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UNDERSTANDING
THE PRESENT CRISIS |
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Richard Clarke
testimony to 9/11 commission, 24 Mar 2004 Washington Post, Wed 24 Mar 2004 |
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The following is the full transcript of Wednesday's hearing
by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: SPEAKERS: WITNESSES: [...] KEAN: I'd like to call the hearing back to order. KEAN: Our next witness is Mr. Richard Clarke, who served as the
former national coordinator for counterterrorism at the National Security
Council. Mr. Clarke served on the National Security Council's staff with
great dedication. We are pleased to have him here with us, to join us. Mr. Clarke, could I ask you to raise your right hand so we place you
under oath? Do you swear, or affirm, to tell the whole truth and nothing but
the truth? CLARKE: I do. KEAN: Thank you very much, sir. Now, Mr. Clarke, your written remarks will be entered into the
record in full. We'd ask you, sort of, to summarize your statement and please
proceed. CLARKE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Because I have submitted a written statement today, and I've
previously testified before this commission for 15 hours, and before the
Senate-House Joint Inquiry Committee for six hours, I have only a very brief
opening statement. I welcome these hearings because of the opportunity that they
provide to the American people to better understand why the tragedy of 9/11
happened and what we must do to prevent a reoccurance. I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I
can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11. To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on
television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you
failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because
we failed. And for that failure, I would ask -- once all the facts are out --
for your understanding and for your forgiveness. With that, Mr. Chairman, I'll be glad to take your questions. KEAN: The questioning will be led by Senator Gorton. Are you leading off, or Commissioner Roemer? GORTON: Tim is. KEAN: Commissioner Roemer? ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Mr. Clarke. I want to thank you, as I start my questions,
for your 30 years of public service to the American people. I want to thank
you for your sworn testimony before the 9/11 commission: over 15 hours. And I really want to say, Mr. Clarke, that there are a lot of distractions
out there today. The books, a lot of news media, a lot of accusations flying
back and forth. I want you to concentrate, to the degree you can, on the memos, on
the e-mail, on the strategy papers and on the time that we're tasked to
looking at on this 9/11 commission, between 1998 and September the 11th. ROEMER: You coordinated counterterrorism policy in both the Clinton
and the Bush administrations. I want to know, first of all: Was fighting Al
Qaida a top priority for the Clinton administration from 1998 to the year
2001? How high a priority was it in that Clinton administration during that
time period? CLARKE: My impression was that fighting terrorism, in general, and
fighting Al Qaida, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in
the Clinton administration -- certainly no higher priority. There were
priorities probably of equal importance such as the Middle East peace
process, but I certainly don't know of one that was any higher in the
priority of that administration. ROEMER: With respect to the Bush administration, from the time they
took office until September 11th, 2001, you had much to deal with: Russia,
China, G-8, Middle East. How high a priority was fighting Al Qaida in the
Bush administration? CLARKE: I believe the Bush administration in the first eight months
considered terrorism an important issue, but not an urgent issue. Well, president Bush himself says as much in his interview with Bob
Woodward in the book "Bush at War." He said, "I didn't feel a
sense of urgency." George Tenet and I tried very hard to create a sense of urgency by
seeing to it that intelligence reports on the Al Qaida threat were frequently
given to the president and other high-level officials. And there was a
process under way to address Al Qaida. But although I continued to say it was
an urgent problem, I don't think it was ever treated that way. ROEMER: You have said in many ways -- you've issued some blistering
attacks on the Bush administration. But you've not held those criticisms from
the Clinton administration, either. We heard from Mr. Berger earlier that you
were critical of the Clinton administration on two areas: not providing aid
to the Northern Alliance, and not going after the human conveyor belts of
jihadists coming out of the sanctuaries in Afghanistan. Are there more in the Clinton administration years -- the USS Cole,
the response there? CLARKE: Well, I think first of all, Mr. Berger is right to say that
almost everything I ever asked for in the way of support from him or from president
Clinton, I got. We did enormously increase the counterterrorism budget of the
federal government, initiated many programs, including one that is now called
Homeland Security. CLARKE: Mr. Berger is also right to note that I wanted a covert
action program to aid Afghan factions to fight the Taliban, and that was not
accomplished. He's also right to note that on several occasions, including
after the attack on the Cole, I suggested that we bomb all of the Taliban and
Al Qaida infrastructure, whether or not it would succeed in killing bin
Laden. I thought that was the wrong way of looking at the problem. I think
the answer is essentially Mr. Berger got it right. ROEMER: OK. With my 15 minutes, let's move into the Bush
administration. On January 25th, we've seen a memo that you've written to Dr. Rice
urgently asking for a principals' review of Al Qaida. You include helping the
Northern Alliance, covert aid, significant new '02 budget authority to help
fight Al Qaida and a response to the USS Cole. You attach to this document
both the Delenda Plan of 1998 and a strategy paper from December 2000. Do you get a response to this urgent request for a principals
meeting on these? And how does this affect your time frame for dealing with
these important issues? CLARKE: I did get a response, and the response was that in the Bush
administration I should, and my committee, counterterrorism security group,
should report to the deputies committee, which is a sub-Cabinet level
committee, and not to the principals and that, therefore, it was
inappropriate for me to be asking for a principals' meeting. Instead, there
would be a deputies meeting. ROEMER: So does this slow the process down to go to the deputies
rather than to the principals or a small group as you had previously done? CLARKE: It slowed it down enormously, by months. First of all, the
deputies committee didn't meet urgently in January or February. Then when the deputies committee did meet, it took the issue of Al
Qaida as part of a cluster of policy issues, including nuclear proliferation
in South Asia, democratization in Pakistan, how to treat the various
problems, including narcotics and other problems in Afghanistan, and launched
on a series of deputies meetings extending over several months to address Al
Qaida in the context of all of those inter-related issues. CLARKE: That process probably ended, I think in July of 2001. So we
were ready for a principals meeting in July. But the principals calendar was
full and then they went on vacation, many of them in August, so we couldn't
meet in August, and therefore the principals met in September. ROEMER: So as the Bush administration is carefully considering from
bottom up a full review of fighting terrorism, what happens to these
individual items like a response to the USS Cole, flying the Predator? Why
aren't these decided in a shorter time frame as they're also going through a
larger policy review of how this policy affects Pakistan and other countries
-- important considerations, but why can't you do both? CLARKE: The deputies committee, its chairman, Mr. Hadley, and others
thought that all these issues were sufficiently inter-related, that they
should be taken up as a set of issues, and pieces of them should not be
broken off. ROEMER: Did you agree with that? CLARKE: No, I didn't agree with much of that. ROEMER: Were you frustrated by this process? CLARKE: I was sufficiently frustrated that I asked to be reassigned.
ROEMER: When was this? CLARKE: Probably May or June. Certainly no later than June. And there was agreement in that time frame, in the May or June time
frame, that my request would be honored and I would be reassigned on the 1st
of October to a new position to deal with cybersecurity, a position that I
requested be created. ROEMER: So you're saying that the frustration got to a high enough
level that it wasn't your portfolio, it wasn't doing a lot of things at the
same time, it was that you weren't getting fast enough action on what you
were requesting? CLARKE: That's right. My view was that this administration, while it listened to me,
didn't either believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared
to act as though there were an urgent problem. And I thought, if the administration doesn't believe its national coordinator
for counterterrorism when he says there's an urgent problem and if it's
unprepared to act as though there's an urgent problem, then probably I should
get another job. I thought cybersecurity was and I still think cyber security is an
extraordinary important issue for which this country is very underprepared.
And I thought perhaps I could make a contribution if I worked full time on
that issue. ROEMER: You then wrote a memo on September 4th to Dr. Rice
expressing some of these frustrations several months later, if you say the
time frame is May or June when you decided to resign. A memo comes out that
we have seen on September the 4th. You are blunt in blasting DOD for not
willingly using the force and the power. You blast the CIA for blocking Predator.
You urge policy-makers to imagine a day after hundreds of Americans lay dead
at home or abroad after a terrorist attack and ask themselves what else they
could have done. You write this on September the 4th, seven days before
September 11th. CLARKE: That's right. ROEMER: What else could have been done, Mr. Clarke? CLARKE: Well, all of the things that we recommended in the plan or
strategy -- there's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy
or a series of options. CLARKE: But all of the things we recommended back in January were
those things on the table in September. They were done. They were done after
September 11th. They were all done. I didn't really understand why they
couldn't have been done in February. ROEMER: Well, let's say, Mr. Clarke -- I think this is a fair
question -- let's say that you asked to brief the president of the United
States on counterterrorism. CLARKE: Yes. ROEMER: Did you ask that? CLARKE: I asked for a series of briefings on the issues in my
portfolio, including counterterrorism and cybersecurity. ROEMER: Did you get that request? CLARKE: I did. I was given an opportunity to brief on cybersecurity
in June. I was told I could brief the president on terrorism after this
policy development process was complete and we had the principals meeting and
the draft national security policy decision that had been approved by the
deputies committee. ROEMER: Let's say, Mr. Clarke, as gifted as you might be in
eloquence, and silver-tongued as anyone could be, and let's say -- let's
imagine -- that instead of saying no, you asked for this briefing to the
president -- you said you didn't get it after 8 months of talking -- let's
say you get this briefing in February, after your memo to Dr. Rice on
September the 25th, and you meet with the president of the United States in
February and you brief him on terrorism, tell me how you convinced the
president to move forward on this and get this principals meeting that
doesn't take place until September the 4th moved up so that you can do
something about this problem? CLARKE: Well, I think the best thing to have done, if there had been
a meeting with the president in February, was to show him the accumulated
intelligence that Al Qaida was strong and was planning attacks against the
United States, against friendly governments. It was possible to make a very
persuasive case that this was a major threat and this was an urgent problem. ROEMER: And you think this would have sped up the deputies' process
and the principals' process? CLARKE: No. ROEMER: Do you think the president would have reached down then and
said something to the national security team to... CLARKE: I don't know... ROEMER: ... to expedite this? What... CLARKE: Don't know. ROEMER: ... You worked for President Clinton. You saw what meetings
with presidents could do there. Is this a magical solution? Or is it
something that president might say right back to you, "Listen, Dick,
I've got many other things I've got to do here, in the Middle East peace
process Bosnia, Kosovo, the Korean peninsula"? How likely is it that we
are able to see some kind of result from a meeting like that? CLARKE: I think in depends, in part, on the president. CLARKE: President Bush was regularly told by the director of Central
Intelligence that there was an urgent threat. On one occasion -- he was told
this dozens of times in the morning briefings that George Tenet gave him. On
one of those occasions, he asked for a strategy to deal with the threat. Condi Rice came back from that meeting, called me, and relayed what
the president had requested. And I said, "Well, you know, we've had this
strategy ready since before you were inaugurated. I showed it you. You have
the paperwork. We can have a meeting on the strategy any time you want."
She said she would look into it. Her looking into it and the
president asking for it did not change the pace at which it was considered.
And as far as I know, the president never asked again; at least I was never
informed that he asked again. I do know he was thereafter continually
informed about the threat by George Tenet. ROEMER: Let me ask you, with my yellow light on, a question about
the summer 2000 alert. You were saying, the CIA was saying, everybody was
saying something spectacular is about to happen. Spiking in intelligence,
something terrible is about to happen. You've told us in some of our
interviews you only wish you would have known at that time in that summer
what the FBI knew with regard to Moussaoui, the Phoenix memo, and terrorists
in the United States. What could you have done with some of that information, with the
spiked alerts, with the spectacular attack on the horizon in the summer of
2001? CLARKE: Congressman, it is very easy in retrospect to say that I
would have done this or I would have done that. And we'll never know. I would
like to think that had I been informed by the FBI that two senior Al Qaida
operatives who had been in a planning meeting earlier in Kuala Lumpur were
now in the United States and we knew that and we knew their names. And I
think we even had their pictures. I would like to think that I would have released, or would have had
the FBI release, a press release with their names, with their descriptions,
held a press conference, tried to get their names and pictures on the front
page of every paper, "America's Most Wanted," the evening news, and
caused a successful nationwide manhunt for those two of the 19 hijackers, but
I don't know because you're asking me a hypothetical and I have the benefit
now of 20/20 hindsight. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Clark. Mr. Chairman, thank you for patience and the time. KEAN: Thank you, sir. Senator Gorton? GORTON: Mr. Clarke, you got the position as the head of this
counterterrorism and security group, CSG, when and about May of 1998. Is that
correct? CLARKE: No, Senator. Actually, I got it in the first Bush
administration in the fall of 1992. GORTON: But it got the level of being up there at the White House
and being a very important position in 1998? CLARKE: What happened in 1998 -- let me go back. The
counterterrorism security group, the CSG, goes back to the Reagan
administration. It's been around for that long. I started chairing it during
the last few months of the Bush administration in 1992; continued to chair it
throughout the Clinton administration and into the second Bush
administration. In 1998, President Clinton signed a presidential directive that
created a new title for the chairman of that group. The chairman had always
been a special assistant to the president; that was the title. Under the new
directive in 1998 the title became national coordinator for counterterrorism.
But I think there's something I need to say about that title. The
actual title was national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection
and counterterrorism. And the press, thinking that that title was too long
and not sexy enough, immediately turned it into terrorism czar. If you look at the presidential decision directive in 1998 that
created this position, it is replete with what the national coordinator
cannot do and what resources the national coordinator would not have. It was
not a counterterrorism czar, especially when compared to people like the drug
czar. It gave me... GORTON: It was a staff position, not an action position in other
words. CLARKE: It gave me all of the responsibility and none of the
authority. GORTON: And later in 1998, of course, we had the explosions, the
attack on the two embassies. CLARKE: Right. GORTON: And shortly after that the administration took its one
military response to terrorism in the attacks on Afghanistan and the Sudan.
Were those actions taken on your recommendation? Were you a part of the
decision-making process in calling for that reaction? CLARKE: Senator, I was. But if I may be a little picky, this was not
the administration's first or only use of military action in response to
terrorism. The administration began in the first five months -- the Clinton
administration -- the first five months of the administration, six months to
use military force in response to terrorism. GORTON: The first to Al Qaida. CLARKE: The first time that we had an Al Qaida attack on the United
States facilities -- it was the first time that Al Qaida had attacked us and
we had been told it was Al Qaida. In retrospect, many years after these attacks occurred, FBI and CIA
began to say that things like the World Trade Center attack in 1993 might
have been done by an early stage Al Qaida. GORTON: In August of 1998, did you recommend a longer-lasting
military response or just precisely the one that, in fact, took place? CLARKE: I recommended a series of rolling attacks against the
infrastructure in Afghanistan. Every time they would rebuild it, I proposed that
we blow it up again much like, in fact, we were doing in Iraq, where we had a
rolling series of attacks on their air defense system. And shortly after that, you came up with the so-called Delenda Plan,
as I understand it. And is our staff report accurate in saying that it had
four principle approaches -- diplomacy, covert action, various financial
members and military action? Is that a reasonable summary? CLARKE: Yes, sir. GORTON: Also, is our staff accurate in saying that the strategy was
never formally adopted, but that you were authorized in effect to go ahead
with the first three, but not with the fourth? CLARKE: Yes, sir. GORTON: And at various times thereafter you did recommend specific
military responses under specific circumstances, did you not? CLARKE: Yes, sir. GORTON: Each of which was rejected for one reason or another? CLARKE: That's correct. GORTON: Then in the early winter of 1999, when the CIA came up with
a plan to attack a hunting camp in Afghanistan, which it felt that Osama bin
Laden was present or was not present, that recommendation, or that plan, was
ultimately aborted. Did you recommend against that plan? CLARKE: Yes, Senator. What I did was to call the director of Central Intelligence and say
that I had finally been presented with satellite photography of the facility.
And it was very clear to me that this looked like something other than a
terrorist camp. It looked like a luxury hunting trip. And I asked him to look
into it, personally. When he did, he called back and he said that he was no
longer recommending the attack. GORTON: OK. So you never recommended either for or against an attack
on that camp? CLARKE: Well, I think -- I don't want to split hairs. By calling the
director of Central Intelligence and suggesting to him that this did not look
to me like a terrorist facility and urging him to look into it, he certainly
had the impression that I wasn't in favor of it. Absolutely. GORTON: Well, did it make any difference as to what kind of camp it
was, if it was likely that Osama bin laden was there? CLARKE: Well, it did in two respects. The administration had adopted
a policy with regard -- let me back up. After the bombings in 1998, we kept submarines off the coast of
Pakistan, loaded with cruise missiles, for the purpose of launching a
follow-on attack when we could locate bin Laden. The intelligence that we got
about where bin Laden was, was very poor. The DCI, Mr. Tenet, characterized
that intelligence himself on repeated occasions as very poor. On one occasion, we thought we knew where he was, and there were two
problems. One, the intelligence was poor, according to George Tenet. And two,
the collateral damage would have been great, according to the Pentagon. When I looked at this facility, it looked to me like the
intelligence was, again, poor, because it didn't look like a terrorist camp.
And the probability of collateral damage would have been high, I thought,
since I believed, based on the satellite photography, that people other than
terrorists were there. The decision ultimately was George Tenet's, and George Tenet
recommended no action be taken. I don't know, in retrospect -- your staff
might. But I don't know, in retrospect, whether it proved to be true that bin
Laden was in the vicinity or not. GORTON: In any event, every recommendation for military action or
covert action, from late 1998 until the year 2000, ran up against the
objection of actionable -- that it was not based on actionable intelligence,
that wonderful phrase we've heard in the last two days. Is that not correct,
because of the uncertainty as to whether bin Laden was present, uncertainty
about collateral damage, et cetera? CLARKE: That's true in describing actions aimed at Osama bin Laden
himself. There were other covert action activities taken which we obviously
can't go into here. But, there was a pre-existing finding on terrorism under
which CIA was operating. CLARKE: And the CIA was able to do some things outside of
Afghanistan against the Al Qaida network using that authority. GORTON: And at the very end of the Clinton administration after the
attack on the Cole, there was triggered, either by the Cole or by everything
else, a new set of initiatives resulting in what is called a Blue Sky memo,
is that correct? CLARKE: That's right. GORTON: And were you a part of that? Did you draft it? Was it your
plan? CLARKE: The Blue Sky memo I believe you're referring to was part of
an overall update of the Delenda Plan. And it was a part generated by the
Central Intelligence Agency. We, my staff, generated the rest of the update. GORTON: And the goal of that plan was to roll back Al Qaida over a
period of three to five years, reducing it eventually to a rump group like
other terrorist organizations around the world. CLARKE: Our goal was to do that to eliminate it as a threat to the
United States, recognizing that one might not ever be able to totally
eliminate everybody in the world who thought they were a member of Al Qaida.
But if we could get it to be as ineffective as the Abu Nidal organization was
toward the end of its existence; it didn't pose a threat to the United
States. That's what we wanted. The CIA said that if they got all the
resources they needed, that might be possible over the course of three years
at the earliest. GORTON: And then Delenda and that Blue Sky proposal, I take it, were
pretty much the basis of what you recommended to Condoleezza Rice in January
of 2001: covert assistance to the Northern Alliance, you know, more money for
CIA activities, something called choosing a standard of evidence for
attributing responsibility for the Cole, new Predator reconnaissance missions
and more work on funding? CLARKE: That's right, Senator. The update to the Delenda Plan that
we did in October, November, December of 2000 was handed to the new national
security adviser in January of 2001. It formed the basis of the draft
national security presidential directive that was then discussed in September
of 2001. It formed the basis of the draft national security presidential
directive that was then discussed in September of 2001 and signed by
President Bush as NSPD-9, I believe, later in September. GORTON: What do you mean by a standard of evidence? I'm troubled by
this fuzzy phrase, "actionable intelligence." And let's take the
Cole from that. As we've heard from Director Tenet in November and then more
precisely in December of 2000, they pretty much concluded that the Cole took
place through Al Qaida people, but they couldn't prove that it had been
directed Osama Bin Laden. GORTON: Was the amount of intelligence available in November,
December of 2000 and 2001, in your view, actionable intelligence that could
have been the appropriate basis for a specific response to the Cole? CLARKE: The phrase that you read, "the standard for
actionable," was a way of my addressing this problem. And I wanted to
get us away from having to prove either in a court of law legal standard or
even in some fancy intelligence community standard that went through a
prolonged process that took months. I thought we could disassociate the attack on the Cole from any
attacks that we did on the Taliban and Al Qaida. If people wanted to further
study who was guilty of attacking the Cole -- and the FBI had deployed
hundreds of people to do that, and CIA was saying that there were some people
involved who might have been Al Qaida -- I thought fine. If you want to have
that kind standard and you want to have that kind of process, fine. Then
let's separate that and let's bomb Afghanistan anyway and not tie the two
together. But it seemed to my staff, looking at the same intelligence that the
CIA was looking at, it seemed to us within two days of the attack on the Cole
that we could put together an intelligence case that this was an Al Qaida
attack by the local Al Qaida cell in Yemen. And that is, of course, the
conclusion that the CIA came to in January or February of the next year based
on pretty much nothing but the evidence that we had available to us within
two days. GORTON: Now, since my yellow light is on, at this point my final
question will be this: Assuming that the recommendations that you made on
January 25th of 2001, based on Delenda, based on Blue Sky, including aid to
the Northern Alliance, which had been an agenda item at this point for two
and a half years without any action, assuming that there had been more
Predator reconnaissance missions, assuming that that had all been adopted say
on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have
prevented 9/11? CLARKE: No. GORTON: It just would have allowed our response, after 9/11, to be
perhaps a little bit faster? CLARKE: Well, the response would have begun before 9/11. GORTON: Yes, but there was no recommendation, on your part or anyone
else's part, that we declare war and attempt to invade Afghanistan prior to
9/11? CLARKE: That's right. GORTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. KEAN: Thank you, Senator. I just have one question. Taking it back
further, you've been there more than anybody, really, in this particular slot
in looking at terrorism and looking at it well. Is it resources, is it change
of policy, what is it over the years, taking all your years there through 2
administrations or 3 administrations even -- what could we have done? I'm trying to find not only what we could have done, but what should
we be doing perhaps in the future? Because we were beaten. I mean, we were
really beaten by these guys, and 3,000 people died. And is there anything you
can think of in that long period, had we done differently as a country, as a
policy, what have you, that could have made a difference? CLARKE: Well I think, Governor, there's a lot that, in retrospect,
with 20/20 hindsight... KEAN: Yes, I'm asking 20/20 hindsight, because we have that
opportunity now. CLARKE: I think Al Qaida probably came into existence in 1988 or in
1989, and no one in the White House was ever informed by the intelligence
community that there was an Al Qaida until probably 1995. The existence of an organization like that was something that
members of the National Security Council staff suspected in 1993. National
Security Adviser Anthony Lake urged CIA to create a special program to
investigate whether there was some organization centered around bin Laden. It was not done because CIA decided there was probably an
organization, it was done because the national security adviser thought there
was probably an organization. CLARKE: Had we a more robust intelligence capability in the last
1980s and early 1990s, we might have recognized the existence of Al Qaida
relatively soon after it came into existence. And if we recognized its
existence and if we knew its philosophy and if we had a proactive
intelligence covert action program -- so that's both more on the collection
side and more on the covert action side -- then we might have been able to
nip it in the bud. But as George Tenet I think explained this morning, our HUMINT
program, our spy capability, had been eviscerated in the 1980s and early
1990s. And there was no such capability either to even know that Al Qaida
existed, let alone to destroy it. And there is something else that I think we need to understand about
the CIA's covert action capabilities. For many years, they were roundly criticized by the Congress and the
media for various covert actions that they carried out at the request of
people like me and the White House -- not me, but people like me. And many
CIA senior managers were dragged up into this room and others and berated for
failed covert action activities, and they became great political footballs. Now, if you're in the CIA and you're growing up as a CIA manager
over this period of time and that's what you see going on and you see one
boss after another, one deputy director of operations after another being
fired or threatened with indictment, I think the thing you learn from that is
that covert action is a very dangerous thing that can damage the CIA, as much
as it can damage the enemy. Robert Gates, when he was deputy director of CIA, and when he was
director of CIA, and when he was deputy national security adviser, Robert
Gates repeatedly taught the lesson that covert action isn't worth doing. It's
too risky. That's the lesson that the current generation of directorate of
operations managers learned as they were growing up in the agency. Now, George Tenet says they're not risk-averse, and I'm sure he
knows better than I do. But from the outside, working with the D.O. over the course of the
last 20 years, it certainly looks to me as though they were risk- averse, but
they had every reason to be risk-averse, because the Congress, the media, had
taught them that the use of covert action would likely blow up in their face.
KEAN: Thank you very much, sir. Commissioner Ben-Veniste? BEN-VENISTE: Good afternoon, Mr. Clarke. I want to focus on the role
of the national security adviser and your relationship with the national
security adviser in the Clinton administration as compared with the Bush
administration. Can you point to any similarities or differences? CLARKE: Well, I think the similarity is that under all four national
security advisers for whom I worked, I was told by each of the four,
beginning with Brent Scowcroft, that if I ever had any -- I hate to use the
word, Senator, "actionable intelligence," the phrase -- if I ever
had reason to believe that there was something urgent that they could act on
that I could interrupt anything that they were doing, that I have an open
door any time I needed it day or night if there was something about to
happen. I think the difference between the two national security advisers in
the Clinton administration and the national security adviser in the Bush
administration is that on policy development, I dealt directly with the
national security advisers in the Clinton administration. But policy
development on counterterrorism I was told would be best done with the deputy
national security adviser. So I spent less time talking about the problems of
terrorism with the national security adviser in this administration. BEN-VENISTE: Let me move to substance in terms of the level of
threat during the summer of 2001 and your involvement in coordination of both
foreign and domestic intelligence. That was definitely a part of your
function, was it not? CLARKE: Yes, sir. BEN-VENISTE: And before I get to that and before I forget doing so,
I want to express my appreciation for the fact that you have come before this
commission and state in front of the world your apology for what went wrong.
To my knowledge, you are the first to do that. (APPLAUSE) BEN-VENISTE: This does not detract from the fact that there were so
many people who we have met over this past year who were engaged in trying to
keep our country safe and to have worked tirelessly to achieve that goal. BEN-VENISTE: In the millennium threat we knew, and we covered this
with Sandy Berger to some considerable extent, that sleeper cells in North
America had been activated, and we had rolled them up and prevented, among
other things, an attack on the Los Angeles International Airport. With respect to the level of threat and the intelligence information
that you were receiving, is it fair to say that in the summer of 2001, the
threat level either approached or exceeded anything that you had previously
been receiving? CLARKE: I think it exceeded anything that George Tenet or I had ever
seen. BEN-VENISTE: And I think the phrase which has received some currency
in our hearings of someone's hair being on fire originated with you, saying
that basically you knew that something drastic was about to happen and that
the indicators were all consistent in that regard. CLARKE: That's right. BEN-VENISTE: Did you make a determination that the threat was going
to come from abroad, as an exclusive proposition? Or did you understand that
given the fact that we had been attacked before and that the plans had been
interrupted to attack us before that the potential existed for Al Qaida to
strike at us on our homeland? CLARKE: The CIA said in their assessments that the attack would most
likely occur overseas, most probably in Saudi Arabia, possibly in Israel. I
thought, however, that it might well take place in the United States based on
what we had learned in December '99, when we rolled up operations in
Washington state, in Brooklyn, in Boston. The fact that we didn't have intelligence that we could point to
that said it would take place in the United States wasn't significant in my
view, because, frankly, sir -- I know how this is going to sound but I have
to say it -- I didn't think the FBI would know whether or not there was
anything going on in the United States by Al Qaida. BEN-VENISTE: Well, the FBI was a principal agency upon which you had
to rely, is that not the case? CLARKE: It is. BEN-VENISTE: Now, with respect to what you were told -- you were the
principal coordinator for counterterrorism for the chief executive flowing up
and down through you, correct? CLARKE: Yes, sir. BEN-VENISTE: Did you know that the two individuals who had been
identified as Al Qaida had entered the United States and were presently
thought to be in the country? CLARKE: I was not informed of that, nor were senior levels of the
FBI. BEN-VENISTE: Had you known that these individuals were in the
country, what steps, with the benefit of hindsight, but informed hindsight,
would you have taken, given the level of threat? CLARKE: To put the answer in context, I had been saying to the FBI
and to the other federal law enforcement agencies and to the CIA that because
of this intelligence that something was about to happen that they should
lower their threshold of reporting, that they should tell us anything that
looked the slightest bit unusual. In retrospect, having said that over and over again to them, for them
to have had this information somewhere in the FBI and not told to me, I still
find absolutely incomprehensible. BEN-VENISTE: And I will have to end it here although I'd like to go
further. Was the information with respect to Moussaoui and his erratic
behavior in flight school ever communicated to you? CLARKE: Not to me. BEN-VENISTE: Given the fact that there was a body of information
with respect to the use of planes as weapons within the intelligence
community's knowledge, had you received information about Moussaoui training
to fly a commercial airplane? Would that have had some impact on the kind of
efforts which might be made to protect commercial aviation? CLARKE: I don't know. The information to which you refer,
information in the intelligence community's knowledge about Al Qaida having
thought of using aircraft as weapons, that information was old relatively
speaking -- five years, six years old -- hadn't reoccurred to my knowledge
during those five or six years -- and has to be placed -- to give the
intelligence community a break -- it has to be placed in the context of the
other intelligence reports. CLARKE: The volume of intelligence reports on this kind of thing, on
Al Qaida threats and other terrorist threats, was in the tens of thousands,
probably hundreds of thousands over the course of the five or six years. Now, in retrospect, to go back and find a report six years earlier
that said perhaps they were going to use aircraft as weapons, it's easy to do
now. But I think the intelligence community analysts can be forgiven for not
thinking about it given the fact that they hadn't seen a lot in the five or
six years intervening about it and that there were so many reports about so
many other things. BEN-VENISTE: And yet -- with your indulgence, Mr. Chairman... KEAN: Short indulgence. BEN-VENISTE: And yet, an FAA advisory went out. The FAA advised on
the potential for domestic hijackings. CLARKE: I asked them to. BEN-VENISTE: And had you known on top of that that there was a
jihadist who was identified, apprehended in the United States before 9/11 who
was in flight school acting erratically... CLARKE: I would like to think, sir, that even without the benefit of
20-20 hindsight, I could have connected those dots. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you. KEAN: Commissioner Kerrey? KERREY: Mr. Clark, first of all, let me thank you for doing what I
think all of us who had any responsibilities during the late 1990s, early
2000, have responsibility to do, which is to apologize to the families for
letting them down. I think it was a courageous gesture. And I think it would
be a lot easier for us to, in a nonjudgmental fashion, figure out what went
wrong and what to do in the future if we'd all sort of start off our
inquiries with that declaration. I appreciate very much the sincerity of
that. Let me also say that I feel badly, because I presume that you are,
at the moment, receiving terrible phone messages and e-mail messages. And I
hope you don't take it personal because you're just caught in one of these
moments. I can barely see you because of all the cameras I'm having to look
through. No, it's OK, I'm just kidding. KERREY: I'm just trying to illustrate the attention that's being
paid to you, and... CLARKE: Senator, I think I knew what the price would be. KERREY: Well, you're a smarter man than most of us, then, because I
think you can kind of know it theoretically. But until you get in it, it can
be quite surprising. And let me also thank you for over a quarter century of public
service. I mean, you really in many ways are an example of a single
individual coming into government and demonstrating that you can make a
difference over a long period of time. And you have. And I think as badly as you feel toward the families that are
sitting behind you, there are many families that are today, unknowingly, the
recipient of your service. Because, we did, thanks to you and thanks to many
others who were working with you, prevent an awful lot of bad things from
happening as well. So let me start off with that and start off by saying that I think
one of the things we got to try to do is get to a point where we can have
honest disagreements and let those disagreements permit us to discover where,
in fact, we've got common ground. I find, in fact, arguments almost being
necessary. And you are, again, a very good demonstration of that. You almost
always, with your declaratories, provoke a good argument. And it's those
arguments that allow us to discover where our common ground is. Let me say that in one area I disagree with you is on the Delenda.
You said in response to Senator Gorton earlier that it would not have
prevented 9/11, it was not a declaration of war, you weren't advocating
declaring war. I believe Delenda would have necessitated a declaration of war, and
it was probably one of the reasons it was rejected as well as other options
that I think would have substantially reduced the risk of 9/11 had we
followed your advice. One of the reasons it was probably not taken up by the National
Security Council and the president was that it would have required that
draconian of a step -- and you've heard me say it before, but I think it's
one of the mistakes that we made. Let me ask you, just specific to the use of airplanes as a weapon,
because it seems so obvious, and again it seemed so obvious after the fact.
It was such a simple and easy strategy that was put in place. But, in your case, in '96 with the Olympics, you raised a concern
about a small Cessna being used to attack the Olympics in Atlanta. And I
think it was '98 -- in December '98 -- you were head of the CSG, chairing the
CSG, when there was a big concern on the East Coast about the possibility of
someone connected to Osama bin Laden hijacking a commercial aircraft out of
New York City. KERREY: That warning went out. During the millennium scare, as well,
you sent a memo to Berger discussing the possible domestic threats. And the
quote is that, "Is there a threat to civilian aircraft?" In March
2001 another CSG item on the agenda mentions, "the possibility of
alleged bin Laden interest in targeting U.S. passenger planes at the Chicago
Airport," end quote. And it seems to me that we had a broad, general understanding that
it was possible that hijacking might be on the list of things that were going
to be used. And I remember Administrator Garvey, when she became before this
commission a month or so ago, all their attention was overseas, she said. I
mean, if you listen and look at the documents on the day of 9/11, it just
inescapably leads to the conclusion that we were surprised by a hijacking. And I wonder if you've got a perspective on how it's possible that
we were surprised by hijacking, let alone a multiple hijacking simultaneously
occurring at the same moment? CLARKE: Well, sir, I would distinguish between hijackings in general
and hijackings that then turn the aircraft into suicide weapons. There have
been hijackings by terrorists going back for 20- 25 years, and the United
States had some programs in place to deal with that. In 1996, after the TWA 800, crash the president appointed a
commission on aircraft safety and security that looked at whether we needed
to augment our protection against hijacking. And it made several recommendations. Most of those recommendations
were carried out, not all of them. One of the things it rejected was federalizing the aircraft
searching process that is now done by the Transportation Security Agency,
because it would have cost so much money and it would have required such a
big federal bureaucracy. At the time where there had been no recent hijacking, I assume that
commissioners on that commission thought they were making the right
recommendation. Many of their recommendations for increased security,
however, were carried out. CLARKE: But as to your question about using aircraft as weapons, I
was afraid beginning in 1996, not that a Cessna would fly into the Olympics,
but that any size aircraft would be put into the Olympics. And during my inspection of the Atlanta Olympic security
arrangements a month or two before the games, I was shocked that the FBI
hadn't put into effect any aircraft -- air defense security arrangements. So
I threw together an air defense for the Atlanta games somewhat quickly, but I
got an air defense system in place. We then tried to institutionalize that for Washington to protect the
Capitol and the White House. And that system would have been run by the
Secret Service. It would have involved missiles, anti-aircraft guns, radar,
helicopters. Secret Service developed all the plans for that. Secret Service was
a big advocate for it, but they were unable to get the Treasury Department,
in which they were then located, to approve it. And I was unable to get the
Office of Management and Budget to fund it. KERREY: Just a two-sentence response. I mean, the papers were full
of stories about men and women using suicide as a device in carrying out
terrorist objectives. The second intifada was in full force beginning in late
2000 through 2001. So perhaps on the second question, if I get the chance, we can
continue this discussion. CLARKE: I'd enjoy that. The bottom line here is, I thought I -- I agree with you. And I
thought I had made a persuasive case that we needed an air defense system as
well as an airport system, not just to stop hijackers at baggage inspection,
but to deal with them if they got through that and were able to hijack an
aircraft. I thought we needed an air defense system. And we got a little of
that air defense system implemented, but only a little. KERREY: Put me on the list if we have a chance to do a second round.
KEAN: Will do. Governor Thompson? THOMPSON: Mr. Clarke, as we sit here this afternoon, we have your
book and we have your press briefing of August 2002. Which is true? CLARKE: Well, I think the question is a little misleading. The press briefing you're referring to comes in the following
context: Time magazine had published a cover story article highlighting what
your staff briefing talks about. They had learned that, as your staff
briefing notes, that there was a strategy or a plan and a series of
additional options that were presented to the national security adviser and
the new Bush team when they came into office. Time magazine ran a somewhat sensational story that implied that the
Bush administration hadn't worked on that plan. And this, of course, coming
after 9/11 caused the Bush White House a great deal of concern. So I was asked by several people in senior levels of the Bush White
House to do a press backgrounder to try to explain that set of facts in a way
that minimized criticism of the administration. And so I did. Now, we can get into semantic games of whether it was a strategy, or
whether it was a plan, or whether it was a series of options to be decided
upon. I think the facts are as they were outlined in your staff briefing. THOMPSON: Well, let's take a look, then, at your press briefing,
because I don't want to engage in semantic games. You said, the Bush
administration decided, then, you know, mid-January -- that's mid- January,
2001 -- to do 2 things: one, vigorously pursue the existing the policy --
that would be the Clinton policy -- including all of the lethal covert action
findings which we've now made public to some extent. Is that so? Did they
decide in January of 2001 to vigorously pursue the existing Clinton policy? CLARKE: They decided that the existing covert action findings would
remain in effect. THOMPSON: OK. The second thing the administration decided to do is to
initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a
couple of years and get them decided. Now, that seems to indicate to me that
proposals had been sitting on the table in the Clinton administration for a
couple of years, but that the Bush administration was going to get them done.
Is that a correct assumption? CLARKE: Well, that was my hope at the time. It turned out not to be
the case. THOMPSON: Well, then why in August of 2002, over a year later, did
you say that it was the case? CLARKE: I was asked to make that case to the press. I was a special
assistant to the president, and I made the case I was asked to make. THOMPSON: Are you saying to be you were asked to make an untrue case
to the press and the public, and that you went ahead and did it? CLARKE: No, sir. Not untrue. Not an untrue case. I was asked to
highlight the positive aspects of what the administration had done and to
minimize the negative aspects of what the administration had done. And as a
special assistant to the president, one is frequently asked to do that kind
of thing. I've done it for several presidents. THOMPSON: Well, OK, over the course of the summer, they developed
implementation details. The principals met at the end of the summer, approved
them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase
in funding five-fold. Did they authorize the increase in funding five-fold? CLARKE: Authorized but not appropriated. THOMPSON: Well, but the Congress appropriates, don't they, Mr. Clarke?
CLARKE: Well, within the executive branch, there are two steps as
well. In the executive branch, there's the policy process which you can
compare to authorization, which is to say we would like to spend this amount
of money for this program. And then there is the second step, the budgetary
step, which is to find the offsets. And that had not been done. In fact, it
wasn't done until after September 11th. THOMPSON: Changing the policy on Pakistan, was the policy on
Pakistan changed? CLARKE: Yes, sir it was. THOMPSON: Changing the policy on Uzbekistan, was it changed? CLARKE: Yes, sir. THOMPSON: Changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance,
was that changed? CLARKE: Well, let me back up. I said yes to the last two answers. It
was changed only after September 11th. It had gone through an approvals
process. It was going through an approvals process with the deputies
committee. And they had approved it -- The deputies had approved those policy
changes. It had then gone to a principals committee for approval, and that
occurred on September 4th. Those three things which you mentioned were
approved by the principals. They were not approved by the president, and
therefore the final approval hadn't occurred until after September 11th. THOMPSON: But they were approved by people in the administration
below the level of the president, moving toward the president. Is that
correct? CLARKE: Yes, so over the course of many, many months, they went
through several committee meetings at the sub-Cabinet level. And then there
was a hiatus. And then they went to finally on September 4th, a week before
the attacks, they went to the principals for their approval. Of course, the
final approval by the president didn't take place until after the attacks. THOMPSON: Well is that eight-month period unusual? CLARKE: It is unusual when you are being told every day that there
is an urgent threat. THOMPSON: Well, but the policy involved changing, for example, the
policy on Pakistan, right? So you would have to involve those people in the
administration who had charge of the Pakistani policy, would you not? CLARKE: The secretary of state has, as a member of the principals
committee, that kind of authority over all foreign policy issues. THOMPSON: Changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance,
that would have been DOD? CLARKE: No. Governor, that would have been the CIA. But again, all of the right people to make those kinds of changes
were represented by the five or six people on the principals committee. THOMPSON: But they were also represented on the smaller group, were
they not, the deputies committee? CLARKE: But they didn't have the authority to approve it. They only
had the authority to recommend it further up the process. THOMPSON: Well, is policy usually made at the level of the
principals committee before it comes up? |
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