Understanding the present crisis

UNDERSTANDING THE PRESENT CRISIS
www.upc.org.uk

Richard Clarke testimony to 9/11 commission, 24 Mar 2004

(continuation)

CLARKE: Policy usually originates in working groups. Recommendations and differences then are floated up from working groups to the deputies committee. If there are differences there, policy recommendations and differences are then floated up to the principals. And occasionally, when there is not a consensus at the principals level, policy recommendations and options, or differences, go to the president. And the president makes these kinds of decisions.

By law, in fact, many of the kinds of decisions you're talking about can only be made by the president.

THOMPSON: And you said that the strategy changed from one of rollback with Al Qaida over the course of five years, which it had been, which I presume is the Clinton policy, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaida, that is in fact the time line. Is that correct?

CLARKE: It is, but it requires a bit of elaboration. As your staff brief said, the goal of the Delenda Plan was to roll back Al Qaida over the course of three to five years so that it was just a nub of an organization like Abu Nidal that didn't threaten the United States.

I tried to insert the phrase early in the Bush administration in the draft NSPD that our goal should be to eliminate Al Qaida. And I was told by various members of the deputies committee that that was overly ambitious and that we should take the word "eliminate" out and say "significantly erode."

CLARKE: And then, following 9/11, we were able to go back to my language of eliminate, rather than significantly erode. And so, the version of the national security presidential decision directive that President Bush finally got to see after 9/11, had my original language of "eliminate," not the interim language of "erode."

THOMPSON: And you were asked when was...

KEAN: Governor, one more question.

THOMPSON: When was that presented to the president? And you answered: the president was briefed throughout this process.

CLARKE: Yes. The president apparently asked, on one occasion that I'm aware of, for a strategy. And when he asked that, he apparently didn't know there was a strategy in the works. I, therefore, was told about this by the national security adviser.

I came back to her and said, well, there is a strategy; after all, it's basically what I showed you in January. It stuck in the deputies committee. She said she would tell the president that, and she said she would try to break it out of the deputies committee.

THOMPSON: So you believed that your conference with the press in August of 2002 is consistent with what you've said in your book and what you've said in press interviews the last five days about your book?

CLARKE: I do. I think the think that's obviously bothering you is the tenor and the tone. And I've tried to explain to you, sir, that when you're on the staff of the president of the United States, you try to make his policies look as good as possible.

THOMPSON: Well, with all respect, Mr. Clarke, I think a lot of things beyond the tenor and the tone bother me about this.

KEAN: Thank you, Governor. Commissioner Gorelick.

GORELICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Clarke, for your testimony today. You have talked about a plan that you presented to Dr. Rice immediately upon her becoming national security adviser, and that in response to questions from Commissioner Gorton, you said elements of that plan, which were developed by you and your staff at the end of 2000 -- many elements -- became part of what was then called NSPD-9, or what ultimately became NSPD-9.

When Dr. Rice writes in the Washington Post, "No Al Qaida plan was turned over to the new administration," is that true?

CLARKE: No. I think what is true is what your staff found by going through the documents and what your staff briefing says, which is that early in the administration, within days of the Bush administration coming into office, that we gave them two documents. In fact, I briefed Dr. Rice on this even before they came into office.

CLARKE: One was the original Delenda Plan from 1998, and the other document was the update that we did following the Cole attack, which had as part of it a number of decisions that had to be taken so that she characterizes as a series of options rather than a plan. I'd like to think of it as a plan with a series of options, but I think we're getting into semantic differences.

GORELICK: Thank you.

I'd like to turn NSPD-9, the document that was wending its way through the process up until September 4th. The document is classified so I can only speak of it in generalities.

But as I understand it, it had three stages which were to take place over, according to Steve Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, over a period of three years.

The first stage was, we would warn the Taliban. The second stage was we would pressure the Taliban. And the third stage was that we would look for ways to oust the Taliban based upon individuals on the ground other than ourselves, at the same time making military contingency plans.

Is that correct?

CLARKE: Well, that's right. The military contingency plans had always been around, but there was nothing in the original draft, NSPD, that was approved by the principals to suggest U.S. forces would be sent into Afghanistan on the ground.

GORELICK: In addition to that, Director Tenet was asked to draft new additional covert action authorities. Is that right?

CLARKE: That's right, in part because Mr. Hadley found the existing six memorandums of covert action authority to be talmudic -- it's actually I think Mr. Hadley who gets credit for that word.

But it wasn't really meant to expand them significantly other than providing direct aid to Afghan factions.

GORELICK: Now you have just described, then, the skeleton, if you will, of what was approved by the administration as of September 4th. And we know that no further action was taken before September 11th.

GORELICK: And so I would read to you -- and these are questions I would have put to Dr. Rice had she been here, and I will put to her, the White House designee, Secretary Armitage. She says our strategy, which was expected to take years, marshalled all elements of national power to take down the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures. Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets, taking the fight to the enemy where he lived.

Is that an accurate statement, in your view?

CLARKE: No, it's not.

GORELICK: In addition to the items that were left hanging during this period of time that we've talked about, in your view -- the predator, the issue of aid to the Northern Alliance, the response to the Cole -- the other item that we have heard about that was deferred until the policy emerged was action on the set of covert authorities or the draft of covert authorities that Director Tenet supplied to the NSC in I believe it was March of '01. Is that true?

CLARKE: Yes.

GORELICK: And no action was taken on those until after 9/11. Is that correct?

CLARKE: That's correct.

GORELICK: After the millennium, you were asked by Sandy Berger, and he testified about it this morning, to do an after-action report. And he described how there were 29 recommendations and a huge supplemental, et cetera. The report doesn't address some of the systemic issues.

And you, above maybe anybody else, saw the systemic problems. I mean you have described, yourself, the problems with the FBI, the wall between the FBI and the CIA. We've heard about the disconnect between the State Department watch list and the FAA no-fly list. We've heard about really the inadequacy of our visa program and our consular effort.

So my question for you is this: You had a great shot after the millennium to take a whack at these problems which you no doubt must have seen or maybe -- I'll give you the benefit of the doubt -- perhaps there are some you hadn't seen. Why wasn't the after-action report, post-millennium, as modest as it was. Why didn't it address these fissures and these gaps in the system?

CLARKE: Well, it made 28 or 29 recommendations. Had all of those recommendations been easy to do, they would have been implemented, before or after the after-action report.

CLARKE: Many of the 28 or 29 recommendations were implemented, but some of them weren't, because we went pretty far in the art of the practical, the art of the possible, with those recommendations.

That's probably why some of them never got done. And some of them still haven't been done. I've learned over time that if you go for the perfect solution, the best solution, you don't get very far in actually achieving things. You can write nice reports if you're the Brookings commission or something, but if you want to get something done in the real world, you do what is doable and you try to do a little bit more. But you don't shoot for the moon.

And I think some of systemic things that are obvious to you and -- I know they are -- were more practical after 9/11 than they were after the millennium. Remember, in the millennium, we succeeded in stopping the attacks. That was good news.

But it was not good news for those of us who also wanted to put pressure on the Congress and pressure on OMB and other places because we were not able to point to -- and I hate to say this -- body bags. You know, unfortunately, this country takes body bags and requires body bags sometimes to make really tough decisions about money and about governmental arrangements.

And one of the things I would hope that comes out of your commission report is a recommendation for a change in the attitude of government about threats, that we be able to act on threats that we foresee, even if acting requires boldness and requires money and requires changing the way we do business, that we act on threats in the future before they happen.

The problem is that when you make that recommendation before they happen, when you recommend an air defense system for Washington before there has been a 9/11, people tend to think you're nuts. And I got a lot of that. You know, when the Clinton administration ended, 35 Americans had died at hands of Al Qaida over the course of eight years. And a lot of people said, behind my back and some of them to my face, why are you so obsessed with this organization? It's only killed eight Americans over the course -- 35 Americans over the course of eight years. Why are you making such a big deal over this organization?

That's the kind of mind set that made it difficult for us, even though the president, the national security adviser, and others, the DCI, knew there was a problem and were supporting me. But the institutional bureaucracy and the FBI and DOD and then CIA and OMB and on the Hill -- because I spent a lot of time up here trying to get money and trying to change authorities -- couldn't see the threat because it hadn't happened.

GORELICK: Well, that's a very sobering statement, particularly from someone whose reputation is as aggressive as your reputation is. And it makes me think that individuals who are less of a pile driver -- to use Sandy Berger's words -- must feel even less able to push for change.

GORELICK: Thank you.

KEAN: Secretary Lehman?

LEHMAN: Thank you.

Dick, since you and I first served 28 years ago in the MBFR delegation, I have genuinely been a fan of yours. I've watched you labor without fear of favor in a succession of jobs where you really made a difference. And so when you agreed to spend as much time as you did with us in, as you say, 15 hours, I was very hopeful.

And I attended one of those all-day sessions and read the other two transcripts, and I thought they were terrific. I thought here we have a guy who can be the Rosetta Stone for helping this commission do its job, to help to have the American people grasp what the dysfunctional problems in this government are.

And I thought you let the chips fall where they may. You made a few value judgments which could be debated. But by and large, you were critical of the things, institutions, and people that could have done better and some that did very badly.

And certainly the greater weight of this criticism fell during the Clinton years simply because there were eight of them and only 7 1/2 months of the Bush years. I don't think you, in the transcripts that we have of your classified interviews, pulled punches in either direction. And, frankly, a lot of my questioning this past two days has been drawn from some of the things that you articulated so well during the Clinton years, particularly, because they stretched from the first, as you pointed out, attempt by Saddam to assassinate President Bush 41 right up through the end of the administration.

But now we have the book. And I've published books. And I must say I am green with envy at the promotion department of your publisher.

LEHMAN: I never got Jim Thompson to stand before 50 photographers reading your book. And I certainly never got "60 Minutes" to coordinate the showing of its interview with you with 15 network news broadcasts, the selling of the movie rights, and your appearance here today. So I would say, "Bravo."

(LAUGHTER)

Until I started reading those press reports, and I said this can't be the same Dick Clarke that testified before us, because all of the promotional material and all of the spin in the networks was that this is a rounding, devastating attack -- this book -- on President Bush.

That's not what I heard in the interviews. And I hope you're going to tell me, as you apologized to the families for all of us who were involved in national security, that this tremendous difference -- and not just in nuance, but in the stories you choose to tell -- is really the result of your editors and your promoters, rather than your studied judgment, because it is so different from the whole thrust of your testimony to us.

And similarly, when you add to it the inconsistency between what your promoters are putting out and what you yourself said as late as August '05, you've got a real credibility problem.

And because of my real genuine long-term admiration for you, I hope you'll resolve that credibility problem, because I'd hate to see you become totally shoved to one side during a presidential campaign as an active partisan selling a book.

CLARKE: Thank you, John.

(LAUGHTER)

Let me talk about partisanship here, since you raise it. I've been accused of being a member of John Kerry's campaign team several times this week, including by the White House. So let's just lay that one to bed. I'm not working for the Kerry campaign. Last time I had to declare my party loyalty, it was to vote in the Virginia primary for president of the United States in the year 2000. And I asked for a Republican ballot.

CLARKE: I worked for Ronald Reagan with you. I worked for the first President Bush. And he nominated me to the Senate as an assistant secretary of state, and I worked in his White House, and I've worked for this President Bush. And I'm not working for Senator Kerry.

Now, the fact of the matter is, I do co-teach a class with someone who works for Senator Kerry. That person is named Randy Beers. Randy Beers and I have worked together in the federal government and the White House and the State Department for 25 years.

Randy Beers worked in the White House for Ronald Reagan. Randy Beers worked in the White House for the first President Bush, and Randy Beers worked in the White House for the second President Bush.

And just because he is now working for Senator Kerry, I am not going to disassociate myself from one of my best friends and someone who I greatly respect and worked with for 25 years.

And, yes, I will admit, I co-teach a class at the Harvard University and Georgetown University with Mr. Beers. That, I don't think, makes me a member of the Kerry campaign.

The White House has said that my book is an audition for a high- level position in the Kerry campaign. So let me say here as I am under oath, that I will not accept any position in the Kerry administration, should there be one -- on the record, under oath.

Now, as to your accusation that there is a difference between what I said to this commission in 15 hours of testimony and what I am saying in my book and what media outlets are asking me to comment on, I think there's a very good reason for that.

In the 15 hours of testimony, no one asked me what I thought about the president's invasion of Iraq. And the reason I am strident in my criticism of the president of the United States is because by invading Iraq -- something I was not asked about by the commission, it's something I chose write about a lot in the book -- by invading Iraq the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism.

KEAN: Commissioner Fielding?

FIELDING: Mr. Clarke, thank you for being here.

I shared John's feelings when I read your interviews with the staff as well, because it gave a perspective of something that bridged different administrations and really had a chance to see it. And of course, you were looking at it from different level than some of the other people we had interviewed.

And likewise, I was a little taken back when I saw the hoopla and the promotion for the book and when I saw this transcript that just came forward today.

FIELDING: But what's bothering me now is that not only did you interview with us, but you also spent more than six hours with the congressional joint inquiry. And I've read your information, and, I mean, that's a very serious body and very serious inquiry -- not that we're not. But I can't believe over six hours you never expressed any concern to them that the Bush administration didn't act with sufficient urgency to address these horrible potential problems if you felt that way.

Did you ever list for the joint inquiry any of the measures that you thought should have been taken that weren't?

CLARKE: I think all the measures that I thought should have been taken were in the plan that I presented in January of 2001 and were in the NSPD that the principals approved in September, September 4th, 2001. There were no additional measures that I had in mind other than those that I presented. And as I did explain, both to the commission and to the joint inquiry, those proposals, which ultimately were adopted by the principals committee, took a very, very, very long time to make it through the policy development process.

FIELDING: Well, I understand that, but I think the charges that you've made are much more -- I think they're much deeper than that.

Let me ask you a question, because it's been bothering me as well. You've been involved intimately in PDD-39 and in PDD-62. The latter certainly very much implicates your own position. How long did it take for those to be developed and signed?

CLARKE: I'm not sure I could recollect that answer. Perhaps the staff could find that.

To your general answer about how long does it take PDDs to be signed, I've seen them signed in a day and I've seen them take three years.

FIELDING: Well, of course. I mean, we've all seen that. But these were -- obviously 62 was a very important one, but obviously the one that we're talking about that was developed was an extremely important one, and it was one that you put a lot into yourself. And it was in the beginning of a new administration.

Anyway...

CLARKE: Sir, if I may?

FIELDING: Yes?

CLARKE: There's also the issue that was raised earlier by another member of the commission was to whether all of the pending decisions needed to be rolled up into a national security presidential directive or whether, based on the urgency of the intelligence, some of them couldn't -- like arming the Predator to attack and kill bin Laden -- why did that have to wait until the entire policy was developed?

CLARKE: Weren't there pieces like that that could have been broken off and decided right away? Now I certainly urged that. I urged that beginning in February when I realized that this policy process was going to take forever.

FIELDING: I understand. And I understand your testimony that you did that. What I don't understand is, if you had these deep feelings and deep concerns about the lack of ability and urgency within the Bush administration, that you didn't advise the joint inquiry. And I mean, did you feel it unnecessary to tell them that the Bush administration was too preoccupied with the Cold War issues or Iraq at that point?

CLARKE: I wasn't asked, sir. I think I provided the joint inquiry, as a member of the administration at the time, please recall, I provided the joint inquiry all the facts it needed to make the conclusions which I've made about how long it took and what the development of the policy process was like and the refusal of the administration to spin out for earlier decision things like the armed Predator.

FIELDING: Well, it obviously will be up to the members of the joint inquiry to make that decision and judgment.

But, you must agree that it's not like -- going before a joint inquiry is not like going before a press background briefing. As you said, I think your description was I tried to highlight the positive and play down the negative. But the joint inquiry wasn't asking you to do that, they were asking you to come forward, weren't they?

CLARKE: I answered very fully all of the questions the joint inquiry had asked. They said that themselves in their comments to me, and in their report. I testified for six hours. And I testified as a member of the Bush administration.

And I think, sir, with all of your experience in this city, you understand as well as I do the freedom one has to speak critical of an administration when one is a member of that administration.

FIELDING: I do understand that. But I also understand the integrity with which you have to take your job. But thank you, sir.

CLARKE: Thank you.

KEAN: We're starting on the second round now questioning. Congressman Roemer?

ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Having served on the joint inquiry, the only person of this 9/11 panel to have served on the inquiry, I can say in open session to some of Mr. Fielding's inquiries that as the joint inquiry asked for information on the National Security Council and we requested that the National Security Adviser Dr. Rice come before the joint inquiry and answer those questions.

ROEMER: She refused. And she didn't come. She didn't come before the 9/11 commission.

And when we asked for some questions to be answered, Mr. Hadley answered those questions in a written form.

So I think part of the answer might be that we didn't have access to the January 25th memo. We didn't have access to the September 4th memo. We didn't have access to many of the documents and the e-mails. We're not only talking about Mr. Clarke being before the 9/11 commission for more than 15 hours, but I think in talking to the staff, we have hundreds of documents and e-mails that we didn't previously have, which hopefully informs us to ask Mr. Clarke and ask Dr. Rice the tough questions.

And I have some more tough questions for you, Mr. Clarke.

(APPLAUSE)

On the FBI, you've said that the FBI did not do a very good job. I think I'm paraphrasing you in much easier language than you have used. But that during the millennium, which may be the exception to the rule, they performed extremely well in sharing information. How do we get the FBI to do this on a regular basis? We still have problems here today. Or is that not an option for us?

We don't have time, Mr. Clarke. I mean, I appreciate everybody going after everybody in Washington, D.C. We don't have time to make these kinds of arguments and attacks if we're going to get this situation right in the future in this country and prevent or hopefully prevent the next one.

Well, we do know something for certain, and that is that groups like Al Qaida want to get dirty bombs, they want to get chemical and biological weapons, and they want to come after America.

So how do we get this situation solved, Mr. Clarke? What do we do with the FBI? What's your recommendation?

CLARKE: In the perfect world, I believe we could create a domestic intelligence service that would have sufficient oversight that it would not infringe on our civil liberties. In a perfect world, I would create that domestic intelligence service separately from the FBI.

In the world in which we live, I think that would be a difficult step to go directly to. And so what I proposed, instead, is that we create a domestic intelligence service within the FBI and, as fast as we could, develop it into an autonomous agency.

CLARKE: I am very fearful that such an agency would have potential to infringe on our civil liberties. And therefore, I think we would have to take extraordinary steps to have active oversight of such an agency. And we would have to explain to the American people in a very compelling way why they needed a domestic intelligence service, because I think most Americans would be fearful of a secret police in the United States.

But frankly, the FBI culture, the FBI organization, the FBI personnel are not the best we could do in this country for a domestic intelligence service.

ROEMER: We will certainly be looking to people in future hearings for their recommendations in a host of different areas. So I hope that you might think through this area a little bit more and be available to us.

Mr. Clarke, let me ask you some difficult questions for you to get at the complexity of our relationship with the Saudis.

One the one hand, I think there's a great deal of unanimity that the Saudis were not doing everything they could before 9/11 to help us in a host of different areas; 15 of the 19 hijackers came from there. We had trouble tracking some of the financing for terrorist operations. But we still have too many of the madrassas and the teachings of hatred of Christians and Jews and others coming out of some of these madrassas.

We need to broaden and deepen this relationship. I will ask you a part A and a part B.

Part A is where do we go in this difficult relationship? And part B is to further look at the difficulty here. You made a decision after 9/11 to, I think -- and I'd like to ask you more about this -- to allow a plane of Saudis to fly out of the country. And when most other planes were grounded, this plane flew from the United States back to Saudi Arabia. I'd like to know why you made that decision, who was on this plane, and if the FBI ever had the opportunity to interview those people.

CLARKE: You're absolutely right that the Saudi Arabian government did not cooperate with us significantly in the fight against terrorism prior to 9/11. Indeed, it didn't really cooperate until after bombs blew up in Riyadh.

Now, as to this controversy about the Saudi evacuation aircraft, let me tell you everything I know, which is that in the days following 9/11 -- whether it was on 9/12 or 9/15, I can't tell you -- we were in a constant crisis management meeting that had started the morning of 9/11 and ran for days on end. We were making lots of decisions, but we were coordinating them with all the agencies through the video teleconference procedure.

CLARKE: Someone -- and I wish I could tell you, but I don't know who -- someone brought to that group a proposal that we authorize a request from the Saudi embassy. The Saudi embassy had apparently said that they feared for the lives of Saudi citizens because they thought there would be retribution against Saudis in the United States as it became obvious to Americans that this attack was essentially done by Saudis, and that there were even Saudi citizens in the United States who were part of the bin Laden family, which is a very large family, very large family.

The Saudi embassy therefore asked for these people to be evacuated; the same sort of thing that we do all the time in similar crises, evacuating Americans.

The request came to me and I refused to approve it. I suggested that it be routed to the FBI and that the FBI look at the names of the individuals who were going to be on the passenger manifest and that they approve it -- or not.

I spoke with at that time the number two person in the FBI, Dale Watson, and asked him to deal with this issue.

The FBI then approved -- after some period of time, and I can't tell you how long -- approved the flight.

Now, what degree of review the FBI did of those names, I cannot tell you. How many people there are on the plane, I cannot tell you.

But I have asked since: Were there any individuals on that flight that in retrospect the FBI wishes they could have interviewed in this country. And the answer I've been given is no, that there was no one who left on that flight who the FBI now wants to interview.

ROEMER: Despite the fact that we don't know if Dale Watson interviewed them in the first place.

CLARKE: I don't think they were ever interviewed in this country.

ROEMER: So they were not interviewed here. We have all their names. We don't know if there has been any follow up to interview those people that were here and flown out of the country.

CLARKE: The last time I asked that question, I was informed that the FBI still had no desire to interview any of these people.

ROEMER: Would you have a desire to interview some of these people that...

CLARKE: I don't know who they are.

ROEMER: We don't know who they are...

CLARKE: I don't know who they are. The FBI knew who they were because they...

ROEMER: Given your confidence in your statements on the FBI, what's your level of comfort with this?

CLARKE: Well, I will tell you in particular about the ones that get the most attention here in the press, and they are members of the bin Laden family.

CLARKE: I was aware, for some time, that there were members of the bin Laden family living in the United States.

And, let's see, in open session I can say that I was very well aware of the members of the bin Laden family and what they were doing in the United States. And the FBI was extraordinarily well aware of what they were doing in the United States. And I was informed by the FBI that none of the members of the bin Laden family, this large clan, were doing anything in this country that was illegal or that raised their suspicions.

And I believe the FBI had very good information and good sources of information on what the members of the bin Laden family were doing.

ROEMER: I've been very impressed with your memory, sitting through all these interviews the 9/11 commission has conducted with you. I press you, again, to try to recall how this request originated. Who might have passed this on to you at the White House situation room? Or who might have originated that request for the United States government to fly out -- how many people in this plane?

CLARKE: I don't know.

ROEMER: We don't know how many people were on a plane that flew out of this country. Who gave the final approval, then, to say yes, you're clear to go, it's all right with the United States government to go to Saudi Arabia?

CLARKE: I believe, after the FBI came back and said it was all right with them, we ran it through the decision process for all of these decisions we were making in those hours, which was the Interagency Crisis Management Group on the video conference.

I was making or coordinating a lot of decisions on 9/11 and the days immediately after. And I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don't know. Since you pressed me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State, or the White House Chief of Staff's Office. But I don't know.

ROEMER: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

KEAN: Senator Gorton?

GORTON: One more question on that subject. When the approvals were finally made and when the flight left, was the flight embargo still in effect? Or was that over; were we flying once again?

CLARKE: No, sir. No, Senator. The reason that a decision was needed was because the flight embargo, the grounding, was still in effect.

GORTON: OK. We talked a little bit in my earlier round of questioning about this frustrating phrase "actionable intelligence." And one of your recommendations to the new administration, according to our staff report, was to choose a standard of evidence for attributing responsibility for the Cole and deciding on a response.

Did that express a frustration that you had had, now, for the previous several years, that the phrase "actionable intelligence" often seemed to be an excuse for people not doing anything, that perhaps they had other reasons for not wanting to do? Did you want a broader definition, either of how much intelligence was needed, or how broad action should be?

CLARKE: Yes.

GORTON: Yes to both?

CLARKE: OK.

GORTON: Could you tell me what your previous frustrations had been, and what kind of test you would have imposed?

CLARKE: Well, I think if you go back to 1993, when the attempted assassination on the first President Bush occurred in Kuwait, the process we put in place then was to ask the FBI, working with the Secret Service, to develop a set of evidence and CIA to develop separately an intelligence case. And that took from February of '93 through the end of May.

And it was done in a way that was reminiscent of a criminal process, at least the FBI case was.

The CIA case was an intelligence case and had different sources of information, different standards for what was admissible and a more lenient standard for making a determination.

Well, I think beginning then, I was frustrated by that kind of evidentiary process.

Now, I heard Sandy Berger this morning point out that immediately following the Pan Am 103 terrorist attack, the assumption in the intelligence and law enforcement communities was that it was a Syrian attack. And I recall that. He's quite right. And it turned out not to be a Syrian attack.

He pointed out that in the days and weeks after the TWA 800 crash, we assumed it was a terrorist attack. There were eyewitnesses of what appeared to be a missile attack. But after exhaustive investigations that went on for years, in the case of the NTSB and the FBI, a determination was made that it was not a terrorist attack. And I believe that that is the accurate determination.

Mr. Berger made other examples -- Oklahoma City and whatnot. I think we have to distinguish between rushing to judgment after a terrorist event, which as Mr. Berger said, is a mistake because sometimes the evidence changes, sometimes the evidence develops.

We saw this in Spain just two weeks ago where for the first day after the attacks in Madrid, the evidence really looked like it was the Basque separatist group. And I know there are political charges against the Spanish government for having distorted intelligence, but there was a lot of intelligence the first day that suggested that it was the Basque terrorist group.

So we do need to be careful not to rush to judgment after a terrorist attack. On the other hand, what I was suggesting in that paper that you referred to is that we not necessarily have to wait for a terrorist attack in order to attack a terrorist group.

CLARKE: But when you sometimes do that, you get into trouble. President Clinton got into a lot of trouble, a lot of criticism for blowing up a chemical plant in Sudan. To this day there are a lot of people who believe that it was not related to a terrorist group, not related to chemical weapons. They're wrong, by the way.

But the president had decided in PDD-39 that there should be a low threshold of evidence when it comes to the possibility of terrorists getting their access, getting their hands on chemical weapons. And he acted on that basis. And when he acted on that basis, he and his advisers were all heavily criticized.

So what I was suggesting there and what I am suggesting here now is that while Sandy Berger is right and we should not rush to judgment after a terrorist attack as to who did it until there is ample intelligence evidence, not criminal evidence, on the other hand, we should feel free to attack terrorist groups without waiting for them to attack us if we make a policy and an intelligence judgment that they pose a threat.

GORTON: One follow-up question on that. Between January and September of 2001, was there any actionable intelligence under either the narrow or broader definition that caused you to recommend an immediate military response to some provocation?

CLARKE: I suggested, beginning in January of 2001, that the Cole case was still out there and that by now, in January of 2001, CIA had finally gotten around to saying it was an Al Qaida attack, and that therefore there was an open issue which should be decided about whether or not the Bush administration should retaliate for the Cole attack.

Unfortunately, there was no interest, no acceptance of that proposition? And I was told on a couple of occasions, "Well, you know, that happened on the Clinton administration's watch."

I didn't think it made any difference. I thought the Bush administration, now that it had the CIA saying it was Al Qaida, should have responded.

GORTON: But there was no other January to September incident that caused you to recommend a military response, I gather?

CLARKE: In the general definition, I think there was. What we had discussed in the general definition was not waiting for the terrorist attack, but feeling free to use military activity -- or covert action activity, doesn't have to be military -- covert action activity as a way of taking the offensive against terrorist organizations that look like they threaten the United States.

CLARKE: And what our plan or strategy or list of options, included was covert action activity to be taken, to go on the offensive against Al Qaida in Afghanistan.

GORTON: Through surrogates or through direct intervention?

CLARKE: That was a combination of both. But the determination of how that would be structured would be left to the CIA.

GORTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

DEAN: Senator Kerrey?

KERREY: Well, Mr. Clarke, let me say at the beginning that everything that you've said today and done has not damaged my view of your integrity. It's very much intact as far as I'm concerned. And I hope that your pledge earlier not to be a part of the Kerry administration did not preclude you from coming to New York sometime and teaching at the new schools.

(LAUGHTER)

And let me also say this document of Fox News earlier, this transcript that they had, this is a background briefing. And all of us that have provided background briefings for the press before should beware. I mean, Fox should say "occasionally fair and balanced" after putting something like this out.

(LAUGHTER)

Because they violated a serious trust.

(APPLAUSE)

All of us that come into this kind of an environment and provide background briefings for the press I think will always have this as a reminder that sometimes it isn't going to happen, that it's background.

Sometimes, if it suits their interest, they're going to go back, pull the tape, convert it into transcript and send it out in the public arena and try to embarrass us or discredit us.

So I object to what they've done, and I think it's an unfortunate thing they did.

Let me say as well that you and I have some disagreements and I'm going to get into them.

First of all, I do not want to go back to the bad old days when covert operations could be done in an environment where the people thought they could do something in violation of U.S. law or that they'd come to Congress and lie about it, thinking that that was okay. I mean, that's what we're directing our attention to.

Perhaps there were some personnel mistakes that were made in the response to the problems in Guatemala in particular.

But I don't want to go back to the bad old days where guys could go out there and operate and not have to worry about U.S. law, not have to worry about whether or not they came and lied to Congress.

CLARKE: Nor do I, Senator.

KERREY: And secondly, I don't see it as you do, that the war in Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism. I honestly don't.

Unless you say that the threat of terrorism in Iraq is unquestionably gone up as a consequence of Al Qaida feeling even more opposition to freedom in Iraq than they do in freedom in the United States.

They feel much more threatened by having an Arab democracy than they do by having a democracy in the United States.

KERREY: And so I don't see it that way. And although I don't go as far as the administration has done with drawing the connection to Al Qaida, I do think that the presence of Abdul Rahman Yasin in Iraq certainly causes some suspicions to be raised. I presume you know who Abdul Rahman Yasin is, and I wonder if you can comment on that.

I mean, what conclusions do you draw by the fact that we have an individual who we believe was part of the conspiracy to attack the World Trade Center I in February of 1993 associated with Ramzi Yousef, who was connected at least indirectly to the second attack. I wonder what conclusions you draw from the fact that Yasin has been given, at the very least, a place that it could hang out, and he is on the lam again. We're still hunting him and trying to find out where he is in Iraq today.

CLARKE: Let me go back into the history of 1993, which is when we first heard about this man.

In 1993, when the truck bomb exploded at the World Trade Center, we didn't know there was an Al Qaida. No one had ever said that. In the initial reports, and I mean initial by the sense of about a year or two, the initial reports from the FBI's investigation of that attack, suggested that the attackers were somehow a gang of people from five or six different countries who had found each other and come together almost like a pick-up basketball team, that there was no organization behind it.

Eventually, in retrospect, the FBI and CIA were able to discover that there was an organization behind it and that organization is what we now call Al Qaida.

Most of the people directly involved in that conspiracy were identified and tracked down by the FBI and CIA, were arrested or snatched and brought back to the United States. Mr. Yasin was the one who wasn't. And the reason he wasn't was he was an Iraqi. He was the only Iraqi in the group. There were Egyptians and there were other nationalities. He was an Iraqi and therefore when the explosion took place and he fled the United States, he went back to Iraq.

CLARKE: And we were, obviously, for obvious reasons, unable to either snatch him or get him to be extradited to the United States.

But the investigation, both the CIA investigation and the FBI investigation, made it very clear in '95 and '96 as they got more information, that the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack.

And the fact that one of the 12 people involved in the attack was Iraqi hardly seems to me as evidence that the Iraqi government was involved in the attack. The attack was Al Qaida; not Iraq. The Iraqi government because, obviously, of the hostility between us and them, didn't cooperate in turning him over and gave him sanctuary, as it did give sanctuary to other terrorists.

But the allegation that has been made that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was done by the Iraqi government I think is absolutely without foundation.

KERREY: Can you see where a reasonable person might say that if Yasin is given a safe haven inside of Iraq, prior to 9/11, that the Iraqis are at least unwilling to do what is necessary to bring someone that we believe is responsible for killing Americans in 1993 to justice?

CLARKE: Absolutely. The Iraqis were providing safe haven to a variety of Palestinian terrorists, as well. Absolutely -- as were the Iranians, as were the Syrians.

KERREY: Thank you.

KEAN: Commissioner Ben-Veniste?

BEN-VENISTE: I just wanted to say that having sat in on two days of debriefings with you, Mr. Clarke, and having seen excerpts from your book, other than questions you weren't asked, I have not perceived any substantive differences between what you have said to us and what has been quoted from your published work. Having said that, I'll cede my time to Congressman Roemer, if he'll give me his time with Condoleezza Rice.

(LAUGHTER)

CLARKE: That may not be a good deal.

(LAUGHTER)

KEAN: Is that all? Congressman Thompson?

THOMPSON: Mr. Clarke, in this background briefing, as Senator Kerrey has now described it, for the press in August of 2002, you intended to mislead the press, did you not?

CLARKE: No. I think there is a very fine line that anyone who's been in the White House, in any administration, can tell you about. And that is when you are special assistant to the president and you're asked to explain something that is potentially embarrassing to the administration, because the administration didn't do enough or didn't do it in a timely manner and is taking political heat for it, as was the case there, you have a choice. Actually, I think you have three choices. You can resign rather than do it. I chose not to do that. Second choice is...

THOMPSON: Why was that, Mr. Clarke? You finally resigned because you were frustrated.

CLARKE: I was, at that time, at the request of the president, preparing a national strategy to defend America's cyberspace, something which I thought then and think now is vitally important. I thought that completing that strategy was a lot more important than whether or not I had to provide emphasis in one place or other while discussing the facts on this particular news story.

The second choice one has, Governor, is whether or not to say things that are untruthful. And no one in the Bush White House asked me to say things that were untruthful, and I would not have said them.

In any event, the third choice that one has is to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were, and that is what I did.

I think that is what most people in the White House in any administration do when they're asked to explain something that is embarrassing to the administration.

THOMPSON: But you will admit that what you said in August of 2002 is inconsistent with what you say in your book?

CLARKE: No, I don't think it's inconsistent at all. I think, as I said in your last round of questioning, Governor, that it's really a matter here of emphasis and tone. I mean, what you're suggesting, perhaps, is that as special assistant to the president of the United States when asked to give a press backgrounder I should spend my time in that press backgrounder criticizing him. I think that's somewhat of an unrealistic thing to expect.

THOMPSON: Well, what it suggests to me is that there is one standard of candor and morality for White House special assistants and another standard of candor and morality for the rest of America.

CLARKE: I don't get that.

CLARKE: I don't think it's a question of morality at all. I think it's a question of politics.

THOMPSON: Well, I...

(APPLAUSE)

THOMPSON: I'm not a Washington insider. I've never been a special assistant in the White House. I'm from the Midwest. So I think I'll leave it there.

KEAN: Congressman Roemer?

ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your patience.

This has been I'm sure a long day for you, Mr. Clarke. I want to explore a little bit more, since we've heard from Mr. Tenet on this issue today, the Predator issue.

As you know, the Predator first came out of use in Kosovo, and it was used in various activities, with a laser on it, to track Serb tanks, to help us go after those tanks. It was flown in 2000 in the Clinton administration as a recon vehicle, unmanned recon vehicle.

In 2001, we had a debate, a complex debate, that I can understand both sides of. Took several months to try to resolve it. There are two issues here: on the recon Predator and on the armed Predator.

Mr. Tenet said that they were not blocking the armed Predator. You have said that they were blocking the armed Predator.

How do we reconcile these two? And please take us through a little bit of this. I want to ask you if it would have made much of a difference getting the unarmed up, and if the armed could have been put up earlier than October of 2001.

CLARKE: Let me begin in the first few months of the year 2000. President Clinton was enormously frustrated because he had authorized, in effect, the assassination of bin Laden and his lieutenants by CIA. He had also authorized, in principle, the use of military forces, cruise missiles, to attack and kill bin Laden and his lieutenants. And none of this had happened because the CIA had been unable to use its human intelligence resources in Afghanistan to provide -- I'm sorry, Senator -- actionable intelligence.

On the occasions when we had things that looked like actionable intelligence, the three or four occasions, the director of CIA himself said the intelligence wasn't good enough. So the president was very mad and he asked Sandy Berger and me to come up with a better way.

CLARKE: I asked the director of the joint staff, Admiral Fry, and the associate DCI, Charlie Allen, to form a task force to come up with a better way. They proposed flying the Predator in Afghanistan.

CIA's directorate of operations, the director of the directorate of operations, opposed the use of Predator in 2000 for reconnaissance purposes. He said that if there were additional resources available to pay for the Predator operation, he would prefer to use them on human intelligence.

ROEMER: And how much are we talking about, Mr. Clarke?

CLARKE: Pennies, relatively.

ROEMER: Hundreds of thousands of dollars?

CLARKE: Some of it cost hundreds of thousands. The whole program was in the low millions, I think.

In any event, this slowed things down, obviously.

Mr. Berger took up my cause with the director of Central Intelligence and got their agreement that they would fly the reconnaissance version. It was flown in September and October of 2000, 11 flights. And the directorate of operations put a lot of restrictions on those flights, in part because they were afraid that the aircraft would be shot down and they would have to pay for it. I tried to point out that even if the aircraft were shot down, the pilot would return safety to home. But that didn't seem to persuade them.

In any event, during those flights, at CIA's insistence, they were designed as a proof of concept operation, meaning that we could not have cruise missiles, other military activity, other covert action capabilities cued to this so that when the Predator did see bin Laden, as it did I think on three occasions, but clearly on one in that time frame, there were no military assets available, there were no covert action assets available, at the insistence of the CIA, because they wanted this only as a proof of concept operation.

Fast forward to 2001: The flights had been suspended because of the winter during which they couldn't fly.

We then became aware that there was a long-term program in the Air Force to arm the Predator. Johnny Jumper, the head of the Air Force, thought that it might be possible to crash -- probably the wrong word -- to accelerate this program and arm the Predator right away.

General Jumper directed that happening. It happened in a matter of months, not a matter of years. And it appeared to work in tests in the western United States.

When on September 4th we held the principals meeting that's been discussed, the issue on the table was: Would CIA fly the armed Predator?

CLARKE: And CIA took the view, in the principals meeting, that it was not their job to fly armed UAVs. They did not want to fly the armed Predator under their authority.

I was informed by people who were in the CIA that during the discussions inside CIA, people in the Directorate of Operations had raised objections. Saying, for example that if CIA flies the armed Predator, and it kills bin Laden, then CIA agents all around the world will be at risk of retaliation attacks by Al Qaida.

I didn't think that was a very persuasive reason because I thought CIA agents were already at risk of attack by Al Qaida.

In any event, as the September 4th principals meeting ended, CIA had not agreed to fly the mission. September 11th happened. CIA then agreed to fly the armed Predator mission. It went into operation very quickly in Afghanistan. It found...

ROEMER: Within a month?

CLARKE: ... the military commander -- I think within the month. It found the military commander of Al Qaida. And because it was armed, then, it could not only find things it could kill them. And it launched a missile, a Hellfire missile, at the military commander of Al Qaida and killed him and his associates. If that answers the question.

ROEMER: That answers the question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

KEAN: OK. Mr. Clarke, thank you very much. Thank you not only for your testimony today, but thank you for your extraordinary time you spent already with the commission and your willingness to help us with our report.

(APPLAUSE)

[...]