Clarke praises Clinton, hints at Bush Admin. failures, in 2002

[rumguy]

This interview was conducted March 20, 2002. Clarke was still working for the White House.

"By the time 1998 the embassy bombings occurred, I think everyone in the Clinton Cabinet would have said that Al Qaeda is a serious threat. In fact, if you look in retrospect at what the Clinton administration did after those embassy bombings through to the end of that administration -- since now most of it is public knowledge, lot of it was highly classified at the time -- if 9/11 had not happened, most Americans looking at what the Clinton administration did about bin Laden would have said, 'What an overreaction. Why were they so preoccupied with bin Laden?'

There was an enormous amount of activity that was carried on if you look at the predicate, prior to the attack on the Cole destroyer in October 2000. The predicate was Americans killed at two embassies in Africa. Yet there was this massive program that was initiated to go after bin Laden. It didn't succeed, but it tried very hard. It did prevent some attacks, and it delayed others. But looked at in vacuum, the Clinton administration activities, 1998 to the end of the administration against bin Laden -- if you look at that without knowing in advance that 9/11 is going to happen, if you can separate that in your mind, the Clinton administration activities against bin Laden were massive."

ON EDIT: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/interviews/clarke.html

[Liberal_Andy]

1. Link?

:hi:

[rumguy]

2. He even hints at failures in the Bush Admin....

A lot of people looked at Sept. 11, and said "Massive intelligence failure. Haven't seen an intelligence failure like this since Pearl Harbor." What's your opinion on that allegation?

I think it's a cheap shot. I think when people say, no matter what event it is, they say, "Oh, it was an intelligence failure," they frequently don't know what the intelligence community said prior to the event. In June 2001, the intelligence community issued a warning that a major Al Qaeda terrorist attack would take place in the next many weeks. They said they were unable to find out exactly where it might take place. They said they thought it might take place in Saudi Arabia.

We asked, "Could it take place in the United States?" They said, "We can't rule that out." So in my office in the White House complex, the CIA sat and briefed the domestic U.S. federal law enforcement agencies, Immigration, Federal Aviation, Coast Guard, and Customs. The FBI was there as well, agreeing with the CIA, and told them that we were entering a period when there was a very high probability of a major terrorist attack. Now I don't think that's an intelligence failure. It may be a failure of other parts of the government, but I don't think that was an intelligence failure.

The June-July warnings. A lot of things happened at that point. Do we think now that Sept. 11 was in fact what was being talked about?

Absolutely. Absolutely.