Rockin' with Dick Clarke

There's an interesting thing about all the brouhaha about former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's new book in which he excoriates the Bush administration for its failures in the "war on terrorism." The accusations that have been getting the most play are that 1)the Bush administration downplayed or ignored warnings about al-Qaeda because of an ideological blind spot that lead to an almost exclusive focus on Iraq, 2)a blind spot so profound that in the immediate wake of 9/11 it pushed for evidence of the non-existent link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and 3)in the months following, it politicized antiterrorism for its own gain.

The thing is, none of this is news. This has all been said before, been shown before, been known before. What Clarke provides is not a breakthrough but a confirmation.

So why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth both in the press corps and the White House? Why is it "shocking revelations" from a "disgruntled former employee?" Well, the Bush gang was right about one thing, part of it does have to do with the timing. Bush hack Dan Barlett called that timing "questionable," noting Clarke's friendship with Rand Beers, another former Bush adviser on terrorism who is now John Kerry's adviser on national security. But while it's unlikely the book was timed to help Kerry, the fact that it's coming out during a presidential campaign - particularly a campaign in which antiterrorism is supposedly Bush's strong suit - is part of the reason for all the attention. (Which means the timing very likely had more to do with promoting sales than promoting Democrats.)

Now, the good part of this is that the book is getting some attention. The bad part is that the media, afflicted as usual with selective amnesia and unwilling to rouse itself from its torpor, is failing to relate it to any earlier revelations (even the recent ones of Paul O'Neill, who also reported the blinkered focus on Iraq), instead reducing it to the old "he said she said" routine that leaves as victor the side that can shout the loudest the longest.

I'm not going to try to limn all the desperate deceptions that mark the Bushites' non-response to Clarke; if you want to get some real solid reportage and analysis along those lines, I suggest you check out the invaluable TalkingPointsMemo by Josh Marshall, who has been all over this. (The direct link to his first post on this, from March 20, is here; after that you'll have to go to the following week's archive to keep reading. Or just go to the main page and scroll down to the item datelined March 20 at 8:23pm.)

What I do want to do is to note just two things that caught my eye and my sense of the absurd. (The quotes are all via TPM; the link is above, so I won't link to them individually.)

- First, in the hours following Clarke's appearance on "60 Minutes" on Sunday, the Shrub crew pursued two lines of attack. Jim Wilkinson, speaking for the National Security Council, told Paula Zahn on Monday night that "Dick Clarke was in charge of counterterrorism policy in the time preceding 9/11," trying to imply that 9/11 was therefore Clarke's fault. The same day, Dick "The Big Dick" Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's show (boy, that must have been one tough interview), said of Clarke "well, he wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff ... he clearly missed a lot of what was going on."

Those arguments appear mutually contradictory - but what I love about it is that they're actually not. Clarke, in fact, was before 9/11 the counterterrorism coordinator at NSC. He wasn't out of the loop, he was the loop. But it was a loop that was getting the runaround, his warnings ignored and shunted to the side in the single-minded pursuit of "get Saddam."

- Second, appearing on 60 Minutes, White House rep Steve Hadley, as quoted by Marshall, said that

contrary to Clarke's assertion, Mr. Bush didn't ignore the ominous intelligence chatter in the summer of 2001.

"All the chatter was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas. But interestingly enough, the president got concerned about whether there was the possibility of an attack on the homeland. He asked the intelligence community: 'Look hard. See if we're missing something about a threat to the homeland.'"

Suddenly I get this image of George Bush as Jack Lord on Hawaii 5-0, never wrong, instantly sizing up the most complicated and devious plots and penetrating to the heart of the matter before anyone else has a clue what's going on. "No, I smell the hand of Wo Fat - er, I mean a threat to the homeland - here."

Book 'em, Rice-o.

Update, March 24: According to Scott McClellan at his White House press briefing today,

Dick Clarke could have released his book at any time, but the fact is he chose to release it at a time and in a way where he could maximize coverage to sell books, and at a time when he could have the impact to influence the political discourse.

Gasp! Horrors! Outrage! Someone who, based on their own experiences, has a conviction about a matter chooses to speak on it when it might influence opinion! When everyone knows that the only proper time to express a view is when you think it will make no difference at all!

Gasp! Horrors! Outrage!