Richard Clarke: Against All Facts

"There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever." - Richard Clarke, March 21, 2004

"I remind you that Clarke himself made the original connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. In a January 23, 1999 Washington Post article by Vernon Loeb, he told Mr. Loeb regarding the August 20, 1998 U.S. missile strike on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant that intelligence existed which connected bin Laden to the ownership of the al-Shifa plant, the Iraqi nerve gas agents, and Sudan's ruling junta, the National Islamic Front. If he knew that then, stated it for the record, and it was never disputed by anyone, it is either a flat lie or a severe memory lapse for him to say anything else now." - Mansoor Ijaz

In the preface, Clarke notes that his book is "also the story of four presidents" (oddly, only three make the cover). Clarke contends that Reagan and the two Bushes failed to act against terrorism while Clinton allegedly "quelled anti-American terrorism by Iraq and Iran." In the case of Reagan, Clarke notes that Reagan did not retaliate after Marines were killed in a car bombing in Beirut. However, Clarke ignores when Reagan did retaliate against terrorist acts. For example, while Clarke does mention "Libya's bombing of a U.S. Army hangout in Berlin" on April 5, 1986, there is no mention of the retaliation Reagan took against Libya. Nine days after the bombing, Reagan told the American people that he had "launched a series of strikes against the headquarters, terrorist facilities, and military assets that support Mu`ammar Qadhafi's subversive activities."

In the preface, Clarke writes that Ronald Reagan "did not retaliate for the murder of 278 United States Marines in Beirut." Clarke repeats this figure two more times in his book. I was in the Marines at the time and will never forget that the actual number killed in the barracks bombing was 241, including a number of Navy corpsmen. (Incidentally, on page 42, Clarke notes that the Reagan administration sent Donald Rumsfeld to "Baghdad not to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but to save him from probable defeat by the Iranian onslaught." According to Clarke, "When Iran was preparing an offensive in a sector, the Iraqis would know from what U.S. satellites saw and Saddam would counter with beefed-up defenses." Encarta says that Iran lost at least 300,000 people and spent $500 billion fighting the Iran-Iraq War. In 2003, a U.S. district judge ruled that Iran was responsible for 1983 Marine barracks bombing. Perhaps the timing is coincidental, but Rumsfeld showed up in Baghdad two months after the bombing of the Marine barracks. In any case, I can't think of any retaliation against Iran that would have been greater punishment than what resulted from the Rumsfeld's visit to save Saddam "from probable defeat by the Iranian onslaught.")

Clarke also faults George H.W. Bush for not retaliating for the Libyan murders of 259 passengers on Pan Am 103. (Clarke on page 225 incorrectly places the Pan Am 103 bombing "during the first Bush's administration" instead of the Reagan administration.) Clarke does not say how Bush should have retaliated and belittles Bush's choice to deal with the bombing through diplomacy. The UN Security Council in 1992 had placed sanctions on air travel and arms sales to Libya to force Libya to hand over the suspects in the bombing. Clarke fails to mentions that, after Clinton's ineffective "retaliation" against al Qaeda in August 1998, the UN Security Council in 1999 imposed sanctions on the Taliban to force it to turn over Osama bin Laden. Libya eventually turned over the suspects and sanctions were lifted. The Taliban never turned over bin Laden.

On page xii, Clarke makes the incredible claim that his book "is meant to be factual, not polemical." As this report shows, Clarke's book is far from factual. As far as "polemical" (i.e., "of or pertaining to a controversy, argument, or refutation"), the purpose of Clarke's book is to refute claims that the Clinton administration did too little to combat terrorism and that the Bush administration was right to invade Iraq.

On page 32, Clarke writes that he was "taken aback" on the evening of September 12, 2001, when President Bush asked him to "see if Saddam did this." That doesn't seem unreasonable when one considers that most of the veteran investigators involved in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center believed Iraq was involved. Clarke fails to give Bush credit for spending his time getting to the bottom of the attack. This is in sharp contrast to Bill Clinton's response to the November 13, 1995 truck bombing of a US-operated Saudi National Guard training center in Riyadh. In that attack-the worse one on Americans in the Middle East since 1983-five Americans and two Indians were killed. Instead of spending his time getting to the bottom of who was in involved in that attack, on November 15 Clinton got involved with an intern named Monica Lewinsky.

On page 40, "Nothing occurring during Clinton's tenure approached either attack in terms of the numbers of Americans killed by foreign terrorism. Neither Ronald Reagan nor George H.W. Bush retaliated for these devastating attacks on Americans." Clarke fails to note that the goal of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993-which killed seven (Clarke says six were killed, but one victim, Monica Smith, was pregnant) and wounded more than 1,000-was to kill 50,000 people. Addressing the defendants in May 1994, the sentencing judge noted that if the sodium cyanide believed to have been an added feature to the bomb had "burned instead of vaporizing," the "cyanide gas would have been sucked into the North Tower and everyone in the North Tower would have been killed." Clarke also fudges with the numbers killed in attacks by implying that all 259 passengers on Pan Am 103, were Americans, but, in his comparisons of those killed by terrorists under the Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton administrations, only counts the Americans killed in the African embassy bombings in August 1998. While only 12 Americans were killed in those bombings, they left a total of 257 dead and 5,000 wounded. According to Richard Miniter in Losing Bin Laden, by the end of the Clinton administration "bin Laden's terror network was operating in more than fifty-five countries and already responsible for the deaths of thousands (including fifty-nine Americans)." Despite this much higher death toll during the Clinton administration, Clarke offers no criticism regarding Clinton's failure to retaliate after several attacks. Clarke also fails to acknowledge that when Clinton did retaliate after the embassy bombings, his efforts were ineffective and even counterproductive. As Peter L. Bergen points out in Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, "The attacks…had an unintended consequence: they turned bin Laden from a marginal figure in the Muslim world into a global celebrity."

On page 41, Clarke writes that, in response to Reagan's failure to retaliate after the barracks bombing, "Usama bin Laden would refer to the success of terrorism in driving the United States out of Beirut." Clarke fails to note that bin Laden was much more impressed by Clinton's failure to stand up to al Qaeda in Somalia. In October 1993, al Qaeda-trained Somalis ambushed US peacekeeping forces in Somali. The attacks downed two helicopters and killed 18 Army Rangers. In a 1998 interview with ABC, Usama bin Laden stated that the U.S. withdrawal from Somalia "cleared from Muslim minds the myths of superpowers." Further, al Qaeda "realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat."

On page 41, Clarke notes that in the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the list of nations that sponsored terrorism. Nowhere in his book does Clarke note that Iraq was put back on that list after Saddam invaded Kuwait and remained on that list during the entire Clinton administration.

On page 62, Clarke discusses the coalition the Bush 41 administration had built when it went to war with Iraq in 1991. "Their historic efforts are in marked contrast to the go-it-alone, hell-bent-for-war policy pursued by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney twelve years later. Clarke fails to mention that Bill Clinton also lacked such a coalition when he launched Operation Desert Fox against Iraq in December 1998. Only U.S. and British forces took part in that operation. Oddly, given that he claims he took part in the planning of nearly every major military operation while he was in government service, Clarke fails to discuss Operation Desert Fox in his book.

On page 65, Clarke writes that Iraq was defeated in its war against Iran. However, on page 102 he writes that "the leaders of the Iranian Revolution were looking for an excuse to end the war" and "our mistake shoot-down of the Iran Air flight" during the summer of 1988 gave them that excuse. "Iran declared a cease-fire," Clarke writes. Saddam "eagerly accepted the cease-fire."

On page 77, Clarke writes he expressed outrage when he learned that Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, entered the U.S. without any documents. "So, let me get this straight," Clarke writes, "we let a guy go who was with a bomb builder, we let him get into a cab at JFK even though he shows up here without a passport." In fact, Yousef entered the U.S. with an Iraqi passport. The passport was Government Exhibit 614 in United States v. Muhammad Salameh et al.

On page 78, Clarke writes that the sole, remaining fugitive from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Abdul Yasim, "flew immediately to Iraq, where, we believe, he was incarcerated by Saddam Hussein's regime." An ABC News crew actually found Yasim working a government job in Iraq in 1997, and documents captured in 2003 revealed that the bomber had been on Saddam's payroll for years.

On pages 78-79, Clarke writes, "The first member of al Qaeda arrested in the United States-as we later discovered-was El Sayyid Nosair, who assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane, the fiery leader of the radical Jewish Defense League, in New York in 1992." Kahane was assassinated in 1990.

On page 79, Clarke writes that Clinton's response to Saddam's attempt to assassinate George H.W. Bush in 1993 "successfully deterred Saddam from ever again using terror against us. According to Clarke, between 1993 and the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Saddam did not plan or sponsor terrorism against Americans. But, as Laurie Mylroie asked in an April 4, 2004 National Review Online article, if the 1991 Gulf War did not end Saddam's involvement in terrorism, why would one cruise-missile strike achieve that goal? In fact, that missile strike does not appear to have ended Saddam's involvement in terrorism directed towards American interests. In Losing Bin Laden, Richard Miniter reports that an Iraqi diplomat was expelled from the Czech Republic when he was linked to a plot to bomb Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the U.S. government. The plot was mentioned in the State Department's "Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism" in 2000. That report also noted that "Iraq planned and sponsored international terrorism in 2000" (see http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2000/2441.htm). The Philippine government also expelled an Iraqi diplomat on February 13, 2003 after it was discovered that he had had contact with the al Qaeda-affiliated Abu Sayyaf group. In October 2002, Abu Sayyaf set off a bomb in Zamboanga City that killed Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, a U.S. Special Forces solider. According to Hamsinaji Sali, an Abu Sayyaf leader, Iraq had been providing the group with arms and funding since 2000. According to a February 26, 2003 article about Iraq-Abu Sayyaf connection in The Christian Science Monitor, "In the past, Iraq's secular regime had little contact with Islamic militants, preferring to carry out operations on its own. But intelligence analysts say Iraq's bungled efforts in 1991 convinced it that terrorism wasn't its strong point, and that it's looking to use money-and Muslim solidarity-to build relationships with groups more capable of carrying out attacks."

On page 86, Clarke issues the first of many attacks on the U.S. military. Writing about Clinton and Somalia, Clarke writes, "[Clinton] had inherited [Somalia] and the military had let him down." Clinton did inherit the intervention in Somalia. However, as Rich Lowry notes in Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years, Clinton turned Somalia into "an exercise in wildly unrealistic nation building." According to Lowry, "American officers in the field requested more firepower-artillery pieces, Bradley armored vehicles, M-1 tanks, assault helicopters, and A-130 Specter gunships." Secretary of Defense Les Aspin turned down the request because supplying the military with those weapons would send the wrong "message." It was actually the Clinton administration that let down our military in Somalia.

On pages 87 and 88, Clarke writes about evidence surfaced after our troops left Somalia that "al Qaeda had been sending advisors to Aideed and had helped engineer the shoot-down of the U.S. helicopters" in Somalia. Clarke notes that this information was included in a 1998 indictment against Osama bin Laden. However, while Clarke refers to this indictment several times in his book, he never mentions that the indictment also claims that "al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq." Throughout his book, Clarke claims that there was never any evidence of links between al Qaeda and Iraq. However, there must have been some evidence for the above to be included in the indictment. No one who served in the Clinton administration-including Clarke-has disavowed the alleged connection as it was presented in 1998. In fact, William Cohen, Clinton secretary of defense, reiterated the Iraq-al Qaeda connection in his testimony before the 9-11 commission.

On page 88, Clarke writes that "al Qaeda had bombed a hotel in Yemen in December 1992, thinking that U.S. Air Force personnel supporting the Somalia operation were living there. (The Americans had been evacuated because Yemeni security had heard rumors of the plot.)" Al Qaeda had actually targeted two hotels in Yemen. American soldiers had checked out of the Goldmohur two days before the bombing plot. U.S. Marines were still at the Aden Hotel, but a security guard had foiled the attack.

On page 95, Clarke discusses "part of the theories of Laurie Mylroie." Clarke misrepresents Mylroie's position on Ramzi Yousef, and, later in the book, writes that Myrolie's theory "had been investigated for years and found to be totally untrue." Mylroie's theory (i.e., that Iraq was involved in the first World Trade Center bombing) isn't actually hers. According to Jim Fox, director of the New York FBI, which was the lead investigative agency, "Although we are unable to say with certainty the Iraqis were behind the bombing, that is certainly the theory accepted by most of the veteran investigators." (see http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/comment/mylroie200404050847.asp) According to Clarke, those who believe what most of the veteran investigators believed are cabalists who make up "a small cult following."

On page 126 Clarke discusses the TWA 800 tragedy and writes, "Dismissing conspiracy theories out of hand, however, is dangerous…. Because I was personally skeptical about what agencies told me and always intrigued by the possibility of the unlikely explanation, I encouraged my analysts to have open minds and perform due diligence on every claim." As shown above, Clarke dismissed the theory of Laurie Mylorie out of hand. His interpretation of the theory was so incorrect that it is clear he never performed due diligence on the claim.

On page 133, Clarke claims that Ramzi Yousef, the leader of the group responsible for the first World Trade Center attack, was a "crafty Palestinian-Kuwaiti." While Yousef called himself "Pakistani by birth, Palestinian by choice," he is a Pakistani Baluch, not a Palestinian.

On page 136, Clarke writes, "Jihad was available to a limited extent in the Philippines, where Muslims in the south had been fighting the Christian government for centuries." While Roman Catholics make up more than 80 percent of the Philippines' population, the Republic of the Philippines has a secular government. Article 2 of the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines declares separation of church and state.

On page 142, Clarke writes, "In recent years Sudanese intelligence officials and Americans friendly to the Sudan regime have invented a fable about bin Laden's final days in Khartoum. In the fable the Sudanese government offers to arrest bin Laden and hand him over in chains to FBI agents, but Washington rejects the offer because the Clinton administration does not see bin Laden as important or does and cannot find anywhere to put him on trial." Clinton himself confirmed that this 'fable" actually occurred. Speaking to a New York business group on Feb. 15, 2002, Clinton said the following: "Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, and then he went to Sudan. And we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan." Clinton clearly states that he did not bring bin Laden to the U.S. because "we had no basis on which to hold him," yet Clarke writes, "…had we been able to put our hands on him then we would have gladly done so. U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White in Manhattan could, as the saying goes, 'indict a ham sandwich.' She certainly could have obtained an indictment for bin Laden in 1996 had we needed it." On page 135, Clarke writes, "Despite the lack of evidence of a bin Laden hand in the series of terrorist events, Lake, Berger, Soderberg, and I had persisted in 1993 and 1994 in asking CIA to learn more about the man whose name kept appearing in buried CIA's raw reporting as 'terrorist financier Usama bin Laden.'" If the Clinton administration had suspicions in 1993 and 1994, it seems the "ham sandwich" could have been indicted in 1996.

On page 186, Clarke discusses the retaliatory strikes against al Qaeda after the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. "If we thought this was the best time to hit the Afghan camps, [Clinton] would order it and take the heat for the 'Wag the Dog' criticism that we all knew would happen, for media and congressional reaction that would say that he was using a military strike to divert attention from his deposition in the investigation," Clarke writes, referring to the Lewinsky case. According to Clarke, the 'Wag the Dog' "reaction made it more difficult to get approval for follow-up attacks on al Qaeda, such as my later attempts to persuade the Principals to forget about finding bin Laden and just bomb the training camps." This is an odd claim. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Majority Leader Trent Lott both expressed strong support for the retaliatory strikes against al Qaeda. In fact, no one in the GOP leadership even raised the "Wag the Dog" issue. Governor George W. Bush of Texas voiced his support for Clinton. A CNN poll conducted on August 20, 1998 find that only 36 percent of those polled believed the strikes were designed to divert attention away from the Monica Lewinsky controversy. Two-thirds of those polled approved of the strikes, while just 19 percent disapproved of them. If Clinton had decided to launch stronger attacks against al Qaeda during the remainder of 1998, it is unlikely that Congress and the American people would not have been behind him. Instead, Clinton in December 1998 decided "to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors." A few months after that, he launched an illegal war of choice on Kosovo.

Clarke makes another odd statement regarding "Wag the Dog" on page 186. "Ironically, Clinton was blamed for a 'Wag the Dog' strategy in 1998 dealing with a real threat from al Qaeda but no one labeled Bush's 2003 war on Iraq as a 'Wag the Dog' move even though the 'crisis' was manufactured…." I'll get into the "manufactured" crisis later. As far as "Wag the Dog," there's a reason why it was not applied to Bush. In the movie Wag the Dog, a sex scandal threatens the re-election of a president and a fixer "deftly deflects attention from the President by creating a bigger and better story-a war." Since President Bush has not been involved in a sex scandal or any other personal scandal, why would deflection be needed?

On page 206, Clarke recounts an exchange with Secretary of State several months after the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in August 1998. "What do you think will happen if you lose another embassy?" Clarke asked. "The Republicans in Congress will go after you." "First of all, I didn't lose these two embassies," Albright shot back. "I inherited them in the shape they were." According to Clarke, Albright, realizing that Clarke was a friend, smiled coyly at him. Albright was sworn in as Secretary of State more than 18 months before the embassies she inherited were bombed. According to Rich Lowry in Legacy, "The American ambassador to Kenya, Prudence Bushnell, repeatedly asked Washington for more security at the embassy, including in a letter directly to Madeleine Albright. She was ignored." Peter L. Bergen in Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, writes, "Bushnell had cabled Washington on December 24, 1997, pointing out the threat of terrorism and the embassy's extreme vulnerability because of its location and the lack of setback from the street. She wrote another letter to the U.S. secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, in April 1998, reprising her concerns." Here we had an ambassador concerned about an attack on a specific target and--after 18 months on the job--Albright took absolutely no action. Still, she and Clarke remained friends. George W. Bush was on the job fewer than eight months on September 11, 2001 and had no reports concerning a specific target. Clark has declared Bush an enemy.

On page 225, Clarke writes that Bill Clinton "had put an end to Iraqi and Iranian terrorism against the United States by quickly acting against the intelligence services of each nation." However, on page 283, he writes, "When the Bush administration talked about Iraq as a nation that supported terrorism, including al Qaeda, and was developing weapons of mass destruction, those comments perfectly suited Iran, not Iraq." If Iran was supporting al Qaeda, how can Clarke claim that Clinton put an end to Iranian terrorism against the United States?

On page 227, Clarke claims that in January 2001 he advised Condi Rice, Steve Hadley, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell on al Qaeda, saying, "we must act decisively and quickly, deciding on the issues prepared after the attack on the Cole, going on the offensive." Clarke faults the Bush administration for not going on the offensive against al Qaeda, yet gives the Clinton administration a pass for failing to go on the offensive after al Qaeda attacked our embassies in the August 1998. The claim that Clinton considered the elimination al Qaeda as a top priority is also suspect. Consider this paragraph from Clinton's final State of the Union address: "I predict to you, when most of us are long gone, but some time in the next 10 to 20 years, the major security threat this country we'll face will come from the enemies of the nation state: the narco-traffickers and the terrorists and the organized criminals, who will be organized together, working together, with increasing access to ever-more sophisticated chemical and biological weapons." At the very time al Qaeda was preparing to hit American soil, Clinton was predicting that such a threat would be realized "when most of us are long gone." In testimony before the U.S. Senate on July 25, 2000, Secretary of State William Cohen stated, "I cannot think of a more important issue to address than protecting the American people from the threat posed by states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq who are seeking to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them." In other words, Cohen considered the threat posed by Iraq as greater than the threat posed by al Qaeda. As I will show later, others in the Clinton administration felt the same way.

On page 229, Clarke writes that as he briefed Condoleezza Rice on al Qaeda, "her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before." On October 4, 2000, Rice, then an adviser to the Bush presidential campaign, appeared as a guest on Detroit's WJR and responded to a question about the threat posed by al Qaeda. "The first is you really have to get the intelligence agencies better organized to deal with the terrorist threat to the United States," Rice said. "One of the problems that we have is a kind of split responsibility, of course, between the CIA in foreign intelligence and the FBI in domestic intelligence. There needs to be better cooperation because we don't want to wake up one day and find out that Osama bin Laden has been successful on our own territory." Clarke would later note that Rice did not use the term "al Qaeda" in this interview. Just two months later, President Clinton released "A National Security Strategy for a Global Age" to Congress. The 45,000-word document made no mention of al Qaeda and mentioned Osama bin Laden by name just four times. "Iraq" and "Iraqi" were mentioned more than 20 times. When Secretary of Defense William Cohen was asked to list the priorities he discussed with Donald Rumsfeld during the transition, he stated, "I think of all the issues, certainly we have to keep the focus on the people in the military; recruitment, retention, quality-of-life issues, to begin with." He then discussed budgetary issues, Russia, China, NATO EU, and national missile defense. When Cohen finally got to terrorism issues, he mentioned "weapons of mass destruction in those countries who are developing weapons of mass destruction" and "our relationship with enforcing the no-fly zones in Iraq." (http://www.usembassy.it/file2001_01/alia/a1010901.htm) Clarke would later claim that al Qaeda was the top priority of the Clinton administration, yet Cohen certainly did not express that view when he met with Rumsfeld.

On page 232, Clarke writes about al Qaeda's plans to attack America: "They have published all of this and sometimes, as with Hitler in Mein Kampf, you have to believe that these people will actually do what they say they will do." Apparently, Clarke doesn't take Saddam Hussein's statements as seriously. Consider the following:

• On November 3, 1992, Bill Clinton was elected and Saddam celebrated George H.W. Bush's defeat: "[T]he Mother of Battles. . . has continued, and will continue."
• On May 1, 1998, the Iraq Revolutionary Command Council and Iraq's Baath Party leadership issued a joint statement to the Security Council. The statement called for the lifting of sanctions and concluded with a warning: "This prompts us to competently adhere, after relying on God, to our rights, sound path, and to great jihad for the sake of the rights of our people, our nation, and mankind…. The inability of the Iraqi people to see a lifting of sanctions after eight years…will lead to dire consequences."
• On August 5, 1998, the Iraqi leadership issued a letter that stated, "In addition to previous warnings over the past years, we have been frankly, clearly, and truly warning over the past three months-since 1 May 1998-against the continuation of this situation and stress that the leadership and people of Iraq cannot stand the continuation of this situation…. These serious and true warnings were neglected."

On page 237, Clarke credits himself and the Clinton administration for thwarting the Millennium bombing. On December 14, 1999, Ahmed Ressam was stopped at the US-Canada border with 130 pounds of bomb-making materials. On December 20, Raymond Kelly, commissioner of the US Customs Services, explained to PBS's Jim Lehrer exactly how Ressam was caught: "Well, this individual acted in a somewhat nervous manner. The inspectors asked him to get out of the vehicle. He first refused to do so. He then got out of the vehicle. They asked him to open the trunk, which is fairly normal procedure. When he went back and looked in the truck of this individual, they saw some substance there. They thought it might have been drugs. He then bolted. He actually ran out of his jacket and ran for five blocks, attempted to get into a woman's car. They chased him on foot and were able to wrestle him to the ground and handcuff him. He had nothing to say." After Lehrer asked Kelly if the US Customs Service had any advance word or "tip that this guy was coming in with some explosives," Kelly replied, "No. There was no advanced information. What happened, what we want customs inspectors to do is to question people, and they started a normal conversation. His itinerary seemed a little bit unusual, and he was uncommunicative and, again, when they asked him to get out of the car, he refused to get out of the vehicle." It was later discovered that Ressam was sweating because he had gotten malaria while at terrorist-training camps in Afghanistan, and it was his sweating that made customs agent Diana Dean suspicious. In Against All Enemies, Clark implies that Ressam's capture was a success of the Clinton administration because the custom agents had been on heightened alert. "We were on no more alert than we're always on. That is a matter of public record," Michael Chapman, one of the customs agents who arrested Ressam told The Seattle Times on April 12, 2004. Mike Carter, a staff reporter with The Seattle Times, noted several other mistakes with Clarke's telling of the Ressam case, including:

• Clarke wrote that Ressam bolted and left his car on the ferry. In fact, Ressam drove off the ferry and ran when he was stopped for inspection.
• Clarke reported Dean ran after Ressam. Actually, two other agents gave chase.
• More significantly, Clarke wrote that agents had found "explosives and a map of the Los Angeles International Airport" in the car, implying the threat to the airport was known almost immediately. There was no map in the car. A map of Greater Los Angeles was found days later in Ressam's apartment in Montreal. Nobody had a clue for nearly 11 months that Los Angeles was a target.

On page 242, Clarke, quoting Randy Beers, a former NSC official and current John Kerry national security coordinator, writes that the Republicans "ran against Max Cleland, saying he wasn't patriotic because he didn't agree 100 percent with Bush on how to do homeland security." This is an urban legend that Clarke fails to challenge. As The Wall Street Journal noted shortly after Saxby Chambliss defeated Cleland, "Mr. Chambliss won by exposing Senator Cleland's voting record on the issues that mattered most to Georgians, such as taxes, missile defense and especially homeland security. Chambliss campaign ads noted that Mr. Cleland recorded 11 votes against the President on homeland security and 22 votes to gut or delay the Bush tax cut. 'He says he supports President Bush [in the war on terror] at every opportunity,' said one TV spot, 'but that's not the truth.'" The Wall Street Journal also noted that Chambliss won the Veterans of Foreign Wars endorsement, which specifically cited Cleland's voting record on national security, and asked, "Was the VFW also questioning Mr. Cleland's patriotism?"

On page 244, Clarke writes, "In the end, what was unique about George Bush's reaction to terrorism was his selection as an object lesson for potential state sponsors of terrorism, not a country that had been engaging in anti-U.S. terrorism but one that had not been, Iraq. It is hard to imagine another President making that choice." That's not at all hard to imagine. A fact sheet entitled "Keeping America Secure for the 21st Century: President Clinton's Initiative on Biological and Chemical Weapons Preparedness" was issued by the White House on January 22, 1999. The fact sheet concludes with this sentence: "Through military action against production facilities for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Sudan, the United States has acted to degrade and eliminate the ability of these two nations to build weapons of mass destruction and supply them to terrorists" (http://usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/whouse/archive/1999/january/wh5125.htm). In other words, another president had already launched a preemptive military strike against Iraq to prevent that country from supplying terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. Also, Clarke ignores the fact that the Iraqi war resolution passed in the Senate on October 11, 2002 by a 77-23 vote. Two of the "yea" votes came from Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, who are currently the Democrats' presidential and vice-presidential nominees.

On page 246, Clarke writes that, by occupying Iraq, Bush handed al Qaeda "precisely what it wanted and needed, proof that America was at war with Islam, that we were the new Crusaders come to occupy Muslim land." However, on the previous page, Clarke writes, "It was also plainly obvious after September 11 that al Qaeda's sanctuary in Taliban-run Afghanistan had to be occupied by U.S. forces and the al Qaeda leaders killed." On pages 277 and 278, Clarke writes, "After the U.S. finally introduced ground force units into Afghanistan and began sweep operations looking for al Qaeda and the Taliban, American and its coalition partners (including France and Germany) should have established a security presence throughout the country." He does not explain how this occupation of Muslim country (which, unlike Iraq, was an Islamic Emirate with a higher percentage of Muslim citizens than Iraq) would not have handed al Qaeda "precisely what it wanted and needed." Clarke also appears ignorant of Afghanistan's history. As Peter L. Bergen notes in Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, "Ultimately, the British came to realize that to occupy Afghanistan was to invite disaster. They subsequently preferred to exercise influence over the country by indirect means."

On page 247, begins a chapter entitled "Right War, Wrong." Appropriately, this is Chapter 11. In this chapter, Clarke argues that invading Iraq was a mistake because Iraq "posed no threat to us," let alone an "imminent threat." On page 267, Clarke writes, "Even if Iraq still had WMD stockpiles, possession of weapons of mass destruction is not in and of itself a threat to the United States. Over two dozen nations possess WMD, according to unclassified CIA testimony to Congress." This contention contradicts remarks Clarke made in an October 8, 1998 speech: "There is almost a one-for-one copy of the terrorist state sponsors list resident within the list of states that have chemical and biological weapons. What does it mean to be a state sponsor of terrorism? It means that you have trained, equipped, financed, provided sanctuary to, provided leadership for, provided intelligence to, and armed terrorist groups. Now if these state sponsors of terrorism have done all of that, do we want to bet the security of our people here at home that those state sponsors will not go the additional step of providing terrorist groups with the chemical and biological weapons that are already in the inventory of the state sponsors of terrorism?" (http://usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/whouse/archive/1998/october/wh191013.htm) Although Clarke acknowledges that he believed Iraq had WMD at the time of the invasion, he fails to tell readers that Iraq was also listed as a state sponsor of terrorism during the entire Clinton administration. He also failed to tell readers that many members of the Clinton administration also clearly saw Iraq as a threat to the US. Here are just a few statements, all of which were made after Operation Desert Fox (many liberal pundits claim that Operation Desert Fox wiped out Saddam's WMD):

• "His willingness to be cruel internally is not unique in the world, but the combination of that and his willingness to export his problems makes him a clear and present danger at all times." - UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, January 11, 2001 (http://www.usembassy.it/file2001_01/alia/a1011102.htm)
• "Iraq remains a threat. Unanswered questions remain in the areas of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and of the missiles to deliver them." - U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham, March 27, 2000 (http://www.usembassy.it/file2000_03/alia/a0032708.htm)
• "As a result of its refusal to cooperate with the UN disarmament regime, Iraq maintains the capacity to produce missiles and chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. The absence of UN inspectors from Iraq has afforded Saddam the opportunity to reconstitute his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Saddam has already launched two bloody wars; one against Iran in 1980 and the other against Kuwait in 1990. In the last couple of years, Saddam Hussein has repeatedly issued public threats against his neighbors, including calls for the overthrow of a number of regimes." - State Department Fact Sheet, August 2, 2000 (http://www.usembassy.it/file2000_08/alia/a0080205.htm)
• "We do not believe there can be peace or stability in the Gulf while Saddam Hussein remains in power. We are determined to restrain his quest for nuclear weapons and dangerous technologies. The next Administration will have to grapple with the issue and decide on the right mix of policies." - Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann, December 19, 2000 (http://www.usembassy.it/file2000_12/alia/a0121905.htm)
• "Iraq under Saddam Hussein remains dangerous, unreconstructed and defiant. Saddam's record makes clear that he will remain a threat to regional peace and security as long as he remains in power. He will not relinquish what remains of his WMD arsenal. He will not live in peace with his neighbors. He will not cease the repression of the Iraqi people. The regime of Saddam Hussein cannot be rehabilitated or reintegrated as a responsible member of the community of nations." - NEA Assistant Secretary Edward S. Walker Jr., March 23, 2000 (http://www.usembassy.it/file2000_03/alia/a0032315.htm)
• "Over the years, I have talked about the capabilities of his military and his hidden weapons of mass destruction, as well as Saddam's ability to launch terrorism." - CIA Director George Tenet, February 2, 1999 (http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/1999/ps020299.html)
• "Over the next 15 years, however, our cities will face ballistic missile threats from a wider variety of actors-North Korea, probably Iran, and possibly Iraq…. A major worry is that Iraqi reconstruction of WMD-capable facilities damaged during Operation Desert Fox and continued work on delivery systems shows the priority Saddam continues to attach to preserving a WMD infrastructure." - CIA Director George Tenet, February 2, 2000 (http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2000/dci_speech_020200.html)
• "As long as Saddam Hussein remains in power, he represents a threat to the well-being of his people, the peace of the region, and the security of the world. We will continue to contain the threat he poses, but over the long term the best way to address that threat is through a new government in Baghdad." - Bill Clinton, March 3, 1999 (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/1999/99030305_npo.htm)
• "The crisis between the United States and Iraq that led to the declaration on August 2, 1990, of a national emergency has not been resolved. The Government of Iraq continues to engage in activities inimical to stability in the Middle East and hostile to United States interests in the region. Such Iraqi actions pose a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and vital foreign policy interests of the United States. For these reasons, I have determined that it is necessary to maintain in force the broad authorities necessary to apply economic pressure on the Government of Iraq." - Bill Clinton, July 20, 1999 (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/1999/990721-iraq--usia1.htm)
• "I cannot think of a more important issue to address than protecting the American people from the threat posed by states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq who are seeking to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them…. From my perspective, the utility of considering active defenses against missiles from states like North Korea, Iran and Iraq does not depend on a judgment that their leaders are utterly indifferent to the prospect of retaliation. Rather it is based on a recognition that leaders of these isolated states might be prepared to use WMD attacks - and risk retaliation - in circumstances where more traditional, or at least more cautious, leaders would not." - Secretary of Defense William Cohen, July 25, 2000

On page 256, Clarke responds to a staff member who questions Attorney General John Ashcroft's intelligence: "Maybe he's just cagey, but after all, he did lose a Senate reelection to a dead man." Besides being yet another ad hominem attack, this charge is not exactly correct. Ashcroft had led in the polls until his Democrat opponent, Mel Carnahan, was killed in an airplane crash on October 16, 2000 and it was too late to take his name off the ballot. Carnahan's widow, Jean, used ads to make emotional appeals for "the values and beliefs that Mel Carnahan wanted to take to the United States Senate" and vowed to take his seat if Carnahan won the election. Voters knew the election was between Ashcroft and Jean Carnahan, not Ashcroft and a dead man.

On page 264, Clarke writes, "The administration of the second George Bush did begin with Iraq on its agenda." Clarke doesn't mention that Iraq was also on the agenda of the outgoing Clinton administration. On January 11, 2001, UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, speaking about Iraq, told reporters the Bush administration "will have to deal with this problem, which we inherited from our predecessors and they now inherit from us." (http://www.usembassy.it/file2001_01/alia/a1011102.htm) Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made the same point two days earlier. "First of all, I am really sorry that we had the issue of Saddam Hussein on our plate when we arrived, and I am equally sorry to say that we are passing it on." (http://www.usembassy.it/file2001_01/alia/a1010903.htm) Clarke does not explain why he believes Iraq should have been taken off the plate when Bush was inaugurated on January 21, 2001.

On page 265, Clarke writes, "The reasons given by the Bush administration for its war with Iraq have shifted from terrorism to weapons of mass destruction to the suffering of the Iraqi people." If by "shift" Clarke means "to exchange (one thing) for another," this is not true. All three reasons were offered in President Bush's March 17, 2003 speech:

• "The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda."
• "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people."
• "Unlike Saddam Hussein, we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty. And when the dictator has departed, they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation."

On page 268, Clarke writes, "Both the White House and the CIA must have known there was no 'imminent threat' to the U.S., but one claimed the opposite, and the other allowed them to do so uncorrected." In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush actually said, "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late." And, as noted above, it was Richard Holbrooke, Clinton's UN ambassador and current John Kerry advisor, who on January 11, 2001 said Saddam's "willingness to be cruel internally is not unique in the world, but the combination of that and his willingness to export his problems makes him a clear and present danger at all times." There is no record of Clarke contradicting the Ambassador Holbrooke.

On page 268, Clarke writes, "After President Bush was forced to admit publicly that there was no connection between the al Qaeda attack of September 11 and Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, advocates of the Iraq War began to shift their argument." First, the Bush administration never claimed that Iraq was involved in 9/11. If it had, the war with Iraq would have been a war of retribution instead of a pre-emptive war. Second, Bush did not admit that there was no connection between the attack and Saddam Hussein. He said, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks." Saying that we have no evidence is not tantamount to saying there is no connection. It is possible to say there is no evidence and still believe there is a connection. In fact, Clarke does this himself on page 50, when he refers to an aircraft crash that killed General Zia, the military ruler of Pakistan, and arms for the Afghans that blew up in an explosion at a base used by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence: "I could never find the evidence to prove that Soviet KGB had ordered these two acts for their bitter defeat, but in my bones I knew they had."

On page 270, Clarke asks "Was there an al Qaeda affiliate group, complete with terrorist training camp, in Iraq?" and answers, "Yes, in the area outside the control of Saddam Hussein, in the north of the country controlled by Saddam's opponents." Clarke is referring to Ansar al Islam. Stephen Hayes in The Connection notes that, according to detainees from both Iraqi intelligence and Ansar al Islam, Saddam provided Ansar al Islam with financial payment and arms. The CIA also reported in December 2002 that Ansar al Islam had obtained VX nerve gas from the Iraqi regime. In addition, Abu Musab al Zarqawi traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for after sustaining a serious injury to his leg in Afghanistan. Al Zarqawi received treatment at the Olympic Hospital, whose director happened to have been Uday Hussein. If members of Ansar al Islam were Saddam's opponents, why was one of its leaders given treatment in Baghdad and then allowed to go free? Clarke does not tell readers about Salman Pak, a terrorist training camp near Baghdad and clearly within the control of Saddam. According to GlobalSecurity.org, "two defectors from Iraqi intelligence stated that they had worked for several years at the secret Iraqi government camp, which had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995. Training activities including simulated hijackings carried out in an airplane fuselage [said to be a Boeing 707] at the camp. The camp is divided into distinct sections. On one side of the camp young, Iraqis who were members of Fedayeen Saddam are trained in espionage, assassination techniques and sabotage. The Islamic militants trained on the other side of the camp, in an area separated by a small lake, trees and barbed wire. The militants reportedly spent time training, usually in groups of five or six, around the fuselage of the airplane. There were rarely more than 40 or 50 Islamic radicals in the camp at one time."

In the epilogue, Clarke, writes, "Terrorism, which never once was addressed by the presidential candidates in 2000, will be a major topic in the 2004 campaign." This is a minor point, but Al Gore did broach the topic of terrorism in the final debate when, recalling his time in Congress, he said, "I worked hard to ... deal with the problems of terrorism."