In this very important piece, the incomparable William
Rivers Pitt has done what the TV news anchors on
SeeBS, SeeNotNews, NotBeSeen and AnythingButSee should
have done for the US electorate by now, i.e. put
Richard Clarke's blockbuster accusations into context
by highlighting the most prominent of those who have
stood up to the _resident and the VICE _resident from
within their own administration and frame the real
question: How bad is their failure? Is it simply
incompetence and wrong-mindedness or is it worse?
Incompetence and wrong-mindedness on national security
would be enough to remove them from office in the
national referendum on CREDIBILITY, CHARACTER and
COMPETENCE this coming November, BUT the LNS fears it
is worse...As Al Gore bellowed that fateful night in
Tennessee: HE BETRAYED THIS COUNTRY...
William Rivers Pitt. www.truthout.org: Richard Clarke, Tom Maertens, Roger Cressey, Donald Kerrick, Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, Greg Thielmann, Karen Kwiatkowski and Rand Beers all heard and saw the real stuff happening in this Bush White House. Wilson has a book coming out in May, in which he will name the White House operatives who destroyed his wife's career. There will be more books, from more people, and the 24-hour news cycle will continue to ride this tiger. These people are telling the world about the real stuff. The Bush/Cheney Re-Election Axis is terrified, and the Secret Service detail guarding the White House perimeter might want to cowboy up in preparation for a rain of rat bags coming over that fence.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/033004A.shtml
The Line
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 30 March 2004
Former White House Counter-Terrorism Czar Richard
Clarke has managed to do something that defies modern
political gravity. He has stayed in the news, hour
after hour and day after day. He was hurled many days
ago into the maelstrom of the 24-hour news cycle,
which reports one moment on an incredibly important
story, flings that story out beyond the Oort Cloud the
next moment, and that story is never seen again.
Clarke, somehow, has managed to maintain his position
at the top of the news despite this process we
mistakenly call 'journalism' for longer than any other
ten major recent stories combined.
There are several reasons for this. First of all,
Clarke's accusations are damning. According to him,
the Bush administration ignored the threat of al Qaeda
terrorism completely. After the attacks of September
11, the administration became obsessed with attacking
Iraq, despite the fact that every intelligence
organization in America was telling them Iraq had
nothing to do with it. Clarke maintains that the war
in Iraq is a dangerous distraction from the defense of
the nation, a political war that has nothing to do
with making America safer, and one that has cost us
terribly in blood and treasure. Given the fact that
Clarke was physically in the White House for all this,
and that he has been in the anti-terrorism business
since the days of Ronald Reagan, his accusations have
long, sharp teeth.
There is also the fact that Clarke apologized for
September 11. In the context of a White House that has
battled the assembly of a September 11 investigation
for two years, a White House that has slapped down
every plea from the family members of those who died
on September 11 to get this investigation rolling, a
White House that tried at one point to put the
investigation into the slippery hands of Henry
Kissinger, a White House that has adamantly refused to
hand over relevant data about September 11 to the
commission they never wanted to see in the first
place, a White House that won't allow National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly
before this commission despite her central role in the
administration, a National Security Advisor that would
dance the Macarena on the Capitol dome if it could get
her out of giving that testimony because she knows she
will get clobbered with her own words, and finally a
White House that never got around to saying they were
sorry to the families of the September 11 victims, in
the context of all that, Richard Clarke's heartfelt
apology to those families instantly became the stuff
of political legend.
Another reason Clarke has stayed in the news is
because he does not stand alone. Had he been the only
person to come forth with savage criticism of George
W. Bush and his administration, Karl Rove would have
called out the dogs, and Clarke would have found
himself selling Amway outside of McMurdo Sound before
St. Patrick's Day. Fortunately for Mr. Clarke, and for
the truth, he has joined a long and prestigious line
of people who have come forward to bear witness
against this White House:
* Tom Maertens, who was National Security Council
director for nuclear non-proliferation for both the
Clinton and Bush White House. Maertens' own words tell
the tale: "Clarke was a colleague of mine for 15
months in the White House, under both Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush. Subsequently, I moved to the U.S.
State Department as deputy coordinator for
counterterrorism, and worked with him and his staff
before and after 9/11. The Bush administration did
ignore the threat of terrorism. It was focused on tax
cuts, building a ballistic missile system, withdrawing
from the ABM Treaty and rejecting the Kyoto Protocol.
Clarke's gutsy insider recounting of events related to
9/11 is an important public service. From my
perspective, the Bush administration has practiced the
most cynical, opportunistic form of politics I
witnessed in my 28 years in government: hijacking
legitimate American outrage and patriotism over 9/11
to conduct a pre-ordained war against Saddam Hussein."
* Roger Cressey, Clarke's former deputy. Cressey
backs up one of the most damning charges that has been
leveled against the administration by Clarke: They
blew past al Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks, focusing
instead on Iraq. Cressey is one of four eyewitnesses
to an exchange between Clarke and Bush which took
place in the White House Situation Room on September
12, 2001. Bush pressed Clarke three times on September
12 to find evidence that Iraq was responsible for the
attacks. According to his book, 'Against All Enemies,'
Clarke protested that al-Qaida, and not Iraq, was
responsible. Bush angrily ordered him to "'look into
Iraq, Saddam,'" and then left the room. According to
Cressey, Condoleezza Rice was also a witness to this
exchange. The word from administration officials is
that Rice can't seem to remember it. This, among
others, is a reason Rice is refusing to testify
publicly before the September 11 commission.
* Donald Kerrick, a three-star General who served
as deputy National Security Advisor under Clinton, and
stayed for several months in the Bush White House.
According to a report by Sidney Blumenthal from March
25, Kerrick wrote Stephen Hadley, his replacement in
the White House, a two-page memo. "It was classified,"
Kerrick told Blumenthal. "I said they needed to pay
attention to al-Qaida and counterterrorism. I said we
were going to be struck again. We didn't know where or
when. They never once asked me a question nor did I
see them having a serious discussion about it. They
didn't feel it was an imminent threat the way the
Clinton administration did. Hadley did not respond to
my memo. I know he had it. I agree with Dick that they
saw those problems through an Iraqi prism. But the
evidence wasn't there." Hadley has since become a
White House front man in the attacks against Rickard
Clarke.
* Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary for
George W. Bush. O'Neill was afforded a position on the
National Security Council because of his job as
Treasury Secretary, and sat in on the Iraq invasion
planning sessions which were taking place months
before the attacks of September 11. "It was all about
finding a way to do it," says O'Neill. "That was the
tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to
do this.'" O'Neill describes the process of
decision-making between Bush and his people as being
"like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people."
Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Ron Suskind captured
O'Neill's views in a new book titled 'The Price of
Loyalty.' "From the very first instance, it was about
Iraq," says Suskind about his interviews with O'Neill
and his review of 19,000 pages of documentary evidence
provided by O'Neill. "It was about what we can do to
change this regime. Day one, these things were laid
and sealed."
* Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador and career
diplomat who received lavish praise from the first
President Bush for his work in Iraq before the first
Gulf War. Wilson was the man dispatched in February
2002 to Niger to see if charges that Iraq was seeking
uranium from that nation to make nuclear bombs had any
merit. He investigated, returned, and informed the
CIA, the State Department, the office of the National
Security Advisor and the office of Vice President
Cheney that the charges were without merit. Eleven
months later, George W. Bush used the Niger uranium
claim in his State of the Union address to scare the
cheese out of everyone, despite the fact that the
claim had been irrefutably debunked. Wilson went
public, exposing this central bit of evidence to
support the Iraq invasion as the lie it was. A few
days later, Wilson's wife came under attack from the
White House, whose agents used press proxies to
destroy her career in the CIA as a warning to Wilson
and anyone else who might come forward. For the
record, Wilson's wife was a deep-cover agent running a
network which worked to keep weapons of mass
destruction out of the hands of terrorists. The irony
is palpable.
* Greg Thielmann, former Director of the Office
of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Issues in
the State Department. Thielmann, like Ambassador
Wilson, was involved in investigating whether the
Niger uranium claims had any merit. Thielmann told
Newsweek at the beginning of June 2003 that the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research had
concluded the documents used to support the Niger
uranium claims were "garbage." In fact, they were
crude forgeries. Thielmann was stunned to see Bush use
the claims in his State of the Union address eleven
months after the charge had been dispensed with as
nonsense. "When I saw that, it really blew me away,"
Thielmann told Newsweek. He watched Bush use the claim
and said, "Not that stupid piece of garbage. My
thought was, how did that get into the speech?"
* Karen Kwiatkowski, a Lt. Colonel in the Air
Force and a career Pentagon officer. Kwiatkowski
worked in the office of Undersecretary for Policy
Douglas Feith, and worked specifically with the Office
of Special Plans. Kwiatkowski's own words tell her
story: "From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed
firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of
Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the
neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence
nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. I saw a
narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some
executive appointees in the Pentagon used to
manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship
between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S.
intelligence agencies. I witnessed neoconservative
agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully
considered assessments, and through suppression and
distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what
were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the
executive office of the president."
* Rand Beers, who served the Bush administration
on the National Security Council at the White House as
a special assistant to the President for combating
terrorism. Mr. Beers served in government for more
than 30 years working in international narcotics and
law enforcement affairs, intelligence, and
counter-terrorism. He worked for the National Security
Council under presidents Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton.
Because of his position, Beers saw everything. In a
June 25 2003 interview with Ted Koppel on Nightline,
Beers reported that the administration was failing
dramatically to defend the United States against
terrorism. According to Beers, al Qaeda presented a
far greater threat to America than Hussein and Iraq,
and that the Iraq war was a terrible and unnecessary
distraction from what was truly needed to keep the
nation safe.
Rogue journalist Hunter S. Thompson, in a Rolling
Stone article from July 4 1973 titled 'Fear and
Loathing in Washington: The Boys in the Bag,'
described the looming sense of doomed finality which
surrounded the Nixon White House after the existence
of recorded Oval Office conversations became exposed.
The Nixon White House had tried everything to that
point to fend off the Watergate scandal: They denied
everything, then tried to pay off the central figures,
then fired a bunch of people, denied everything again,
and finally released edited transcripts of the White
House tapes in an effort to stem the tide that was
about to flood them out of power.
"There are a hundred or more people wandering
around Washington today," wrote Thompson, "who have
heard the 'real stuff,' as they put it - and despite
their professional caution when the obvious question
arises, there is one reaction they all feel free to
agree on: that nobody who felt shocked, depressed or
angry after reading the edited White House transcripts
should ever be allowed to hear the actual tapes,
except under heavy sedation or locked in the trunk of
a car. Only a terminal cynic, they say, can listen for
any length of time to the real stuff without feeling a
compulsion to do something like drive down to the
White House and throw a bag of live rats over the
fence."
Richard Clarke, Tom Maertens, Roger Cressey,
Donald Kerrick, Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, Greg
Thielmann, Karen Kwiatkowski and Rand Beers all heard
and saw the real stuff happening in this Bush White
House. Wilson has a book coming out in May, in which
he will name the White House operatives who destroyed
his wife's career. There will be more books, from more
people, and the 24-hour news cycle will continue to
ride this tiger.
These people are telling the world about the real
stuff. The Bush/Cheney Re-Election Axis is terrified,
and the Secret Service detail guarding the White House
perimeter might want to cowboy up in preparation for a
rain of rat bags coming over that fence.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead
writer for t r u t h o u t. He is a New York Times and
international bestselling author of two books - 'War
on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and
'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
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Posted by richard at March 30, 2004 03:43 PM