Wow- Richard Clarke caught in a lie/factual error:
The insider memoir of former counter-terrorist expert Richard Clarke that accuses the White House of unconcern over terrorism reportedly contains errors.
Many of the mistakes concern the 1999 arrest of now-convicted terrorist Ahmed Ressam at a Port Angeles, Wash., ferry terminal, the Seattle Times reported Monday.
Clarke’s memoir plus his Congressional testimony blamed the White House for failing to be vigilant against terrorism before Sept. 11, 2001.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who publicly has contradicted Clarke, says there was no alert, and now agents who arrested Ressam confirm Rice’s statements.
Clarke, who worked for both Clinton and Bush, said his office sent warnings both overseas and to local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies around the country to be on heightened alert for suspicious activity. “And then we waited,” he wrote.
“The break came in an unlikely location,” Clarke wrote, describing Ressam’s arrest by customs agents during a “routine screening.”
Another customs agent who was involved also agreed with Rice.
“No,” was the terse reply of Michael Chapman, one of the customs agents who arrested Ressam, when asked if he was aware of a security alert.
So much for the ‘we manned the battle stations’ meme- am I the only one who finds it amazing that members of the Clinton administration continue to lie- THREE YEARS AFTER LEAVING OFFICE?
Another report:
Was it “shaking trees” or shaking knees that led to the arrest of convicted millennium terrorist Ahmed Ressam?
As former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke tells it in his book “Against All Enemies,” an international alert to be on the lookout for terrorists played a role in Ressam’s capture at a Port Angeles ferry terminal in December 1999, his car loaded with bomb-making material.
But national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, in her testimony before the Sept. 11 commission last week, discounted Clarke’s version and credited a savvy U.S. customs agent, Diana Dean.
Dean stopped Ressam because “she sniffed something about Ressam. They saw that something was wrong”
KT
dude
chill out
ok, so maybe clarke was retelling a story as he remembered it and made some detail errors. is anyone harmed because of these mistakes? was he willfully lying, or just lazy about fact-checking?
he worked for reagan, bush 1, clinton, and now bush 2. he was a conservative.
John Cole
Richard Clarke had two years to get his facts right in the book, and he used this instance as evidence that the former administration took steps they never did. That would be bad enough, but he used those non-existent steps that they did not take to criticize and excoriate the current administration in a politically motivated jihad.
I will not chill out.
KT
he is criticizing bush because, IMHO, he thinks that bush is not doing a good job with security. he thinks security is an important issue, that americans should be safe and they’re not. why does it have to be partisan?
Eric Sivula
Because it began when was offered a book deal, and one of his friends began working for a Leftist who needed some cover.
Oh and ABC is hiring Dick ‘the Douche’ Clarke. He should fit in with the other former Clitonistas.
Oliver
Washington Times? Was Fox busy? We’ll talk when a legit news service covers it.
Jay
Oliver, that is so frigging weak.
Jay
Whoops! There it is Oliver! It’s int he Seattle Times.
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001901197_ressam12m.html
Your apology is accepted.
Jay
Oops. Here’s another source:
peninsuladailynews.com/sited/story/html/160888
Oliver Is As Looney As Rall
Like Flypaper to Stupid, Baybeeeeee!!!
SteveMG
If Mr. Clarke had been offered the second in command to Tom Ridge at Homeland Security, does anyone believe he would have written his book and made the critical, but largely unsubstantiated, comments about the Bush Admin.’s terror tactics?
Oliver? Burnplant? Ferris? Anyone?
SMG
KT
how can you say they are unsubstantiated?
capt joe
puhleze, Clarke bs lies are popping out like, … er popcorn. Just apply the heat, pop pop pop ….
You guys never admit your wrong, ever.
The only reason you nutjobs are blowing all this bs up in the air is because you want your man in the WH.
The lot of you would rather the boom-booms appear all over america than have a republican in the WH.
That is absolutely disgusting.
like shit to ass.
Rosemary the Queen of All Evil
KT said, “he worked for reagan, bush 1, clinton, and now bush 2. he was a conservative.”
Clarke admitted on Meet the Press that he voted for Gore in 2000. No conservative would admit that, even if it were true. He’s a Democrat.
Andrew J. Lazarus
So, I googled for some news accounts of the trial. Emphasis added by me.
So we had a good idea Ressam was after an LA airport long before he turned.
The question about what role any heightened alert had is harder to judge. Ressam’s arrest was a fluke (not exactly, it was good work by a capable officer). But the operation that rolled up his co-conspirators was a professional job and I can’t tell from this write-up if Clarke or anyone in DC had some influence in making resources available to these investigators.
CleverNameHere
KT
is anyone harmed because of these mistakes?
Fortunately, the American public isn’t as stupid as Clarke had hoped, so Bush’s election chances haven’t been harmed. I would argue, though, that Clarke has contributed to the wounding of the national discourse, in that he has aided and abetted the true loons on the left.
AJL
I’m sure Clinton’s admin took terrorism very seriously, and did what they felt feasible to protect against attacks. I’m sure our counter terror folks did a great job mopping up Ressam’s buddies once the plot was discovered. But the point is that this is no different from 9-11. Our guys in 2001 did a fantastic job preventing other planned attacks in the wake of the WTC desctruction.
The point is that this whole episode does not prove what it was represented to demonstrate: that the Clinton team dealt with terror strikes on home soil more effectively than did the Bush admin. Clarke should be pilloried for this willful misrepresentation, not given an analyst job on one of the major networks.
DamnURDumb
READ THIS:
“Now Sheehan was even more unnerved. There were only 15 days before the New Year. How many terrorists had sneaked in before we caught Ressam? Where were they hiding? What were they planning?
“Thousands of FBI agents volunteered or were assigned to the investigation, called “Borderbom.” From Seattle to Boston, they questioned hundreds of Muslims, wiretapped hundreds of conversations, put hundreds of people under surveillance. They made early-morning “knock-and-talk” visits, questioning Muslims at their homes, probing for ties to terrorism. They hoped to disrupt any plans.”
from Seattle Times, not the Moonie Times
So your bitch is the *National Coordinator* didn’t *personally* make sure each and every field agent got briefed…but did put THOUSANDS of agents on it?
Let’s be clear John, THOUSANDS of agents is not ‘manning the battle stations’ to you?
Then what the hell is?
Kimmitt
Wait, you’re upset that Clarke misremembered who chased down a particular suspect and when a map was found on him?
Seriously, this is your evidence that he’s lying? Shit, I couldn’t tell you whether my wife or I drove the car last.
LooksLikeCondiIsLying
This story is from two days after the arrest of Ahmed Ressam:
National Security Adviser Warns of Risk of Terrorism
By STEPHEN LABATON
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 — With security being tightened after the arrest of an Algerian man who crossed the Canadian border into Washington with powerful bomb-making materials, President Clinton’s national security
adviser today warned Americans to be more vigilant over the next few
weeks because of a “heightened risk of terrorist actions.”
While the State Department has issued similar warnings in recent weeks for Americans traveling abroad during millennial celebrations, Samuel R.
Berger, the White House’s ranking security aide, broadened the caution today.
“We’re not aware of any other specific threat against particular targets in the United States, and obviously if that changes we’ll alert the American people,” Mr. Berger said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”
“But I would think that as Americans go about their plans for New Year’s, they simply should be vigilant.”
link
I’m sure the Bush excuse-makers and backpedallers here will start saying “well, Customs doesn’t have anything to do with American’s travelling abroad” or “yeah, but it came from State, not the FBI”.
The. Washington. Times. Lies. Never. Use. Them. As. A. Source.
CadilaqJaq
So, Richard Clarke, the left’s last great white hope to dismember the GWB administration has been proven to be a liar too…
Sadly for the left, all they have are lies: left over habits from the lying Clinton administration. The best they can do today is to scream “lie” whenever they are caught in a transparent falsehood: shoot the messenger, ignore the substance.
Slartibartfast
I wrote something on this too, John. The upshot is, Ressam was apprehended through pretty much equal parts our luck and his own ineptitude.
The “only fifteen days before the new year” timeframe begins two days AFTER Ressam was apprehended. He was nabbed on December 14, 1999. Or was there a more subtle point that I missed?
SteveMG
Kimmitt:
You said: “Wait, you’re upset that Clarke misremembered who chased down a particular suspect and when a map was found on him?
Seriously, this is your evidence that he’s lying? Shit, I couldn’t tell you whether my wife or I drove the car last.”
I think you’ve found your true calling in life. You should be a book publisher. You’d make millions, hell, billions.
You wouldn’t have to hire fact checkers, or a research department, or a legal team, or go through the gally proofreading process. Hell, just print whatever manuscript crosses your desk.
Facts? Nothing to worry about. Accuracy? Fughetaboutit. Truth? Who cares about that?
SMG
Slartibartfast
I guess those 19,000 (or whatever the real number was) pages of documents Clarke lugged out of the White House were just to lend the _appearance_ of a well-researched book.
Tongue Boy
“Wait, you’re upset that Clarke misremembered who chased down a particular suspect and when a map was found on him?”
Well, when the map is central to Clarke’s assertion that it was heightened terror alert status, as opposed to a routine drug bust, that nailed Ressam, then yes, any misrepresentation is quite upsetting. Any other questions?
HH
Once again, morons, this comes from the Seattle Times and UPI picked up the story. This guy was supposedly the foremost expert on terrorism, knew all that was going on, etc. So either his credibility on these matters is exaggerated or he deliberately lied, putting all of his claims into question (as if the devastating pieces by Time.com, NBC News and the like didn’t already make this clear). Sorry, lefty spinners, your emperor has no clothes.
Bird Dog
KT wrote: “why does it have to be partisan?”
My answer is that Clarke claimed non-partisanship but his written and spoken words are obviously partisan. He is Slippery Dick.
trickydickcheney
Lefty calls it a day?
tinyurl.com/3clu7
HH
Considering that the straw man which “knocks this down” comes from an earlier Seattle Times, the same Seattle Times series that made it abundantly clear that the Millennium plot was stopped by the war on drugs, and now makes it abundantly clear that there was no “security alert” for LAX, I’d say the new info rules.
Slartibartfast
HH, the Seattle Times article cited above actually says that the heightened alertness was because of Ressam being apprehended, not the proximate cause of it as our friend would have us believe.
Rick
“Let the excuse making from the Clarke crowd begin.”
It took Oliver nearly two hours to get in gear. And it was a weak start, as usual.
Cordially…
Dean
And Kimmitt helps explain why the Left has long been prepared to give the likes of Clinton and others a pass: What’s the big deal w/ not remembering?
Now, if only that courtesy would be accorded their ideological foes….
Slartibartfast
So much for even-keeled Democrats.
Slartibartfast
I’m going to borrow an arrow from Kimmitt’s rhetorical quiver : “brownshirts“.
Kimmitt
Holy crap! Not only are there blatant falsehoods (Bush regularly visits VA hospitals with wounded from the Iraq war), but an actual death threat against Rumsfeld printed and distributed? Who approved this ad for the newspaper? Who the hell are these people?
I mean, shit, this is Texas GOP platform kind of awfulness.