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”
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