For­mer coun­tert­er­ror­ism czar Richard Clark proved him­self an unblink­ing war­rior against the Bush attack dogs today as the White House attempted to bring him down — but their weapons were appar­ently pow­er­less against him.
First, they tried to use a back­ground brief­ing he gave against him. In today’s press brief­ing, White House press sec­re­tary Scott McClel­lan tried repeat­edly to paint Clarke’s August 2002 back­ground brief­ing to reporters as “his own words” instead of the words of a man who was spe­cial assis­tant to the pres­i­dent.

Q Scott, just one more on Clarke. Given the fact that you’re point­ing to this tran­script, read­ing through it, say­ing it’s a ques­tion of his cred­i­bil­ity –
MR. McCLEL­LAN: Well, it’s his own words.
Q Right.
MR. McCLEL­LAN: I’m just repeat­ing his own words.
Q Right. So given that, given the fact that he def­i­nitely had this quoted as toe­ing the administration’s line before reporters, why do you think he is say­ing what he’s say­ing?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: Well, like I said, this goes to his cred­i­bil­ity, and I think that those are ques­tions that Mr. Clarke needs to answer. It was Mr. Clarke who went out and made asser­tions that this admin­is­tra­tion was doing noth­ing prior to 9/11, that we were not tak­ing the threat from al Qaeda seri­ously, that there was a delay, that we moved slowly. But Dick Clarke, in his words acknowl­edges, one, that the admin­is­tra­tion took al Qaeda very seri­ously and began a process to address the threat very early on; and two, our admin­is­tra­tion was able to come to quick deci­sions on a num­ber of issues that had been on the table for sev­eral years; and three, that the Pres­i­dent directed the White House to develop a new com­pre­hen­sive strat­egy of elim­i­nat­ing rather than rolling al Qaeda. You can­not square Dick Clarke’s new asser­tions with his past words. That’s very clear.
I would like to just point to a cou­ple of other parts of this tran­script from Mr. Clarke’s inter­view with reporters. There’s a ques­tion by a reporter. Ques­tion: What is your response to the sug­ges­tion in the August 12^th — well, in the Time Mag­a­zine arti­cle that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion was unwill­ing to take on board the sug­ges­tions made in the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion because of ani­mus against the — gen­eral ani­mus against the for­eign pol­icy?
Mr. Clark: “I think if if there was a gen­eral ani­mus that clouded their vision, they might not have kept the same guy deal­ing with the ter­ror­ism issue. This is the one issue where the National Secu­rity Coun­cil lead­er­ship decided con­ti­nu­ity was impor­tant and kept the same guy around, the same team in place. That doesn’t sound like ani­mus against the pre­vi­ous team to me,” Mr. Clarke went on to say.
Then a reporter — here it’s listed, Jim Angle, White House Cor­re­spon­dent [From Fox News, which came to the White House with this tran­script — CA]: “You’re say­ing that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion did not stop any­thing that the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion was doing while it was mak­ing these deci­sions, and by the end of the sum­mer had increased money for covert action five­fold, is that cor­rect?“
Mr. Clarke: “All of that is cor­rect.“
Now, two other parts I want to refer to, as well:
Ques­tion by a reporter: “Were all of those issues part of an alleged plan that was late Decem­ber, and the Clin­ton team decided not to pur­sue because it was too close to –” Mr. Clarke jumps in here: “There was never a plan, Andrea. What there was, was these two things — one a descrip­tion of the exist­ing strat­egy, which included a descrip­tion of the threat; and two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years and which were still on the table.“
So the follow-up ques­tion: “So there was noth­ing that devel­oped, no doc­u­ments or no new plan of any sort?
Mr. Clarke: “There was no new plan.“
Ques­tion: “No new strat­egy, I mean. I don’t want to get into seman­tics.“
Mr. Clarke: “Plan, strat­egy — there was no, noth­ing new.“
And later on, again this is Jim Angle here, ask­ing this ques­tion: “So just to fin­ish up, if we could then, so what you’re say­ing is that there was no — one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actu­ally, the first changes since Octo­ber of ’98 were made in the spring months just after the admin­is­tra­tion came into office?
Mr. Clarke: “You got it. That’s right.“
And finally, because I think this one is impor­tant, as well, Mr. Clarke towards the end of the inter­view went on to say: “You know, the other thing to bear in mind is the shift from the roll-back strat­egy to the elim­i­na­tion strat­egy. When Pres­i­dent Bush told us in March to stop swat­ting at flies and just solve this prob­lem, then that was the strate­gic direc­tion that changed the NSPD” — meaning the National Secu­rity Pol­icy Direc­tive — “from one of roll-back to one of elim­i­na­tion.“
So those are Mr. Clarke in his own words, and his own words con­tra­dict what he now asserts.
Q Is he a liar or is he just for­get­ful?
Q Scott, Scott?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: April.
Q Is he a liar or just for­get­ful?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: You’ve had your turn.
April.

Here McClel­lan dis­putes that the White House even attempts to coor­di­nate its daily com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­egy.

Q Scott, back to Terry’s ques­tion. Are these just basi­cally talk­ing points? We know every day all of you start from the begin­ning of the day to dis­sem­i­nate — well, to fig­ure out what you’re going to say to the media, how you’re going to present your spin, I guess, you would say in some ways. And was he just fol­low­ing talk­ing points, the spin line?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: I don’t know if that’s — I don’t know if that’s quite an accu­rate descrip­tion of the way we start our day or what we do.
Q Well, I mean when you start your day, you guys are talk­ing about what you want to put out there and how you’re going to put it out there, and what you should not say. And was he, indeed, fol­low­ing the line that you were given here that day?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: This was Mr. Clarke describ­ing what he knew in his own words. This was not any­body but Mr. Clarke mak­ing these com­ments.
Q But, Scott, in this admin­is­tra­tion when reporters go and ask you, other per­sons around here, we get the same words — the same words come out. There’s no vari­a­tion or any­thing. Was he –
MR. McCLEL­LAN: Well, I think that’s a sign that we’re fol­low­ing the President’s direc­tion and his poli­cies.
Q You’re fol­low­ing talk­ing points, cor­rect?
MR. McCLEL­LAN: No. Again, you need to sep­a­rate out some of this. This was Mr. Clarke, on his own, mak­ing these com­ments back in the spring of 2002. This was him in his own words.

So, accord­ing to McClel­lan, there are no talk­ing points and Clarke is a rogue spe­cial assis­tant to the pres­i­dent who talks off the reser­va­tion — in his own words, remem­ber — but who’s own words back up the president’s poli­cies.
Huh?
Then, dur­ing his tes­ti­mony today before the National Com­mis­sion on Ter­ror­ist Attacks Upon the United States, Com­mis­sion mem­ber Gov. James R. Thomp­son held up the tran­script of the Aug. 2002 press brief­ing and asked, “Which is true?“
Clarke responded with, “I was asked by sev­eral peo­ple in senior lev­els of the Bush White house to do a press back­grounder to try to explain that set of facts that min­i­mized crit­i­cism of that admin­is­tra­tion. And so I did.“
“I was asked to make that case to the press,” Clarke con­tin­ued. “I was spe­cial assis­tant to the pres­i­dent, and I made the case I was asked to make.“
Thomp­son responded with incredulity that such things ever hap­pen, ask­ing, “Are you say­ing to me you were asked to make an untrue case to the press and the pub­lic and you went ahead and did it?“
“No sir,” replied Clarke. “Not untrue. Not an untrue case. I was asked to high­light the pos­i­tive aspects of what the admin­is­tra­tion had done and to min­i­mize the neg­a­tive aspects of what the admin­is­tra­tion had done. And as a spe­cial assis­tant to the pres­i­dent, one is fre­quently asked to do that kind of thing. I’ve done it for sev­eral pres­i­dents.“
Snap!
So far, the White House’s only line of defense against Clarke is that he’s “a liar and a boob and both out-of-the-loop and respon­si­ble for every­thing that went wrong,” as Josh Mar­shall neatly sum­ma­rizes. And those are pretty weak con­sid­er­ing he’s got 30 years of ser­vice under his belt, he was the loop and his book shows how the Clin­ton White House did a lot of things right — such as pre­vent­ing al Qaeda from tak­ing over Bosnia in the mid 1990s. [pp 136 – 140]
Aside: I’m out­raged that Fox approached the White House with this back­ground brief­ing tape. Accord­ing to McClel­lan, “it was Fox News who yes­ter­day came to us and said they had a tape of this con­ver­sa­tion with Mr. Clarke.” If that’s true, then a news orga­ni­za­tion that was included in a brief­ing with the agree­ment that it was on back­ground — that is, with no quotes and the briefer not be iden­ti­fied — approached a source’s for­mer employer and offered to give up appar­ently con­flict­ing words that the employer could use against the source. (I read the tran­script. It’s not par­tic­u­larly con­tra­dic­tory, frankly, and can eas­ily be read as how Clarke char­ac­ter­ized it.) This is a major jour­nal­is­tic no-no. When I was at Colum­bia University’s Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism, we were taught to go to jail before you give up your sources. And you sure as hell don’t approach some­one you’re sup­posed to be cov­er­ing and offer to help them out against some­one.
But back to Fox. Any­one who still thinks Fox is “fair and bal­anced” should really have their head exam­ined. If you like it because it’s a right-wing attack net­work, more power to you. At least you’re hon­est with your­self. But if you really think it’s work­ing for any­thing but Bush’s re-election, you really need to get out more.
But all this crit­i­cism is really sec­ondary because Clarke reserves he real out­rage for Iraq. When the sub­ject of the war there came up, Clarke said to the Com­mis­sion, sim­ply and dev­as­tat­ingly, “By invad­ing of Iraq, the Pres­i­dent of United of the States has greatly under­mined the war on ter­ror­ism.“
For a long sev­eral sec­onds, there was noth­ing in the room but a deadly silence.