Richard A. Clarke
Encyclopedia
Richard Alan Clarke was a U.S. government employee for 30 years, 1973–2003. He worked for the State Department
during the presidency of Ronald Reagan
. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National Security Council
. President Bill Clinton
retained Clarke and in 1998 promoted him to be the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism, the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council
. Under President George W. Bush
, Clarke initially continued in the same position, but the position was no longer given cabinet-level access. He later became the Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity, before leaving the Bush Administration in 2003.
Clarke came to widespread public attention for his role as counter-terrorism czar in the Clinton and Bush Administrations in March 2004, when he appeared on the 60 Minutes
television news magazine, released his memoir about his service in government, Against All Enemies
, and testified before the 9/11 Commission. In all three instances, Clarke was sharply critical of the Bush Administration's attitude toward counter-terrorism before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and of the decision to go to war with Iraq. Following Clarke's strong criticisms of the Bush Administration, Bush administration officials and other Republicans attempted to discredit him or rebut his criticisms, making Clarke a controversial figure.
factory worker. He studied at the Boston Latin School
(graduated in 1968), received a Bachelor's degree
from the University of Pennsylvania
in 1972 and master's degree in 1978 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
.
as a management intern in the U.S. Department of Defense. Starting in 1985, Clarke served in the Reagan
Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence. During the Presidential administration of George H.W. Bush, as the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, he coordinated diplomatic efforts to support the 1990-1991 Gulf War
and the subsequent security arrangements. During the Clinton Administration, Clarke became the counter-terrorism coordinator for the National Security Council. He also advised Madeleine Albright
during the Genocide in Rwanda, to request the UN to withdraw all UN troops from Rwanda. She refused and permitted Gen. Dallaire to keep a few hundred troops who managed to save thousands from the genocide. Later Clarke told Samantha Powers “It wasn’t in American’s national interest. If we had to do the same thing today and I was advising the President, I would advise the same thing.
He directed the authoring of PDD-25 which outlined a reduced military and economic role for the United States in Rwanda as well as future peacekeeping operations. He remained counter-terrorism coordinator during the first year of the George W. Bush Administration, and later was the Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity and cyberterrorism. He resigned from the Bush Administration in 2003.
Clarke's positions inside the government have included:
threat in the greater Middle East, the memo also suggests strategies for combating al-Qaeda that might be adopted by the new Bush Administration.
In his memoir, "Against All Enemies", Clarke wrote that when he first briefed Rice on Al-Qaeda, in a January 2001 meeting, "her facial expression gave me the impression she had never heard the term before." He also stated that Rice made a decision that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism should be downgraded. By demoting the office, the Administration sent a signal through the national security bureaucracy about the salience they assigned to terrorism. No longer would Clarke's memos go to the President; instead they had to pass though a chain of command of National Security Advisor Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley
, who bounced every one of them back.
At the first Deputies Committee meeting on Terrorism held in April 2001, Clarke strongly suggested that the U.S. put pressure on both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda by arming the Northern Alliance
and other groups in Afghanistan
. Simultaneously, that they target bin Laden and his leadership by reinitiating flights of the MQ-1 Predators. To which Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
responded, "Well, I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden." Clarke replied that he was talking about bin Laden and his network because it posed "an immediate and serious threat to the United States." According to Clarke, Wolfowitz turned to him and said, "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."
Clarke wrote in Against All Enemies that in the summer of 2001, the intelligence community was convinced of an imminent attack by al Qaeda, but could not get the attention of the highest levels of the Bush administration, most famously writing that Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
George Tenet
was running around with his "hair on fire".
At a July 5, 2001, White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke stated that "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." Donald Kerrick, a three-star general who was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration and stayed on into the Bush administration, wrote Hadley a classified two-page memo stating that the NSA needed to "pay attention to Al-Qaida and counterterrorism" and that the U.S. would be "struck again."
Many of the events Clarke recounted during the hearings were also published in his memoir. Among his highly critical statements regarding the Bush Administration, Clarke charged that before and during the 9/11 crisis, many in the administration were distracted from efforts against Osama bin Laden
's Al-Qaeda organization by a pre-occupation with Iraq
and Saddam Hussein
. Clarke had written that on September 12, 2001, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and "testily" asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying "Please update and resubmit." After initially denying that such a meeting between the President and Clarke took place, the White House later reversed its denial when others present backed Clarke's version of the events.
Prior to the 9/11 Commission, portions of the Clarke's August 6 Daily Briefing Memo to President Bush were subsequently redacted by The White House for national security
reasons. Despite the title of the memo, in response to aggressive questioning from Richard Ben-Veniste
– a Democratic member of the 9/11 Commission – Rice stated that the document "did not warn of attacks inside the United States." Clarke then asked on several occasions for early principals meetings on these issues, and was frustrated that no early meeting was scheduled. No principals committee meetings on Al-Qaida were held until September 4, 2001.
In a late November truthout interview, former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal
said, "Clarke urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of Al-Qaeda.. the Bush administration is trying to withhold documents from the 9/11 bipartisan commission. I believe one of the things that they do not want to be known is what happened on August 6, 2001. It was on that day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. I believe he told (Clarke) that he didn't want to be briefed on this again, even though Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Bush was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible... The public has a right to know what happened on August 6, what Bush did, what Condi Rice did, what all the rest of them did, and what Richard Clarke's memos and statements were."
Former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick
, the only member of the 9/11 Commission to read the President's Daily Brief, revealed in the hearings that the documents "would set your hair on fire" and that the intelligence warnings of al-Qaida attacks "plateaued at a spike level for months" before 9/11.
The most credible criticism of Clarke has been based upon the fact that the 9/11 terrorists gathered within United States borders and went undetected by National Security organizations. And Clarke has been much criticized for his performance before the 9/11 Commission for a rather theatrical display aimed at painting the newly arrived Bush Administration as responsible for the 9/11 attack.
According to some reports, the White House tried to discredit Clarke in a move described as "shooting the messenger." New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
was more blunt, calling the attacks on Clarke "a campaign of character assassination."
Republicans inside and outside the Bush Administration vigorously attacked both Clarke's testimony and his tenure during the hearings. In the furor over Clarke's revelations before the 9/11 Commission, Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist
immediately took to the Senate floor to make a speech accusing Clarke of telling "two entirely different stories under oath", pointing to congressional hearing testimony Clarke gave in 2002, but Frist later admitted to reporters that he was unaware of any actual discrepancies in Clarke's testimony. Some White House attempts to discredit Clarke were inconsistent, specifically, the day after Clarke's revelations Vice President Dick Cheney
went on the Rush Limbaugh
radio program to claim that Clarke's account of the events leading to the 9/11 attacks was not credible because Clarke "wasn't in the loop" on pre-9/11 counter-terrorism planning, while at the same time National Security Adviser Rice was telling reporters that Clarke was the center of all counter-terrorism efforts.
Clarke was also criticized by defenders of the Bush administration who seized on 1999 suggestions by Clarke himself of intelligence indicating a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda
, despite the fact that by 2001, after investigation, Clarke and others concluded that no link had been established. Specifically, in February 1999 Clarke wrote the Deputy National Security Advisor that one reliable source reported Iraqi officials had met with Bin Ladin and may have offered him asylum. Therefore, Clarke advised against surveillance flights to track bin Laden in Afghanistan: Anticipating an attack, “old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad”, where he would be impossible to find. Clarke also made statements that year to the press linking Hussein and al-Qaeda
to an alleged joint-chemical-weapons-development effort at the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan
.
Since 1999, however, the United States government has admitted that its evidence regarding Al Shifa is inconclusive, and Clarke had concluded that there was no Iraq-Al-Qaeda link. In Against All Enemies he writes, "It is certainly possible that Iraqi agents dangled the possibility of asylum
in Iraq before bin Laden at some point when everyone knew that the U.S. was pressuring the Taliban to arrest him. If that dangle happened, bin Laden's accepting asylum clearly did not," (p. 270). In an interview on March 21, 2004, Clarke made the statement: "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaeda, ever."
Clarke had made clear in his book that this conclusion was understood by the intelligence community at the time of 9/11 and the ensuing months, but top Bush administration officials were pre-occupied with finding a link between Iraq and 9/11 in the months that followed the attack, and thus, Clarke argued, the Iraq war distracted attention and resources from the war in Afghanistan and hunt for Osama bin Laden
. Clarke's account of the post-9/11 period was corroborated in later years by Marine Lieutenant General Greg Newbold, former director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who retired in 2002, and by Army General John Batiste, former commander of the First Infantry Division, who retired in November 2005, and who in 2001 and 2002 had been the Senior Military Advisor to Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
. The two were among several retired generals who came out in 2006 calling for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
. Consistent with Clarke's account of the period, Newbold told an interviewer in 2007 of his dismay over the focus on Iraq, which seemed "irrelevant", in meetings in late 2001, and "that Saddam, and not Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar, was most on the Bush administration's mind." Batiste, who would go on to have a primary role in the war in Iraq, saw the Iraq war plan develop "even before 9/11" and then "solidify" thereafter, in his position on the Wolfowitz staff according to a 2007 interview.
Another point of attack for Clarke's critics was his role in allowing members of the bin Laden family
to fly to Saudi Arabia on September 20, 2001. According to Clarke's statements to the 9/11 Commission, a member of the Bush Administration relayed to Clarke the request of the Saudi embassy to allow the members of the bin Laden family
living in the U.S. to fly to Saudi Arabia. Clarke testified to the commission that he relayed this decision in turn to the FBI via Dale Watson
, and that the FBI at length sent its approval of the flight to the Interagency Crisis Management Group. However, FBI spokesman John Iannarelli denied that the FBI had a role in approving the flight: "I can say unequivocally that the FBI had no role in facilitating these flights."
Clarke has also exchanged criticism with Michael Scheuer
, former chief of the bin Laden Unit
at the Counterterrorist Center
at the CIA. When asked to respond to Clarke's claim that Scheuer was "a hothead, a middle manager who really didn't go to any of the cabinet meetings," Scheuer returned the criticism as follows: "I certainly agree with the fact that I didn't go to the cabinet meetings. But I'm certainly also aware that I'm much better informed than Mr. Clarke ever was about the nature of the intelligence that was available against Osama bin Laden and which was consistently denigrated by himself and Mr. Tenet
." Matthew Continetti
writes: "Scheuer believes that Clarke’s risk aversion and politicking negatively impacted the hunt for bin Laden prior to September 11, 2001. Scheuer stated that his unit, codename 'Alec,' had provided information that could have led to the capture and or killing of Osama bin Laden on ten different occasions, only to have his recommendations for action turned down by senior intelligence officials, including Clarke."
In response to Clarke's charges against the Bush administration, Fox News, with the Administration's consent, identified and released a background briefing that Clarke gave in August 2002, at the Administration's request, to minimize the fallout from a Time Magazine story about the President's failure to take certain actions before 9/11. In that briefing on behalf of the White House, Clarke stated "there was no plan on Al-Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration," and that after taking office President Bush
decided to "add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, fivefold, to go after Al-Qaeda." At the next day's hearing, 9/11 Commission member James Thompson
challenged Clarke with the 2002 account, and Clarke explained: "I was asked to make that case to the press. I was a special assistant to the President, and I made the case I was asked to make... 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."
On March 28, 2004, at the height of efforts to undermine his critique of the Bush administration during the 9/11 Commission
Hearings, Clarke went on NBC's Sunday morning news show, Meet the Press
and was interviewed by journalist Tim Russert
. In responding to and rebutting the criticism, Clarke challenged the Bush administration to declassify the whole record, including closed testimony by Bush administration officials before the Commission.
than on IT security, then you will be hack
ed. What's more, you deserve to be hacked."
. He has also become an author of fiction, publishing his first novel, The Scorpion's Gate
, in 2005, and a second, Breakpoint
, in 2007.
Clarke wrote an op-ed
for the Washington Post on May 31, 2009 harshly critical of other Bush administration officials, entitled "The Trauma of 9/11 Is No Excuse".
Clarke wrote that he had little sympathy for his fellow officials who seemed to want to use the excuse of being traumatized, and caught unaware by Al-Qaeda
's attacks on the USA, because their being caught unaware was due to their ignoring clear reports a major attack on U.S. soil was imminent. Clarke particularly singled out former Vice President Dick Cheney
and former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice
.
Clarke released his newest book, Cyber War, in April 2010.
both before and after September 11, 2001 but focused much of its criticism on Bush for failing to take sufficient action to protect the country in the elevated-threat period before the September 11, 2001 attacks
and for the 2003 invasion of Iraq
, which Clarke feels greatly hampered the war on terror, and was a distraction from the real terrorists.
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
during the presidency of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
. President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
retained Clarke and in 1998 promoted him to be the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism, the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
. Under President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, Clarke initially continued in the same position, but the position was no longer given cabinet-level access. He later became the Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity, before leaving the Bush Administration in 2003.
Clarke came to widespread public attention for his role as counter-terrorism czar in the Clinton and Bush Administrations in March 2004, when he appeared on the 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
television news magazine, released his memoir about his service in government, Against All Enemies
Against All Enemies
Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror is a 2004 book by former U.S. chief counter-terrorism advisor Richard A. Clarke, criticizing past and present presidential administrations for the way they handled the War on Terrorism. The book focused much of its criticism on President George W...
, and testified before the 9/11 Commission. In all three instances, Clarke was sharply critical of the Bush Administration's attitude toward counter-terrorism before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and of the decision to go to war with Iraq. Following Clarke's strong criticisms of the Bush Administration, Bush administration officials and other Republicans attempted to discredit him or rebut his criticisms, making Clarke a controversial figure.
Background
Richard Clarke was born in 1950, the son of a BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
factory worker. He studied at the Boston Latin School
Boston Latin School
The Boston Latin School is a public exam school founded on April 23, 1635, in Boston, Massachusetts. It is both the first public school and oldest existing school in the United States....
(graduated in 1968), received a Bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
from the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in 1972 and master's degree in 1978 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
.
Government career
In 1973, he began work in the federal governmentFederal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
as a management intern in the U.S. Department of Defense. Starting in 1985, Clarke served in the Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence. During the Presidential administration of George H.W. Bush, as the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, he coordinated diplomatic efforts to support the 1990-1991 Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
and the subsequent security arrangements. During the Clinton Administration, Clarke became the counter-terrorism coordinator for the National Security Council. He also advised Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Korbelová Albright is the first woman to become a United States Secretary of State. She was appointed by U.S. President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99–0...
during the Genocide in Rwanda, to request the UN to withdraw all UN troops from Rwanda. She refused and permitted Gen. Dallaire to keep a few hundred troops who managed to save thousands from the genocide. Later Clarke told Samantha Powers “It wasn’t in American’s national interest. If we had to do the same thing today and I was advising the President, I would advise the same thing.
He directed the authoring of PDD-25 which outlined a reduced military and economic role for the United States in Rwanda as well as future peacekeeping operations. He remained counter-terrorism coordinator during the first year of the George W. Bush Administration, and later was the Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity and cyberterrorism. He resigned from the Bush Administration in 2003.
Clarke's positions inside the government have included:
- United States National Security CouncilUnited States National Security CouncilThe White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
, 1992–2003- Special Advisor 2001-2003
- National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism, 1998–2001
- Chair of the Counter-terrorism Security Group, 1992–2003
- United States Department of StateUnited States Department of StateThe United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
1985-1992- Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs, 1989–1992
- Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence, 1985–1988
Early warnings about Al-Qaeda threat
Clarke's role as a counter-terrorism advisor in the months and years prior to 9/11 would lead to the central role he played in deconstructing what went wrong in the years that followed. Clarke and his communications with the Bush administration regarding bin Laden and associated terrorist plots targeting the United States were mentioned frequently in Condoleezza Rice's public interview by the 9/11 investigatory commission on April 8, 2004. Of particular significance was a memo from January 25, 2001, that Clarke had authored and sent to Rice. Along with making an urgent request for a meeting of the National Security Council's Principals Committee to discuss the growing al-QaedaAl-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
threat in the greater Middle East, the memo also suggests strategies for combating al-Qaeda that might be adopted by the new Bush Administration.
In his memoir, "Against All Enemies", Clarke wrote that when he first briefed Rice on Al-Qaeda, in a January 2001 meeting, "her facial expression gave me the impression she had never heard the term before." He also stated that Rice made a decision that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism should be downgraded. By demoting the office, the Administration sent a signal through the national security bureaucracy about the salience they assigned to terrorism. No longer would Clarke's memos go to the President; instead they had to pass though a chain of command of National Security Advisor Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley
Stephen Hadley
Stephen John Hadley was the 21st U.S. Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs , serving under President George W. Bush....
, who bounced every one of them back.
Within a week of the inauguration, I wrote to Rice and Hadley asking 'urgently' for a Principals, or Cabinet-level, meeting to review the imminent Al-Qaeda threat. Rice told me that the Principals Committee, which had been the first venue for terrorism policy discussions in the Clinton administration, would not address the issue until it had been 'framed' by the Deputies.
At the first Deputies Committee meeting on Terrorism held in April 2001, Clarke strongly suggested that the U.S. put pressure on both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda by arming the Northern Alliance
Northern Alliance
The Afghan Northern Alliance is a military-political umbrella organization created by the Islamic State of Afghanistan in 1996.Northern Alliance may also refer to:*Northern Alliance , a Canadian white supremacist group...
and other groups in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. Simultaneously, that they target bin Laden and his leadership by reinitiating flights of the MQ-1 Predators. To which Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is a former United States Ambassador to Indonesia, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank, and former dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University...
responded, "Well, I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden." Clarke replied that he was talking about bin Laden and his network because it posed "an immediate and serious threat to the United States." According to Clarke, Wolfowitz turned to him and said, "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."
Clarke wrote in Against All Enemies that in the summer of 2001, the intelligence community was convinced of an imminent attack by al Qaeda, but could not get the attention of the highest levels of the Bush administration, most famously writing that Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
George Tenet
George Tenet
George John Tenet was the Director of Central Intelligence for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, and is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University....
was running around with his "hair on fire".
At a July 5, 2001, White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke stated that "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." Donald Kerrick, a three-star general who was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration and stayed on into the Bush administration, wrote Hadley a classified two-page memo stating that the NSA needed to "pay attention to Al-Qaida and counterterrorism" and that the U.S. would be "struck again."
9/11 Commission
On March 24, 2004, Clarke testified at the public 9/11 Commission hearings. At the outset of his testimony Clarke offered an apology to the families of 9/11 victims and an acknowledgment that the government had failed: "I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11...To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to them who are here in this room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness." Clarke was the only member of the Clinton or Bush Administrations who provided an apology to the family members of victims along with an acknowledgement of the government's failure.Many of the events Clarke recounted during the hearings were also published in his memoir. Among his highly critical statements regarding the Bush Administration, Clarke charged that before and during the 9/11 crisis, many in the administration were distracted from efforts against Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
's Al-Qaeda organization by a pre-occupation with Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
. Clarke had written that on September 12, 2001, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and "testily" asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying "Please update and resubmit." After initially denying that such a meeting between the President and Clarke took place, the White House later reversed its denial when others present backed Clarke's version of the events.
Prior to the 9/11 Commission, portions of the Clarke's August 6 Daily Briefing Memo to President Bush were subsequently redacted by The White House for national security
National security
National security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic, diplomacy, power projection and political power. The concept developed mostly in the United States of America after World War II...
reasons. Despite the title of the memo, in response to aggressive questioning from Richard Ben-Veniste
Richard Ben-Veniste
Richard Ben-Veniste , is an American lawyer. He first rose to prominence as a special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal. He has also been a member of the 9/11 Commission. He is known for his pointed questions and criticisms of members of both the Clinton and George W...
– a Democratic member of the 9/11 Commission – Rice stated that the document "did not warn of attacks inside the United States." Clarke then asked on several occasions for early principals meetings on these issues, and was frustrated that no early meeting was scheduled. No principals committee meetings on Al-Qaida were held until September 4, 2001.
In a late November truthout interview, former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal
Sidney Blumenthal
Sidney Blumenthal is a former aide to President of the United States Bill Clinton and a widely published American journalist, especially on American politics and foreign policy....
said, "Clarke urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of Al-Qaeda.. the Bush administration is trying to withhold documents from the 9/11 bipartisan commission. I believe one of the things that they do not want to be known is what happened on August 6, 2001. It was on that day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. I believe he told (Clarke) that he didn't want to be briefed on this again, even though Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Bush was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible... The public has a right to know what happened on August 6, what Bush did, what Condi Rice did, what all the rest of them did, and what Richard Clarke's memos and statements were."
Former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick
Jamie Gorelick
Jamie S. Gorelick is an American attorney, presently representing BP. She was Deputy Attorney General of the United States during the Clinton administration...
, the only member of the 9/11 Commission to read the President's Daily Brief, revealed in the hearings that the documents "would set your hair on fire" and that the intelligence warnings of al-Qaida attacks "plateaued at a spike level for months" before 9/11.
Criticism
Before and after Clarke appeared before the 9/11 Commission, defenders of the Bush Administration tried to attack his credibility, launching a full-scale offensive against him: impugning his personal motives, claiming he was a disappointed job-hunter, that he was publicity-mad, a political partisan (Clarke, in fact, had been a Reagan administration appointee before the first Bush administration brought him from the State Department to the NSA). They charged that he exaggerated perceived failures in the Bush Administration's counterterrorism policies while exculpating the former Clinton administration from its perceived shortcomings.The most credible criticism of Clarke has been based upon the fact that the 9/11 terrorists gathered within United States borders and went undetected by National Security organizations. And Clarke has been much criticized for his performance before the 9/11 Commission for a rather theatrical display aimed at painting the newly arrived Bush Administration as responsible for the 9/11 attack.
According to some reports, the White House tried to discredit Clarke in a move described as "shooting the messenger." New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...
was more blunt, calling the attacks on Clarke "a campaign of character assassination."
Republicans inside and outside the Bush Administration vigorously attacked both Clarke's testimony and his tenure during the hearings. In the furor over Clarke's revelations before the 9/11 Commission, Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist
Bill Frist
William Harrison "Bill" Frist, Sr. is an American physician, businessman, and politician. He began his career as an heir and major stockholder to the for-profit hospital chain of Hospital Corporation of America. Frist later served two terms as a Republican United States Senator representing...
immediately took to the Senate floor to make a speech accusing Clarke of telling "two entirely different stories under oath", pointing to congressional hearing testimony Clarke gave in 2002, but Frist later admitted to reporters that he was unaware of any actual discrepancies in Clarke's testimony. Some White House attempts to discredit Clarke were inconsistent, specifically, the day after Clarke's revelations Vice President Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
went on the Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III is an American radio talk show host, conservative political commentator, and an opinion leader in American conservatism. He hosts The Rush Limbaugh Show which is aired throughout the U.S. on Premiere Radio Networks and is the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United...
radio program to claim that Clarke's account of the events leading to the 9/11 attacks was not credible because Clarke "wasn't in the loop" on pre-9/11 counter-terrorism planning, while at the same time National Security Adviser Rice was telling reporters that Clarke was the center of all counter-terrorism efforts.
Clarke was also criticized by defenders of the Bush administration who seized on 1999 suggestions by Clarke himself of intelligence indicating a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations were made by U.S. Government officials who claimed that a highly secretive relationship existed between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the radical Islamist militant organization Al-Qaeda from 1992 to 2003, specifically through a series of...
, despite the fact that by 2001, after investigation, Clarke and others concluded that no link had been established. Specifically, in February 1999 Clarke wrote the Deputy National Security Advisor that one reliable source reported Iraqi officials had met with Bin Ladin and may have offered him asylum. Therefore, Clarke advised against surveillance flights to track bin Laden in Afghanistan: Anticipating an attack, “old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad”, where he would be impossible to find. Clarke also made statements that year to the press linking Hussein and al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
to an alleged joint-chemical-weapons-development effort at the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
.
Since 1999, however, the United States government has admitted that its evidence regarding Al Shifa is inconclusive, and Clarke had concluded that there was no Iraq-Al-Qaeda link. In Against All Enemies he writes, "It is certainly possible that Iraqi agents dangled the possibility of asylum
Right of asylum
Right of asylum is an ancient juridical notion, under which a person persecuted for political opinions or religious beliefs in his or her own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, a foreign country, or church sanctuaries...
in Iraq before bin Laden at some point when everyone knew that the U.S. was pressuring the Taliban to arrest him. If that dangle happened, bin Laden's accepting asylum clearly did not," (p. 270). In an interview on March 21, 2004, Clarke made the statement: "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaeda, ever."
Clarke had made clear in his book that this conclusion was understood by the intelligence community at the time of 9/11 and the ensuing months, but top Bush administration officials were pre-occupied with finding a link between Iraq and 9/11 in the months that followed the attack, and thus, Clarke argued, the Iraq war distracted attention and resources from the war in Afghanistan and hunt for Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
. Clarke's account of the post-9/11 period was corroborated in later years by Marine Lieutenant General Greg Newbold, former director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who retired in 2002, and by Army General John Batiste, former commander of the First Infantry Division, who retired in November 2005, and who in 2001 and 2002 had been the Senior Military Advisor to Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is a former United States Ambassador to Indonesia, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank, and former dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University...
. The two were among several retired generals who came out in 2006 calling for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
. Consistent with Clarke's account of the period, Newbold told an interviewer in 2007 of his dismay over the focus on Iraq, which seemed "irrelevant", in meetings in late 2001, and "that Saddam, and not Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar, was most on the Bush administration's mind." Batiste, who would go on to have a primary role in the war in Iraq, saw the Iraq war plan develop "even before 9/11" and then "solidify" thereafter, in his position on the Wolfowitz staff according to a 2007 interview.
Another point of attack for Clarke's critics was his role in allowing members of the bin Laden family
Bin Laden family
The bin Laden family , also spelled bin Ladin, is a wealthy family intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family. The family was thrown into media spotlight through the activities of one of its members, Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks...
to fly to Saudi Arabia on September 20, 2001. According to Clarke's statements to the 9/11 Commission, a member of the Bush Administration relayed to Clarke the request of the Saudi embassy to allow the members of the bin Laden family
Bin Laden family
The bin Laden family , also spelled bin Ladin, is a wealthy family intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family. The family was thrown into media spotlight through the activities of one of its members, Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks...
living in the U.S. to fly to Saudi Arabia. Clarke testified to the commission that he relayed this decision in turn to the FBI via Dale Watson
Dale Watson
Dale L. Watson is the former Assistant Director for the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI, as such he headed the FBI investigation into the September 11, 2001 attacks and the 2001 anthrax attacks.-Education:...
, and that the FBI at length sent its approval of the flight to the Interagency Crisis Management Group. However, FBI spokesman John Iannarelli denied that the FBI had a role in approving the flight: "I can say unequivocally that the FBI had no role in facilitating these flights."
Clarke has also exchanged criticism with Michael Scheuer
Michael Scheuer
Michael F. Scheuer is a former CIA intelligence officer, American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies...
, former chief of the bin Laden Unit
Bin Laden Issue Station
The Bin Laden Issue Station was a unit of the Central Intelligence Agency dedicated to tracking Osama bin Laden.Soon after its creation the Station developed a new, deadlier vision of bin Laden's activities. In 1999 the CIA inaugurated a grand "Plan" against al-Qaeda, but struggled to find the...
at the Counterterrorist Center
Counterterrorist Center
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorism Center was established in 1986. It is not to be confused with the National Counterterrorism Center, a separate entity.-Foundation and early years:...
at the CIA. When asked to respond to Clarke's claim that Scheuer was "a hothead, a middle manager who really didn't go to any of the cabinet meetings," Scheuer returned the criticism as follows: "I certainly agree with the fact that I didn't go to the cabinet meetings. But I'm certainly also aware that I'm much better informed than Mr. Clarke ever was about the nature of the intelligence that was available against Osama bin Laden and which was consistently denigrated by himself and Mr. Tenet
George Tenet
George John Tenet was the Director of Central Intelligence for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, and is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University....
." Matthew Continetti
Matthew Continetti
Matthew Continetti is a conservative journalist and associate editor at The Weekly Standard.-Biography:He graduated from Columbia University in 2003. While in college he wrote for the Columbia Spectator and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's magazine, CAMPUS...
writes: "Scheuer believes that Clarke’s risk aversion and politicking negatively impacted the hunt for bin Laden prior to September 11, 2001. Scheuer stated that his unit, codename 'Alec,' had provided information that could have led to the capture and or killing of Osama bin Laden on ten different occasions, only to have his recommendations for action turned down by senior intelligence officials, including Clarke."
In response to Clarke's charges against the Bush administration, Fox News, with the Administration's consent, identified and released a background briefing that Clarke gave in August 2002, at the Administration's request, to minimize the fallout from a Time Magazine story about the President's failure to take certain actions before 9/11. In that briefing on behalf of the White House, Clarke stated "there was no plan on Al-Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration," and that after taking office President Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
decided to "add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, fivefold, to go after Al-Qaeda." At the next day's hearing, 9/11 Commission member James Thompson
James R. Thompson
James Robert Thompson, Jr. , also known as Big Jim Thompson, was the 37th and longest serving Governor of the US state of Illinois...
challenged Clarke with the 2002 account, and Clarke explained: "I was asked to make that case to the press. I was a special assistant to the President, and I made the case I was asked to make... 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."
On March 28, 2004, at the height of efforts to undermine his critique of the Bush administration during the 9/11 Commission
9/11 Commission
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to...
Hearings, Clarke went on NBC's Sunday morning news show, Meet the Press
Meet the Press
Meet the Press is a weekly American television news/interview program produced by NBC. It is the longest-running television series in American broadcasting history, despite bearing little resemblance to the original format of the program seen in its television debut on November 6, 1947. It has been...
and was interviewed by journalist Tim Russert
Tim Russert
Timothy John "Tim" Russert was an American television journalist and lawyer who appeared for more than 16 years as the longest-serving moderator of NBC's Meet the Press. He was a senior vice president at NBC News, Washington bureau chief and also hosted the eponymous CNBC/MSNBC weekend interview...
. In responding to and rebutting the criticism, Clarke challenged the Bush administration to declassify the whole record, including closed testimony by Bush administration officials before the Commission.
Cyberterrorism and cybersecurity
Clarke, as Special Advisor to the President on Cybersecurity, spent his last year in the Bush Administration focusing on cybersecurity and the threat of terrorism against the critical infrastructure of the United States. At a security conference in 2002, after citing statistics that indicate that less than 0.0025 percent of corporate revenue on average is spent on information-technology security, Clarke was famously heard to say, "If you spend more on coffeeCoffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
than on IT security, then you will be hack
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
ed. What's more, you deserve to be hacked."
Post government career
Clarke is currently Chairman of Good Harbor Consulting, a strategic planning and corporate risk management firm; an on-air consultant for ABC News, and a contributor to GoodHarborReport.net – an online community discussing homeland security, defense, and politics. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and a faculty affiliate of its Belfer Center for Science and International AffairsBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs
The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs is a permanent research center located within the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The center's current director is political scientist Graham T. Allison....
. He has also become an author of fiction, publishing his first novel, The Scorpion's Gate
Scorpion's Gate (novel)
The Scorpion's Gate is a geopolitical thriller by former United States intelligence and Counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke. The Scorpion's Gate is his first novel, but it is not his first book — unlike his non-fiction policy books this is an attempt to convey vital foreign policy...
, in 2005, and a second, Breakpoint
Breakpoint (novel)
Breakpoint is a cyberpunk science fiction novel by former United States intelligence and counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke. It is his second novel. The book paints a dystopic prediction of the future.-Plot:...
, in 2007.
Clarke wrote an op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
for the Washington Post on May 31, 2009 harshly critical of other Bush administration officials, entitled "The Trauma of 9/11 Is No Excuse".
Clarke wrote that he had little sympathy for his fellow officials who seemed to want to use the excuse of being traumatized, and caught unaware by Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
's attacks on the USA, because their being caught unaware was due to their ignoring clear reports a major attack on U.S. soil was imminent. Clarke particularly singled out former Vice President Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
and former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
.
Clarke released his newest book, Cyber War, in April 2010.
Written works
On March 22, 2004, Clarke's book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror—What Really Happened (ISBN 0-7432-6024-4), was published. The book was critical of past and present Presidential administrations for the way they handled the war on terrorWar on Terror
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
both before and after September 11, 2001 but focused much of its criticism on Bush for failing to take sufficient action to protect the country in the elevated-threat period before the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
and for the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
, which Clarke feels greatly hampered the war on terror, and was a distraction from the real terrorists.
- Defeating the Jihadists: A Blueprint for Action, 2004. In this book Clarke outlines his idea of a more effective U.S. counterterrorism policy. (ISBN 0-87078-491-9)
- The Scorpion's GateScorpion's Gate (novel)The Scorpion's Gate is a geopolitical thriller by former United States intelligence and Counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke. The Scorpion's Gate is his first novel, but it is not his first book — unlike his non-fiction policy books this is an attempt to convey vital foreign policy...
, 2005 (novel). (ISBN 0-399-15294-6) - BreakpointBreakpoint (novel)Breakpoint is a cyberpunk science fiction novel by former United States intelligence and counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke. It is his second novel. The book paints a dystopic prediction of the future.-Plot:...
, 2007 (novel). (ISBN 0-399-15378-0). - Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters, 2008. (ISBN 9780061474620)
- Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It, 2010. with Robert K. Knake (ISBN 9780061962233)
Affiliations
- Chairman, Good Harbor Consulting, LLC, a strategic planning and corporate risk management firm.
- Contributor, Good Harbor index, an online resource for homeland security, defense and political issues, operated by Good Harbor Consulting, LLC.
- Faculty affiliate, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
- Advisory Board Member, Civitas Group, LLC
- On-air consultant, ABC NewsABC NewsABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
.
External links
- "Attacks on Richard Clarke," Guardian UK.
- Field, Chris, "On Richard Clarke". March 22, 2004
- Richard Clarke Book Reaction, NPR
- Clarke's Take on Terror from CBS News
- frontline the man who knew interviews richard a. clarke PBS
- "Richard Clarke Talks Cybersecurity and JELL-O," an exclusive interview with IEEE Security & Privacy magazine after the 9/11 testimony
- "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" Streaming video of Richard Clarke talk at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (March 8, 2005).
- "A Dick Clarke Top Seven" by Mansoor Ijaz
- Articles, essays, and reports written by Richard Clarke
- "National Insecurity" by Samuel Hughes