November 17, 2004 | Richard Clarke Briefing Finally De-Classified

As some might recall, a number of senators criticized Richard Clarke after his public testimony before the 9/11 Commission, saying he was contra.

From a Knight Ridder story in April:

Don't expect to read anytime soon what Richard Clarke said two years ago about the Bush administration's efforts against terrorism, despite Republican requests to declassify his testimony in an effort to discredit him.

Behind closed doors Clarke gave an exhaustive, 10-year overview of counterterrorism with details, names and other sensitive information that the CIA and White House have consistently refused to release, say three people who heard the testimony or read it later.

"Knowing what he said, it's going to be very difficult to declassify much of that testimony," said Eleanor Hill, staff director of the congressional investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

On June 11, 2002, Clarke was the leadoff witness before the joint inquiry on Capitol Hill. His testimony took six hours and filled 191 pages.

Republicans complain that Clarke's testimony then is very different from his recent criticism that Bush did not focus on terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks. Some Democrats who have read both see no inconsistencies.

At the time of his public testimony, he had already resigned from the National Security Council and he was harshly critical of the Bush Administration's handling of anti-terrorism prior to 9/11.

He took much heat after Fox News released a Bush Administratioin anti-terrorism backgrounder he had given to reporters, which many said contradicted his sworn testimony.

That release gave credence to charges by Republican senators, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee), that Clarke's public testimony was far different from the private briefing given to the first investigation of 9/11, which was undertaken by the Select Committee on Intelligence.

That, however, could not be verified since the testimony was never declassified and made public.

According to OMB Watch, the testimony was declassified in June 2004, but Senate Select Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) blocked its release.

That has changed.

The testimony is here (.pdf).

Having just speed-read the document, a few things about possible contradictions come to mind.

Clarke gave this briefing as a member of the executive branch. He defends the actions taken by the NSC and the deputies committee in 2001. One could hardly expect an employee of the executive branch to say anything differently to Congress.

But notably, he does not defend the Bush administration vociferously -- nor is he questioned very closely about it.

But when talking about the Clinton administration, he has little but praise for the executive branch:

If 9/11 hadn't happened, I think historians could go back - historians in the year 2020 could go back and look at what the Clinton administration did in 1998 and 1999 and 2000 and say, boy, were those guys overreacting.

In hindsight, you can seeds of his later testimony.

I'm sure that others will take this up in much more detail (and a lot more vinegar).

But his testimony is fascinating and if you have the time, it is worth reading. There's some great stuff in there about the NSA's collection abilities, about the fights between the CIA and the Pentagon about special forces, about domestic intelligence gathering, about the dangers of Hezebollah and Iran, about the need for a domestic intelligence agency and about rendering and torture of terrorism suspects.

How much of it is true and unbiased? I don't know.

But here's two interesting tidbits:

Senator Bayh: Is there any evidence based upon your experience, Mr. Clarke, linking the Iraqi Government and al Qaeda in any significant way?

Mr. Clarke: No.

and two,

After 9/11 several companies that engage in commercial marketing and commercial marketing databases came to the FBI with information about the hijackers, information that actually amazed the FBI that such information existed, information about how many times they received Federal Express deliveries or United Parcel deliveries, where those deliveries were, where they had account at Mail Boxes, Etc.

It turns out that while the government is not Big Brother, the private sector really is; and the marketing firms, the commercial marketing mail order firms and other credit agencies and related organizations have much more information about us than the government does.

And under the Attorney General guidelines and other rules the Justice Department prohibits, or has until now prohibited, the FBI and other people from accessing that kind of data. And that kind of data - telephone records, credit card records, what deliveries occurred when - does reside in the databases of large commercial enterprises.

Clarke seems to be conflating some kinds of data (I feel fairly certain that marketing firms do not have telephone records -- set me straight if I'm wrong).

He also seems to be overstating the prohibitions on the feds use of data aggregators (which the FBI used way before 9/11). He later goes on to say that prior to 9/11, probable cause is necessary to get this data (which was true for some data for criminal investigations, but the standard was even then much lower for intelligence gathering).

Still, there's much of interest in the badly scanned, but mostly unredacted, document.

Posted by Ryan Singel at November 17, 2004 06:16 PM

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