Reading Against All Enemies, part II

Over at Time, Romesh Ratnesar accuses Clarke of “sexing up” his interactions with Bush. One example:

Perhaps Clarke’s most explosive charge is that on Sept. 12, President Bush instructed him to look into the possibility that Iraq had a hand in the hijackings. Here’s how Clarke recounted the meeting on 60 Minutes: “The President dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this’…..the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said, ‘Iraq did this.'” After Clarke protested that “there’s no connection,” Bush came back to him and said “Iraq, Saddam — find out if there’s a connection.” Clarke says Bush made the point “in a very intimidating way.” The next day, interviewed on PBS’ The NewsHour, Clarke sexed up the story even more. “What happened was the President, with his finger in my face, saying, ‘Iraq, a memo on Iraq and al-Qaeda, a memo on Iraq and the attacks.’ Very vigorous, very intimidating.” Several interviewers pushed Clarke on this point, asking whether it was all that surprising that the President would want him to investigate all possible perpetrators of the attacks. Clarke responded, “It would have been irresponsible for the president not to come to me and say, Dick, I don’t want you to assume it was al-Qaeda. I’d like you to look at every possibility to see if maybe it was al-Qaeda with somebody else, in a very calm way, with all possibilities open. That’s not what happened.” How does this square with the account of the same meeting provided in Clarke’s book? In that version, Clarke finds the President wandering alone in the Situation Room on Sept. 12, “looking like he wanted something to do.” Clarke writes that Bush “grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room” — an impetuous move, perhaps, but hardly the image that Clarke depicted on television, of the President dragging in unwitting staffers by their shirt-collars. The Bush in these pages sounds more ruminative than intimidating: “I know you have a lot to do and all, but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way.” When Clarke responds by saying that “al-Qaeda did this,” Bush says, “I know, I know, but see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…..” Again Clarke protests, after which Bush says “testily,” “Look into Iraq, Saddam.” Nowhere do we see the President pointing fingers at or even sounding particularly “vigorous” toward Clarke and his deputies. Despite Clarke’s contention that Bush wanted proof of Iraqi involvement at any cost, it’s just as possible that Bush wanted Clark to find disculpatory evidence in order to discredit the idea peddled by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Baghdad had a hand in 9/11. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush rejected Wolfowitz’s attempts to make Iraq the first front in the war on terror. And if the President of the United States spoke “testily ” 24 hours after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, well, can you blame him?

This is on pages 32-33 of Against All Enemies — and actually, Clarke’s written account of the Bush encounter is more charitable to the President than Ratnesay indicates. The key passage occur right after the encounter:

“Paul Kurtz walked in, passing the President on the way out. Seeing our expressions, he asked, “Geez, what just happened here?” “Wolfowitz got to him,” Lisa[Gordon-Hargerty] said, shaking her head. “No,” I said. “Look, he’s the President. He has not spent years on terrorism. He has every right to ask us to look again, and we will, Paul.”

[Yeah, and don’t forget what Clarke said on background in mid-2002!–ed. Actually, I’m not terribly persuaded that this should weaken Clarke’s credibility. As anyone who’s worked in government should know, what’s said in an official capacity will read differently than what’s said when one is allowed to be candid. Clarke was acting as a dutiful bureaucrat in 2002, and not as an independent agent.]