From the day it took office, U.S. News & World Report wrote a few months ago, the Bush administration “dropped a shroud of secrecy” over the federal government. After Sept. 11, 2001, the administration’s secretiveness knew no limits: Americans, Ari Fleischer ominously warned, “need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” Patriotic citizens were supposed to accept the administration’s version of events, not ask awkward questions.
But something remarkable has been happening lately: More and more insiders are finding the courage to reveal the truth on issues including mercury pollution – yes, Virginia, polluters do write the regulations these days, and never mind the science – and the war on terror.
It’s important, when you read the inevitable attempts to impugn the character of the latest whistle-blower, to realize just how risky it is to reveal awkward truths about the Bush administration.
When Gen. Eric Shinseki told Congress that postwar Iraq would require a large occupation force, that was the end of his military career.
When Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV revealed that the 2003 State of the Union speech contained information known to be false, someone in the White House destroyed his wife’s career by revealing that she was a CIA operative.
And we now know that Richard Foster, the Medicare system’s chief actuary, was threatened with dismissal if he revealed to Congress the likely cost of the administration’s prescription drug plan.
The latest insider to come forth is, of course, Richard Clarke, George Bush’s former counterterrorism czar and the author of the just-published “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.”
On “60 Minutes” Sunday, Clarke said the previously unsayable: Bush, the self proclaimed “war president,” had “done a terrible job on the war against terrorism.”
After a few hours of shocked silence, the character assassination against Clarke began. He “may have had a grudge to bear since he probably wanted a more prominent position,” declared Vice President Dick Cheney, who also says Clarke was “out of the loop.” (What loop? Before 9/11, Clarke was the administration’s top official on counterterrorism.) It’s “more about politics and a book promotion than about policy,” said Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary.
Of course, Bush officials have to attack Clarke’s character because there is plenty of independent evidence confirming the thrust of his charges.
Did the Bush administration ignore terrorism warning before 9/11? Justice Department documents obtained by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, show that it did. Not only did Attorney General John Ashcroft completely drop terrorism as a priority – it wasn’t even mentioned in his list of seven “strategic goals” – but on Sept. 10, 2001, he proposed a reduction in counterterrorism funds.
Did the administration neglect counterterrorism even after 9/11? After 9/11 the FBI requested $1.5 billion for counterterrorism operations, but the White House slashed this by two-thirds.
Finally, did some top officials really want to respond to 9/11 not by going after al-Qaida, but by attacking Iraq? Of course they did. “From the very first moment after Sept. 11,” Kenneth Pollack, a former Clinton administration official, told “Frontline,” “there was a group of people, both inside and outside the administration, who believed that the war on terrorism” should target Iraq first. Clarke simply adds more detail.
Still, the administration would like you to think that Clarke has base motives in writing his book. But give the hawk’s dominance of the best-seller lists until very recently, it’s untimely that he wrote it for the money. Given the assumption by most political pundits, until very recently, that Bush was guaranteed re-election, it’s unlikely that he wrote it in the hopes of getting a political job. And given the Bush administration’s penchant for punishing its critics, he must have known that he was taking a huge personal risk.
So why did he write it? How about this: Maybe he just wanted the public to know the truth.
Inside Job by Jim Marrs
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"This sobering book is a vital reading for every American patriot. Jim Marrs raises so many important and unanswered questions that, whether or not you believe 9/11 was an inside job, there can be no doubt about the need for us to fight to win our country back from these thieves and criminals in high places. This is hair-raising journalism from a fellow Texan populist."
-Jim Hightower, activist, radio commentator, and author of "Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush."