Richard Clarke - 9/11 Commission Testimony

[0:00] our next witness is mr richard clark who served as a former national coordinator for counterterrorism [0:06] at the national security council mr clark served in the national security council staff with great [0:11] dedication we are pleased to have him here with us to join us mr clark could i ask you to raise [0:18] your right hand so we place you under oath you swear or affirm to tell the whole truth and [0:23] nothing but the truth i do thank you very much sir mr clark your written remarks will be entered [0:29] into the record in full uh we'd ask you sort of to summarize your statement and please proceed [0:34] thank you mr chairman because i have submitted a written statement today and i've previously [0:41] testified before this commission for 15 hours and before the senate house joint inquiry committee [0:48] for six hours i have only a very brief opening statement i welcome these hearings because of [0:56] the opportunity they provide to the american people to better understand why the tragedy [1:02] of 9-11 happened and what we must do to prevent a reoccurrence i also welcome the hearings because [1:11] it is finally a forum where i can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9-11 to them who are here [1:21] in the room to those who are watching on television your government failed you those entrusted with [1:32] protecting you failed you and i failed you we tried hard but that doesn't matter because we failed [1:46] and for that failure i would ask once all the facts are out for your understanding and for your [1:56] forgiveness for that mr chairman i'll be glad to take your questions questioning will be led by uh [2:06] senator gorton are you leading offer commissioner roma commissioner roma thank you mr chairman welcome [2:16] mr clark i want to thank you uh as i uh start my questions for your 30 years of public service to [2:26] the american people i want to thank you for your sworn testimony before the 9-11 commission over 15 [2:36] hours and i really want to say mr clark that there are a lot of distractions out there today the books [2:44] a lot of news media a lot of accusations flying back and forth i want you to concentrate to the degree you [2:54] can on the memos on the email on the strategy papers and on the time that we're tasked with looking at on [3:06] this 9 11 commission between 1998 and september the 11th you coordinated counterterrorism policy in both [3:17] the clinton and the bush administrations i want to know first of all was fighting al qaeda a top priority [3:27] for the clinton administration from 1998 to the year 2001 how high of priority was it in that clinton [3:36] administration during that time period my impression was that fighting terrorism in general uh and [3:44] fighting al qaeda in particular uh were an extraordinarily high priority in the clinton administration [3:50] certainly no higher priority they were priorities probably of equal importance such as the middle east [3:56] peace process but i certainly don't know of one that was any higher in the priority of that [4:02] administration with respect to the bush administration from the time they took office [4:08] until september 11 2001 you had much to deal with russia china g8 middle east how high of priority [4:18] was fighting al qaeda in the bush administration i believe the bush administration in the first eight [4:26] months considered terrorism uh an important issue but not an urgent issue they well president bush himself [4:39] says as much in the his interview with bob woodward in the book bush at war he said i didn't feel a sense [4:45] of urgency george tennant and i tried very hard to create a sense of urgency by seeing to it that [4:54] intelligence reports on the al qaeda threat were frequently given to the president and other high-level [5:00] officials and there was a process underway to address al qaeda but although i continued to say it was an [5:11] urgent problem i don't think it was ever treated that way now you have said in many ways you've issued [5:21] some blistering attacks on the bush administration but you have not held those criticisms from the clinton [5:28] administration either we heard from mr berger earlier that you were critical of the clinton [5:33] administration on two areas not providing aid to the northern alliance and not going after the human [5:40] conveyor belts of jihadists coming out of the sanctuaries in afghanistan are there more in the [5:46] clinton administration years the uss cole the response there well i think first of all uh mr berger is [5:53] right to say that almost everything i ever asked for in the way of support from him or from president [6:00] clinton i got we did enormously uh increase the counterterrorism budget of the federal government [6:08] initiated many programs uh including what is now called homeland security uh mr berger's also right [6:15] to note that i uh wanted a covert action program to aid afghan factions to fight the taliban and that was not [6:25] accomplished uh he's also right to note that on several occasions including after the attack on the coal [6:33] i suggested that we bomb all of the taliban and al-qaeda infrastructure whether or not it would [6:41] succeed in killing bin laden i thought that was the wrong wrong way of looking at the problem [6:49] so i i think the answer is essentially uh mr berger got it right okay let's move into with my 15 minutes [6:57] let's move into the bush administration on january the 25th we've seen a memo that you've written [7:03] to dr rice urgently asking for a principles review of al-qaeda you include helping the northern alliance [7:13] covert aid significant new o2 budget authority to help fight al-qaeda and response to the uss coal you [7:24] attach to this document both the uh the linda plan of 1998 and a strategy paper from december 2000 [7:34] do you get a response to this urgent request for a principles meeting on these and how does this [7:40] affect your time frame for dealing with these important issues i did get a response the response [7:46] was um that in the bush administration uh i should and my committee the counterterrorism security group [7:54] should report to the deputies committee which is a sub cabinet level committee and not to the [7:58] principles uh and that therefore it was inappropriate for me to be asking for a principles meeting [8:06] uh instead there would be a deputies meeting so does this slow the process down to go to the deputies [8:12] rather than to the principals or a small group as you previously done it slowed it down enormously by [8:18] months uh first of all the deputies committee didn't meet uh urgently in january or february then when [8:27] the deputies committee did meet uh it took the issue of al-qaeda as part of a cluster of policy issues [8:36] uh including uh nuclear proliferation in south asia uh democratization in pakistan uh how to treat uh [8:45] the problems uh the various problems including narcotics and other problems in afghanistan [8:52] and launched on a series of deputies meetings extending over several months to address al-qaeda in the [9:00] context of all of those interrelated issues that process probably ended i think in july of 2001 [9:10] so we were ready for a uh principles meeting in july but the principles calendar was full and then they [9:17] went on vacation many of them in august so we couldn't meet in august uh and therefore the [9:22] principles met uh in september so as the bush administration is carefully considering from bottom [9:28] up a full review of fighting terrorism what happens to these individual items like a response to the uss [9:36] coal well flying the predator why aren't these decided in a shorter time frame as they're also [9:43] going through a larger policy review of uh how this policy affects pakistan and other countries [9:50] important considerations but why can't you do both uh the deputies committee [9:57] uh its chairman mr hadley uh and others uh thought that all these issues uh were sufficiently interrelated [10:06] that they should be taken up as a set of issues and pieces of them should not be broken off [10:12] did you agree with that um no i didn't agree with much were you were you frustrated by this process [10:18] uh i was sufficiently frustrated that uh i asked to be reassigned uh when was this probably may or june [10:27] um certainly no later than june uh and there was agreement uh in that time frame in the may or june [10:33] time frame that i would be my request would be honored and i would be reassigned on the first of october [10:40] uh to a new position um to deal with cyber security a position that i requested be created uh because [10:48] are you saying that the frustration got to a high enough level that it wasn't your portfolio it wasn't [10:54] doing a lot of things at the same time it was that you weren't getting fast enough action on what you [11:02] were requesting that's right uh my view was that this administration while it listened to me uh didn't [11:10] either believe me that there was an urgent problem or uh was unprepared to act as though there were an [11:17] urgent problem and i thought if the administration doesn't believe its national coordinator uh for [11:24] counterterrorism when he says there's an urgent problem and if it's unprepared to act as though [11:28] there's an urgent problem uh then probably i should get another job i thought cyber security was and i [11:36] still think cyber security is an extraordinarily important issue for which this country is [11:42] very underprepared and i thought perhaps i could make a contribution if i worked full-time on that [11:48] issue you then write a letter or a memo on september the fourth to dr rice expressing some of these [11:56] frustrations several months later if you say the time frame is may or june when you decided to resign [12:02] a memo comes out that we have seen on september the fourth you are blunt and blasting dod for not [12:09] willingly using the the force and the power you blast the cia for blocking predator you urge policy [12:17] makers to imagine a day after hundreds of americans lay dead in a home or abroad after a terrorist attack [12:26] and ask themselves what else they could have done you write this on september the fourth seven days [12:32] before september 11th that's right what else could have been done mr clark well all of the things that [12:38] we recommended uh in the plan or strategy there's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a [12:45] strategy or a series of options but um all of the things we recommended um back in january were those [12:55] things on the table in september uh they were done they were done after september 11th they were all [13:03] done uh i didn't really understand why they couldn't have been done in february well let's say mr clark i [13:10] think this is a fair question let's say that you asked to brief the president of the united states [13:17] on counterterrorism did you ask that i asked for a series of briefings on the issues in my portfolio [13:24] including counterterrorism uh and cyber security did you get that request i i did i was given a [13:31] briefing opportunity to brief on cyber security uh in june i was told i could brief the president [13:37] on terrorism uh after this policy development process was complete and we had um the principles [13:44] meeting and the draft national security um policy decision that had been approved by the deputies [13:51] committee let's say mr clark is gifted as you might be in eloquence and silver-tongued as anyone [14:00] could be and let's say let's imagine that instead of saying no you asked for this briefing to the [14:10] president you said you didn't get it after eight months of talking let's say you get this briefing in [14:15] february after your memo to dr rice on september the 25th and you meet with the president united states [14:21] in february and you brief them on terrorism tell me how you convince the president to move forward [14:29] on this and get this principles meeting that doesn't take place until september the 4th moved up so that [14:36] you can do something about this problem well i think the best thing to have done if there had been a [14:42] meeting with the president in february was to show him the accumulated intelligence that al-qaeda was strong [14:49] uh and was planning attacks um uh against the united states against friendly governments [14:58] it was possible to make a very persuasive case that this was a major threat and this was an urgent [15:04] problem and you think this was would have sped up the deputies process and the principles process [15:11] do you think the president would have reached down then and said something to [15:14] the national security team to uh i don't know expedite this what what what well you worked for [15:20] president clinton you you you saw what meetings with presidents could do there is this a magical [15:26] solution or is it something that presidents might say right back to you listen dick i've got many other [15:33] things i've got to do here in the middle east peace process uh bosnia kosovo uh uh the korean peninsula [15:41] how likely is it that we are able to see some kind of result from a meeting like that i i think it [15:47] depends in part on the president president bush was regularly told by the director of central intelligence [15:55] that there was an urgent threat on one occasion he was told this dozens of times in the morning [16:02] briefings that george tenet gave him on one of those occasions he asked for a strategy uh and to deal [16:11] with the threat uh condi rice came back from that meeting called me and relayed what the president [16:17] had requested and i said well you know we've had this strategy ready uh since before you were [16:23] inaugurated i showed it to you you have the paperwork we can have a meeting on the strategy anytime you [16:28] want she said she would look into it uh it didn't her looking into it and the president asking for it [16:38] did not change the pace at which it was considered as far as i know the president never asked again at [16:43] least i was never informed that he asked again i do know he was thereafter continually informed about [16:49] the threat by george tenet let me ask you uh with my yellow light on uh a question about the summer [16:56] 2000 alert you were saying the cia was saying everybody was saying something spectacular is about [17:04] to happen spiking in intelligence something terrible is about to happen you've told us in some of our [17:12] interviews you only wish you would have known at that time in that summer what the fbi knew with [17:19] regard to massawi the phoenix memo and terrorists in the united states what could you have done with [17:28] some of that information with these spiked alerts with the spectacular attack on the horizon in the [17:34] summer of 2001 well congressman is is very easy in retrospect to say that i would have done this or i [17:42] would have done that uh and we'll never know uh i would like to have think i would like to think [17:50] that had i been informed by the fbi that two senior al qaeda operatives who had been in a planning [17:57] meeting earlier in kuala lampur were now in the united states and we knew that and we knew their names [18:05] and i think we even had their pictures uh i would like to think that i would have released [18:10] or would have had the fbi release a press release with their names with their descriptions held a [18:17] press conference tried to get their names and pictures on the front page of every paper america's [18:21] most wanted the evening news uh and caused a successful nationwide manhunt for those two two of the 19 [18:32] hijackers but i don't know uh because you're asking me a hypothetical and uh i have the benefit now of [18:40] 2020 hindsight thank you mr clark mr chairman thank you for the patience and the time okay thank you [18:45] sir uh senator gorton mr clark you got the position as the head of this counterterrorism and security [18:54] group csg when and about may of 1998 is that correct no senator actually i got it in the first bush [19:02] administration uh in the fall of 1992 but it got the level of uh being up there at the white house [19:11] and being a very important position in 1998 what happened in 1998 let me go back the counterterrorism [19:18] security group the csg uh goes back to the regular administration it's been around for that long [19:27] i started chairing it during uh the last few months of the bush administration in 1992 [19:32] uh continued to chair it throughout the clinton administration and into the bush second bush [19:38] administration in 1998 uh president clinton signed a presidential directive that created a new title [19:47] for the chairman of that group uh he the chairman had always been a special assistant to the president [19:55] that was the title uh under the new directive in 1998 the title became national coordinator for [20:03] counterterrorism uh but i think there's a something i need to say about that title the actual title was [20:10] national coordinator for security infrastructure protection and counterterrorism and the press [20:16] thinking that title was too long and and not sexy enough immediately turned it into terrorism czar [20:24] if you look at the presidential decision directive in 1998 that created this position it is replete with [20:31] what the national coordinator cannot do and what resources the national coordinator would not have [20:40] uh it was not a counterterrorism czar uh especially when compared to people like the drug czar uh it [20:49] gave me staff position not an action that not an action position in other words it gave me all of the [20:54] responsibility and none of the authority uh and later in 1998 of course we had the uh the explosions [21:07] the attack on the two embassies right and shortly after that the administration took uh it's uh one military [21:17] response to terrorism in the uh attacks on afghanistan and uh the sudan were those actions taken on your [21:26] recommendation were you a part of uh the decision-making process and uh calling for that reaction uh senator i was [21:34] but if i may be a little picky this was not the administration's first or only use of military [21:39] action in response to terrorism uh the administration uh began uh in the first five months the clinton [21:47] administration uh first five months of the administration uh six months uh to use military [21:53] force in response to the first to al-qaeda uh first time that we we had a uh an al-qaeda attack [22:00] on the united states facilities uh it was the first time that al-qaeda had attacked us and we had been [22:06] told it was al-qaeda in retrospect many years after these attacks occurred uh fbi and cia began to say [22:15] that things like the world trade center attack in 1993 might have been done by an early stage al-qaeda in [22:23] august of 1998 uh did you recommend a longer lasting military response or just precisely the one that [22:32] in fact took place i recommended a series of rolling attacks against the infrastructure in afghanistan [22:42] every time they would rebuild it i proposed that we blow it up again much like in fact we were doing [22:50] in iraq where we had a rolling series of attacks uh on their air defense system uh and shortly after [22:57] that you came up with the uh so-called delenda plan because i understand it and is our staff report [23:06] accurate in saying that it had four principal approaches diplomacy covert action various financial [23:13] members and uh military action is that a reasonable summary yes our staff has given us yes sir [23:19] uh and is also is our staff accurate in saying that the strategy was never formally adopted but that [23:26] you were authorized in effect to go ahead with the first three but not with the fourth yes sir [23:34] and at various times thereafter you did recommend specific military responses under specific [23:40] circumstances did you not yes sir each of which was rejected for one reason or another that's correct [23:45] uh then in the early winter of 1999 when the cia came up with a plan to attack a hunting camp in afghanistan at [23:59] which it felt that uh osama bin laden was present or was not present uh that uh recommendation or that plan [24:09] was ultimately aborted uh did you recommend against that plan yes senator i what i did was to [24:15] call the director of central intelligence and say that i had finally been presented with [24:21] satellite photography of the facility uh and it was very clear to me uh that this looked like something [24:29] other than a terrorist camp uh it looked like a luxury uh hunting trip uh and i asked him to look into [24:37] it personally uh when he did he called back and he said that he was no longer recommending the attack [24:44] okay so you never recommended either for or against an attack on that camp well i think i don't want [24:50] to split hairs uh by by calling the director of central intelligence and suggesting to him that this [24:55] did not look to me like a terrorist facility and urging him to look into it uh he certainly had the [25:02] impression that i wasn't in favor of it absolutely uh well did it make any difference as to what kind [25:10] of camp it was if it was likely that osama bin laden was there well it did and it and in two respects [25:19] the administration had adopted a policy with regard let me back up after the bombings in 1998 [25:30] we kept submarines off the coast of pakistan loaded with cruise missiles for the purpose of launching a [25:37] follow-on attack when we could locate bin laden the intelligence that we got about where bin laden was [25:46] was very poor the dci mr tenet characterized that intelligence himself on repeated occasions as very [25:54] poor on one occasion we thought we knew where he was uh and there were two problems one the intelligence [26:03] was poor according to george tenet and two the collateral damage would have been great according to [26:11] the pentagon when i looked at this facility it looked to me like the intelligence was again poor [26:18] because it didn't look like a terrorist camp and the probability of collateral damage would have [26:25] been high i thought uh since i believed based on the satellite photography that people other than [26:31] terrorists were there the decision ultimately was george tenet's and george tenet recommended no action be [26:41] taken i don't know in retrospect uh your staff might but i don't know in retrospect whether it proved to be [26:50] true that bin laden was in the vicinity or not in any event uh every recommendation for military action or [27:04] uh covert action uh from late 1998 until the year 2000 ran up against the the objection of actionable [27:16] that it was not based on actionable intelligence that wonderful phrase we've heard in the last two [27:21] days is that not correct because of uncertainty as to whether bin laden was present uncertainty about [27:27] uh collateral damage etc that's true in describing actions aimed at uh osama bin laden himself uh there [27:37] were other covert action um activities taken uh which we obviously can't go into here uh but there was a [27:46] pre-existing finding on terrorism uh under which cia was operating and cia was able to do some things [27:54] uh outside of afghanistan uh against the al-qaeda network uh using that authority and at the [28:03] very end of the clinton administration uh after uh the attack on the coal uh there was triggered either [28:14] by the coal or by everything else that a a new set of initiatives uh resulting in what is called a [28:22] blue sky memo is that correct that's right and were you a part of that was that [28:27] was did you draft it was it your plan uh the blue sky memo i believe you're referring to [28:33] was uh part of an overall update of the delenda plan and it was a part generated by the central [28:41] intelligence agency we my staff generated the rest of the update and uh the goal of that plan was to [28:49] roll back al-qaeda over a period of three to five years reducing it eventually to a rump group like other [28:57] uh terrorist organizations around the world our our goal was to do that to eliminate it as a threat [29:03] to the united states uh recognizing that um one night one might not ever be able to totally eliminate [29:11] everybody in the world who thought they were a member of al-qaeda but if we could get it to be as [29:15] ineffective as the abu nidal organization was toward the end of its existence uh it didn't pose a threat [29:23] to the united states uh that's what we wanted cia said that if they got all the resources they needed [29:30] that might be possible over the course of three years at the earliest and then uh delenda and that [29:39] blue sky proposal i take it were pretty much the basis of uh what you recommended to uh uh condoleezza [29:47] rice in january of 2001 covert alliance covert assistance to the northern alliance uh you know [29:55] more money for cia activities uh something called choosing a standard of evidence for attributing [30:01] responsibility for the coal new predator red reconnaissance uh missions and more work on funding [30:10] that's right senator the update to the delenda plan that we did in october november december of 2000 [30:16] uh was handed to the national the new national security advisor in january of 2001 it formed the [30:24] basis of the draft national security presidential directive that was then discussed in september of [30:29] 2001 and signed by president bush as nspd9 uh i believe in later in september what what do you mean by a [30:39] standard of evidence that yeah i i'm troubled by this fuzzy phrase actionable intelligence [30:45] so did you feel let and let's take the coal on that as we've heard from uh you know director tenet um [30:54] in november and then more precisely in december of 2000 they'd pretty much concluded that uh the coal [31:02] was announced was was taken took place through al-qaeda people but they couldn't prove that it had been [31:11] directed by osama bin laden was the amount of intelligence available in november december of 2000 [31:18] and 2001 in your view acts actionable intelligence that could have uh been the appropriate basis for [31:26] a specific response to the coal the the phrase that you'd read um the standard for actionable uh [31:39] uh was a way of my addressing this problem and i wanted to get us away from having to prove [31:47] either in a court of law legal standard or even in some fancy uh intelligence community standard [31:55] that went through a prolonged process that took months um i thought we could disassociate the attack [32:06] on the coal from any attacks that we did on the taliban uh and al-qaeda if people wanted to further study [32:15] who was guilty of attacking the coal and the fbi had deployed hundreds of people to do that and cia [32:23] was saying you know that there were some people involved who might have been al-qaeda [32:28] i thought fine if you want to have that kind of standard and you want to have that kind of process [32:33] fine then let's separate that and let's bomb afghanistan anyway uh and not tie the two together [32:41] but it it seemed to my staff who were looking at the same intelligence that the cia was looking at [32:49] it seemed to us within two days of the attack on the coal that we could put together an intelligence [32:55] case that this was an al-qaeda attack by the local al-qaeda cell uh in yemen and that is of course the [33:06] conclusion that the cia came to in january or february of the next year based on pretty much nothing but [33:13] the evidence that we had available to us within two days now since my yellow light is on at this point [33:20] my final question will be this uh you know assuming that the recommendations that you made in jan on [33:28] january 25th of 2001 based on dolenda based on uh blue sky including aid to the northern alliance which [33:39] had been an agenda item at this point for two and a half years without any action assuming that there [33:47] had been more predator reconnaissance missions assuming that that had all been adopted say on january 26th [33:54] year 2001 is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9 11 no it just would have [34:02] allowed our response after 9 11 to be perhaps a little bit faster well the response would have [34:07] begun before 9 11. but yes but we weren't gonna there was no recommendation on your part or anyone [34:16] else's part that we declare war and attempt to invade afghanistan prior to 9 11. that's right thank you [34:24] mr chairman thank you senator uh i just have one question uh taking it back further you you you've [34:33] been there longer than anybody really in this particular slot and looking at terrorism and looking [34:38] at it well um if you if is it resources is it uh change of policy what is it over the years [34:52] taking all your years there for two administrations or three administrations even [34:57] um what could we have done and i'm trying to find not only what we could have done but [35:04] what should we be doing perhaps in the future because we were beaten i mean we were we were really [35:11] beaten by these guys and and and uh three thousand three thousand people died and what what is there [35:17] anything that you can think of for that long period had we done differently as a country as a policy [35:21] what have you uh that could have made a difference well i think governor there's a lot [35:25] uh that in retrospect with 2020 hindsight um yeah i'm asking 2020 hindsight because because we have [35:32] that we have that opportunity now i i think you know al qaeda probably came into existence in 1988 [35:39] or 1989 uh and no one in the white house was ever informed by the intelligence community that there was an [35:47] al-qaeda until probably 1995 um the existence of an organization uh like that uh was something that [36:01] members of the national security council staff suspected in 1993 uh national security advisor anthony lake [36:12] urged cia to create a special program to investigate whether there was some organization [36:20] uh centered around bin laden uh it was not um done because cia decided there was probably an [36:29] organization it was done because the national security advisor thought there was probably an [36:34] organization had we a more robust intelligence capability uh in the late 1980s and early 1990s we [36:45] might have recognized the existence of al qaeda relatively soon after it came into existence and if we [36:51] recognized its existence and if we knew uh its philosophy and if we had a proactive um intelligence covert [37:03] action program so that's both more on the collection side and more on the covert action side um then we [37:11] might have been able to nip it in the bud but as george tennett i think explained this morning [37:16] uh our human program our human program our spy capability um had been eviscerated um in the 1980s [37:25] um and early 1990s and there was no such capability either to even know that al qaeda existed uh let alone [37:35] uh to destroy it and there's something else that i think we need to understand about the cia's covert [37:42] action capabilities for many years uh they were roundly criticized by the congress uh and the media [37:52] for various covert actions that they carried out at the request of people like me in the white house [37:59] not me but people like me uh and many cia senior managers were dragged up into this room and others [38:07] and berated uh for failed covert action activities and they became great political footballs [38:16] now if you're in the cia and you're growing up as a cia manager over this period of time [38:22] and that's what you see going on and you see one boss after another uh one deputy director of [38:29] operations after another being fired or threatened with indictment or i think the thing you learn [38:36] from that is that covert action is a very dangerous thing that can damage the cia as much as it can damage [38:45] the enemy robert gates when he was deputy director of cia and when he was director of cia and when he [38:52] was deputy national security advisor robert gates repeatedly taught the lesson the covert action [38:59] isn't worth doing it's too risky that's the lesson that the current generation of uh director of operations [39:08] managers learned as they were growing up in the agency now george tenet says they're not risk averse [39:15] and i'm sure he knows better than i do but from the outside working with the do over the course of [39:23] the last 20 years it certainly looks to me as though they were risk averse but they had every reason [39:29] to be risk averse because the congress the media had taught them that the use of covert action [39:37] would likely blow up in their face okay thank you very much uh commissioner benveniste good afternoon [39:53] mr clark i want to focus on the role of the national security uh advisor and your relationship with the [40:08] national security advisor in the clinton administration as compared with the bush administration can you [40:16] point to any similarities or differences well i think the similarity [40:23] uh is that under all four national security advisors for whom i worked um i was told by each of [40:31] the four beginning with brent scowcroft uh that if i ever had any um i hate to use the word senator but [40:39] actionable intelligence um the phrase if i ever had reason to believe that there was something urgent that [40:47] they could act on uh that i could interrupt anything they were doing uh that i had a uh an open door [40:55] uh at any time i needed it day or night uh if there was something about to happen um i think the [41:02] difference uh between the two national security advisors in the clinton administration and the [41:09] national security advisor in the bush administration is that on policy development um i dealt directly [41:17] with the national security advisors in the clinton administration but policy development [41:21] on counterterrorism uh i was told uh would be best done with the deputy national security advisor [41:31] so i spent less time talking about the problems of terrorism with the national security advisor [41:38] in this administration let me uh move to substance in terms of the the level of threat [41:47] uh during the summer of 2001 and your involvement in coordination of both uh foreign and domestic [41:55] uh intelligence um that was definitely a part of your function was it not yes sir now and before i get [42:04] to that and before i forget doing so um i want to express my appreciation for the fact that you have [42:12] come before this commission and state in uh in front of the world uh your apology for what went wrong [42:22] my knowledge you're the first to do this does not detract from the fact that there were so many [42:34] people who we have met uh over this past year who were engaged in trying to keep our country safe [42:40] and to have worked tirelessly um to achieve that goal in in the millennium threat uh we knew and [42:49] we've covered this with uh sandy burger to some considerable extent that sleeper cells in north [42:58] america had been activated and that we had rolled them up and prevented among other things an attack on [43:05] the los angeles international airport with respect to the level of threat and the intelligence information [43:15] that you were receiving um is it fair to say that in the summer of 2001 the threat level uh either [43:23] approached or exceeded anything that you had previously been receiving well i think it exceeded anything [43:29] that george tennant or i had ever seen and i think the uh the phrase which has received some currency [43:38] in uh in our hearings uh of someone's hair being on fire originated with you saying that basically [43:45] you knew that something drastic was about to happen and that the indicators were all uh consistent in [43:53] that regard that's right did you make a determination that the threat uh was going to come from [44:01] uh abroad as an exclusive proposition uh or did you understand that given the fact that we had been [44:10] attacked before and that the plans had been interrupted to attack us before [44:18] that the potential existed for al qaeda to strike at us on our homeland the cia uh said in their assessments [44:28] uh that the attack would most likely occur overseas uh most probably in saudi arabia possibly in israel [44:40] i thought however that it might well take place in the united states based on what we had learned in [44:45] december 99 when we rolled up operations in washington state in brooklyn in boston um the fact that we didn't [44:54] have intelligence that we could point to that said it would take place in the united states [45:00] uh wasn't significant in my view because frankly sir i know how this is going to sound but i have to [45:07] say it i didn't think the fbi would know whether or not there was anything going on in the united [45:12] states by al qaeda well uh the fbi was the principal agency upon which you had to rely is that not the [45:20] case it is now with respect to what you were told you were the principal coordinator for counterterrorism [45:29] uh for the uh the chief executive uh flowing up and down through you correct yes sir did you know [45:39] that the two individuals who had been identified as al qaeda had entered the united states and were [45:47] presently thought to be in the country uh i was not informed of that nor were senior levels of the fbi [45:54] uh had you known that these individuals uh were in the country uh what steps uh with the benefit of [46:03] hindsight but informed hindsight would you have taken given the level of threat to put the answer in [46:12] in a context i had been saying to the fbi and to the other federal law enforcement agencies [46:21] and to the cia that because of this intelligence that something was about to happen that they should [46:28] lower their threshold of reporting that they should tell us anything that looked the slightest bit [46:34] unusual uh in retrospect having said that over and over again to them for them to have had this [46:41] information somewhere in the fbi and not told me i still find absolutely incomprehensible was and and [46:49] and i will i will have to end it here although i'd like to go further uh was the information with [46:56] respect to moussaoui and his erratic behavior in flight school ever communicated to you not to me and [47:04] given the fact that there was a body of information with respect to the use of planes as weapons within [47:13] the intelligence community's knowledge had you received information about moussaoui [47:20] military training to fly a commercial airplane would that have had some impact on the kind of [47:31] efforts which might be made to protect commercial aviation i don't know the information to which you [47:38] refer information in the intelligence community's knowledge about al qaeda having thought of using [47:46] aircraft as weapons that information was um old relatively speaking five years six years old [47:56] uh hadn't reoccurred to my knowledge during those five or six years um and has to be placed to give [48:02] the intelligence community a break it has to be placed in the context of the other intelligence reports [48:09] the volume of intelligence reports on this kind of thing on al qaeda threats and other terrorist threats [48:14] uh... was in the tens of thousands probably hundreds of thousands over the course of the five or six [48:20] years um now in retrospect to go back and find a report uh six years earlier that said perhaps they [48:29] were going to use aircraft uh as weapons it's easy to do now but i i think the intelligence community [48:36] analysts can be forgiven for not thinking about it given the fact that they hadn't seen a lot in the [48:43] five or six years intervening about it and that there were so many reports about so many other things [48:48] and yet with your indulgence mr chairman and yet indulgence and yet uh an faa advisory went out the faa [48:58] advised on the potential for domestic hijackings i asked them to and had uh you known on top of that [49:05] that there was a jihadist uh who was identified apprehended in the united states before 9 11 [49:13] uh who was in flight school acting erratically i would like to thank sir um that even without [49:21] the benefit of 2020 hindsight i could have connected those dots thank you uh commissioner carey mr clark [49:33] first of all let me uh thank you for for doing what i think all of us who had any responsibilities [49:40] during the late 1990s early 2000 have a responsibility to do which is to apologize to the families for [49:48] letting them down uh i think it was a it was a courageous gesture and i think it'd be a lot [49:53] easier for us to in a in a non-judgmental fashion figure out what went wrong and what to do in the [49:59] future if we'd all sort of start off our our inquiries with that declaration i appreciate very much the [50:05] sincerity of that and i may also say i i feel badly because i presume that you are at the moment [50:12] uh uh receiving terrible phone messages and email messages and uh and i hope you don't take it [50:21] personal because it uh you're just caught in one of these uh these moments i can barely see you [50:27] because all the cameras i'm having to look to no no it's okay i'm just kidding i'm just trying to [50:32] illustrate the the attention that's being paid to you and senator i uh i think i knew what the price [50:37] would be well i uh you're a smarter man than than most of us then because i think you can sort of [50:43] know it theoretically but until you get in it it's it it can be quite surprising and let me also thank [50:49] you for uh over a quarter century of public service i mean you really in many ways are an example of a [50:55] single individual coming into government and demonstrating that you can make a difference over [50:59] a long period of time and uh and you have and i think as badly as you feel toward the families that [51:06] are sitting behind you um there are many families that are that are today unknowingly the recipient of [51:13] of your service because we did thanks to you and thanks to many others who are working with you [51:19] prevent an awful lot of bad things from happening as well so let me start off with that and let me [51:26] start off by saying that i think that one of the things we got to try to do is get to a point where [51:29] we can have honest disagreements and let those disagreements permit us to discover where [51:36] uh where in fact we've got common ground i i find in fact arguments almost being necessary [51:42] uh and uh you again are a very good demonstration of that uh you almost always with your declaratories [51:48] provoke a provoke a good argument and it's those arguments that allow us to discover where our common [51:54] ground is basically that in one areas i disagree with you i i it's on the delinda you said it to [51:59] in response to senator gordon earlier that it would not have prevented 9-11 it would not have resulted in [52:04] a declaration was not a declaration of war you weren't advocating declaring war i believe delinda [52:09] would have necessitated like declaration of war and it was probably one of the reasons that it was [52:13] rejected as well as other options that i think would have substantially reduced the risk of 9-11 had [52:19] we followed your advice one of the reasons it probably was not taken up by by uh the national [52:25] security council and the president was that it would required that draconian of a step and i've [52:30] you've heard me say it before but i think it's one of the mistakes that that we made let me ask you [52:38] just specific to the to the use of airplanes as a as a as a weapon because it you know it seems so [52:46] obvious and again it seemed obvious fully the skull seemed so obvious after the fact i mean it was such [52:52] a simple and easy uh strategy that that was put in place but in your case uh in 96 with the olympics [53:00] uh you raised a concern about a small cessna being used to attack the olympics in atlanta [53:05] and i think it was was in 98 in december 98 you were head of the csg when chairing the csg when there [53:12] was a a big concern on the east coast about the possibility of someone connected to some of bin laden [53:18] hijacking a commercial aircraft of out of new york city that warning uh went out during the millennium [53:24] scare as well uh you sent a member to burger uh discussing the possible domestic threats and the [53:32] quote is that is there a threat to civilian aircraft uh in march 2001 another csg uh item on the agenda [53:42] mentions a possibility of alleged bin laden interest in targeting u.s passenger planes at the chicago [53:47] airport end of quote and it it seems to me that that we had a a broad general understanding that [53:55] it was a that it was possible that hijacking might be on the list of things that that were going to be [54:00] used and i i'm just i remember uh uh administrator garvey when she came before this commission a month [54:07] or so ago uh all their attention was overseas she said uh i mean if you listen and look look at the [54:13] documents on the day of of 9 11 it just inescapably leads to conclusion that we were surprised by [54:19] hijacking and i just i wonder if you've got a perspective on how it's possible that we were [54:25] surprised by hijacking let alone multiple hijacking simultaneously occurring on the at the same moment [54:31] well senator i would distinguish between hijackings in general and hijackings that then turn the aircraft [54:39] into suicide weapons um there had been hijackings by terrorists going back for 20 25 years and the [54:47] united states had some programs in in place to deal with that in 1996 after the twa 800 crash [54:59] the president appointed a commission on aircraft safety and security that looked at whether we needed [55:05] to augment our protection against hijacking uh and it made several recommendations uh most of those [55:14] recommendations were carried out not all of them one of the things it rejected was federalizing uh [55:22] the aircraft searching process uh that is now done by the transportation security agency because [55:28] it would have cost so much money uh and it would have required such a big federal bureaucracy [55:34] uh at the time when there had been no recent hijacking i assume that commissioners on that [55:44] commission thought they were making the right recommendation uh many of their recommendations [55:50] for increased security however were carried out but as to your question about using aircraft as [55:56] weapons i was afraid beginning in 1996 not that the cessna would fly into the olympics but that any [56:04] size aircraft would be put into the olympics and during my inspection of the atlanta olympic security [56:09] arrangements a month or two before the games i was shocked that the fbi hadn't put into effect any [56:16] aircraft air defense security arrangements so i threw together an air defense for the atlanta games [56:25] somewhat quickly but i got an air defense system in place we then tried to institutionalize that [56:33] for washington uh to protect the the capital and the white house and that system would have uh been [56:41] run by the secret service it would have involved missiles anti-aircraft guns radar helicopters uh secret [56:48] service developed all the plans for that um secret service was a big advocate for it but they were [56:54] unable to get the treasury department in which they were then located uh to approve it uh and i was unable [57:00] to get the office of management and budget to fund it but certainly there's just two sentence response [57:08] i mean the the the papers were full of uh stories about men and women using uh suicide as a as a as [57:18] a device and and carrying out terrorist uh objectives uh the second intifada was in full force and and uh [57:24] beginning in late 2000 through 2001 so i i i perhaps in a second question if i get the chance we can [57:32] continue this discussion i'd enjoy that the bottom line here is i thought i i agree with you and i thought [57:39] i had made a persuasive case that we needed an air defense system as well as an airport system not [57:46] just to stop hijackers at uh baggage inspection but to deal with them if they got through that and [57:51] were able to hijack an aircraft i thought we needed an air defense system uh and we got a little of [57:57] that air defense system implemented but only a little put me on the list if we have a chance to [58:02] do a second round we'll do governor thompson mr clark as we uh sit here this afternoon we have uh your [58:11] book and we have your press briefing of august 2002 which is true well i uh i think the question [58:24] is a little misleading uh the press briefing you're referring to comes in the following context [58:31] uh time magazine had published a cover story article uh highlighting what your staff briefing talks [58:43] about uh they had learned that as your staff briefing notes that there was a strategy or a plan [58:54] and a series of additional options uh that were presented uh to the national security advisor and the [59:02] new bush team when they came into office time magazine ran a somewhat sensational story uh that [59:14] implied that the bush administration um hadn't worked on that plan uh and this is of course coming [59:22] after 9 11 caused the bush white house a great deal of concern so i was asked by several people in [59:31] senior levels of the bush white house to do a press backgrounder uh to try to explain that set of [59:39] facts in a way that minimized criticism of the administration and so i did now we can get into [59:49] semantic games of whether it was a strategy or whether it was a plan or whether it was a series [59:57] of options to be decided upon i think the facts are as they were outlined in your staff briefing well [1:00:07] let's take a look then at your press briefing because i don't want to engage in semantic games [1:00:13] um you said the bush administration decided then you know mid-january that's mid-january 2001 to do two [1:00:26] things one vigorously pursue the existing policy that would be the clinton policy including all of the [1:00:34] lethal covert action findings which we've now made public to some extent is is that so did they decide [1:00:41] in january of 2001 to vigorously pursue the existing clinton policy they decided that the existing covert [1:00:49] action findings would remain in effect okay the second thing the administration decided to do is [1:00:57] to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get [1:01:02] them decided now that seems to indicate to me that proposals have been sitting on the table in the [1:01:08] clinton administration for a couple of years but the bush administration was going to get them done is [1:01:13] that a correct assumption well that was my hope at the time it turned out not to be the case well [1:01:20] then why in august of 2002 over a year later did you say that it was the case uh i was asked to make [1:01:30] that case to the press i was a special assistant to the president uh and i made the case i was asked to [1:01:37] make are you saying to me that you were asked to make an untrue case to the press and the public and [1:01:42] that you went ahead and did it no sir not not untrue not an untrue case i was asked to highlight the [1:01:50] positive aspects of what the administration had done and to minimize the negative aspects of what [1:01:55] the administration had done and as a special assistant to the president one is frequently [1:02:00] asked to do that kind of thing i've done it for several presidents well okay over the course of the [1:02:12] summer they developed implementation details principals met at the end of the summer approved them in their [1:02:19] first meeting changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold did they authorize [1:02:26] the increase in funding five-fold authorized but not appropriated well but the congress appropriates don't [1:02:32] think mr clark well in this in within the executive branch there are two steps as well within the [1:02:38] executive branch there's the policy process which you can compare to authorization which is to say we'd like [1:02:46] to spend this amount of money for this program and then there is the second step the budgetary step [1:02:51] which is to find the offsets and that had not been done in fact it wasn't done until after september 11th [1:02:58] changing the policy on pakistan was the policy on pakistan changed yes sir it was changing the policy [1:03:04] on uzbekistan was it changed yes sir changing the policy on the northern alliance assistance was that [1:03:11] changed well let me back up i said yes to the last two answers uh it was changed only after september [1:03:19] 11th it had gone through an approvals process it was going through an approvals process uh with the [1:03:26] deputies uh committee and they had approved that the deputies had approved those policy changes [1:03:32] it had then gone to a principals committee for uh approval and that occurred on september 4th [1:03:38] yes and those thing those three things which you mentioned were approved by the principals they [1:03:46] were not approved by the president and therefore the final approval hadn't occurred until after september [1:03:52] 11th but they were approved by people in the administration below the level of the president [1:03:58] approving towards the president is that not correct yeah so over the course of many many months [1:04:02] they went through several uh committee meetings at the subcabinet level uh and then there was a hiatus [1:04:09] uh and then they went to uh finally in september 4th uh a week before the attacks they went to the [1:04:15] principals for their approval of course the final approval by the president didn't take place until [1:04:21] after the attacks well is that eight month period unusual it is unusual when you are being told every [1:04:29] day that there is an urgent threat well but the policy involved changing for example the policy on pakistan [1:04:36] right so you would have to involve those people in the administration who had charge of the pakistani [1:04:41] policy would you not um the secretary of state has as a member of the principals committee has [1:04:49] that kind of authority over all foreign policy issues changing the policy on the northern alliance [1:04:54] assistance that would have been dod no uh governor that would have been the cia but again uh all of the [1:05:02] right people to make those kinds of changes were represented by the five or six people on the [1:05:06] principals committee well they were also represented on the smaller group were they not the deputies committee [1:05:12] but they didn't have the authority to approve it they only have the authority to recommend it up [1:05:17] further up the process well is policy usually made at the level of the principals committee before it [1:05:21] comes up policy usually originates in working groups recommendations and differences then are floated up [1:05:32] from working groups to the deputies committee if there are differences there policies policy [1:05:38] recommendations uh and differences are then floated up to the principles and occasionally [1:05:44] when there's not a consensus at the principles level policy recommendations and options or differences [1:05:50] go to the president and the president makes these kinds of decisions by law in fact many of the [1:05:55] kinds of decisions you're talking about can only be made by the president and you said that the [1:06:01] strategy changed from one of rollback with al-qaeda over the course of five years which it had been [1:06:07] which i presume is the clinton policy to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of al-qaeda [1:06:14] that is in fact the timeline is that correct um it is but it requires a bit of elaboration [1:06:22] as as your staff brief said the goal of the delenda plan was to roll back al-qaeda over the course of [1:06:30] three to five years so that it was just a nub of an organization like abu nidal that didn't threaten [1:06:36] uh the united states uh i tried to insert the phrase early in the bush administration in the draft nspd [1:06:47] that our goal should be to eliminate al-qaeda and i was told by various members of the deputies committee [1:06:54] that that was overly ambitious uh that we should take the word eliminate out uh and say significantly [1:07:01] erode um and then uh following uh following 9 11 uh we were able to go back to my language of eliminate [1:07:12] rather than significantly erode and so the the version of the national security presidential decision [1:07:19] directive uh that president bush finally got to see after 9 11 uh had my original language of eliminate [1:07:27] not the interim language of erode and you were asked when was the governor one more question [1:07:34] when was that presented to the president and you answered the president was briefed throughout this [1:07:38] process yeah the president uh apparently asked on one occasion uh that i'm aware of uh for a strategy [1:07:47] uh and he when he asked that uh he apparently didn't know that there was a strategy in the works [1:07:52] uh i therefore was told about this by the national security advisor i came back to her and said well [1:07:59] there is a strategy after all it's basically what i showed you in january it's stuck in the deputies [1:08:05] committee she said she would tell the president that uh and she said she would try to break it out of [1:08:11] the deputies committee so you you believe that your conference with the press in august of 2002 [1:08:19] it's consistent with what you've said in your book and what you've said in press interviews the last [1:08:24] five days about your book i do i think the the thing that's obviously bothering you is the tenor and [1:08:29] the tone and i've tried to explain to you sir that when you're on the staff of the president of the [1:08:34] united states you try to make his policies look as good as possible well with all respect mr clark i [1:08:41] think a lot of things beyond the tenor and the tone bother me about this thank you mr chairman thank you [1:08:48] governor uh commissioner grellick thank you mr chairman and uh thank you uh mr clark for your [1:08:54] testimony today um you have talked about a plan that you presented to dr rice um immediately upon [1:09:02] her becoming uh national security advisor and that uh in response to questions from commissioner gordon [1:09:09] you said that elements of that plan which were developed by you and your staff at the end of 2000 [1:09:15] uh many elements became part of what was then called nspd nine or what ultimately became nspd nine [1:09:24] when dr rice writes in the washington post no al-qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration [1:09:32] is that true no i think what is true is what your staff found by going through the documents and what [1:09:38] your staff briefing says which is that early um in the administration within days of the bush [1:09:45] administration coming into office that we gave them two documents one and in fact i brief dr rice on [1:09:53] this even before they came into office one was the original delenda plan uh from 1998 and the other [1:10:01] document was the update that we did following the coal attack which had as part of it a number of [1:10:11] decisions that had to be taken uh so that she characterizes it as a series of options rather than [1:10:17] a plan i'd like to think of it as a plan with a series of options but i think we're getting into [1:10:21] semantic differences thank you um i'd like to talk uh turn to nspd nine the the document that was [1:10:30] wending its way through the process um up until september 4th um the document is classified so there [1:10:41] i can only speak of it in generalities but as i understand it it had three stages which were to take place [1:10:49] over according to steve hadley the deputy national security advisor over a period of three years [1:10:56] one the first stage was we would warn the taliban the second stage was we would pressure the taliban [1:11:05] and the third stage was that we would look for ways to oust the taliban based upon individuals on the [1:11:14] ground other than ourselves at the same time making military contingency plans is that correct well [1:11:22] that's right well the military contingency plans had always been around but there was no there's nothing [1:11:28] in the original draft uh nspd that was approved by the principles to suggest u.s forces would be [1:11:35] sent into afghanistan on the ground and the covert uh in addition to that uh director tenet was asked to [1:11:42] draft anew some covert additional covert action authorities is that right that's right in in part [1:11:48] because mr hadley uh found um the existing six uh memorandums of covert action authority to be [1:11:58] talmudic it's actually i think mr hadley who gets credit for that word but it wasn't it wasn't really [1:12:04] meant to expand them significantly other than uh providing aid direct aid to afghan factions [1:12:10] now you have just described then the skeleton if you will of what was approved by the administration [1:12:18] as of september 4th and we know that no further action was taken before september 11th and so i [1:12:25] would read to you um and these are questions i would have put to dr rice had she been here uh and i will [1:12:34] put to her um the white house designee uh secretary arminage she says our strategy she says which was [1:12:44] expected to take years marshalled all elements of national power to take down the network not just [1:12:51] respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures our plan called for military options to [1:12:58] attack al-qaeda and taliban leadership ground forces and other targets taking the fight to the enemy [1:13:05] where he lived is that an accurate statement in your view no it's not in addition to the items [1:13:18] that were left hanging during this period of time that we've talked about in in your view the predator [1:13:25] the issue of aid to the northern alliance the response to the coal the other item that we have [1:13:31] heard about that was deferred until the policy emerged was the action on the set of covert authorities [1:13:40] or the draft of covert authorities that director tenet supplied to the nsc in i believe it was march [1:13:49] of 01 is that true yes and no action was taken on those until after 9-11 is that correct that's correct [1:14:02] after the millennium uh you were asked by sandy berger and he testified about it this morning to do an after [1:14:10] action report and he described how there were 29 recommendations and a huge supplemental etc well thank [1:14:18] you the report doesn't address some of the systemic issues and you above maybe anybody else saw the [1:14:30] systemic problems i mean you have described yourself the problems with the fbi the wall between the fbi and [1:14:38] the cia we've heard about the disconnect between the state department watch list and the faa no fly list [1:14:46] we've heard about really the inadequacy of our visa program and the consular effort so my question for [1:14:57] you is this you had a great shot after the millennium to take a whack at these problems which you no doubt [1:15:06] must have seen or maybe that i'll give you the benefit of the doubt perhaps there's some you hadn't seen [1:15:10] why was the after action report post millennium as modest as it was why didn't it address these [1:15:24] fissures and these gaps in the system well it made 28 or 29 recommendations had all of those [1:15:33] recommendations been easy to do they would have been implemented uh before uh or after uh the after [1:15:42] action report many of the 28 or 29 recommendations were implemented but some of them weren't because [1:15:48] we went pretty far in the art of the practical the art of the possible with those recommendations [1:15:56] and that's probably why some of them never got done and some of them still haven't been done [1:16:01] i've learned over time that if you go for the the perfect solution the best solution you don't get [1:16:09] very far in actually achieving things you can write nice reports uh if you're at the brookings commission or [1:16:16] something but uh if uh if you want to get something done in the real world uh you you do what is [1:16:23] doable and you try to do a little bit more uh but you don't shoot for the moon and i think some of the [1:16:29] systemic uh things that are obvious to you and uh i know they are uh were more practical after 9 11 [1:16:40] than they were after the millennium remember in the millennium we succeeded in stopping the attacks [1:16:48] that was good news but it was not good news for those of us who also wanted to put pressure on [1:16:54] the congress and pressure on omb and other places because we were not able to point to and i hate [1:17:00] to say this body bags you know unfortunately this country takes body bags it requires body bags sometimes [1:17:07] to make really tough decisions about money and about governmental arrangements and one of the [1:17:13] things i would hope that comes out of your commission report is a change a recommendation [1:17:19] for a change in the attitude of government about threats that we be able to act on threats that we [1:17:26] foresee even if they were acting requires boldness and requires money and requires changing the way we do [1:17:35] business that we act on threats in the future before they happen the problem is that when you [1:17:42] make that recommendation before they happen when you recommend an air defense system for washington [1:17:47] before there's been a 911 people tend to think you're nuts and i got a lot of that you know when [1:17:54] the clinton administration ended 35 americans had died at the hands of al-qaeda over the course of eight [1:18:01] years and a lot of people said behind my back and some of them to my face why are you so obsessed [1:18:08] with this organization it's only killed eight americans over the course uh 35 americans over [1:18:15] the course of eight years why are you making such a big deal over this organization that's the kind [1:18:22] of mindset that made it difficult for us even though the president the national security advisor and [1:18:29] others the dci knew there was a problem and were supporting me but the institutional bureaucracy in the [1:18:36] fbi and in dod and in cia and in omb and on the hill because i spent a lot of time up here trying [1:18:43] to get money and trying to get change authorities uh couldn't see the threat because it hadn't happened [1:18:52] well that's a very uh sobering statement particularly from someone who whose reputation is uh as aggressive [1:19:00] as your reputation is and um it makes me think that individuals with who are less of a pile driver to [1:19:10] use sandy burger's words um must feel even less able to push for change thank you secretary layman [1:19:24] thank you uh dick since you and i first served 28 years ago in the mbfr delegation uh i have genuinely [1:19:32] been a fan of yours i've watched you uh uh labor without fear or favor in the uh in a succession of [1:19:40] jobs where you really made a difference and so when you uh when you agreed to uh spend as much time as [1:19:51] you did with us uh in as you say 15 hours uh i was very uh hopeful and i attended one of those all day [1:20:03] sessions and read the other two transcripts and i thought they were terrific i thought here we have a guy [1:20:10] who can be the rosetta stone for helping this commission do its its job to help to have the [1:20:19] american people grasp what the dysfunctional problems in this government are uh and i thought you let [1:20:31] the chips fall where they may you made a few value judgments which could be debated but by and large [1:20:40] you were critical of the the things institutions and people that uh that could have done better and [1:20:51] some that did very badly um and uh certainly the greater weight of this criticism fell during the [1:21:00] clinton years simply because there were eight of them and only seven and a half months of the uh of [1:21:07] the bush years i don't think you in the transcripts that we have of your classified interviews uh pulled [1:21:15] punches in either uh direction and frankly a lot of my questioning this past two days has been drawn from [1:21:26] some of the things that you articulated uh so well during the clinton years particularly because they [1:21:33] stretched from uh from the first as you pointed out uh attempt by saddam to assassinate uh president bush [1:21:42] 41 right up through the end of the administration but now we have the book and i've published books [1:21:51] and i must say i am green with envy at uh at the promotion department of your uh your publisher i never got [1:22:00] jim thompson to stand before 50 photographers uh reading your book and i certainly never got 60 [1:22:10] minutes to coordinate uh the showing of its interview with you uh with 15 network news broadcasts the [1:22:19] selling of the movie rights and your appearance here today so i would say bravo until i started reading [1:22:28] those press reports and i said this can't be the same dick clark that that testified before us because [1:22:39] uh all of the promotional material and all of the spin in the networks was that this is a rounding [1:22:46] devastating attack this book on president bush that's not what i heard in the the interviews and [1:22:57] uh i uh i hope you're going to tell me as you apologize to the families for all of us who [1:23:07] were involved in national security that this tremendous difference and not just in nuance [1:23:16] but in what it is you choose to the stories you choose to tell is really the result of your editors [1:23:23] and your promoters uh rather than your studied judgment because it is so different from the whole thrust [1:23:36] of your uh testimony to us and similarly when you add to it the inconsistency between what your promoters [1:23:46] are putting out and what you yourself said as late as august 05 you've got a real credibility problem [1:23:56] and because of my real genuine long-term admiration for you i hope you'll resolve that credibility [1:24:03] problem because i'd hate to see you uh become totally shoved to one side during a presidential [1:24:11] campaign as an active partisan selling a book thank you john let me talk about partisanship here since [1:24:24] you raise it i've been accused of being a member of john kerry's campaign team several times this week [1:24:32] including by the white house so let's just lay that one to bed uh i'm not working for the carry [1:24:39] campaign last time i had to declare my party loyalty it was to vote in the virginia uh primary for [1:24:48] president united states in the year 2000 and i asked for a republican ballot i worked for ronald reagan [1:24:55] with you i worked for the first president bush and he nominated me to the senate as an assistant [1:25:02] secretary of state and secretary of state and i worked in his white house and i've worked for [1:25:05] this president bush and i'm not working for senator carry now the fact of the matter is i do co-teach a [1:25:13] class with someone who works for senator carry that person is named randy beers randy beers and i have [1:25:22] worked together in the federal government in the white house in the state department for 25 years randy beers [1:25:29] worked in the white house for ronald reagan randy beers worked in the white house for the first [1:25:34] president bush and randy beers worked in the white house for the second president bush and just because [1:25:42] he is now working for senator carry i am not going to disassociate myself from one of my best friends [1:25:48] and someone who i greatly respect and have worked with for 25 years and yes i will admit i co-teach a [1:25:55] class at the harvard university and georgetown university with mr beers that i don't think makes [1:26:01] me a member of the carry campaign the white house has said that my book is an audition for a high [1:26:09] level position in the carry campaign so let me say here as i am under oath that i will not accept any [1:26:16] position in the carry administration should there be one on the record under oath now as to your [1:26:25] accusation that there is a difference between what i said to this commission in 15 hours of testimony [1:26:32] uh and what i am saying in my book uh and what media outlets are asking me to comment on i think [1:26:41] there's a very good reason for that in the 15 hours of testimony no one asked me what i thought about [1:26:47] the president's invasion of iraq and the reason i am strident in my criticism of the president of the [1:26:54] united states is because by invading iraq something i was not asked about by the commission it's something i [1:27:02] chose to write about a lot in the book by invading iraq the president of the united states has greatly [1:27:08] undermined the war on terrorism there's no feeling mr clark thank you for being here um i guess i i [1:27:33] shared john's feelings when i read your your interviews with the staff as well because it it [1:27:39] it gave a perspective of somebody that bridged different administrations and really had a chance [1:27:47] to see it and of course you were looking at it from different level than some of the other people [1:27:51] we'd interviewed um and likewise uh i was a little taken back when i saw the the hoopla and the [1:27:58] promotion for the book and where i saw this transcript that just came forward today uh but what's bothering [1:28:05] me now is that uh not only did you did you interview with us and and uh but you also spent more than six [1:28:18] hours with the with the congressional joint inquiry and i've i've read your information and uh i mean [1:28:28] that's a very serious body and very serious inquiry not that we're not but uh i can't believe over six [1:28:37] hours you never expressed any concern to them that the bush administration didn't act with sufficient [1:28:43] urgency to address these horrible potential problems if you felt that way and uh i mean did did you did [1:28:50] you ever list for the joint inquiry any of the measures that you thought should have been taken that [1:28:54] weren't i think all of the measures that i thought should have been taken were in the plan that i [1:29:01] presented in january of 2001 and were in the nspd that the that the principles approved in september [1:29:11] september 4th 2001 there were no additional measures that i had in mind other than those that i [1:29:18] presented and as i did explain both to the commission and to the joint inquiry those proposals [1:29:27] which ultimately were adopted by the principles committee took a very very very long time to [1:29:33] make it through the policy development process well i understand that but but i think the charges that [1:29:40] you've made are much more well i think they're much deeper than that let me ask you a question because [1:29:45] it's been bothering me as well you've been involved uh intimately in pdd 39 and in pdd 62 [1:29:54] the latter certainly is very very much implicates your own position how long did it take for those [1:30:02] to be uh developed and and and uh signed uh i'm not sure i could recollect that answer uh perhaps the [1:30:12] staff could find out uh your general answer about how long does it take pdds to be signed uh i've seen [1:30:20] them signed in a day and i've seen them take three years well of course i mean we've all seen that but [1:30:25] but but these were obviously the 62 was a very important one but obviously the one that we're [1:30:30] talking about that was developed was an extremely important one it was one that you put a lot into [1:30:34] yourself uh and and and it was in the beginning of a new administration anyway um sir if i may yeah [1:30:42] there's also the issue uh that was raised earlier by another member of the commission as to whether all [1:30:49] of the pending decisions needed to be rolled up into a national security presidential directive or [1:30:58] whether based on the urgency of the intelligence some of them couldn't like arming the predator [1:31:05] to attack and kill bin laden why did that have to wait until the entire policy was developed [1:31:12] weren't there pieces like that that could have been broken off and decided right away [1:31:16] and i certainly urged that uh i urged that beginning in february when i realized that this [1:31:22] policy process was going to take forever oh no i understand and and i understand your [1:31:26] testimony that you did that what i don't understand is if you had these deep feelings and deep concerns [1:31:31] about about the lack of ability uh and and urgency within the bush administration that you didn't advise [1:31:39] the joint inquiry uh and uh i mean was the was the uh did you feel it not necessary to tell them that [1:31:47] the bush administration was too preoccupied with the cold war issues or iraq at that point it wasn't asked [1:31:53] sir i think i provided the joint inquiry uh as a member of the administration at the time please recall [1:32:02] i provided the joint inquiry all the facts it needed to make the conclusions which i've made [1:32:08] uh about how long it took and what the development of the policy process was like and the refusal of [1:32:15] the administration to spin out for earlier decision things like the armed predator well it obviously [1:32:22] will be the members of the joint inquiry to to make that uh decision in judgment uh but you must agree [1:32:28] that it's not like going before a joint inquiry is not like uh going before a press background briefing [1:32:34] and as you said i think your description was i tried to highlight the positive and play down the [1:32:39] negative but the joint inquiry wasn't asking you to do that they were asking you to come forward weren't [1:32:43] they i answered uh very fully all of the questions the joint inquiry had to ask they said that [1:32:50] themselves uh in their uh comments to me and in their report i testified for six hours uh and i testified [1:32:58] as a member of the bush administration and i think sir with all of your experience in this city you [1:33:04] understand as well as i do the freedom one has to speak critical of an administration when one is [1:33:12] a member of that administration i do understand that but i also understand you know the integrity [1:33:17] with which you have to take your job but thank you sir thank you we're starting on a second round [1:33:24] now questioning uh congressman roman thank you mr chairman uh having served on the joint inquiry [1:33:31] the only person of this 9 11 panel to have served on the inquiry i i can say uh in open session to [1:33:39] some of mr fielding's inquiries that as the joint inquiry asked for information on the national security [1:33:48] council and we requested that uh the national security advisor dr rice come before the joint inquiry and [1:33:57] answer those questions she refused and she didn't come she didn't come before the 9 11 commission and [1:34:06] when we asked for some questions to be answered uh mr hadley answered those questions in a written form [1:34:14] so i think part of the answer might be that we didn't have access to the january 25th memo we didn't [1:34:25] have access to the september 4th memo we didn't have access to many of the documents and the emails [1:34:32] we're not only talking about mr clark being before the 9 11 commission for more than 15 hours but i [1:34:38] think in talking to the staff we have hundreds of documents and emails that we didn't previously have [1:34:45] which hopefully informs us to ask mr clark and ask dr rice the tough questions and i have some more [1:34:53] tough questions for you mr clark on the fbi on the fbi you've said that the fbi did not do a very good [1:35:05] job i think i'm paraphrasing you in uh much easier language than you've used but that during the [1:35:13] millennium which may be the exception to the rule they performed extremely well in sharing information [1:35:21] how do we get the fbi to do this on a regular basis we still have problems here today [1:35:27] or is that not an option for us we don't have time mr clark i mean i i appreciate everybody going [1:35:36] after everybody in washington dc we don't have time to make these kinds of arguments and attacks [1:35:45] if we're going to get this situation right in the future in this country and prevent or hopefully [1:35:50] prevent the next one when we do know something for certain and that is that groups like al qaeda [1:35:56] want to get dirty bombs they want to get chemical and biological weapons and they want to come after [1:36:02] america so how do we get this situation solved mr clark what do we do with the fbi what's your [1:36:09] recommendation in a perfect world i believe we could create a domestic intelligence service [1:36:16] that would have sufficient oversight that it would not infringe on our civil liberties [1:36:20] in a perfect world i would create that domestic intelligence service separately from the fbi in [1:36:28] the world in which we live i think that would be a difficult step to go directly to and so what i [1:36:35] proposed instead is that we create a domestic intelligence service within the fbi and as fast as [1:36:42] we could develop it into an autonomous agency i'm very fearful that such an agency would have potential [1:36:53] to infringe on our civil liberties and therefore i think we would have to take extraordinary steps [1:37:00] to have active oversight of such an agency and we'd have to explain to the american people in a very [1:37:07] compelling way why they needed a domestic intelligence service because i think most americans would be [1:37:12] fearful of a secret police in the united states but frankly the fbi culture the fbi organization the fbi [1:37:24] personnel are not the best we could do in this country for a domestic intelligence service we will [1:37:33] certainly be looking to people in future hearings for their recommendations in a host of different areas [1:37:43] so i hope that uh you might think through this area a little bit more and be available to us mr clark [1:37:49] let me ask you some difficult questions for you to get at the complexity of our relationship with the [1:37:56] saudis on the one hand i think it's fairly there's a great deal of unanimity that the saudis were not [1:38:04] doing everything they could before 9 11 to help us in a host of different areas that 15 of the 19 hijackers [1:38:10] came from there that we had trouble tracking some of the financing uh for terrorist operations that [1:38:16] we still have too many of the madrasas and uh uh the teachings of hatred uh of uh of christians and [1:38:25] jews and others coming out of uh some of these madrasas we need to broaden and deepen this relationship [1:38:34] i will ask you a part a and a part b part a is where do we go in this difficult relationship and [1:38:41] part b is to further look at the difficulty here uh you made a decision after 9 11 to uh i think and [1:38:53] i'd like to ask you more about this to allow a plane of saudis to fly out of the country and when most [1:39:01] other planes were grounded this plane flew from the united states back to saudi arabia i'd like to [1:39:09] know why you made that decision who was on this plane and if the fbi ever had the opportunity to [1:39:16] interview those people you're absolutely right that the uh the saudi arabian government did not [1:39:21] cooperate with us significantly in the fight against terrorism prior to 9 11. indeed it didn't really [1:39:28] cooperate until after bombs blew up in riyadh now as to this um controversy about the the saudi evacuation [1:39:36] aircraft uh let me let me tell you everything i know which is that some in the days following 9 11 [1:39:46] whether it was on 9 12 or 9 15 i can't tell you we were in a constant uh crisis management meeting [1:39:56] that it started the morning of 9 11 and ran for days on end we were making lots of decisions but [1:40:04] we were coordinating them with all the agencies through the video teleconference procedure someone [1:40:10] and i wish i could tell you who but i don't know who uh someone brought to that group uh a proposal [1:40:17] that we authorize a request from the saudi embassy uh the saudi embassy had apparently said that they [1:40:24] feared for the lives of saudi uh citizens because they thought there would be retribution against [1:40:31] saudis in the united states as it became obvious to americans that this attack was essentially done [1:40:36] by saudis and that there were even saudi citizens in the united states who were part of the bin laden [1:40:43] family which is a very large family very large family the saudi embassy therefore asked for these [1:40:51] people to be evacuated the same sort of thing that we do all the time in similar crises [1:40:57] evacuating americans uh the request came to me and i refused to approve it uh i suggested that [1:41:06] it be routed to the fbi and that the fbi look at the names of the individuals who are going to be [1:41:15] on the passenger manifest and that they approve it or not i spoke with the uh at that time the number [1:41:23] two person in the fbi dale watson uh and asked him uh to deal with this issue uh the fbi then approved [1:41:34] approved after some period of time and i can't tell you how long approved the flight now what degree of [1:41:43] review the fbi did of those names i cannot tell you how many people there are on the plane i cannot tell [1:41:50] you but i have asked uh since uh were there any individuals on that flight that in retrospect uh the fbi [1:42:02] wishes uh they could have interviewed in this country and the answer i've been given is no that there was [1:42:09] no one who left that on that flight uh who the fbi uh now wants to interview despite the fact that we [1:42:17] don't know if dale watson interviewed them in the first place uh i don't think they were in ever [1:42:22] interviewed in this country do we so they were not interviewed here we have all their names we don't [1:42:29] know if there has been any follow-up to interview those people that were here and flown out of the [1:42:33] country the last time i asked that question i was informed that the fbi had no still had [1:42:40] no desire uh to interview any of these people would you have a desire to interview some of these [1:42:45] people that i don't know who they are we don't know who they are i don't know who they are the fbi knew [1:42:50] who they were because they haven't your confidence and your statements on the fbi what's your level [1:42:55] of comfort with this well i will tell you in particular about the ones that get the most attention [1:43:00] here in in in the press and they are members of the bin laden family i was aware for some time that [1:43:10] there were members of the bin laden family living in the united states and let's see in open session [1:43:17] i can say that i was very well aware of the members of the bin laden family and what they were doing in [1:43:24] the united states and the fbi was extraordinarily well aware of what they were doing in the united states [1:43:32] and i was informed by the fbi that none of the members of the bin laden family this large clan [1:43:39] were doing anything in this country that was illegal or that raised their suspicions and i believe the fbi [1:43:46] had very good information and good sources of information about what the members of the bin laden [1:43:53] family were doing i've been very impressed with your memory uh sitting through all these interviews [1:44:00] that the 9 11 commission has conducted with you uh i press you again to try to recall [1:44:09] how this request originated who might have passed this on to you at the white house situation room or [1:44:16] who might have originated that request for the united states government to fly out how many people [1:44:23] on this plane i don't know we don't know how many people were on a plane that flew out of this country [1:44:29] who who gave the final approval then to say yes you're clear to go it's all right with the united [1:44:34] states government to go to saudi arabia uh i believe after the fbi came back and said it was all right with [1:44:39] them we ran it through the decision process for all of these decisions that we were making in the in [1:44:45] those hours which was the the interagency crisis management group uh on the video conference um i was [1:44:54] making or coordinating a lot of decisions on the on 9 11 and the days immediately after uh and i would [1:45:02] love to be able to tell you who did it who brought this proposal to me but i don't know um there the two [1:45:11] since you press me the two possibilities that are most likely are uh either the department of state [1:45:18] or the white house chief of staff's office but i don't know thank you thank you mr chairman uh senator [1:45:27] god one more question on that subject when the approvals were finally made and when the flight left [1:45:33] was the flight embargo still in effect or were we flying uh or or or was that over were we flying once again [1:45:42] no sir no senator the reason that a decision was needed uh was because the the flight embargo the [1:45:49] grounding uh was still in effect okay we talked a little bit in my earlier round of questioning about [1:45:57] this uh frustrating phrase actionable intelligence and uh one of your recommendations uh to the new [1:46:08] administration uh according to our staff report was to choose a standard of evidence for attributing [1:46:15] responsibility for the coal and deciding on a response did that express a frustration that you [1:46:22] had had for the previous several years that the phrase actionable intelligence uh often seemed to be [1:46:30] an excuse for people not doing anything uh you know that perhaps they had other reasons for not wanting [1:46:37] to do did you want a broader definition either of how much intelligence what one needed or how broad [1:46:45] action should be yes yes to both yes okay could you tell me you know you know what your previous [1:46:55] frustrations had been and what kind of test you would have uh imposed well i think if you go back to [1:47:03] 1993 um when the attempted assassination on the first president bush occurred in kuwait [1:47:11] the process we put in place then was to ask the fbi working with secret service to develop a set of [1:47:20] evidence and cia to develop separately an intelligence case and that took from february of 93 through the end of may [1:47:36] and it was done in a way that was reminiscent of a criminal process at least the fbi case was [1:47:45] the cia case was an intelligence case and had different sources of information different standards for [1:47:50] what was admissible uh and a more lenient standard for making a determination but i think beginning [1:47:59] then i was frustrated by that kind of evidentiary process now i heard sandy burger this morning point [1:48:08] out that immediately following the pan am 103 uh terrorist attack uh the assumption in the intelligence and law [1:48:16] enforcement communities was that it was a syrian attack and i recall that he's quite right [1:48:24] and it turned out not to be a syrian attack he pointed out that in the days and weeks after the twa 800 [1:48:32] crash we assumed it was a terrorist attack there were eyewitnesses of what appeared to be a missile [1:48:41] attack but after exhaustive investigations that went on for years in the case of the ntsb and the fbi [1:48:51] a determination was made that it was not a terrorist attack and i believe that that is the accurate [1:48:56] determination mr burger made other examples oklahoma city and whatnot i think we have to distinguish [1:49:05] between rushing to judgment after a terrorist event which as mr burger said uh is a [1:49:13] mistake because sometimes the evidence changes sometimes the evidence develops we saw this [1:49:20] in spain uh just two weeks ago where for the first day after the attacks in madrid [1:49:27] the evidence really looked like it was the basque separatist group and uh i know there are political [1:49:36] charges against the spanish government for having distorted intelligence but there was a lot of [1:49:40] intelligence the first day that suggested it was the basque terrorist group so we do need to be [1:49:46] careful not to rush to judgment after a terrorist attack on the other hand what i'm suggesting what i was [1:49:55] suggesting in that paper that you referred to is that we not necessarily have to wait for a terrorist attack [1:50:03] in order to attack a terrorist group but when you sometimes do that um you get into trouble uh president [1:50:17] clinton got into a lot of trouble a lot of criticism for blowing up a chemical plant in sudan to this day [1:50:27] there are a lot of people who uh believe that it was not related to a terrorist group not related to [1:50:34] chemical weapons uh they're wrong by the way um but the president had decided in pd39 that there should [1:50:45] be a low threshold of evidence when it comes to the possibility of terrorists uh getting their access [1:50:54] getting their hands on chemical weapons uh and he acted on that basis and when he acted on that basis he [1:51:02] and his advisors uh were all heavily criticized so what i'm was suggesting there and what i am suggesting [1:51:10] here now is that while sandy burger is right and we should not rush to judgment after a terrorist attack [1:51:17] as to who did it until there is ample intelligence evidence not criminal evidence on the other hand [1:51:24] we should feel free to attack terrorist groups without waiting for them to attack us if we make a policy [1:51:32] and an intelligence judgment that they pose a threat one follow-up question on that between january and [1:51:39] september of 2001 was there any actionable intelligence under either the narrow or broader definition [1:51:48] that caused you to recommend an immediate military response to some provocation i suggested um in [1:51:59] beginning in january of 2001 that the uh the coal case was still out there uh and that by now in january [1:52:08] of 2001 cia had finally gotten around to saying it was an al-qaeda attack uh and that therefore there [1:52:16] was an open issue which should be decided about whether or not the bush administration uh should [1:52:23] retaliate for the coal attack uh unfortunately uh that there was no interest no acceptance of that [1:52:33] proposition uh and i was told uh on a couple of occasions well that you know that happened on the [1:52:40] clinton administration's watch i didn't think it made any difference uh i thought the bush administration [1:52:47] now that it had the cia saying it was al-qaeda should have responded but there was no other january [1:52:55] to september incident that caused you to recommend a military response i gather in the general definition [1:53:02] i think there was um you know what we had discussed in the general definition was not waiting for the [1:53:09] terrorist attack but feeling free to use military activity as a or covert action activity doesn't have [1:53:16] to be military covert action activity as a way of taking the offensive against terrorist organizations [1:53:24] that look like they threaten the united states and what our plan or strategy or list of options [1:53:31] uh included was uh covert action activity uh to be taken to go on the offensive against al-qaeda in [1:53:40] afghanistan through surrogates or through direct intervention that was um a combination of both [1:53:51] but it was the determination of how that would be structured would be left to the cia thank you mr [1:53:55] chairman senator carey well mr clark let me say at the beginning that uh uh everything that you've said [1:54:03] today and and and done has has not damaged my view of your integrity it's very much intact as far as [1:54:08] i'm concerned and i hope that uh your pledge earlier not to be a part of the carrie administration [1:54:13] did not preclude you from coming to new york sometime and teaching at the new school so [1:54:20] in the carrier and let me also say this this this document of fox news earlier uh this transcript [1:54:27] that they have this is a background briefing and all of us that have provided background briefings for [1:54:33] the press before should be where uh i mean fox should say occasionally fair and balanced after [1:54:41] putting something like this out because they violated a serious trust all of us all of us that [1:54:49] come into this kind of an environment and provide background briefings for the press i think will [1:54:53] always have this as a as a reminder that sometimes it isn't going to happen that it's background [1:55:00] sometimes if it suits their interest they're going to go back pull the tape convert it into [1:55:04] transcript and send it out in the public arena and try to embarrass us or discredit us so i i object to [1:55:11] what they've done and i think it's an unfortunate thing they did let me say as well that you and i [1:55:16] have some disagreements and i'm going to get into them now first of all i do not want to go back to [1:55:21] the bad old days when covert operations could be done in an environment where the people thought they [1:55:26] could do something in violation of u.s law or that they come to congress and lie about it uh thinking that [1:55:33] that that was okay i mean that's what we were attracting our attention to perhaps we have perhaps [1:55:38] there were some personnel mistakes that were made in the response to the problems in guatemala in [1:55:41] particular but i don't want to go back to the bad old days where the guys could go out there and [1:55:45] operate and not have to worry about u.s law and not have to worry about whether or not they came and [1:55:49] lied to congress nor do i senator and secondly uh i don't see it as you do that the that the war in [1:55:55] iraq has increased the the threat of terrorism i i honestly don't unless you say that the threat of terrorism in iraq has unquestionably gone up as a [1:56:03] consequence of al-qaeda feeling even more opposition to freedom in iraq than they do in freedom in the united [1:56:10] states uh they're they feel much more uh threatened by having an arab democracy uh than they do by having [1:56:18] a democracy in the united states and so i i don't see it that way and though i don't go as far as [1:56:23] administration has done with drawing the connection to al-qaeda i do think that the that the presence of [1:56:29] abdul rahman yassim in iraq uh it certainly causes some suspicions to be raised i wonder and i presume [1:56:37] you know who abdul rahman yassim is and i wonder if you could comment on that i mean what what conclusions [1:56:42] do you draw by the fact that that we have an individual who we believe was a part of the [1:56:48] conspiracy to attack the world trade center in the beginning the world trade center one in february of [1:56:52] 2000 february 1993 uh an associate of ramzi yusuf uh who was uh uh connected at least indirectly to [1:57:03] the second attack i wonder what conclusions you draw from the the fact that uh you seem has been given [1:57:09] at the very least a a place that he could hang out and he's on the lamb again and we're still hunting [1:57:14] him and trying to find out where he is in iraq today let me uh go back into the history of 1993 which [1:57:22] is when we first heard about this man in 1993 when the uh truck bomb exploded at the world trade center [1:57:31] we didn't know there was an al-qaeda no one had ever said that and the initial reports and i mean [1:57:38] initial by the sense of about a year or two the initial reports from the fbi's investigation of that [1:57:43] attack um suggested that the attackers were somehow a gang of people from five or six different countries [1:57:52] who had found each other and come together almost like a pickup basketball team uh that there was no [1:58:00] organization behind it eventually uh in retrospect the fbi and cia were able to discover that there [1:58:08] was an organization behind it and that organization is what we now call al-qaeda uh most of the people [1:58:17] involved directly involved in that conspiracy were identified and tracked down by the fbi and cia [1:58:25] and arrested or snatched uh and brought back to the united states mr yersin was the one who wasn't [1:58:35] and the reason he wasn't was he was an iraqi he was the only iraqi in the group there were egyptians [1:58:43] there were other nationalities he was an iraqi and therefore when the explosion took place and he fled [1:58:50] the united states he went back to iraq and we were obviously for obvious reasons unable to either snatch him [1:58:58] or get him to be extradited to the united states but the the investigation both the cia investigation [1:59:06] and the fbi investigation made it very clear in 95 and 96 as they got more information uh that the iraqi [1:59:16] government was no way involved in that attack and the fact that one of the 12 people involved in the [1:59:22] attack was iraqi uh hardly seems to me as evidence that they were that the iraqi government was involved [1:59:28] in the attack and the attack was al-qaeda not iraq the iraqi government because obviously of the [1:59:37] hostility between us and them didn't cooperate in turning him over and gave him sanctuary as it did [1:59:45] give sanctuary to other terrorists but the allegation that has been made that the 1993 attack on the world [1:59:53] trade center was done by the iraqi government i think is absolutely without foundation can you see [2:00:00] where a reasonable person might say that if you seem is given a safe haven inside of iraq uh prior to [2:00:09] 9 11 that the iraqis are at least unwilling to do what is necessary to bring someone that we believe [2:00:14] is responsible for killing americans in 1993 to justice well the iraqis were absolutely the iraqis [2:00:20] were providing safe haven to a variety of palestinian terrorists as well absolutely as were the iranians [2:00:29] as were the syrians thank you commissioner benveniste i just wanted to say that having [2:00:45] sat in on two days of debriefings with you mr clark and having seen excerpts from your book other than [2:00:58] questions you weren't asked i have not perceived any substantive differences between what you have said [2:01:05] to us and what has been quoted from your published work having said that i'll cede my time to congressman [2:01:18] romer if he'll give me his time with condoleezza rice that may not be a good deal questions for the record [2:01:29] mr commissioner commissioner commissioner thompson mr clark in this background [2:01:40] briefing as senator carey has now described it for the press in august of 2002 you intended to [2:01:49] mislead the press did you not no i think there's a very fine line that anyone who's been in the white [2:01:57] house in any administration can tell you about and that is when you are special assistant to the [2:02:05] president and you're asked to explain something that is potentially embarrassing to the administration [2:02:13] because the administration didn't do enough or didn't do it in a timely manner and is taking [2:02:19] political heat for it as was the case there you have a choice actually i think you have three choices [2:02:31] you can resign rather than do it i chose not to do that second choice is why was that mr clark you [2:02:42] finally resigned because you were frustrated i was at that time at the request of the president [2:02:49] preparing a national strategy to defend america's cyberspace something which i thought then and think [2:02:55] now is vitally important i thought that completing that strategy was a lot more important than whether [2:03:05] or not i had to provide emphasis in one place or other while discussing the facts of this particular news [2:03:13] story the second choice one has uh governor is whether or not to say things that are untruthful [2:03:23] and no one uh in the bush white house asked me to say things that were untruthful and i would not have [2:03:30] said them in any event the third choice that one has is to put the best face you can for the administration [2:03:40] uh on the facts as they were uh and that is what i did and i think that is what most people in the [2:03:49] white house uh in any administration do when they're asked to explain something that is embarrassing to [2:03:57] the administration but you will admit that that what you said in august of 2002 is inconsistent with [2:04:06] what you say in your book no i don't think it's inconsistent at all i think as i said in your last [2:04:10] round of questioning governor that it's really a matter here of emphasis and tone and that it's [2:04:16] really i mean what you're suggesting uh perhaps is that as special assistant to the president united [2:04:24] states when asked to give a press backgrounder i should spend my time in that press background [2:04:30] they're criticizing him i think that's somewhat of an unrealistic thing to expect but what it suggests [2:04:35] to me is that there is uh there is uh one standard one standard of um candor and morality for white [2:04:45] house special assistance and another standard of candor and morality for the rest of america i don't get [2:04:51] that i don't think it's a question of morality at all i think it's a question of politics well i'm not a [2:05:07] washington insider i've never been a special assistant in the white house i'm from the midwest so i think [2:05:12] i'll leave it there congressman roma thank you mr chairman i appreciate your patience this has been [2:05:21] a i'm sure a long day for you mr clark i want to explore a little bit more since we've heard from [2:05:26] mr tenet on this issue today the uh the predator issue as you know the predator uh first came out of [2:05:37] use in kosovo and it was used in various activities to with a laser on it to track serb tanks to help us [2:05:50] go after those tanks it was flown in 2000 in the clinton administration as a recon vehicle unmanned recon [2:05:59] vehicle in 2001 we had a debate a complex debate that i can understand both sides of [2:06:08] took several months to try to resolve it there are two issues here on the recon predator and on [2:06:15] the armed predator mr tenet said that they were not blocking the armed predator you have said that [2:06:25] they were blocking the unarmed the armed predator how do we reconcile these two and please take us [2:06:36] through a little bit of this i want to ask you if it would have made much of a difference getting the [2:06:40] unarmed up and if the armed could have been put up earlier than october of 2001 let me begin in the [2:06:51] the first few months of the year 2000 president clinton was enormously frustrated because he had [2:06:57] authorized in effect the assassination of bin laden and his lieutenants by cia he had also authorized in [2:07:06] principle the use of military forces cruise missiles to attack and kill bin laden and his lieutenants [2:07:12] and none of this had happened because the cia had been unable to use its human intelligence resources [2:07:20] in afghanistan to provide i'm sorry senator actionable intelligence on the occasions when we had things [2:07:32] that looked like actionable intelligence the three or four occasions the director of cia himself said the [2:07:37] intelligence wasn't good enough so the president was very mad and he asked sandy burger and me to come [2:07:43] up with a better way i asked the director of the joint staff admiral fry and the associate dci charlie allen [2:07:54] to form a task force to come up with a better way they proposed flying the predator in afghanistan cia's [2:08:04] directorate of operations the director of the director of operations opposed the use of predator [2:08:12] in 2000 for reconnaissance purposes he said that if there were additional resources available to [2:08:19] pay for the predator operation he would prefer to use them on human intelligence and how much are we [2:08:25] talking about mr clark pennies uh relatively hundreds of thousands of dollars uh some of it cost hundreds [2:08:33] of thousands the whole program was in the low millions i think um in any event this slowed things [2:08:39] down obviously mr burger um took up my cause uh with the director of central intelligence and [2:08:50] got their agreement that they would fly the reconnaissance version it was flown in september and october of [2:08:58] 2000 11 flights and the director of operations put a lot of restrictions on those flights in part because [2:09:08] they were afraid that the aircraft would be shot down and they would have to pay for it i tried to point [2:09:13] out that even if the aircraft were shot down the pilot would return safely to home but that didn't [2:09:18] seem to persuade them in any event during those flights at cia's insistence they were designed as [2:09:28] a proof of concept operation meaning that we could not have cruise missiles other military activity other [2:09:38] covert action capabilities cued to this so that when the predator did see bin laden as it did i [2:09:49] think on three occasions but clearly on one in that time frame there were no military assets available [2:09:56] there were no covert action assets available at the insistence of the cia because they wanted this [2:10:01] only as a proof of concept operation fast forward to 2001 the flights had been suspended because of the [2:10:09] winter during which they couldn't fly we then became aware that there was a long-term program in the air [2:10:17] force to arm the predator johnny jumper the head of the air force thought that it might be possible to [2:10:26] crash probably the wrong word to accelerate this program and arm the predator right away general jumper [2:10:36] directed that happen it happened in a matter of months not a matter of years and it appeared to work [2:10:44] uh in tests in the western united states when on september 4th we held the principles meeting that's been [2:10:56] discussed the issue on the table was would cia fly the armed predator and cia took the view in the [2:11:05] principles meeting that it was not their job to fly armed uavs and they did not want to fly the armed [2:11:14] predator under their authority i was informed by people who had were in the cia that during the the [2:11:22] discussions in side cia people in the directorate of operations had raised objections saying for example [2:11:32] that if cia flies the armed predator and it kills bin laden then cia agents all around the world will be [2:11:41] at risk of retaliation attack by al-qaeda i didn't think that was a very persuasive reason [2:11:50] because i thought cia agents were already at risk of attack by al-qaeda in any event uh as the [2:11:57] september fourth principles meeting ended cia had not agreed to fly the mission september 11th happened [2:12:07] cia then agreed to fly the armed predator mission it went into operation very quickly in afghanistan it [2:12:16] found the military command i think within a month it it found the military commander of al-qaeda [2:12:25] and because it was armed then uh it could not only find things it could kill them and it launched [2:12:34] a missile a hellfire missile at the military commander of al-qaeda and killed him and his [2:12:41] associates um that answers the question that answers the question thank you mr chairman okay [2:12:51] mr clark thank you very much thank you not only for your testimony today but thank you for [2:12:58] your extraordinary time you spent already with the commission and your willingness to help us with