Richard Clarke

Richard Clarke was an expert in counter-terrorism and former employee of the State Department during the Reagan Administration. He was eventually a member of the 9/11 Commission.

Controversies

In 2001, Clarke, a Clinton administration holdover, was pushed off of the National Security Council Principals Committee in the Bush administration after he, along with White House staffer Susan Rice, overruled Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's efforts to capture Osama bin Laden. As a deputy, Clarke handed up mem9s written by the CIA, "Bin Laden determined to strike in the United States," but when questioned was never able to provide any specifics as to where and when.

Clarke resigned from his post in 2003, resentful of his demotion and loss of status on the Principal's Committee who enjoyed face-to-face briefings with Bill Clinton. Condoleeza Rice helped Clarke save face in the wake of intelligence failures, "I don't think that anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile."