GOP Seeks to Unseal Clarke’s ’02 Testimony

WASHINGTON —  Key congressional Republicans on Friday called for declassifying the testimony that former White House anti-terrorism chief Richard Clarke delivered behind closed doors to a congressional panel two years ago.

GOP leaders contended it would show whether Clarke’s testimony in 2002 contradicted his recent public criticism of how the Bush administration dealt with terrorism before Sept. 11.

Clarke this week suggested the administration was not aggressive enough in addressing the threat posed by Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks. The former White House official’s criticism, contained in testimony before an independent commission investigating the attacks, as well as in a new book, brought forth a torrent of attacks from administration defenders.

But congressional aides from both parties who were familiar with Clarke’s nearly six hours of closed-door testimony on June 11, 2002, before a House-Senate panel said they did not believe his statements then were significantly inconsistent with his recent public statements.

The call for declassifying Clarke’s old testimony, coupled with a harsh personal denunciation, came from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on the Senate floor. It escalated a political “he-said, he-said” that has inflamed debate from Capitol Hill to the presidential campaign trail about the Bush administration’s actions before Sept. 11.

Bush has made his national security credentials a major theme of his campaign.

A White House spokesman said the administration was “working to accommodate” a request originally made by Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and endorsed by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) on Friday to examine whether Clarke’s testimony could be made public without compromising national security.

Goss’ panel would probably need a vote of its members to approve declassification of the Clarke testimony, whether in whole or in part.

One congressional aide familiar with Clarke’s testimony said: “They’re grabbing at straws and throwing up a lot of chaff and hope they score.”

Clarke spent many hours before the committee and provided a thick volume of testimony, the aide said. “But I think on the major issues, he’s consistent. I don’t think they’ll find anything.”

Bush allies charged during commission hearings this week that a 2002 news briefing by Clarke in which he defended the administration’s pre-Sept. 11 actions detracted from the credibility of his criticism of Bush policies now.

“What it suggests to me is that there is one standard of candor and morality for White House special assistants and another standard of candor and morality for the rest of America,” said former Illinois Gov. James Thompson, a Republican commission member.

However, Clarke retorted: “I don’t think it’s a question of morality at all. I think it’s a question of politics.”

Clarke parried questions about whether he had deliberately offered two versions of events by sketching out what he said were the realities of life in official Washington. As a member of the Bush administration, he had opted, he said, “to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were, and that is what I did. And I think that is what most people in the White House in any administration do when they’re asked to explain something that is embarrassing to the administration.”

Roger Cressey, who works with Clarke at Good Harbor Consulting LLC, said Clarke’s closed-door testimony would not contradict the book or his public comments.

“It doesn’t contradict at all what he was saying,” Cressey said. “You don’t lie in a book. It’s a red herring. What else are they going to do? It’s the only way the Republicans can go on the attack and divert people away from the substance of the book” and Clarke’s public statements.

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he could recall “nothing inconsistent or contradictory” from what Clarke told the congressional panel privately and what he said publicly this week to the independent commission.

In his appearance Wednesday before the Sept. 11 commission, Clarke testified that while the Clinton administration treated Al Qaeda as an urgent threat, the Bush administration did not, preferring to focus on going to war in Iraq.

Delivering the latest and perhaps harshest attack on Clarke by the president’s allies, Frist said: “Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath.” Frist contended that Clarke, in his 2002 appearance before the congressional panel, “testified under oath that the administration actively sought to address the threat posed by Al Qaeda during its first seven months in office.”

“If, in the summer of 2001, he saw the threat from Al Qaeda as grave as he now says it was, and if he found the response of the administration as inadequate as he now says it was, why did he wait until Sunday, March 21, 2004, to make his concerns known?” Frist said, referring to Clarke’s appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

Frist accused the former Bush advisor of an “appalling act of profiteering” to use his insider access to write a book. The Senate GOP leader also attacked Clarke for what he called his “theatrical apology” to the families of Sept. 11 victims during his appearance Wednesday before the commission.

Clarke told the families: “Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness.”

Frist said Clarke’s apology “on behalf of the nation was not his right, his privilege or his responsibility.... Mr. Clarke can and will answer for his own conduct -- but that is all.”

“The fact remains,” Frist added, “that this terrible attack was not caused by the United States government. No administration was responsible for the attack.... The attack on 9/11 was the evil design of a determined and hate-filled few who slipped through the defenses of a nation that treasures its freedoms.”

Goss, in an interview, declined to discuss Clarke’s closed-door testimony. Although he has yet to read Clarke’s book, he said that he has heard Clarke on television and read his comments in newspapers, and said he was “absolutely stunned” by them.

“I can assure you that if the joint inquiry on 9/11 back in 2002 had heard statements like that, they would certainly have led to certain kinds of findings and discussions,” Goss said. He said he was seeking to set the record straight as part of his job to make sure the intelligence system was working well.

Graham, co-chair of the House-Senate Joint Inquiry into intelligence failures preceding Sept. 11, said he had no objections to making public Clarke’s testimony so long as it was released in its entirety, “not, as the Bush administration has done in the past, selectively edited so that only favorable portions are made public.”

Graham said in a statement that the Bush administration also should release all other testimony and documents related to Sept. 11 “for which classification can no longer be justified.” He was referring to 27 pages that had been widely reported as disclosing possible links between individuals working for the Saudi government and at least three of the hijackers while they lived in the United States and planned the attacks.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, said Clarke’s book “raises very, very serious questions,” but said Republicans should stop public attacks on Clarke. “My challenge to the Bush administration would be, if he’s not believable and they have reason to show it, then prosecute him for perjury, because he is under oath. They have a perfect right to do that.”

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Frist’s criticism of Clarke was part of “a full-court press to discredit an administration critic.”

She said in an interview that she would have to review Clarke’s testimony before determining whether it could be declassified without compromising national security. But she added, “If we’re revisiting the declassification issue, let’s tell as much of the story as we can tell ... and let’s not give the impression that we’re just selectively targeting a witness who happens to have written a bestselling book.”

Meanwhile, another controversy continued to simmer on Capitol Hill on Friday over National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s decision not to testify under oath before the Sept. 11 commission. The White House has pledged to make Rice available to the committee in private and not under oath.

“It’s the height of hypocrisy when she says she will not give public testimony to the 9/11 commission when she’s giving public interviews on all four TV networks,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who argued that the commission should use its subpoena power to compel Rice to testify.

While many former government officials argue that the precedent of shielding presidential aides from congressional testimony should be upheld, Nelson countered, “That’s a ruse when you’re dealing with the security of the country ... and she’s contradicting herself. Time to call her in.”

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Times staff writers Josh Meyer and Sonni Efron contributed to this story.