Clarke takes fall for Saudi flight decision

According to an article on The Hill, Richard Clarke now takes full responsibility for the decision to allow Saudi VIP's and assorted Bin Ladens to leave the US just after 9/11.

http://www.thehill.com/news/052604/clarke.aspx

Clarke said yesterday that the furor over the flights of Saudi citizens is much ado about nothing.

“This is a tempest in a teapot,” he said, adding that, since the attacks, the FBI has never said that any of the passengers aboard the flight shouldn’t have been allowed to leave or were wanted for further investigation.

He said that many members of the bin Laden family had been subjects of FBI surveillance for years before the attacks and were well-known to law-enforcement officials.

“It’s very funny that people on the Hill are now trying to second-guess the FBI investigation.”

<snip>

McIntyre commentary from today's edition of realclearpolitics.com:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/commentary.html#5_26_04_0803

So what gives? On one hand, it looks pretty simple: Clarke was the person responsible for authorizing the flight. If so, then his testimony before the Commission was at best misleading and the fact he's kept silent about it knowing the Commission has been desperately seeking the answer shreds whatever is left of his credibility (which isn't much, if you ask me).

But if Clarke really was responsible for authorizing the flight for bin Laden's relatives it begs the obvious question: wouldn't someone from the White House have testified to that effect or leaked the information to the press?

On the other hand the article still seems to suggest, as do the quotes from Commissioner Roemer, that Clarke simply could not have been responsible for authorizing the flight on his own and had to have received direction from someone higher up in the White House. In other words, Clarke is taking the fall.

Why on earth would he do that? It makes absolutely no sense that Clarke would step up and fall on his sword to do the Bush administration any favors.

<snip>

Freepers post McIntyre's story and interesting comments flow forth.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1142456/posts

My take: Clarke has always been a red herring/ally of Bushco. His book, while likely not welcome, was part of the fall-back "incompetence and failure to connect the dots" strategy that was put into effect once the 9/11 commission couldn't be stopped. Of course they got to read and vet the whole thing before it was published.

That he is now "falling on his sword" should be no surprise to anyone who's followed this closely. He is playing both sides publicly but still is on the * team.

And of course everyone is trying to second guess the FBI investigation. As in, WHAT FBI investigation?

"knowing the Commission has been desperately seeking the answer shreds whatever is left of his credibility (which isn't much, if you ask me)."

The question about the Saudi's leaving on a plane WAS addressed by the commission. They have not been "desperately" seeking the answer. They already knew this. Clarke's credibility is quite intact.

or in an interview around the time of the hearing because I remember him say it. Nothing new here.

:shrug:

Edit: oops! Just read the linked article.

The question isn't who approved the flight Clarke did, after consulting the FBI and talking it over with the Crisis Management Group. If you read his testimony, the answer is couched in Washington-speak, but it's there.

The real question is who suggested that the flight(s)take place in the first place. Here's the key graph in the article, buried very far down.

“I believe after the FBI came back and said it was all right with them, we ran it through the decision process for all these decisions that we were making in those hours, which was the interagency Crisis Management Group on the video conference,” Clarke testified. “I was making or coordinating a lot of the decisions on 9-11 in the days immediately after. And I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don’t know. The two — since you press me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State or the White House chief of staff’s office.”

There's no contradiction (though there was a misinterpretation). The question is the timing. Someone had to kick it to Clarke while he was actively managing the crisis on 9/11 or at latest 9/12. Who had the authority to take this to the person who was running the show on the most crucial day in our history? It had to come from inside the WH and from the highest possible level.