THE CLARKE STORY: THE MEDIA DRIVES RIGHT PAST THE POINT

As I was reading the Times coverage this morning I became convinced that something I had noticed in a few stories last night wasn't incidental but absolutely central to the way reporters saw the danger Clarke posed (politically) to the President. They're right: Richard Clarke and his story are without a doubt a political threat to this President. But they utterly misunderstand why.

Before I get there, there are a few quick details about the Times coverage I want to get out of the way. First, bloggers have been very delicate about the fact that none of us have read the book, very specific about the need to keep an open mind and so forth (a specification, I note, absent from the press coverage, since you know all those guys have seen so far is the press kit.) While that's true, I want to also be clear that I feel no compunctions about going full bore after anything said about Clarke's arguments at this stage. The reason is that Clarke's arguments now (or the way they are presented in the media, anyway) may or may not reflect what is in the book, but they are being used to sell the book. Nevertheless, it is the arguments from these interviews, which double up as serious news interviews, such as the 60 Minutes interview or his interview on GMA yesterday, and book tour, that will form the public's impression of what Clarke has to say. Those impressions will harden independent of whatever said is or is not in the book: there will not be a second round of interviews after everyone has read the book and the vast majority of us will not actually read the book. This is the game.

Second: the Times notes that one of the witnesses for this conversation that supposedly took place after September 11th with the President about looking for a link to Saddam is Richard Cressey, then his assistant and now a partner with him in a consulting company. That's fine, I don't think it increases or decreases Cressy's credibility as a witness, but because it might it is incumbant upon the Times to give me that information so that I can reflect upon what it might mean to me as I weigh Cressey's credibility as a witness. And that's why it was incumbant upon NBC to have given me that information last night when they quoted Cressey on the same point, especially since Cressey is also an NBC consultant.

Third: just to give a little big picture perspective here. Clarke's big idea that was supposedly not being implemented fast enough was to push money through to the Northern Alliance. Just so we're clear. That's the same Northern Alliance that everyone is not complaining about as the Warlords who are running the country into the ground.

(As I'm typing this I'm listening to Jonathon Alter on Imus and he is going on about the great White House trashing machine, comparing what is being done to Clarke to what was done to Monica Lewinsky. That's why I mentioned before the use of the word "personal." "Personal" is when you go after the person beyond the particular dispute. When you attack their personal characteristics. I'm really missing something here. I see them angry. I see them going after his on this story. I don't see them trying to destroy him in a way that matches the responses we're getting.)

Now to my global response. Clarke essentially makes two charges against the administration. The first is that prior to September 11th the administration was slow out of the gate, wasn't paying attention, wouldn't take meetings. The second was that after the attacks the President cornered him and demanded he go back and sift through everything and look for a link to Iraq.

Put aside the merits of both. My argument is that consistently the press is drawn to the second charge, sees it as more damning, more dangerous, more potentially damaging politically to the President. Here's my argument: they're crazy. Think about this for a second: the second charge is that the President wanted his guys to go look and see, after the largest terrorist attack in history, an attack so sophisticated that many reasonable people looked at it and just could not believe that it could have been executed without state sponsorship, wanted them to look and see whether, even though there had been no links before, Iraq may have suddenly hooked up with al Queda. Would that have been unprecedented? You mean as opposed to hijacking four planes and using them as missiles?

It's been on the record for over two years that Iraq was brought up within days of the attack. It's been on the record for over two years that Iraq was put off the table within days of the attack. Now, the reporters are all crazy over this because what was said at that meeting wasn't that Iraq was permanently off the table, but that Iraq was another front on the war on terror. But the White House has always been up front that it conceptualized it that way. So it just isn't clear to me that this is a new and explosive charge. If you are angry over Iraq you will be angry over Iraq, if you aren't you won't be.

But if you support the President because you believe he has been a strong leader in the War on Terror and responded to September 11th with leadership, got us through our worst day with grace and strength and calm and strength -- and now you find out that in fact he had been ignoring warning signs for months? That's devastating if true.

How can the political reporters miss that so profoundly? I hate to say it, but I think they are just deeply out of touch with what matters to most people. Any sniff that this administration cared about Iraq coming to office is somehow some huge piece of evidence of . . . what, exactly, I'm not sure, since they admitted during the campaign they were likely to be gunning for Iraq. But Iraq is a huge issue to the political reporters and it is without a doubt disconnected from the War on Terror, conceputally and every other way. Somehow they seem far more willing to forgive missing growing signs that al Queda was coming, and seem to be missing the amount of anger would be coming the administration's way if that turns out to be true.

This is a charge that has to be answered. To have "let" September 11th happen? There can be no more devastating charge and it isn't clear to me how these supposedly sophisticated readers of the American zeitgeist are all missing that. (Jonathan Alter is complaining about the way people who write books are trashed by those in power. "Take your lumps," says he. "But to put people on all the shows . . . and use all the machinery." Oh. I guess they were supposed to just nobly accept the charges. And then wait to see what the likes of Alter had to say about it.)

Update: The Times editorial is a perfect example. (By the way, I was not trying to argue Iraq was involved in 9/11. I was trying to argue that the idea that on the day someone would ask the question does not seem unreasonable.)

Comments

[The Kid]

The media did a poor job of describing Richard Clarke’s roles in the various administrations. He became the head counterintelligence (CI) guy during the Clinton administration and asserts that he was a proponent for a muscular response to terrorist strikes, but that his arguments fell on deaf ears. His effectiveness may have been diminished for a number of reasons having more to do with that administration’s attitudes than with his own effectiveness. I do, however, have the distinct impression that in the latter days of the Clinton administration and in the early days of the Bush administration he may not have been as prescient as he now avers, but rather found potential terrorist threats everywhere. I can see Condi Rice making him the Cybersecurity Czar to get him to focus his arguments and better articulate the threat in a way that specific offensive action – rather than defensive measures like firewalls and anti-virus programs – could be assessed.

Journalists are doing a lousy job of covering this administration because they don’t understand large organizations and management theory. Bush’s key appointments were made not for political reasons, but because he wanted to reestablish control over the critical intelligence and defense organizations that had become politicized in the very political town of Washington, DC. Rice, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were brought in to transform sluggish, risk-averse organizations into effective tools of foreign policy and national defense.

This article explains in part why special forces were not so special: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/613twavk.asp

On NRO and the American Spectator Jed Babbin (deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration) has recounted some of the early challenges Rumsfeld encountered in getting the Pentagon top brass to take transformation seriously. While the other services saluted smartly, the Army under Shinseki’s leadership refused to give up bad ideas like Crusader and empower special forces.

Excerpt from this column: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=5286
And he’s doing just that. After years of fighting future Hawaii senator, and temporary Army Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki, Big Dog is rid of both Shinseki and Army Secretary Tom White, who was also a problem. That Spec Ops is the future is undeniably in Mr. Rumsfeld’s mind. He chose retired General Peter Schoomaker as the next Army Chief, a decision to be confirmed publicly this week. Schoomaker -- according to one of his War College classmates -- is as steady as they come. He should be. In his younger days, he was a Delta Force operator, and then commander of Delta and then of SOCOM itself.

And from this 7/30/2002 column: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=4179
[Army Secretary Thomas] White and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Shinseki have been the most stubborn opponents of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s plan to modernize our armed services.

Perhaps Mr. Clarke realizes that the Bush administration is more ably composed to project the force that he may have argued for in the 1990s. That he’s resorted to cheap partisan tricks at this time in the election cycle does not earn him my respect.

[M B H]

Seems to me the reason the press is less concerned with an alleged failure to address Bin Laden et al earlier is because that also reflects poorly on Clinton, whom they like more than Bush and who had much more time and opportunity to do something. But the Iraq "obsession" does not reflect equally poorly (if it is a poor thing, they seem to think so, but I don't) on Clinton specifically or Democrats more generally, so they go there to maximize what they see as their best chance to hurt Bush without damage to the Democrats.

M B H

[Ted]

Cori,

You and others will have a field day tomorrow when we see the headline items from the hearings today. I bet you could write tomorrows headlines today. Out of hours of testimony, it will all boil down to one or two "themes" And those themes will be the same ones we have seen.

[Jos]

I'm struck by Clarke's failure on he job when measured in his own terms.

In the fall of 2000 right up to 9/11, he was known as the cyberterrorism cassandra, warning of the dangers of hackers to national security. At the same time the 9/11 plotters were in the US, chatting openly in Arabic over the web with their masters in Al Quida about eh palns to attack the WTC.

Shouldn't a guy who was talking publicly about cybersecurity and privately about the threat from Al Quida have been able to pick up on that?

[Athena]

Seems to me the media focuses on the Iraq issue because prevention of September 11th would link too far in the past to the previous administration, and the immediacy would be lost. We mere viewers want the "hear and now" and are perceived to be too far removed from the tragedy of September 11 and focus more on perception of future attacks.

Harping on the previous President would set up a Bush v. Clinton situation, and refocus the game off of the current election coverage.

Also, the media has already been distorting the anti-war protests and movements, and this gives their coverage even more substance.

[Billmon]

I'm listening to Jonathon Alter on Imus and he is going on about the great White House trashing machine, comparing what is being done to Clarke to what was done to Monica Lewinsky.

Wrong analogy. Better analogy: What some Democrats tried to do to Linda Tripp.

And if you don't think it's happening, you must never dip your foot in the sewer of the rabid right press -- NewsMax, Limbaugh.com, etc.

[dauber]

Actually I never have listened to Limbaugh. I think Ive read some News Max stuff, but Im not sure. But I doubt either count as mainstream, much less as part of the WHITE HOUSE'S machinery, even if they believe they are operating on the White House's behalf. And they clearly weren't what Alter was talking about: he was talking about the orchestrated WH strategy, and while the WH strategy clearly is coordinated, (Condi on five morning shows, Dan Bartlett saying very similiar things on evening shows) it just didnt strike me as the kind of personally destructive politics as what was done to Tripp, or, what's her name, Im blanking on it now, the woman from Arkansas who sued ocer the right to sue re. sexual harassment claims. Those strategies really were, I think, about questions of who the PERSON was, and pale in comparsison to "he's bitter."

BTW, in response to something said in an earlier comment: I think it is simply false that the press as a group liked the Clintons. You can argue that they press may have a liberal bias, but whether they do or whether they dont doesnt mean that they arent human beings with personal preferences who respond to other human beings, and who respond the same way any of us would to being treated well, to being treated with respect, or being treated with disrespect. The press corps could take Al Gore or leave him during the campaign, but by the end of Clinton's term I dont think there's any question that while they may well have liked his POLICIES they just LOATHED the Clinton's as people. Look at the amount of air time, during the first two or three months of the Bush administration, that were given over to covering the last few scandals of the CLINTON administration!