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Dubya
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Here's Clarke's response to questions about this earlier testimony:
Quote:
THOMPSON: Mr. Clarke, in this background briefing . . . you intended to mislead the press, did you not?
"CLARKE: No. I think there is a very fine line that anyone who's been in the White House, in any administration, can tell you about. And that is when you are special assistant to the president and you're asked to explain something that is potentially embarrassing to the administration, because the administration didn't do enough or didn't do it in a timely manner and is taking political heat for it, as was the case there, you have a choice. Actually, I think you have three choices. You can resign rather than do it. I chose not to do that. Second choice is . . . .
"THOMPSON: Why was that, Mr. Clarke? You finally resigned because you were frustrated.
"CLARKE: I was, at that time, at the request of the president, preparing a national strategy to defend America's cyberspace, something which I thought then and think now is vitally important. I thought that completing that strategy was a lot more important than whether or not I had to provide emphasis in one place or other while discussing the facts on this particular news story.
"The second choice one has, Governor, is whether or not to say things that are untruthful. And no one in the Bush White House asked me to say things that were untruthful, and I would not have said them.
"In any event, the third choice that one has is to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were, and that is what I did.
"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.
"THOMPSON: But you will admit that what you said in August of 2002 is inconsistent with what you say in your book?
"CLARKE: No, I don't think it's inconsistent at all. I think, as I said in your last round of questioning, Governor, that it's really a matter here of emphasis and tone. I mean, what you're suggesting, perhaps, is that as special assistant to the president of the United States when asked to give a press backgrounder I should spend my time in that press backgrounder criticizing him. I think that's somewhat of an unrealistic thing to expect.
"THOMPSON: Well, 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.
"CLARKE: I don't get that. . . . I don't think it's a question of morality at all. I think it's a question of politics.
"THOMPSON: Well, I. . . . "
(And here Thompson has to pause to wait for the victims of the relatives in the gallery to stop applauding.)
"THOMPSON: I'm not a Washington insider. I've never been a special assistant in the White House. I'm from the Midwest. So I think I'll leave it there."
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And here's him with Larry King:
Quote:
"KING: But the question, Dick, was why did you praise them two years ago?
"CLARKE: I didn't praise them. What you're referring to is this background briefing that the White House leaked today in violation of the rules on background briefings. When I was a special assistant to the president -- here's what happened.
"Time magazine came out with a very explosive story saying, that, in fact, the White House hasn't done everything it could have done. That in fact, that the administration had been handed a plan by me at the beginning of the administration to deal with al Qaeda and that they ignored it. Remember this, this was the cover story on Time and said they had a plan.
"Well, that hurt the White House a lot for obvious reasons. It was true. And they asked me to try to help them out. I was working for the president of the United States at the time. And I said, well, look, I'm not going to lie. And they said, look, can't you at least emphasize the things that we did do? Emphasize the positive?
"Well, you had no other choice at that moment. There are three things you can do. You can resign rather than do it, you can lie and say the administration did all these things it didn't do. Or, if you want to stay inside the government and try to continue to change it from inside, you can stay on, do what they ask you to do, give a background briefing to the press and emphasize those things which they had done. And I chose to do that.
"But, you know, it seems very ironic to me that what the White House is sort of saying is they don't understand why I, as a special assistant to the president of the United States, didn't criticize the president to the press. If I had criticized the president to the press as a special assistant, I would have been fired within an hour. They know that. This is part of their whole attempt to get Larry King to ask Dick Clarke this kind of question. So we're not talking about the major issue.
"KING: We're going to get to that in a minute. But who told you to do that briefing?
"CLARKE: The national security adviser, the press secretary, the communication's director, they all talked to me, asked me to do the briefing and were telling me to spin it in a very positive way. "
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What can I say, it makes total sense for him to say what he did at that point in time.
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"In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. It's - and it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work. We're making progress. It is hard work."
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