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.Clarke presided over a working group that included the counterterrorismheads of the CIA, FBI, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Departments of Defense,Justice, and State.But the National Coordinator for Infrastructure Protectionand Counterterrorism had a limited staff of twelve and no budget; moreover,operational decision making could come only from the departments and agen-cies of the intelligence community.As Clarke has pointed out, he had the appearance of responsibility for counterterrorism, but none of the tools orauthority to get the job done. Nevertheless, Clarke was in the middle of severalcounterterrorism operations.He was involved in the decision making about theCIA s snatch operation against Osama bin Laden in 1998.An Afghan team wasto capture bin Laden at his residence at Tarnak Farms near Kandahar.This raidwas called off because there was a lack of confidence that it would succeed byCIA leadership, the White House, and Clarke.Clarke continued his position on the National Security Council during theearly years of the Bush administration.He proposed a plan to combat al-Qaedathat included covert aid to the Afghan leader of the Northern Alliance, Massoud,spy flights of the new Predator, and ways to eliminate bin Laden as a threat to theUnited States, but there was little enthusiasm for this report by the Bush admin-istration.Becoming frustrated, Clarke decided to resign from government workin November 2001.In the interval, the events of September 11, 2001, transpired,changing the American political landscape.On September 12, President Bushinstructed him to try to find evidence that Saddam Hussein was connected toSeptember 11.Clarke sent a report to the White House stating categorically thatHussein had nothing to do with these terrorist attacks, but there is no evidenceindicating whether President Bush read the report.The report was sent back tobe updated and resubmitted, but nothing came of it. Clarke, Richard A.67Clarke left government serviceClarke s Apology to the Families of the Victims ofin 2003.He then became an out-9/11 before the 9/11 Commissionspoken critic of the Bush admin-istration and its policies prior toI welcome these hearings because of the opportunity thatSeptember 11.This led thethey provide to the American people to better understandWhite House to engage in awhy the tragedy of 9/11 happened and what we must docharacter assassination campaignto prevent a recurrence.against him.Clarke testified forI also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forumtwenty hours during the 9/11where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims ofCommission hearings.He made9/11.To them who are here in the room, to those who arenational headlines for his apologywatching on television, your government failed you, thosethat the government had failed toentrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you.prevent the September 11 attacksWe tried hard, but that doesn t matter because we failed.(see sidebar).In the middle ofthe 9/11 Commission hearings,Richard A.Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America s War onClarke published his bookTerror (New York: Free Press, 2004), p.293.Against All Enemies: InsideAmerica s War on Terror,which gives his side of thecontroversy.In his book Clarke wasespecially critical of theBush administration s inva-sion of Iraq.Most of hiscriticism stems from hisbelief that, by redirectingattention away from binLaden and al-Qaeda, theBush administration hasallowed al-Qaeda to recon-stitute itself into an ongo-ing threat to the UnitedStates.In his eyes the inva-sion of Afghanistan was sohalf-hearted in its commit-ment of American forcesthat bin Laden and nearlyall of the al-Qaeda andTaliban leaders easilyescaped.By not committingthe necessary resources torebuild Afghanistan, Clarkewrote, the Bush administra-tion has allowed both al-Qaeda and the Taliban toFormer White House counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarkethreaten the pro-Americanaddresses the American Library Association s annual conventionAfghanistan state, all toin Orlando, Florida, in 2004 while promoting his book Againstdepose Saddam Hussein.All Enemies.(AP IMAGES/Bruce Weaver.) 68 Cleanup Operations at Ground ZeroSee AlsoBush, George W.; Bush Administration; Clinton AdministrationSee DocumentsDocument #8; Document #31Suggested ReadingDaniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror (New York: Random House,2002); Richard A.Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America s War on Terror (New York:Free Press, 2004); Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, andBin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Books,2004); Timothy Naftali, Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (BasicBooks, 2005).Cleanup Operations at Ground ZeroAlmost immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center, cleanup operationsstarted at Ground Zero.The collapse of the Twin Towers meant that there was lit-tle chance of survivors, but the effort had to be made.New York Fire Department(NYFD) firefighters, New York City police, Port Authority police, and others fromfederal agencies began looking for survivors.Only a handful of survivors were foundthe first day and none thereafter.For the first few days there was chaos as the bucketbrigades were ineffectual and barely scratched the surface of the debris.The prob-lem was that the debris from the buildings had fallen into four different sectors thatwere almost cut off from each other.At first, heavy equipment could not get intothe site because of the fallen pedestrian bridge on West Street, so the only debris thatwas recovered on the first couple of days was by hand.There was also a cloud of accumulated dust and fumes hanging over the sceneof destruction [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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