Inside Politics

Clarke vs. Clarke

Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism official promoting a book critical of the Bush administration, insists Saddam Hussein had no connection to al Qaeda. But in 1999, he defended President Clinton’s attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant by revealing that the United States was “sure” it manufactured chemical-warfare materials produced by Iraqi experts in cooperation with Osama bin Laden, WorldNetDaily.com reports.

Mr. Clarke told The Washington Post in a Jan. 23, 1999, story that U.S. intelligence officials had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, which was hit with Tomahawk cruise missiles in retaliation for bin Laden’s role in the Aug. 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Africa.

The sample contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, which when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas, Mr. Clarke said.

Mr. Clarke told the newspaper that the United States did not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it.

“But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve-gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan,” the newspaper reported.

Heroic imagination

“Some might suggest that [Richard Clarke’s] book is a distorted, false, sour-grapes account from a demoted government official who wants to settle scores …” New York Post columnist John Podhoretz writes.

“But that’s because they simply don’t comprehend the power and the glory that is Dick Clarke,” Mr. Podhoretz said.

“He is the man who took charge of America on 9/11 by ‘putting together a secure teleconference to manage the crisis,’ he writes on page 2.

“A secure teleconference! Wow!

“If you knew anything about Washington, you would surely think that a staffer on the National Security Council — traditionally a role without a great deal of authority — wouldn’t be a major decision-maker during the day of and the days following the attack on this country.

“That’s because You Don’t Know Dick Clarke.

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