Clarke known as a doer who wasn't afraid to step on toes

By Paul Richter
Los Angeles Times

	CHUCK KENNEDY / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS Former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke testifies yesterday in Washington, D.C., before the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
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WASHINGTON — In his 30 years as a master Washington bureaucrat, Richard Clarke learned to get the job done, no matter what it took — and no matter whom it annoyed.

If Clarke needed money for a program, he wouldn't hesitate to fish it out of someone else's budget. If he wanted action from a military officer, he'd call the officer in the field, ignoring the Pentagon's chain of command. "Government is designed not to work," he would tell subordinates. "Our job is to make it work anyway."

It made him one of Washington's most effective bureaucrats. But it also made enemies of those he thought stood in the way of his mission.

This week, those enemies have come to include President Bush and senior officials of the administration that Clarke once served as the nation's top counterterrorism official.

On Monday, White House officials denounced his new book, "Against All Enemies," as irresponsible. Clarke fired back that it was "outrageous" for Bush to run on an anti-terrorism record that the book described as counterproductive.

Over three decades, Clarke, 53, has held national-security posts at the Pentagon, State Department and White House, rising to high-level positions in the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

"If you were obstructing things, he'd roll you," said Jonathan Winer, a friend and former State Department law-enforcement official. "And people who were trying to defend their territory against him would say ... you couldn't turn your back on him." His previous boss, former national security adviser Sandy Berger, has said he regularly had to turn down demands from colleagues that Clarke be fired.

Some in the Reagan and both Bush administrations thought his politics leaned a little to the left; some in the Clinton administration feared that, because of his past service, he might be a little too far to the right. But his knowledge of the issues and the system kept his career advancing.

When Islamic militants hit the World Trade Center in 1993 and a Japanese cult attacked a Tokyo subway in 1995, Clarke argued for more action and more spending against terrorism. In 1998, after al-Qaida bombed U.S. embassies in Africa, the Clinton administration promoted him to be the first federal counterterrorism "czar."
 
Minutes after the second jetliner hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Clarke recounts in his book, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice anointed him "crisis manager."

The assignment meant Clarke found himself ordering around high-level officials and urging his superiors to ground air traffic, according to his account. He also takes credit for barring President Bush from immediately returning to Washington.

Raised in Boston and trained at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Clarke worked night and day at the White House, presiding over one meeting after another between top-level officials.

"He owned the situation room," Winer said. "When the government got stuck on an issue, he would push it forward. I saw that again and again."

Others described him as an aggressive official who couldn't take "no" for an answer.

"Of course he made enemies," said Steven Simon, a Rand Corp. scholar who worked with Clarke off and on for 20 years. "People got annoyed. He thought nothing of bypassing the Pentagon to talk to military commanders, or going around the CIA to the (National Security Agency) to get to the bottom of an intelligence issue."

Clarke pushed the CIA to provide him better and more intelligence. He pushed the FBI to log progress on investigations related to terrorism, even though then-FBI Director Louis Freeh was resisting pressure from the Clinton White House.

Clarke's brash manner is on full display in "Against All Enemies," a searing portrait of missteps and misjudgments in the war on terror. While laying some blame on the former Bush and Clinton administrations, Clarke is most explicit in his criticism of George W. Bush and his top advisers, particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. They are portrayed as indifferent to al-Qaida but obsessed with Iraq and Saddam Hussein, even after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Associates said Clarke, who describes himself politically as an independent, didn't discuss policy in partisan terms. Simon said he believed that Clarke was "a dove in domestic politics, and a hawk in foreign policy."

But White House spokesman Scott McClellan noted Monday that Clarke is a close friend of former counterterrorism official Rand Beers, who is an adviser to Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign, and teaches a course with him.

One current CIA official pointed out that Clarke also has a stake in defending his legacy. "He's got his own record to defend," the official said. "The fact is that September 11 happened on his watch, a watch that extended quite a few years. There's no doubt that he's been very serious for some time in defending those records."

When Bush took office, Clarke was one of the few officials held over from the Clinton administration in a senior post. But his office was reduced in importance in a reorganization of the National Security Council.

In November 2001, he changed jobs, becoming special adviser on cyberterrorism. And in February 2003, two months after the White House blocked his selection as deputy secretary of the new Homeland Security Department, he submitted his resignation.

Bush invited Clarke to his office for a goodbye chat. Associates said senior White House officials thought he didn't fit into its low-key, consensus-oriented style.

For his part, Clarke in his final months felt growing frustration with the Bush team, associates said. Winer said Clarke told him "he couldn't work for these people anymore."

Information from The Washington Post is included in this report.

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