White House tries to shoot the messenger

America/Conor O'Clery: Early on Sunday Eric Ruff dropped into a Starbucks in Washington and scribbled a few talking points for…

America/Conor O'Clery: Early on Sunday Eric Ruff dropped into a Starbucks in Washington and scribbled a few talking points for his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, apparently dictated by the White House.

The Pentagon aide then walked to the Defence Secretary's home nearby to brief him for the Sunday morning talk shows. But he left behind his notes, which were turned over to the Center for American Progress - a pro-Democrat research centre. Now on the centre's web site, they reveal deep White House concern about the charges by counter-terrorism aide Richard Clarke that the Bush administration was negligent about the terrorist threat before 9/11 and undermined the war on terrorism by invading Iraq.

"We need be careful as hell about it," noted Ruff. "This thing will go away soon and what will keep it alive will be one of us going over the line." Referring to Clarke's most damaging allegation, that his anti-terrorism plan was ready by January 2001 but not approved until September 4th, Ruff helpfully pointed out it had an annex going back to July with "contingency plans to attack Taliban". Finally, he cautioned Rumsfeld, he should "rise above Clark".

Donald Rumsfeld took that advice, but the White House and its allies did not however "rise above Clarke". They set out to discredit him instead. He was a closet Democrat making partisan charges, suggested White House press secretary Scott McClellan, pointing out that "his best friend is Rand Beers, who is the principal adviser to the Kerry campaign," Beers is a former Bush counter-terrorism aide who quit last year claiming the White House was not "matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism" and now advises Kerry on national security.

READ MORE

McClellan then implied he was a liar. Asked about Clarke's account of President Bush pressing him in the situation room the day after 9/11 to find an Iraq connection, McClellan said there was no record of such a meeting and "when the president is in the situation room, we keep track of that". Condoleezza Rice later had to admit the meeting could have taken place and anyway the president asked Clarke "a perfectly logical question . . . did Iraq have anything to do with this?" He was even soft on terrorism, suggested McClellan, as Clarke had recommended they "roll back" al-Qaeda, but "we pursued a policy to eliminate al-Qaeda".

Senate majority leader Bill Frist insinuated that Clarke was corrupt as he may have perjured himself if his testimony to the 9/11 commission differed from that to a secret Senate committee (other Senators say it doesn't).

Vice President Dick Cheney inferred that Clarke didn't know what he was talking about. He told conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh that Clarke "was moved out of the counter-terrorism business over to the cyber-security side of things" and "wasn't in the loop, frankly."

Clarke in fact remained anti-terrorism czar until two months after September 11th and Condoleezza Rice later had to contradict Cheney. The national security adviser herself suggested Clarke was unprincipled and petty: she said his charge that the administration was slow to grasp the danger from al-Qaeda was "scurrilous" and ridiculed his complaint that he could not get a cabinet-level meeting to discuss al-Qaeda's threat until September 4th as if it suggested that somehow "the attack on 9/11 could have been prevented by a series of meetings."

Rush Limbaugh suggested he was gay, referring to Clarke, who is single, as a "drama queen". Conservative columnist Robert Novak hinted at racism and sexism, suggesting that Clarke "had a problem with this African American woman, Condoleezza Rice."

Finally Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for Ms Rice, made the case that Clarke was, well weird. He "visualises chanting by bin Laden and bin Laden has a mystical mind control over US officials," said Wilkinson. "This is sort of X-Files stuff."

In his book Against All Enemies Clarke wrote that by invading Iraq Bush played into bin Laden's hands, adding sarcastically that it was as if the al-Qaeda leader was "engaged in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting "Invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq."

The effort to shoot the messenger largely failed. There were too many credible voices contradicting the critics, like Republican Senator Warren Rudman, former head of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, who said Clarke was "exceptionally bright and dedicated" and "the most non-political person I've known".

On Tuesday President George Bush caved in to pressure and appeared in the White House press room to offer up Condoleezza Rice to the 9/11 commission to respond to Clarke's charges.

Bush said he himself would appear in private, accompanied by Dick Cheney, a decision that only invited ridicule from the late night comics. "Why does he have to have an adult with him," asked Jay Leno on NBC.

More evidence that the White House is in denial mode. On Monday CBS comic David Letterman showed a hilarious clip of President Bush speaking while a bored child behind him yawned, fidgeted and fell asleep. Harmless stuff. But when CNN showed it the next day they accused Letterman of cheating.

"We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited in." Letterman went ballistic. "It was 100 per cent absolute lie", he told his audience. The tape it turned out had not been tampered with.

At least President Bush came up this week with a new way of bringing down the deficit. Other countries should share the responsibility, he said. "Why should every kid born in America be stuck with $35,000 in debt - when we can just outsource it and stick it to every kid on the planet." The quote came from the National democratic Committee. It was as genuine as the press release from the Republican National Committee that Kerry's French cousin had called to say he supported President Bush. Both were dated April 1st.