Clarke: A Man on a Mission
`Scurrilous," charged National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. "He may have a grudge to bear," opined Vice President Dick Cheney. The object of their wrath last week: a balding, white-haired career civil servant named Richard Clarke, who said that the Bush White House failed to make terrorism an urgent priority.
The vehemence of the attacks came not merely over the message--others have made similar charges--but over the messenger. For Dick Clarke, counterterrorism czar under two presidents, is an unlikely critic: A registered Republican, he is known for his tough-minded views and has worked in national security posts in four administrations, dating to the Reagan years. "Dick Clarke is no liberal," says former Ambassador Robert Gelbard, who worked with him at the State Department in the early 1990s. "He is very hawkish. And that's part of his frustration."
"Pile driver." The combative Clarke was virtually unknown outside counterterrorism circles until last week, when he kicked off release of his aptly named book, Against All Enemies, with an appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes. Alternately regarded as a brusque, uncontrolled bully and a brilliant, dogged Paul Revere, Clarke made his share of friends and enemies in the insular world of Washington's national security bureaucracy.
Raised by a divorced nurse in working-class Boston, Clarke earned a management degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, in 1973, began a 30-year government career. During the Reagan years, he rose to become a top intelligence official at the State Department, but he was forced to leave in 1992, after the agency's inspector general found he had failed to stop Israeli exports of U.S. technology to China. Clarke soon surfaced at the White House's National Security Council, where his sharp elbows were valued by officials trying to run the sprawling national security apparatus. In 1995, he became the NSC's first terrorism chief. Pressed repeatedly to fire him, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger refused, telling colleagues he "wanted a pile driver" to fight terrorism. After 9/11, Bush's NSC chief, Rice, moved him to a newly created position dealing with cybersecurity. Last year, after setting a record for continuous NSC service, he left to form his own consulting firm.
Known for his workaholic hours and laserlike focus, Clarke seemed almost unfazed by the spotlight's glare. On Thursday, after hours of grueling testimony before the 9/11 commission, he completed a round of news interviews, then at 9 p.m. did a one-on-one with CNN's Larry King, and was up at 6 the next morning, jetting off to a cybersecurity conference in Indiana. Asked how he does it, Clarke laughed: "There are three of me." -David E. Kaplan
This story appears in the April 5, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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