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^huck Harrison: Forum: Clashing with Clarke in Class

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Op-eds Forum: Clashing with Clarke in Class

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by Chuck Harrison April 4, 2004 Reprinted from the Washington Times

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The country is in an uproar over former White House terrorism expert Richard Clarke's recent contentions, which will continue to be debated. Let me give some insight on my own very recent (February 2004) experience with Mr. Clarke, who teaches a class at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He teaches this class with Rand Beers, a former government official with National Security Council experience who now works on the Democratic presidential campaign. As a national security fellow at the Kennedy School, I attended one of Messrs. Beers' and Clarke's classes to discuss U.S. experiences in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti and Kosovo. I was involved in the planning or execution of each of these military operations and wrote my master's thesis on U.S. Somalia policy while attending the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994-95. I requested permission to sit in on the class, which Mr. Clarke cheerfully granted and told me to "pipe up" if I had anything to say, which I quickly did when I questioned his theory there were three major policy decisions during Somalia. While we were debating U.N. actions in Somalia, Mr. Clarke incorrectly stated the U.S. military made a unilateral decision to pull forces out of Somalia. The defense secretary and the president decide deployment and redeployment of combat forces, not the military. So I questioned his statement to the contrary. I specifically asked him to clarify his statement. He backed his contention, stating the military made the decision. He also said our participation in the U.N. mission in Macedonia proved how smooth U.N. operations could be. I reminded him of the soldiers taken prisoner by Serb forces and the ensuing crisis, but he ignored my

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2004/harrison_clarke_wt_040404.htm

4/7/2004

mshingtonpost.com: Phony Apology

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washingtonpost.com

Phony Apology By Charles Krauthammer Friday, April 2, 2004; Page A25

The New York Times swooned. Newsweek put it on its cover. Commentators everywhere expressed sorrowful dismay that President Bush had not done it long ago. Indeed, one has to admire it — the most cynical and brilliantly delivered apology in recent memory: Richard Clarke using the nationally televised Sept. 11 commission hearings to address the families of the victims. "Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you." Many were moved. I was not. For two reasons. First, the climactic confession "I failed you" ~ the one that packed the emotional punch ~ was entirely disingenuous. Clarke did the mea culpa and then spent the next 21/2 hours of testimony ~ as he did on every talk show known to man and in the 300 pages of his book -- demonstrating how everyone else except him had failed. And they failed because the stubborn, ignorant, ideologically blinkered, poll-driven knaves and fools he had been heroically fighting against within the government would not listen to him. Message: They failed you. Second, by blaming the government for the deaths of their loved ones, Clarke deftly endorsed the grotesque moral inversion by which those who died on Sept. 11 are victims o f . . . George Bush. This is about as morally obscene as the implication (made by, among others, the irrepressible Howard Dean) that those who died in the Madrid bombings were also victims of George Bush. This is false. They were all victims of al Qaeda and al Qaeda alone. Bill Clinton did not apologize for Oklahoma City. Ronald Reagan did not apologize for the Beirut bombing. FDR did not apologize for Pearl Harbor. George W. Bush owes no apology. If an apology is owed, it is owed to the entire country and not just the families, and it is owed by the murderers who planned and carried out Sept. 11. The most telling remark Clarke made in the entire hearing was one that did not make the cover of Newsweek. Former senator Slade Gorton: "Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25th of 2001 . . . had all been adopted say on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?" Clarke: "No."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43 572-2004Aprl ?language=printer

4/2/2004

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Mike Hurley From:

Warren Bass

Sent:

Wednesday, March 31, 2004 6:45 PM

To:

Team 3

Subject: The Dogs That Didn't Bark

This is sorta interesting—and not just because it settles an old Bass-Albion bet... war stories

The Dogs That Didn't Bark Why Colin Powell and George Tenet aren't bashing Richard Clarke.

By Fred Kaplan Posted Wednesday, March 31, 2004, at 2:39 PM PT In the short story "Silver Blaze," Sherlock Holmes solves the mystery of a stolen racehorse by observing that the stable's guard dog didn't bark—hence, the intruder was not a stranger. The mystery of whether Richard Clarke is telling the truth about President Bush's counterterrorism policies might be solved the same way: Which dogs aren't barking? Amid all the administration officials bombarding the airwaves with denunciations, who has stayed mum? The answer: Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet, and their silence speaks loudly. Tenet: Speaking no evil

Tenet is central to Clarke's case that Bush was negligent on terrorism. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others have said many times—in what they present as a defense against Clarke's charges—that Bush received an intelligence briefing from Tenet every morning and was therefore well aware of the threat from al-Qaida. But Clarke's point is that Bush didn't take Tenet's warnings seriously. Here's a key passage from Clarke's book, Against All Enemies (Page 235): [Tenet] and I regularly commiserated that al Qaeda was not being addressed more seriously by the new administration. Sometimes I would walk into my office and find the Director of Central Intelligence sitting at my desk or the desk of my assistant, Beverly Roundtree, waiting to vent his frustration. We agreed that Tenet would ensure that the president's daily briefings would continue to be replete with threat information on al Qaeda. This is where the famous "swatting flies" story appears. President Bush, reading the intelligence every day and noticing that there was a lot about al Qaeda, asked Condi Rice why it was that we couldn't stop "swatting flies" and eliminate al Qaeda. Rice told me about the conversation and asked how the plan to get al Qaeda was coming in the Deputies Committee. "It can be presented to the Principals [the Cabinet secretaries] in two days, whenever we can get a meeting," I pressed. Rice promised to get to it soon. Time passed.

3/31/2004

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Mike Hurley From:

Warren Bass

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Friday, March 26, 2004 5:55 PM

To:

Team 3

Subject: Clarke, condensed

juicy bits

Could We Have Prevented 9/11? Slate tells you what Richard Clarke's book reveals about the Bush and Clinton administrations' war on terror.

By Julia Turner Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004, at 5:19 PM PT : On March 24, Richard Clarke delivered a persuasive performance in front of the ' -\l 1 USt ; commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. Clarke—who has worked for ' ^ tb ' * Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, serving ' \t .r^w * as counterterrorism chief for the last two—apologized for his failures in * /\ll '"^««'T ', fighting al-Qaida. Then he slammed the Bush administration for paying ; , * , insufficient attention to the terrorist threat in the summer of 2001. His new L j \\ HI I {- ^ book, Against All Enemies, makes similar points at greater length. Although the book amounts to a chronicle of what many in the present Bush administration did wrong (and what Clarke and Clinton did right), it is neither shrill nor overly self-congratulatory. Unlike some of the books Slate has diced and julienned in this space, this one's worth reading, mostly for Clarke's informed account of al-Qaida's rise and the U.S. government's awareness of the threat. But since you may not have time to read the whole thing, Slate presents Clarke's most salient pieces of criticism and praise. ;,'i

What the Bushies Did Right Pages 1 -29: Put Clarke in charge on the morning of Sept. 11. Clarke describes how he led the Counterterrorism Security Group meeting in which State, Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, and others worked together to ground jets, rouse rescue workers, and protect the president that morning. (Meanwhile, Clarke reports, in the bunker where Dick Cheney and others were located, Lynne Cheney kept turning up CNN, drowning out the CSG teleconference.) Pages 23-24: Resolved to attack al-Qaida on the evening of Sept. 11. That night, Bush spoke to his staff: "I want you to understand that we are at war and we will stay at war until this is done. Nothing else matters." When Donald Rumsfeld pointed out the legal problems posed by some proposed attacks, Bush said, "I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." What the Bushies Did Wrong Page 30-32: Considered attacking Iraq on the evening of Sept. 12. At one point, Bush pulled a few of his advisors into a conference room: "Look," he told us. "I know you have a lot to do and all ... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way."

3/26/2004

Mike Hurley From: Sent: To: Subject:

Warren Bass Sunday, March 21, 2004 3:15 PM Team 3 This Week

FYI.

TRANSCRIPT March 21, 2004 NEWS PROGRAM GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS HOSTS ABC'S "THIS WEEK" ABC'S "THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS" MARCH 21, 2004 SPEAKERS:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST

U.S. SENATOR JOSEPH BIDEN (D-DE) U.S. SENATOR CHUCK HAGEL (R-NE) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE DEBORAH PRYCE (R-OH) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE HENRY WAXMAN (D-CA) FAREED ZAKARIA, ABC NEWS GEORGE WILL, ABC NEWS

(+ ) STEPHANOPOULOS:

Good morning, everyone.

In this first presidential election since the 9/11 attacks, national security is taking center stage. And after a week where the Bush administration commemorated the war in Iraq, intensified the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and questioned Senator Kerry's fitness to lead, the White House is now braced for revelations from one of its own. In a new book, the former head of counterterrorism for the National Security Council charges that President Bush and his top advisers ignored al Qaeda before 9/11 and focused on Iraq immediately after. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "60 MINUTES," CBS) RICHARD CLARKE, FORMER HEAD OF COUNTERTERRORISM, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying, We have looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked for a connection. (END VIDEO CLIP) STEPHANOPOULOS: As Richard Clarke and other top officials prepare to testify before the commission investigating September 11, we'll discuss the war in Iraq, the war on terror, and what it all means for the presidential campaign with Senators Chuck Hagel and Joseph Biden, senior members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They'll be joined by our own Fareed Zakaria and George Will. As always, we'll also bring you the latest headlines, the Note, and the List. 1

FOXNews.com

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ichannel Transcript: Richard Clarke August 2002 Briefing Wednesday, March 24, 2004 FOX NEWS WASHINGTON — The following transcript documents a background briefing in early August 2002 by President Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke to a handful of reporters, including Fox News' Jim Angle. In the conversation, cleared by the White House on Wednesday for distribution, Clarke describes the handover of intelligence from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration and the tatter's decision to revise the U. S. approach to Al Qaeda. Clarke was named special adviser to the president for cyberspace security in October 2001. He resigned from his post in January 2003.

RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Urn, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office — issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy — uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years. And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, mid-January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we've now made public to some extent. And the point is, while this big review was going on, there were still in effect, the lethal findings were still in effect. The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided. So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, fivefold, to go after Al Qaeda. The sixth point, the newly-appointed deputies — and you had to remember, the deputies didn't get into office until late March, early April. The deputies then tasked the development of the implementation details, uh, of these new decisions that they were endorsing, and sending out to the principals. Over the course of the summer — last point — they developed implementation details, the principals met at the end of the summer, approved them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance. And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course [of] five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline. QUESTION: When was that presented to the president? CLARKE: Well, the president was briefed throughout this process.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer Mendly^story/0,3566,115085,00.html

3/24/2004

CBSNews.com: Print This Story

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®CBSNEWS,com Did Bush Press For lraq-9/11 Link? March 21,2004

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his then top anti-terrorism adviser to look for a link between Iraq and the attacks, despite being told there didn't seem to be one. The charge comes from the advisor, Richard Clarke, in an interview airing Sunday at 7 p.m. ET/PT on 60 Minutes. The administration maintains that it cannot find any evidence that the conversation about an lraq-9/11 tie-in ever took place. Clarke also tells CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl that White House officials were tepid in their response when he urged them months before Sept. 11 to meet to discuss what he saw as a severe threat from al Qaeda. "Frankly," he said, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know." Clarke went on to say, "I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism." The No. 2 man on the president's National Security Council, Stephen Hadley, vehemently disagrees. He says Mr. Bush has taken the fight to the terrorists, and is making the U.S. homeland safer. Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan. Clarke suggests the idea took him so aback, he initally thought Rumsfeld was joking. Clarke is due to testify next week before the special panel probing whether the attacks were preventable. His allegations are also made in a book, "Against All Enemies," which is being published Monday by Free Press, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster. Both CBSNews.com and Simon & Schuster are units of Viacom. Clarke helped shape U.S. policy on terrorism under President Reagan and the first President Bush. He was held over by President Clinton to be his terrorrism czar, then held over again by the current President Bush. In the 60 Minutes interview and the book, Clarke tells what happened behind the scenes at the White House before, during and after Sept. 11. When the terrorists struck, it was thought the White House would be the next target, so it was evacuated. Clarke was one of only a handful of people who stayed behind. He ran the government's response to the attacks from the Situation Room in the West Wing. "I kept thinking of the words from 'Apocalypse Now,' the whispered words of Marlon Brando, when he thought about Vietnam. The horror. The horror.' Because we knew what was going on in New York. We knew about the bodies flying out of the windows. People falling through the air. We knew that Osama bin Laden had succeeded in bringing horror to the streets of America," he tells Stahl. After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq. "Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. AI-Qaeda is

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/printable607356.shtml

3/21/2004

G oss Questions Truthfulness of Clarke's 2002 Testimony March 25, 2004 By Ethan Wallison, Roll Call Staff House Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.) said Wednesday that former White House anti-terror czar Richard Clarke, the author of a new book critical of President Bush's handling of the al Qaeda threat before Sept. 11, 2001, may have lied in testimony to his committee, and said he plans to explore whether Congressional action on the matter is warranted. Clarke's "testimony to our committee is 180 degrees out of line with what he is saying in his book," Goss said. "He's either lying in his book or he lied to our committee. It's one or the other." Goss added, "If he was lying to a Congressional committee, he's got a big problem on his hands here." Goss did not reveal the substance of the alleged contradictions. But he waved a print-out from the Fox News Channel's Web site that detailed apparent discrepancies between statements Clarke delivered in 2002 and allegations made in his controversial new memoir, "Against All Enemies." Goss suggested that the statements from 2002 more accurately reflected the substance of what Clarke had told the Intelligence panel during that time. Goss did not specify whether the allegedly contradictory testimony had been made in closed-door session before his committee or the joint Congressional committee that conducted its own separate investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks - or both. The earlier statements, which surfaced Wednesday, came from a recording of a "background" briefing Clarke provided to reporters while he was still a White House aide. In them, Clarke describes early and aggressive anti-terror efforts in the Bush White House that built significantly on the previous planning by the Clinton administration. Goss was unwilling to speculate on a potential course of action, saying he is "still trying to understand" what Clarke is contending now. "You can be sure I'll be looking at it," Goss said. "I don't want people lying to Congressional committees." A conviction of lying to Congress carries potential jail time as a penalty. Clarke's newest account of the Bush administration's anti-terror efforts before 9/11 has unleashed a fiercely contested debate over the truthfulness of the former White House aide, who served in four consecutive administrations going back to President Ronald Reagan. Already, the anti-Bush group MoveOn.Org has launched television spots that quote Clark saying, as he launched the publicity for his book this week, "Frankly, I find it outrageous that a president is running for re-election on the grounds that he'd done such great things on terrorism. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11." A different assessment emerges from the briefing Clarke provided to reporters in 2002. "The Bush administration decided then, you know, in late January [2001], to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings. The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided."

washingtonpost.com: A Clash on Classified Documents

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washingtonpost.com

A Clash on Classified Documents Politics Drives Some Releases, Critics Say By Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, March 31,2004; Page A12

The Bush administration's uneven decision-making on which sensitive documents it declassifies has prompted criticism that the White House is selectively releasing information to justifies its foreign policy decisions and respond to political pressure. Before the war, for example, the administration kept classified the intelligence community's significant dissents to the overall assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It later released those dissents, however, after the CIA was criticized for failing to accurately assess Iraq's weapons -- a reversal cited by those who argue such decisions are being based on politics, not national security. To make its case for war at the United Nations, the White House also released recent audiotapes of intercepted conversations ~ usually among its most highly guarded secrets -- between Iraqi military officers. Last week, in the most recent case under scrutiny, the CIA began reviewing for declassification testimony that former White House counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke gave last year to the congressional panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The CIA launched the effort at the White House's request, after Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, asked it to do so. Goss said his staff made the request after he "was absolutely sure there was going to be a huge uproar" over Clarke's claims that Bush had ignored terrorism before September 2001. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) also asked for the declassification.

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Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the committee, criticized Goss yesterday for bypassing what she said were normal House procedures in seeking declassification. "This is a stunning violation that can only feed the impression that sensitive materials are being selectively declassified for political reasons, rather than national security or the public interest," Harman said. "The message this sends is that for partisan political reasons, classified material can be reviewed and selectively released." The House rules permit the chairman to request a declassification review but say he must get the committee's approval for release, which Goss said he intends to do. Harman also called on the White House, which often reviews CIA declassifications before documents are released, to "recuse itself from any declassification decisions and preserve the integrity of this process."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37357-2004Mar30?language=printer

3/31/2004

•

MSNBC - How Clarke 'Outsourced' Terror Intel

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Column / Terror Watch

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball El • E-mail the authors fl, * Biographies

"^3 • Mars by the attlhors Chris Usher/ A p i H fo r N E W S W E E K

How Clarke 'Outsourced1 Terror Intel The former counterterrorism chief tapped a private researcher to develop intelligence on Al Qaeda. The disclosure sheds new light on White House frustrations with the FBI WEB EXCLUSIVE By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball Newsweek Updated: 4:08 p.m. ET March 31, 2004

March 31 - As White House counterterror czar, Richard Clarke was so frustrated by the FBI's inability to identify Islamic radicals within the United States that he turned for help to a freelance terrorism researcher whose work was deeply resented by top bureau officials. Clarke's secret work with private researcher Steven Emerson is among a number of revealing disclosures in the exWhite House aide's new book, "Against All Enemies," that has been all but obscured by the furor over the author's politically charged allegations against President George W. Bush.

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As recounted by Clarke in his book, and confirmed by documents provided to NEWSWEEK, Emerson and his former associate Rita Katz regularly provided the White House with a stream of information about

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id74639986/

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3/31/2004

*His Own Worst Critic (washingtonpost.com)

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His Own Worst Critic By George F. Will Wednesday, March 31, 2004; Page A25

"So," Lincoln supposedly said to the White House visitor, "you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war." Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," published in 1852, quickly sold 300,000 copies -equivalent to 3 million today ~ and remains the only book to become an American history-shaping political event. When the dust settles from the eight days that shook the world of Washington ~ spanning Richard Clarke's appearance two Sundays ago on "60 Minutes" to his appearance last Sunday on "Meet the Press" ~ no one will say of his "Against All Enemies" what Longfellow said of Stowe's novel: "Never was there such a literary coup de main as this." Too much of the controversy about Clarke's book — and testimony and interviews ~ concerns adjectives. TAimjmsii6

Combating terrorism was only "important" to the Bush administration (by the eighth day Clarke was calling the Bush administration "lackadaisical" about

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37704-2004Mar30.html

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3/31/2004

• Op-Ed Columnist: Smear Without Fear

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V t! m e S . C O m

April 2,2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST

Smear Without Fear By PAUL KRUGMAN

A

funny thing happened to David Letterman this week. Actually, it only started out funny. And the unfunny ending fits into a disturbing pattern.

On Monday, Mr. Letterman ran a video clip of a boy yawning and fidgeting during a speech by George Bush. It was harmless stuff; a White House that thinks it's cute to have Mr. Bush make jokes about missing W.M.D. should be able to handle a little ribbing about boring speeches. CNN ran the Letterman clip on Tuesday, just before a commercial. Then the CNN anchor Daryn Kagan came back to inform viewers that the clip was a fake: "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video." Later in the day, another anchor amended that: the boy was at the rally, but not where he was shown in the video. On his Tuesday night show, Mr. Letterman was not amused: "That is an out and out 100 percent absolute lie. The kid absolutely was there, and he absolutely was doing everything we pictured via the videotape." But here's the really interesting part: CNN backed down, but it told Mr. Letterman that Ms. Kagan "misspoke," that the White House was not the source of the false claim. (So who was? And if the claim didn't come from the White House, why did CNN run with it without checking?) In short, CNN passed along a smear that it attributed to the White House. When the smear backfired, it declared its previous statements inoperative and said the White House wasn't responsible. Sound familiar? On Tuesday, I mentioned remarks by CNN's Wolf Blitzer; here's a fuller quote, just to remove any ambiguity: "What administration officials have been saying since the weekend, basically, that Richard Clarke from their vantage point was a disgruntled former government official, angry because he didn't get a certain promotion. He's got a hot new book out now that he wants to promote. He wants to make a few bucks, and that his own personal life, they're also suggesting there are some weird aspects in his life." Stung by my column, Mr. Blitzer sought to justify his words, saying that his statement was actually a question, and also saying that "I was not referring to anything charged by so-called unnamed White House officials as alleged today." Silly me: I "alleged" that Mr. Blitzer said something because he actually said it, and described "so-called unnamed" officials as unnamed because he didn't name them. Mr. Blitzer now says he was talking about remarks made on his own program by a National Security

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/02/opinion/02KRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=

4/2/2004

)p-Ed Contributor: Need an Army? Just Pick Up the Phone

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AprU 2, 2004 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Need an Army? Just Pick Up the Phone By BARRY YEOMAN

URHAM, N.C. The murderous attack on four American civilians in Falluja, Iraq, brought home gruesome images of charred bodies dangling from a bridge over the Euphrates River. It also introduced Americans to a company few had heard of: Blackwater USA, which was providing security for food delivery convoys when its employees were ambushed. Blackwater, which operates from a 5,200-acre training ground in the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina, is a private military firm that provides an array of services once performed solely by military personnel. The company trains soldiers in counterterrorism and urban warfare. It also provides the American government with soldiers for hire: former Green Berets, Army Rangers and Navy Seals. In February it started training former Chilean commandos — some of whom served under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet — for future service in Iraq. Business is booming at Blackwater, and the company is hardly alone. Private contractors are an invisible but growing part of how war is now fought. Some 10,000 of them are serving in Iraq — one private worker for every 10 soldiers — more than the number of soldiers from Britain, America's largest coalition partner. Some are supplied by well-known corporations like Halliburton. But for the most part, the private military industry is dominated by more obscure businesses with names that seem designed to tell as little as possible about what the company does. Nor is their presence limited to Iraq. In recent years, soldiers-for-profit have served in Liberia, Pakistan, Rwanda and Bosnia. They have guarded Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, and built the military detention facilities holding Al Qaeda suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They have been an essential part of the American war on drugs in Latin America. Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution, who wrote a book on the private military industry, says it brings in about $100 billion a year worldwide. The industry rose to prominence under President George H.W. Bush — Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, received a $9 million contract to study supplementing military efforts after the Persian Gulf war. The Clinton administration sent more work to contractors, but it is under the current president, a strong believer in government privatization, that things started booming. Gary Jackson, the president of Blackwater, envisions a day when any country faced with peacekeeping duties will simply call him and place an order. "I would like to have the largest, most professional private army in the world," he told me. This raises some obvious questions. Shouldn't war be a government function? Why rely on the private sector for our national defense, even if it is largely a supporting role? Part of the reason is practical:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/02/opinion/02YEOM.html?pagewanted=print&position-

4/2/2004