E-mail a friendRichard Clarke
airdate December 9, 2005
Richard Clarke has advised four presidents—from Reagan to George W. Bush—on national security. An internationally recognized expert, he was the country's first counter-terrorism czar. After criticizing the Bush administration's 9/11 response, Clarke left federal service. He now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School, is an on-air ABC News consultant and chair of Good Harbor Consulting. He's also a best selling author, whose books include Against All Enemies, The Scorpion's Gate and Your Government Failed You.
Richard Clarke
Tavis: Richard Clarke is a former White House counter-terrorism adviser who left the Bush Administration following differences over the handling of intelligence and the war in Iraq. His first book, "Against All Enemies", became an instant New York Times best-seller and is now out in paperback. His latest project is a novel called "The Scorpion's Gate" in stores now. Richard Clarke, though, is in Chicago now. Mr. Clarke, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Richard Clarke: It's great to be back.
Tavis: Let me start with some news item before I jump to "The Scorpion's Gate". First and obviously this report card. What do you make of it because the grades the Bush administration received were not good overall? The 9/11 Commission or former commission, if you will, gave the Bush administration a C-minus at best.
Clarke: Well, and a lot of D's and a lot of F's. And this is a Republican former governor of New Jersey who's chairing this commission, so this is not a Democratic partisan attack. What the commission members were saying is that the White House lost interest in homeland security, that they gave lip service to it, got a few projects going and then moved on to something else. As a result, we are probably less safe now than we were prior to 9/11. That's scandalous, in their words, and I think we all have to agree that it's pretty scandalous four years after 9/11.
Tavis: To your point, let me read the specific grades the administration received on what they've done since 9/11. On the forty-one recommendations made by this commission, to your point earlier, Mr. Clarke, seventeen F's. Forty-one grades, seventeen F's or D's, only one A-minus and, as I mention, overall the grade of a C-minus. Tell me how, after all that we have heard and done and witnessed and endured and spent since 9/11, how any administration, to your point, Republican or Democrat, gets seventeen F's and D's?
Clarke: That's because they're not trying. They have this theory that they'd rather fight the terrorists in Iraq than fight them here, except that theory doesn't work. We've been lucky so far that they haven't come here, but there's nothing to stop them from coming here just because we're fighting in Iraq. And, you know, four years is a long time. Our fathers' and mothers' generation fought the Nazis and Imperial Japan and defeated them in the course of four years. You can get a lot done in four years, but we haven't. The trains are unsafe, the chemical plants are unsafe, the radiological materials are unsafe, the ports are unsafe, the borders are open. They haven't done much of anything.
Tavis: And it is my understanding, at least, that your point of view is, at least from reading the op eds you've written, you believe that the mission has in fact been accomplished, that we do have things we can point to that we've achieved in Iraq and that now is the time to get out.
Clarke: Well, now is the time to start getting out after the election, the parliamentary election, this month. I think we get out gradually over the course of about eighteen months, but I think the major reason there's an insurgency in Iraq is because we're there, Tavis. That's why people are fighting. They don't like to be occupied. Most of the people who are fighting are Iraqis, not foreigners. The White House says that themselves. Ninety percent of the people who are fighting are Iraqis and, if we leave, they'll stop fighting.
Tavis: Let me ask you what it is right quick you think we have in fact accomplished that justifies the start of the pull-out?
Clarke: Well, I think by now we have begun training an Iraqi police force and army and, over the course of eighteen months, a lot more of them will be trained and they'll be able to take care of themselves. We will, by the end of this month, have had three elections in Iraq, so what were our goals? You know, our goals were to get Saddam. We did. Our goals were to find the weapons of mass destruction. Well, we found there weren't any, so that's accomplished. And our goal was to start a democracy there and we've started a democracy. They've got to take it from here.
I think we've reached the knee of the curve. Any longer that we stay, beyond sometime perhaps early in 2007, we just make the problem worse. We also need to tell the Iraqi people that we're not intending to stay, so that will put pressure on them to get their people trained, make political compromises among the factions and it will also tell them that it's not true what they hear from Al Qaeda that the United States wants to occupy them forever.
Tavis: Let me shift gears and actually it's really not a shift of gears because, even though it is a novel, even though it is fiction, it's really not that radical a departure from the issues that you talk about, although I must admit when I heard that Richard Clarke had written a novel, I thought that was a bit antithetical to who I thought Richard Clarke was. But when you look at the cover of the book, it says at the very top, "Sometimes you can tell more truth through fiction". So tell me about "The Scorpion's Gate".
Clarke: Well, the reason, Tavis, for writing fiction is, frankly, there are a lot of people who only read fiction and I could write another nonfiction book, but I'd be preaching to the choir. I want to get my thoughts out to a broader audience than I've reached before, a different audience, so "The Scorpion's Gate" is set five years from now. It's a kind of exercise that we did in the White House where we would say to cabinet members, "Pretend it's five years from now. Here's the set of facts. Here's how the world has changed in five years. Now you deal with this new crisis."
So you learn very quickly how the world has changed in five years and then the crisis erupts and a number of people have pieces to the puzzle and, if they put those pieces together, they will learn that there's going to be another war, an oil war, in the Middle East in 2010 or 2011. The challenge for these characters in the novel is whether or not they can stop another oil war.
Tavis: You refer to these fictional characters and yet I must tell you that I was fascinated how brilliantly you weaved real life events and certainly real life countries and real world experiences into this novel, but again, that's your background. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that. Having said that, in this novel, five years from now, to your point, we are still occupying Iraq.
Clarke: Well, the United States forces have gotten out of Iraq, but they're still in the Middle East and we're still dependent on foreign oil and so is China. That's the big difference five years from now. China wants the same oil we want because we haven't reduced our dependency on foreign oil and their economy has grown to the point where they need a lot of foreign oil, so the United States and China are butting heads.
Basically, what I've done is taken the real world of today and extrapolated it five years forward, put in the form of a thriller so that people can enjoy the read, but at the same time, they're going to learn a lot about places I've been in the Middle East and in the United States and they're going to see a little bit about the inside workings of intelligence.
Tavis: Did you enjoy the experience of delving in fiction as opposed to the real stuff you deal with every day?
Clarke: I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would and the people who've read it so far have enjoyed it, so I may do it again.
Tavis: The new book by the New York Times number one best-selling author of "Against All Enemies". We had him on this program a year ago when that book came out. A fascinating conversation then, as is the one tonight. The new book by Richard A. Clarke is "The Scorpion's Gate". I am sure that you will enjoy it. Mr. Clarke, as always, nice to talk to you. Happy holidays to you. Glad to have you on the program.
Clarke: Same to you, Tavis.
Tavis: Thank you, sir. Up next on this program, actor Laurence Fishburne.
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