It’s hard to remember another president who has suffered more abuse and betrayal from the government’s career civil service than George W. Bush. Again and again, it seems, the president hires some seemingly seasoned career counterterrorism hand, only to find out later that he’s actually a Democratic plant, a partisan stooge or just a plain fool.
We already know the story of that notorious turncoat, retired Ambassador Joe Wilson, and his wife, CIA clandestine operative Valerie Plame (whom Rep. Jack Kingston [R-Ga.] pegged as a “glorified secretary”). The CIA foolishly entrusted Wilson with a fact-finding mission to the African nation of Niger to find out whether Saddam Hussein was buying “yellowcake” uranium there for his allegedly reconstituted nuclear weapons program. After getting this plum assignment, Wilson turned on the president with all manner of unfounded accusations.
Now we have Richard Clarke, whom we’re now told was either a liar (Paul Wolfowitz), a fraud out to sell a bunch of books (Scott McClellan), an out-of-the-loop rube (Dick Cheney), or just a moron who couldn’t get the job done (National Security Council [NSC] spokesman Jim Wilkinson and just about everyone else on the White House payroll).
Clarke, of course, worked for the last four presidents (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II) in a series of national-security and counterterrorism roles. Condi Rice kept him on as counterterrorism czar at the NSC when the Bush administration took over from Clinton. And then later, after Sept. 11, the White House appointed him to a less central, but still critical, post as top NSC aide on cyberterrorism and critical infrastructure.
Clearly the White House thought he was top-flight, but now it seems he was just another mix of backstabber and boob of the Joe Wilson variety — a hapless egomaniac or, as columnist John Podhoretz called him yesterday in the New York Post, a “a self-regarding buffoon.”
