Richard Clarke pulls rug out from under Suskind - the 1 percent er - his book is one percent truth - the rest is BS

I have now had a chance to look at Suskind's book. The Khan story covers a couple of paragraphs in a 250 page (ill written) book. Of course the hype has been stupendous, but lost in it was a fascinating exchange between former White House chief of counterterrorism Richard Clarke (now ABC "consultant")and Charles Gibson on Good Morning America.Clarke now leads consulting projects for Good Harbor in the areas of security risk management, cyber security, and counter-terrorism.

Clarke has a good track record and he certainly has the experience (adviser to 2 Presidents, worked under 4 ) and a balanced, rational, experienced view of terror threats.The ultimate inside operator,he is the person who knows how to tackle the toughest national security problems and overcome bureaucratic inertia with behind-the-scenes guts, arrogance, smarts and hard work.

Last year Clarke called for bag searches on US subway systems, legally unpopular but probably highyl effective .. but he doubts the specificity of the Khan Sarin gas report,that Suskind fantasises about, as well as the existence of the players who were cited in the threat.

"There's reason to be skeptical," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, who is the former chief of White House counterterrorism. "Just because something is labeled in an intelligence report does not mean every word it is true."

He claimed the information describing the plot would have been just one of the hundreds of threats that would have been collected in 2003. Furthermore, the specificity of the report , time , date , place , method is very suspect. "Whenever you get reports that are this specific, they are usually made up," he said.

Clarke also said Zawihiri and bin Laden at the time would have been too isolated to have had any active part in such a plot. Also real terrorists would have carried out the attack if the plot was as advanced as Suskind reports.

"Frankly if there was a team in the United States that was ready to do this, they would have done it," Clarke said.

Daily Kos says
"Richard Clarke calls BS on Al Qaeda NYC subway cyanide plot"

I repeat this book is a crock of shit.

Required Reading

The Atlantic Monthly | January/February 2005

Ten Years Later Richard A. Clarke

"Then the second wave of al-Qaeda attacks hit America." A leading expert on counterterrorism imagines the future history of the war on terror. An alarming picture of a country still at war in 2011

.....it starts ... "Having ignored al-Qaeda until September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush responded to the attack in three ways.

First, he ordered an end to the terrorist sanctuary in Afghanistan. For five years thereafter a token U.S. military force assisted the Kabul government in its attempts to rule the warlords and suppress the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Second, he moved to strengthen U.S. domestic law enforcement with the first Patriot Act (a law that civil libertarians would find benign from today's perspective) and the Department of Homeland Security, which in those early years of the war on terror was largely ineffectual.

Third, Bush ordered the ill-fated invasion and occupation of Iraq, which effectively turned his administration into an active recruiting office for al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups around the world."

..... you have to admit though, as a Psyops op. it has been wonderful, afew, very few lies the odd half truth and worldwide saturation coverage in the Press / TV / Radio.