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Clarke, currently the nation's top cyber-security adviser, is best known for his success in identifying emerging issues and outlasting his critics. He has focused most recently on preventing disruptions to important computer networks from Internet attacks. But he has tempered warnings about a "digital Pearl Harbor" after some industry experts mocked them as overblown. With much of the White House evacuated for safety in the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, Clarke worked in the situation room there with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney as stunned leaders planned what to do next. His supporters said Clarke played a central role in the unprecedented decision to quickly ground the nation's airliners.
Clarke previously led the government's secretive Counterterrorism and Security Group, made up of senior officials from the FBI, CIA, Justice Department and armed services, who met several times each week to discuss foreign threats. "It was really the engine room of the anti-terrorism effort," said Sandy Berger, Clinton's former national security adviser and Clarke's former boss. "He's not an easy guy. He's very demanding. More than once people would come to me and complain, but that's why I wanted Dick in that job: He was pushing the bureaucracy."
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"Dick was the single most effective person I worked with in the federal government," said Jonathan M. Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state. "When he was given the authority, he would stay with something every day until it got done. He's efficient and tough-minded. I never saw anyone else as good."
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"Dick in both the Clinton and Bush administrations was the voice pushing this forward, calling out about the dangers," said William Wechsler, a former director for transnational threats on the National Security Council. "There's an easy reason why no one is pointing the finger at him." The security council's director for counterterrorism under Clinton, Daniel Benjamin, described Clarke as "a visionary in terms of pushing hard to recognize the dangers of al-Qaida; certainly the new administration should have attended to his thoughts a little more."
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