Dick Clarke: Bush security officials quitting in disgust

[Lefty48197]

From Richard Clarke's new book, "Against All Enemies":
Pg 234 - "...the truth was also that the Principals Committee was meeting with a full agenda and a backlog of Bush priority issues: the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the Kyoto environment agreement, and Iraq. There was no time for terrorism.
Winter had turned to spring (2001). The daily NSC staff meetings were filled with detailed discussions about the ABM treaty and other issues that I thought were vestigial Cold War concerns. One day I saw an editorial cartoon of Uncle Sam sitting on a throne reading the ABM treaty, while a fuse ran down on a bomb beneath his seat and a terrorist ran away behind him. The cartoon hit me hard. My frustration was boiling over. I asked to be reassigned.
<snip>
I requested that I be given that assignment, to the apparent surprise of Condi Rice and Steve Hadley. Perhaps, I suggested, I have become too close to the terrorism issue. I have worked it for ten years and to me it seems like a very important issue, but maybe I'm becoming like Captain Ahab with bin Laden as the White Whale. Maybe you need someone less obsessive about it. I assume that my message was clear enough: you obviously do not think that terrorism is as important as I do since you are taking months to do anything; so get somebody else to do it who can be happy working at it at your pace. We agreed that I would start the new critical infrastructure and cyber job at the beginning of the new fiscal year, October 1. In the remining four months, however, I was intent on pushing hard to get an administration policy in place to go after al Qaeda.

Pg 240 - Replacing me as the senior NSC counterterrorism official was Wayne Downing, the retired four-star Army general who had led Special Operations Command...
...as soon as the terrorist attack on Khobar Towers had occurred in 1995, I asked Wayne to lead an investigation of whether there had been lax U.S. security at that Air Force facility. There had been and he said so, much to the Pentagon's chagrin. He was a no-nonsense kind of general, the perfect man for the job of coordinating the post September 11 response. Within months of replacing me, Wayne Downing quit the White House in frustration at the Administration's continued bureaucratic response to the threat.
Wayne was replaced by two people, John Gordon and Randy Beers. As with Downing, I had known Beers and Gordon for a long time, having started working with them in 1979 and 1981, respectively...
...When Randy Beers went to the terrorism job in the NSC in 2002, he began working for his fourth president in the White House (having previously worked there for Reagan, Bush, and Clinton). Beers had enormous experience working on intelligence policy and operations, terrorism, foreign military operations, and law enforcement. He was the perfect man for the job.
Pg 241 - Beers called from the White House months later and asked if he could stop by my house for a drink and some advice...
...When Beers sat down next to me his first words were, "I think I have to quit."
I thought I knew why, but I asked. His answer flowed like a river at flood: "They still don't get it. Insteada goin' all out against al Qaeda and eliminating our vulnerabilities at home, they wanna fuckin' invade Iraq again. We have a token U.S. military force in Afghanistan, the Taliban are regrouping, we haven't caught bin Laden, or his deputy, or the head of the Taliban. And they aren't going to send more troops to Afghanistan to catch them or to help the government in Kabul secure the country. No they're holding back, waiting to invade Iraq...
...There's no threat to us now from Iraq, but 70 percent of the American people think Iraq attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. You wanna know why? Because that's what the administration wants them to think!" I could see that there was some considerable built-up anxiety with the Bush administration. I got another bottle of the Pinot Noir.
Randy continued, "Worse yet, they're using the war on terror politically...
...They ran against Max Cleland, saying he wasn't patriotic because he didn't agree 100 percent with Bush on how to do homeland security. Max Cleland, who lost three of his four limbs for this country in Vietnam! Beers had lost hearing in one ear in Vietnam, where he had served two tours as a Marine. "I can't work for these people, I'm sorry I just can't. "
Beers resigned...
...The churn of senior counterterrorism officials continued. John Gordon was transferred shortly thereafter to the position vacated by Tom Ridge, as Homeland Security Advisor. Fran Towensend...
...took over the NSC counterterrorism coordinator job in 2003.
Looking at this revolving door in the counterterrorism job after my departure, and thinking back to the ten months that I had served President Bush as his National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Infrastructure Protection, I am still amazed that I had never been given the chance to talk with him about terrorism until September 11...
Pg 290 - What happened to that team that tried to get the Bush White House to pay attention to al Qaeda before September 11 and then stayed in the Situation Room on that day holding things together, even though they thought the White House was about to be hit by a hijacked aircraft? Where are Lisa Gordon-Hagerty and Robert Cressey and Paul Kurtz? They all left the administration, frustrated. They were never formally thanked by the President, never recognized for what they did before or on September 11...