Rating: 
Summary: TO PSYCHO LIBS: THIS IS FRAUD, A COLLUDING FOR PERSONAL GAIN
Review: Myth: The Administration did not treat the intelligence chatter about an imminent attack during the spring and summer of 2001 with sufficient urgency; Principals did not "go to battle
stations."The Facts: • The President and senior Administration officials were
very concerned about the threat spike during the spring and summer of 2001. • The President and his NSC Principals received intelligence reports about the intelligence "chatter" during this period, but none of the intelligence was specific as to time, place, or manner, and was focused overseas. • The Government's interagency counterterrorism crisis management forum (the Counterterrorism Security Group, or "CSG"), chaired by Dick Clarke, met regularly, often daily, during the high threat period. The CSG was at "battle stations." If Dick Clarke or other members of this group needed anything, they had immediate and daily access to their superiors. Dick Clarke never suggested that the President or the Principals needed to intervene to take any immediate action on these threats. • Dick did not ask to brief the President on the al-Qaida threat during this period or at any other time. Instead, in the middle of the al-Qaida threat period, Clarke asked to brief the President, but on cybersecurity, not al-Qaida. He did so. • Formal, in-person meetings among Principals were not required; unlike President Clinton, President Bush met every morning with his Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet for an intelligence briefing. Secretary Card, Dr. Rice, and the Vice President sat in on the briefings. The threat posed by al-Qaida and the need for a response was discussed regularly at these high-level meetings, as well as in frequent, regular discussions between Dr. Rice and Tenet. Dr. Rice and Secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld also have a 7:15 am phone call every morning and talk frequently during the day, and in this period they discussed actions to respond to the threat during these calls. • Although the threats were focused overseas, in July, Dr. Rice specifically directed Dick Clarke and his CSG to meet to consider possible threats to the homeland and to coordinate actions by domestic agencies, including the FAA, FBI, Secret Service, Customs, Coast Guard, and Immigration, to increase security and surveillance. During the Summer of 2001, FAA and FBI issued numerous terrorist threat warnings, including a warning about "the potential for a terrorist operation, such as an airline hijacking to free terrorists incarcerated in the United States." Security at federal buildings also were reviewed for vulnerabilities. Overseas, we also disrupted terrorist cells worldwide, significantly increased security at our embassies, and directed US Naval vessels to leave high-risk ports in the Middle East and heighten security at military facilities.
Rating:
Summary: ATTENTION LIBS: CLARKE IS USING YOUR STUPIDITY AGAINST YOU!!
Review: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fuming U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice accused former counter-terrorism aide Richard Clarke on Wednesday of shifting positions from backing President Bush's war on terrorism to now questioning it. Clarke has accused Bush of a fixation on Iraq but Rice said Clarke did not raise those concerns with her. She said after his resignation 13 months ago, she invited him to lunch three weeks before the start of the U.S.-led war against Iraq to thank him for his years of service. Clarke had "not a word about concerns that Iraq was going to somehow take us off the path of the war on terrorism. It would've been easy to do, kick the others out, close the door, say 'I just want you to know I think you're making a mistake.'
He didn't do it," she told reporters in her West Wing office.
Rice, in normal circumstances an even-keeled top White House aide, was unusually incensed during a half-hour briefing for reporters in her West Wing office, as she castigated her former employee. She also went on television to make her case. Her comments reflected ongoing White House frustration with Clarke, who has threatened the underpinning of Bush's re-election strategy as an activist in the war on terrorism. Clarke has dominated news cycles this week with a book, interviews and public testimony accusing Bush of failing to act on the threat of al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and for being fixated on Iraq. To underline her case that the Bush administration was acting on the threat, Rice read from a letter from Clarke on Sept. 15, 2001, in which Clarke detailed meetings from the previous June and July about preparations being taken to prepare for the possibility of a "spectacular al Qaeda terrorist attack." MEETING WITH OFFICIALS "We asked that they take special measures to increase security and surveillance," Clarke wrote of a July 5, 2001, meeting with FBI, Secret Service, Federal Aviation Administration, Customs, Coast Guard and Immigration officials. The White House has gone to great lengths to try to discredit Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism czar, by accusing him of being a disgruntled former employee who did not get a promotion and whose best friend is a foreign policy adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Rice said Clarke's criticism expressed in his book, in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview and testimony on Capitol Hill, were directly opposite to what he told reporters in an August 2002 briefing. Clarke said in testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks that the Bush administration considered terrorism important but not urgent, while the previous Clinton administration, for which he also served, considered it a top priority. "There's two very different pictures here, and the fact of the matter is these stories can't be reconciled," Rice said. "Either we were ignoring the threat, or now it's changed that it was important but not urgent, or we were actually responding to the things that he actually suggested, which is what he said in the August 2002 interview." Rice described Clarke as a sometimes difficult employee who was "too busy" to come to some meetings she chaired until she finally demanded he appear.
"I know how to manage people, and I asked him to come once. We continued to have a problem, I asked him to come twice. We didn't have a problem after that," she said.
Rating: 
Summary: American Hero!
Review: Richard Clarke bravely tells the unvarnished truth about thhis Administration's lack of focus on terror, knowing full well he would be the target of an all-out attack by the White House. Those here giving this book only a single star obviously 1) have not read it, and 2) are right-wing cronies. I am grateful for the quiet dignity with which he presents his case, and I hope he sells millions of copies.
Rating:
Summary: Read the Book!
Review: Reviews on Amazon.com: after reading about 20 reviews, my conclusion is that at least half of the 'reviewers' haven't read the book - their rantings are merely an expression of their pre-conceived opinions.
The first 40 pages of the book give a very exciting minute-by-minute account of what the Government in Washington did immediately after the first hijacked airliner struck 1 World Trade Center on the morning of September 11th.
The following chapters cover the author's experiences in trying to push anti-terrorist measures to the forefront of the Government's agenda during his career in the Reagan, Bush senior, Clinton, and George W Bush Administrations. Clarke describes the obstacles he encountered in trying to move the various bureaucracies, and frustrations in getting those agencies to move beyond their entrenched habits and thought patterns. To a person such as myself (this reviewer) who has worked in Government bureaucracy (in an entirely different area), Clarke's accounts are very, very believable.
(The first, reflexive priority of any Governmental agency is: WE MUST DEFEND OUR TURF, so that we keep our jobs. Second: AVOID LOOKING BAD. 'Doing the best thing' or 'recommend the best policy' are further down the line. This is not a condemnation of government - it's an expression of everyday human nature, found in the business world also).
Clarke categorically states that no connection was ever established between Saddam Hussein's Iraq regime and the 9/11 attackers. In the final chapters, Clarke states his view that the invasion of Iraq, which President Bush has justified as a counter-attack against terrorism, is a diversion which has not made the US any safer. Popular support for the US has plummeted both in Europe and in the Moslem world.
Clarke believes that the US invasion of a Moslem country, Iraq, in fact facilitates recruitment for El Quaeda.
Clarke's criticism of the Bush Administration's Iraq war, that it detracts from the war on terror instead of contributing to it, has obviously enraged the Bush Administration and its supporters. It's a valid question to debate. But instead of debating it, the Bush Administration is making it a priority to attack Clarke personally.
This reviewer sides with Clarke in believing that the United States is safer when people throughout the world have a favorable opinion of the US. The Bush Administration has been a conspicuous failure in this area. Military force is a poor antidote to widespread popular hostility.
Most important: read this book.
(and make your own judgement).
Rating:
Summary: Courageous Patriotic American
Review: The sliming of Clarke by several non-reviewers is just a small sample of the slander and character assassination he has been subjected to for having the courage to blow the whistle on the Bush administration's incompetent handling of the war on terror. In writing this book Clarke has shown tremendous courage. He was a member of the Bush administration and therefore knows from firsthand experience that anyone who has the audacity to criticise it will be subjected to a systematic program of slander, sliming and character assassination Clarke must love his country very much in order to reveal the truth about the Bush admisistration's bungling of the war on terrorism, knowing the grief that he would be subjecting himself to, so that the American people can know the truth of what really happened
Rating:
Summary: Yes it was a conspiracy and now we know!
Review: "George W. Bush is a liar. He has lied large and small, directly and by omission. He has mugged the truth-not merely in honest error, but deliberately, consistently, and repeatedly," David Corn; Washington editor for the Nation. "All American presidents have lied, but George W. Bush has relentlessly abused the truth. In this scathing indictment of the president and his inner circle, Clarke, reveals and examines the deceptions at the heart of the Bush presidency. In a stunning work Clarke details and substantiates the many times the Bush administration has knowingly and intentionally misled the American public to advance its own interests and agenda, including: * Brazenly mischaracterizing intelligence and resorting to deceptive arguments to whip up public support for war with Iraq.
* Misrepresenting the provisions and effects of the president's supersized tax cuts * Offering misleading explanations- instead of telling the full truth - about the 9/11 attacks
* Lying about connections to corporate crooks * Presenting deceptive and disingenuous claims to sell controversial policies on the environment, stem cell research, missile defense, Social Security, white-collar crime, abortion, energy, and other crucial issues
* Running a truth-defying, down-and-dirty campaign during the 2000 presidential contest and recount drama * Presidential 'photo ops' like landing on a carrier, and saying 'I support our troops,' when in fact this administration has cut pay and allowances for service men and combatant soldiers. This president has not gone to a 'single' soldiers funeral and has cut substantial operating funds from the Veterans Administration. This book is not a partisan whine-it is instead a carefully constructed, fact-based account that clearly denotes how Bush has relied on deception-from the campaign trail to the Oval Office-to win political and policy battles BY ANY MEANS!" If you like conspiracy books Here are a few. Having read the TOP books in the Government Cover-up Genre; "Unconventional Flying Objects" (NASA UFO Investigator for 30 years) by the scientist Dr. Paul Hill; my FAVORITE is "Alien Rapture" by Brad Steiger and Edgar Fouche (Top Secret Black Programs Insider) - (Great fiction-soon to be a movie); "Alien Agenda" by the best selling author of 'Crossfire' Jim Marrs (Best reference on UFOlogy); and "The Day After Roswell," by Colonel Corso - I'd say these books are a MUST READ also!
Rating:
Summary: Bush Can't Take The Heat
Review: ....So get out of the Whitehouse. Richard Clarke is a much needed wake up call to Americans who care about national security before election year politics. This is an honest account of how Bush failed the American people before 9/11, which Bush has nearly admitted himself when he stated in Bob Woodward's book "I did not consider Al Qaeda an ugent threat" before 9/11. These are Bush's OWN WORDS!!! Clarke merely points out the truth and goes on to describe how the war in Iraq has been a disaster(nearly 600 soldiers killed and counting) and has hurt the war on terrorism. The TRUTH HURTS, but it must be said.
Rating:
Summary: revealing...and utterly frightening
Review: This no Woodward and Bernstein tour-de-force, but a first-hand account by someone who served as a terrorist expert in four administrations. What is terrrifying is his description of a superpower that no longer cares about the costs and consequences of military action, justified or not, launched at any point on the globe. And Clarke's book is only the first chapter in this unraveling tale. Now that he and Congressional leaders of both parties are demanding that Clarke's memos to the various administrations be declassified, we may find out more than we may ever want to know.
Rating:
Summary: reality check
Review: Great first person account of the efforts of the US against terrorism (or lack as the case may be prior to 9/11). The first chapter is amazing, it reads like a Tom Clancy novel. Clear and heart stopping account of 9/11 (the truth is stranger than fiction!). It is clear that Clarke deeply feels and believes the account he gives (he lost at least one close friend on 9/11, ironically a FBI agent who had resigned out of frustration over the lack of action against bin Laden). Really not a controversial book in the sense that anyone who has been paying attention to the Bush administration efforts prior to 9/11. Clarke is fairly hawkish on on US response/intervention abroad. What he reveals about the Bush II's White House is relatively well known {people have short memories, prior to 9/11 the White House was clealy fixaited on missile defense, Iraq, and to a much lesser extent state sponsured terrorism). I doubt GW or Rice ever heard of Usama bin Laden and al Qaeda before GW became president. The key Bush II advisors (Rice, Wolfowitz, Hadley, Rumsfeld, Cheney) clearly seemed to believe that Clinton had either dreamed up or overstated the threat of bin Laden to distract people away from the Monica L. scandal. Pretty clear from the book that they mostly only see events through the narrow lens of their political bias. Anyway, the book is a must for anyone who is interested in 9/11 or the current controversy. After reading the book, you will notice that for the most part, none of the facts revealed are being contradicted by anyone--basically because they are mostly true which is why the White House is reduced to just attacking Clarke (as the did with Secretary Paul O'Neill and ambassador Wilson). Basically its clear that Clarke can no longer stand the BS of the Bush taking credit for what he in reality failed at (politics at its best), and this is Clarke's way of setting the record straight. buy the book and decide for yourself.... La Jolla, CA 3/28/04
Rating:
Summary: Bush Terror
Review: I've only read the first 80 pages or so. I'm dumfounded that so many reviewers see this as a single star. Obviously they aren't open-minded about the substance within this book. The first chapter provides an intriguing view of the US government after the 9/11 attack. Even if you disagree with Clarke, it is fascinating. Clarke has the background to put forth a view on a critical topic. It scares me that so many reviewers are closed minded about this book.[...]
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