The Commission

by Philip Shenon

  But many on the commission’s staff believed that if one person should be singled out for blame, it had to be Freeh, who ran the bureau from 1993 until June 2001.

  While at the FBI, Freeh had seemed nearly immune from criticism. He savored his reputation as the feisty, independent-minded, incor-ruptible G-man—he began his career as an FBI agent in New York—and he made a special effort to court lawmakers in Congress. Republicans on Capitol Hill had special admiration for Freeh because of his antagonism toward Clinton over a series of Democratic fund-raising scandals. Freeh had let it be known to Washington reporters that he loathed the president. He turned in his White House gate pass as a sign of protest over the conduct of Clinton and his aides, even though that limited his access to the West Wing in the event of a crisis.

  But while Freeh’s rhetoric on terrorism was always appropriately tough, he never moved the money or people to the FBI’s counterterrorism programs that he had so publicly claimed they deserved.

  The commission’s investigators determined that although the FBI’s counterterrorism budget tripled during the mid-1990s, the bureau’s spending on terrorism cases remained fairly constant in the four years before 9/11. Money designated by Congress for the counterterrorism investigations was shifted elsewhere by Freeh and his deputies. In Freeh’s last year at the FBI, there were twice as many agents working on drug cases as on terrorists. Only about 6 percent of the bureau’s personnel were agents involved in terrorism cases. Within the FBI, there were so few translators of Arabic and the other common languages of terrorist groups that more than one hundred thousand hours of intercepted conversations of terrorist suspects had not been translated before 9/11.

  Freeh also had to take blame for the disastrous condition of the FBI’s technology. He seemed to take pride in his own backwardness when it came to electronics. He had let it be known to his colleagues that he refused to learn how to use e-mail, as if that were some sort of badge of honor; in the military-style hierarchy of the FBI, it seemed to send out the message that no one else should worry about e-mail, either. Ultimately, Freeh had the computer in his office removed because he never used it. That was in stark contrast with the CIA, which, whatever its other organizational problems, had cutting-edge technology.

  Freeh’s best gift to the bureau may have been the timing of his departure, just three months before September 11. Had he still been at the FBI at the time of the 9/11 commission’s investigation, that might well have been reason enough for the commission to recommend that the bureau be broken up. Freeh’s presence would have made the bureau an easy target. The commission could have pointed a finger at Freeh, identifying him as the embodiment of all that had gone wrong at the FBI for so many years. Instead, the commissioners faced his replacement, Robert Mueller, who had no responsibility for the bureau’s pre-9/11 bungling but was eager to apologize for it.

  Even with Mueller in charge, there was still a sense early on among the commissioners that the bureau needed to be overhauled, if not broken up. Leaders of the congressional investigation of pre-9/11 intelligence failures had recommended a sweeping reorganization of the FBI, possibly including creation of an American MI-5 to take over its role on domestic terrorism. John Lehman and other commissioners wanted to seriously consider a recommendation for a separate domestic intelligence agency. He thought it was hopeless to think the FBI could ever do that job properly. At the bureau, “the law enforcement mentality is all there is,” he said. “It’s like talking to a dog about becoming a cat.”

  Certainly the staff of Team 6 could see from the early weeks of the investigation that the FBI was incapable of what should be its new, central mission—protecting the United States from another 9/11.

  Whatever Mueller’s public relations talents, the team’s investigators believed that remarkably little had changed in his two years on the job. He had attempted some structural changes within the bureau, including bringing terrorism investigations under the control of FBI headquarters. But the commission’s investigators could see that counterterrorism agents and analysts remained second-class citizens within the bureau and that they remained overwhelmed by their responsibilities.

  BY LATE summer in 2001, John Ashcroft thought he had set the FBI on the right course by picking the widely respected Robert Mueller to replace Louis Freeh. Mueller did not like publicity, which meant that Ashcroft would have no rival in asserting himself as the Bush administration’s spokesman on law enforcement issues. There would be none of the traditional headline-grabbing rivalry between the FBI and the Justice Department.

  Ashcroft’s inner circle of aides at the Justice Department were used to seeing their boss portrayed as a wild-eyed conservative fanatic—a punching bag for Democrats, liberals, and the late night comics. It was a role that the White House seemed grateful Ashcroft had taken on; it drew away criticism that might otherwise have been directed at the president.

  And Ashcroft punched back, not so much in person—he seemed decidedly meek in interviews and speeches—as through a high-powered press office run by Mark Corallo, a former army infantryman who became a Republican congressional aide.

  With the creation of the 9/11 commission, Corallo readied himself to explain Ashcroft’s performance as attorney general in the months before 9/11, and Corallo thought Ashcroft’s record would prove to be perfectly defensible.

  The Justice Department could not claim that it was on full alert for a domestic terrorist strike in 2001. But Corallo knew that Ashcroft had been told repeatedly by the FBI and CIA that the evidence suggested al-Qaeda would attack overseas. Ashcroft was not privy to the PDBs, so he had not seen the August 6 PDB that warned of domestic threats.

  In the summer of 2001, Ashcroft had turned down the FBI’s request for a sizable budget increase for its counterterrorism division for the 2003 fiscal year, which obviously looked bad in hindsight. But Corallo argued that had to be seen in the context of the Bush administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2002, in which it requested the largest percentage increase in the FBI’s counterterrorism budget since 1997.

  But if Corallo was beginning to feel sanguine about the 9/11 commission, that the investigation posed no special threat to Ashcroft, he was mistaken. The New York Times and other news organizations were about to change that. In early 2004, reporters began to hear the first rumblings, both from the commissioners and from the staff, about what the commission had learned of Ashcroft, especially his apparently bizarre confrontations with Tom Pickard at the FBI. A reporter from the Times called David Ayres, Ashcroft’s deceptively laconic chief of staff, for comment. If the commission was gunning for the attorney general, it was a front-page story, and Ashcroft deserved the chance to respond. The attorney general responded in a way that nearly tore the 9/11 commission apart.

  40

  K STREET OFFICES OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION

  Washington, D.C.

  MARCH 2004

  Stephanie Kaplan, Philip Zelikow’s hyperefficient young assistant, had been monitoring the Amazon.com website for weeks for details about Richard Clarke’s book. It was clear from the commission’s private interviews with Clarke in December and January that his book, Against All Enemies, might do damage to the president, Condoleezza Rice, and others in the administration, and Zelikow had reason to worry what it might say about him and the 2001 transition. But Zelikow and others took some relief from the fact that the book’s publication date had been set for April 29, more than a month after Clarke’s planned public testimony before the commission, which was scheduled for Wednesday, March 24.

  In early March, Kaplan came out of her office on K Street, appearing agitated and motioning to her computer monitor.

  “You’d better look at this,” she told colleagues outside her office. Her monitor flickered with the page on Amazon’s website where customers could preorder Clarke’s book. “They’ve changed the publishing date.”

  The date had been moved up dramatically by Clarke’s publisher, the Free Press, which understood the
value of releasing their bombshell book on the eve of Clarke’s testimony to the commission. The new publication date was March 22, two days before Clarke’s appearance. The Free Press had also quietly begun to negotiate with CBS News to promote the book with an interview on 60 Minutes on the Sunday before his testimony.

  Zelikow was incensed, and he knew that Kean and Hamilton would be as well. The commissioners had said repeatedly to the staff that they did not want surprises at their public hearings, at least nothing that would surprise them. And Zelikow could only imagine what surprises Clarke had saved up for his book and, perhaps more important, for 60 Minutes, easily the most watched and powerful news show on television.

  Zelikow went to Dan Marcus and ordered him to ready some sort of legal action against the Free Press to get a copy of the book before the hearing.

  “Philip went ballistic,” Marcus recalled. “He wanted to subpoena it.”

  Marcus knew better than to draw up a subpoena or threaten any other sort of legal action. It was a ridiculous idea, he thought. The commission had enough enemies; it did not need to make one out of the publishing industry. How would it look if the commission, unwilling to issue a subpoena to the Bush White House, slapped one on a book publisher instead? That might turn the Washington press corps against the commission as well.

  “Yeah, that’s just what we need, Philip—a First Amendment battle,” he said to Zelikow, scoffing at the idea.

  But Zelikow was insistent. “Well, we have subpoena authority,” he told Marcus. “And they have no right to withhold it from us.”

  Marcus called lawyers for the Free Press in New York and its parent company, Simon & Schuster, and had what he described as a polite conversation. He said he did not threaten a subpoena: “I didn’t use the ‘s’ word.” Instead, he explained that the commission wanted Clarke to live up to a promise, made during his private interviews with the commission, to provide the panel with an advance look at his book. After talking with Clarke, the Free Press agreed to turn over a copy of Against All Enemies to the investigation. But the publisher insisted on several conditions, including a promise that the book’s distribution within the commission would be limited to three staff investigators who were involved in preparing for the Clarke hearing. Clarke had insisted personally on another condition: Zelikow could not be one of the three. Clarke figured that if Zelikow got a copy, he would immediately share it with Condoleezza Rice and others at the White House or turn it over to a favored reporter to bust the embargo on the book and destroy its news value. “I wanted it in writing that Zelikow wouldn’t read it,” Clarke said.

  Marcus consulted with the commissioners and agreed to the publisher’s conditions, over the angry protests of Zelikow. Marcus and others on the staff could not deny that they enjoyed Zelikow’s discomfort. Throughout the investigation, Zelikow had insisted that every scrap of secret evidence gathered by the staff be shared with him before anyone else; he then controlled how and if the evidence was shared elsewhere. Now Zelikow would be the last to know some of the best secrets of them all.

  The commission was true to its word, and the contents of Against All Enemies remained embargoed until the Friday before Clarke’s testimony, when CBS issued a press release about its interview with Clarke for that Sunday night and hinted at some of his book’s more explosive revelations.

  The 60 Minutes interview was gripping television, with Clarke, who was unknown to the public until that moment, explaining to a wide-eyed Lesley Stahl that Bush and Rice had ignored his urgent warnings throughout the spring and summer of 2001 about an imminent attack. Clarke, as the public could see for itself, was made for television. In part it was his physical presence—his shock of white hair and ghostly pallor, as if he had emerged from years of hiding in sunless back rooms of the West Wing to share the terrible secrets he had learned. But even more, it was Clarke’s urgent speaking style. He was merciless about Rice. Like others in the administration, she was obsessed with cold war issues, not with the terrorist threats in front of her. President Bush, Clarke said, had “done nothing” about al-Qaeda before 9/11 and then, after the attacks, tried desperately to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein to justify an invasion of Iraq.

  “I find it outrageous that the president is running for reelection on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism,” Clarke said. “He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.”

  The morning after the broadcast, the White House was in a near panic over Clarke. Andy Card said it was always difficult to calibrate panic in the White House; almost every day had some moment of “extreme anxiety,” especially after 9/11. But Card could not deny that Clarke’s testimony had created genuine alarm within the West Wing. No matter how much the White House press office tried to tear at Clarke’s credibility, his allegations were a direct threat to Bush’s reelection hopes.

  Card said that no person was more upset than Condoleezza Rice, who had never seen her competence or her motives questioned in public like this before. It was the first time that some in the White House had ever seen her express anything like fear.

  Rice took to the airwaves herself, granting several television interviews in a matter of days to respond to Clarke. She scheduled her own 60 Minutes interview for the following Sunday. For someone as self-controlled and diplomatic as Rice, her tone was remarkably angry. Clarke’s attack on her was personal, and her counterattack would be personal, too.

  “Dick Clarke just does not know what he’s talking about,” she said. “I really don’t know what Richard Clarke’s motivations are, but I’ll tell you this: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction, and he chose not to.”

  The White House onslaught against Clarke was fierce throughout the White House, something Clarke had predicted.

  “I assumed they would do everything they could possibly do, and I didn’t try to dwell too much on the specifics,” Clarke said later. “I kind of thought this was suicide.” He had worked in the Bush administration for almost two years before he left the White House, and he said he understood its brass-knuckle tactics. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if Karl Rove had broken into my house and strangled me,” he said, not entirely in jest.

  Dick Cheney joined in the attacks. He went on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and accused Clarke of nursing a “grudge” against the administration after having been turned down for the job of deputy secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security, a job Clarke had indeed wanted. Cheney said that in the Bush White House, Clarke “wasn’t in the loop, frankly” and “clearly missed a lot of what was going on” within the administration in responding to terrorist threats. Cheney’s remarks had unintentionally proved exactly what Clarke was saying—that his authority was so diminished in the Bush administration that he had no ability to reach the decision makers in the White House when threats emerged.

  But even though he knew he would be attacked by the White House, Clarke later said that he had not predicted the attacks would be so ugly or personal. The conservative columnist Robert Novak suggested that Clarke’s criticism of Rice was motivated by racism, that he could not tolerate a “powerful African-American woman.” Clarke’s sexual orientation became part of the attacks. The conservative commentator Laura In- graham opened an especially unsavory line of criticism on the never married Clarke, asking why “this single man” was such a “drama queen.”

  Against All Enemies became an instant best seller and was sold to Hollywood for a film adaptation. The book promised to make Clarke a wealthy man. Still, he thought the publicity might destroy the small security firm, Good Harbor Consulting, that he had set up after leaving the White House. Ahead of his testimony to the commission, he called his two partners in the firm and offered to resign.

  As a result of the book, “we’re never going to get a government contract—or a contract from anybody who wants a gover
nment contract,” Clarke warned them. “This is not what you guys signed up for and, therefore, if you want to dissolve the company or if you want to leave it, then you two go ahead without me.” He said he assumed that ABC News, which had just signed him up as an on-air consultant on terrorism, would also find a way to get out of the contract. His fears were unfounded. Although Clarke’s two partners at Good Harbor “thought I was crazy” to take on the Bush administration, they stayed with him. ABC did, too.

  In the hours before his testimony, Clarke had a final decision to make: What would he say in his prepared testimony? The commission had invited him to speak for up to ten minutes before submitting to questioning.

  Clarke had prepared a long written statement. But on the eve of his testimony, he decided not to read it at the hearing.

  “Don’t be some spineless bureaucrat,” he told himself. “You’ve got people in there, in the audience, whose lives have been ruined.” He knew that the first several rows of the audience at the hearing would be the family members of 9/11 victims.

  “Fuck it,” he said to himself. “I’m just going to apologize to them.”

  41

  OFFICE OF THE COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT

  The White House

  MARCH 24, 2004

  In the hours before Richard Clarke’s testimony before the 9/11 commission, Alberto Gonzales was busy at the White House. He was helping to prepare lists of questions for the commission’s Republicans to ask Clarke—to destroy his credibility. Gonzales and his staff spoke to Fred Fielding, the former White House counsel, and Jim Thompson, the former Illinois governor. They were seen as the administration’s most reliable supporters on the commission. During Clarke’s testimony, Fielding and Thompson could be seen standing up from the dais periodically and disappearing to a back room to take phone calls, apparently from the White House. Gonzales’s office had also been in contact with the office of Senator Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader, who was prepared to rush to the Senate floor to denounce Clarke and question his truthfulness as soon as the hearing was over.