Former White House Counter-Terrorism Czar Richard
Clarke has managed to do something that defies modern political gravity. He has

stayed in the news, hour after hour and day after day. He
was hurled many days ago into the maelstrom of the 24-hour news cycle, which

reports one moment on an incredibly important story, flings
that story out beyond the Oort Cloud the next moment, and that story is never

seen again. Clarke, somehow, has managed to maintain his
position at the top of the news despite this process we mistakenly call

'journalism' for longer than any other ten major recent
stories combined.

There are several reasons for this. First of all,
Clarke's accusations are damning. According to him, the Bush administration ignored

the threat of al Qaeda terrorism completely. After the
attacks of September 11, the administration became obsessed with attacking Iraq,

despite the fact that every intelligence organization in
America was telling them Iraq had nothing to do with it. Clarke maintains that
the

war in Iraq is a dangerous distraction from the defense of
the nation, a political war that has nothing to do with making America safer,
and

one that has cost us terribly in blood and treasure. Given
the fact that Clarke was physically in the White House for all this, and that
he

has been in the anti-terrorism business since the days of
Ronald Reagan, his accusations have long, sharp teeth.

There is also the fact that Clarke apologized for
September 11. In the context of a White House that has battled the assembly of a

September 11 investigation for two years, a White House
that has slapped down every plea from the family members of those who died on

September 11 to get this investigation rolling, a White
House that tried at one point to put the investigation into the slippery hands of

Henry Kissinger, a White House that has adamantly refused
to hand over relevant data about September 11 to the commission they never

wanted to see in the first place, a White House that won't
allow National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly before
this

commission despite her central role in the administration,
a National Security Advisor that would dance the Macarena on the Capitol dome

if it could get her out of giving that testimony because
she knows she will get clobbered with her own words, and finally a White House

that never got around to saying they were sorry to the
families of the September 11 victims, in the context of all that, Richard Clarke's

heartfelt apology to those families instantly became the
stuff of political legend.

Another reason Clarke has stayed in the news is
because he does not stand alone. Had he been the only person to come forth with

savage criticism of George W. Bush and his administration,
Karl Rove would have called out the dogs, and Clarke would have found

himself selling Amway outside of McMurdo Sound before St.
Patrick's Day. Fortunately for Mr. Clarke, and for the truth, he has joined a

long and prestigious line of people who have come forward
to bear witness against this White House:

* Tom Maertens, who was National Security Council
director for nuclear non-proliferation for both the Clinton and Bush White House.

Maertens' own words tell the tale: "Clarke was a colleague
of mine for 15 months in the White House, under both Bill Clinton and George

W. Bush. Subsequently, I moved to the U.S. State Department
as deputy coordinator for counterterrorism, and worked with him and his

staff before and after 9/11. The Bush administration did
ignore the threat of terrorism. It was focused on tax cuts, building a ballistic

missile system, withdrawing from the ABM Treaty and
rejecting the Kyoto Protocol. Clarke's gutsy insider recounting of events related to

9/11 is an important public service. From my perspective,
the Bush administration has practiced the most cynical, opportunistic form of

politics I witnessed in my 28 years in government:
hijacking legitimate American outrage and patriotism over 9/11 to conduct a

pre-ordained war against Saddam Hussein."

* Roger Cressey, Clarke's former deputy. Cressey backs
up one of the most damning charges that has been leveled against the

administration by Clarke: They blew past al Qaeda after the
9/11 attacks, focusing instead on Iraq. Cressey is one of four eyewitnesses to

an exchange between Clarke and Bush which took place in the
White House Situation Room on September 12, 2001. Bush pressed

Clarke three times on September 12 to find evidence that
Iraq was responsible for the attacks. According to his book, 'Against All

Enemies,' Clarke protested that al-Qaida, and not Iraq, was
responsible. Bush angrily ordered him to "'look into Iraq, Saddam,'" and then

left the room. According to Cressey, Condoleezza Rice was
also a witness to this exchange. The word from administration officials is that

Rice can't seem to remember it. This, among others, is a
reason Rice is refusing to testify publicly before the September 11 commission.

* Donald Kerrick, a three-star General who served as
deputy National Security Advisor under Clinton, and stayed for several months in

the Bush White House. According to a report by Sidney
Blumenthal from March 25, Kerrick wrote Stephen Hadley, his replacement in the

White House, a two-page memo. "It was classified," Kerrick
told Blumenthal. "I said they needed to pay attention to al-Qaida and

counterterrorism. I said we were going to be struck again.
We didn't know where or when. They never once asked me a question nor did I

see them having a serious discussion about it. They didn't
feel it was an imminent threat the way the Clinton administration did. Hadley

did not respond to my memo. I know he had it. I agree with
Dick that they saw those problems through an Iraqi prism. But the evidence

wasn't there." Hadley has since become a White House front
man in the attacks against Rickard Clarke.

* Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary for George
W. Bush. O'Neill was afforded a position on the National Security Council

because of his job as Treasury Secretary, and sat in on the
Iraq invasion planning sessions which were taking place months before the

attacks of September 11. "It was all about finding a way to
do it," says O'Neill. "That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find
me a

way to do this.'" O'Neill describes the process of
decision-making between Bush and his people as being "like a blind man in a roomful of

deaf people." Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Ron Suskind
captured O'Neill's views in a new book titled 'The Price of Loyalty.' "From the

very first instance, it was about Iraq," says Suskind about
his interviews with O'Neill and his review of 19,000 pages of documentary

evidence provided by O'Neill. "It was about what we can do
to change this regime. Day one, these things were laid and sealed."

* Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador and career
diplomat who received lavish praise from the first President Bush for his work in

Iraq before the first Gulf War. Wilson was the man
dispatched in February 2002 to Niger to see if charges that Iraq was seeking uranium

from that nation to make nuclear bombs had any merit. He
investigated, returned, and informed the CIA, the State Department, the office

of the National Security Advisor and the office of Vice
President Cheney that the charges were without merit. Eleven months later, George

W. Bush used the Niger uranium claim in his State of the
Union address to scare the cheese out of everyone, despite the fact that the

claim had been irrefutably debunked. Wilson went public,
exposing this central bit of evidence to support the Iraq invasion as the lie it

was. A few days later, Wilson's wife came under attack from
the White House, whose agents used press proxies to destroy her career in

the CIA as a warning to Wilson and anyone else who might
come forward. For the record, Wilson's wife was a deep-cover agent running a

network which worked to keep weapons of mass destruction
out of the hands of terrorists. The irony is palpable.

* Greg Thielmann, former Director of the Office of
Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Issues in the State Department. Thielmann,
like

Ambassador Wilson, was involved in investigating whether
the Niger uranium claims had any merit. Thielmann told Newsweek at the

beginning of June 2003 that the State Department's Bureau
of Intelligence and Research had concluded the documents used to support

the Niger uranium claims were "garbage." In fact, they were
crude forgeries. Thielmann was stunned to see Bush use the claims in his

State of the Union address eleven months after the charge
had been dispensed with as nonsense. "When I saw that, it really blew me

away," Thielmann told Newsweek. He watched Bush use the
claim and said, "Not that stupid piece of garbage. My thought was, how did

that get into the speech?"

* Karen Kwiatkowski, a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force
and a career Pentagon officer. Kwiatkowski worked in the office of Undersecretary

for Policy Douglas Feith, and worked specifically with the
Office of Special Plans. Kwiatkowski's own words tell her story: "From May

2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the
formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of
the

neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in
the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy

favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used
to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between

policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence
agencies. I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured

and carefully considered assessments, and through
suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact

falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the
president."

* Rand Beers, who served the Bush administration on
the National Security Council at the White House as a special assistant to the

President for combating terrorism. Mr. Beers served in
government for more than 30 years working in international narcotics and law

enforcement affairs, intelligence, and counter-terrorism.
He worked for the National Security Council under presidents Reagan, BushSr.,
Clinton. Because of his position, Beers saw everything. In a June 25, 2003,
interview with Ted Koppel on Nightline, Beers reported that

the administration was failing dramatically to defend the
United States against terrorism. According to Beers, al Qaeda presented a far

greater threat to America than Hussein and Iraq, and that
the Iraq war was a terrible and unnecessary distraction from what was truly

needed to keep the nation safe.

Rogue journalist Hunter S. Thompson, in a Rolling
Stone article from July 4 1973 titled 'Fear and Loathing in Washington: The Boys in

the Bag,' described the looming sense of doomed finality
which surrounded the Nixon White House after the existence of recorded Oval

Office conversations became exposed. The Nixon White House
had tried everything to that point to fend off the Watergate scandal: They

denied everything, then tried to pay off the central
figures, then fired a bunch of people, denied everything again, and finally released
edited

transcripts of the White House tapes in an effort to stem
the tide that was about to flood them out of power.

"There are a hundred or more people wandering around
Washington today," wrote Thompson, "who have heard the 'real stuff,' as they

put it - and despite their professional caution when the
obvious question arises, there is one reaction they all feel free to agree on:
that

nobody who felt shocked, depressed or angry after reading
the edited White House transcripts should ever be allowed to hear the actual

tapes, except under heavy sedation or locked in the trunk
of a car. Only a terminal cynic, they say, can listen for any length of time to
the

real stuff without feeling a compulsion to do something
like drive down to the White House and throw a bag of live rats over the fence."

Richard Clarke, Tom Maertens, Roger Cressey, Donald
Kerrick, Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, Greg Thielmann, Karen Kwiatkowski and

Rand Beers all heard and saw the real stuff happening in
this Bush White House. Wilson has a book coming out in May, in which he will

name the White House operatives who destroyed his wife's car
eer. There will be more books, from more people, and the 24-hour news

cycle will continue to ride this tiger.

These people are telling the world about the real
stuff. The Bush/Cheney Re-Election Axis is terrified, and the Secret Service detail

guarding the White House perimeter might want to cowboy up
in preparation for a rain of rat bags coming over that fence.