{"id":419,"date":"2004-04-13T05:06:51","date_gmt":"2004-04-13T05:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:34","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:34","slug":"clarke_vs_dean_diana_dean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=419","title":{"rendered":"Clarke vs. Dean (Diana Dean)"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Update:<\/b> Note that the Seattle Times itself makes the exactly the same point<\/a> that I do (hat tip to Instapundit<\/a>)]<\/b><\/p>\n

Fred Kaplan takes on Condi Rice in Slate<\/a>. I’m not enough of a judge of inside-the-beltway baseball to have a sense whether Rice is a good bureaucracy wrangler or not. I do fully accept that doing so is a critical part of her job, and is a big part of what she’ll ultimately be judged for, which means in part that I’m reserving final judgment on how she’s done in the job for a bit.<\/p>\n

Kaplan makes some arguments about why she isn’t, and you ought to read them and make your own decision.<\/p>\n

But before you, do, let me alert you to a large steaming prairie platter set in the middle of his argument.He says:<\/p>\n

This was one of Clarke’s most compelling points. In his book, testimony, and several TV interviews, Clarke has argued that the Clinton administration thwarted al-Qaida’s plot to set off bombs at Los Angeles airport on the eve of the millennium because intelligence reports of an impending terrorist attack were discussed at several meetings of Cabinet secretaries. Knowing they’d have to come back and tell the president what they were doing to prevent an attack, these officials went back to their departments and “shook the trees” for information. When Bush came to power, Rice retained Clarke and his counterterrorism crew, but she demoted their standing; terrorism was now discussed (and, even then, rarely) at meetings of deputy secretaries, who lacked the same clout and didn’t feel the same pressure.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a key point, and is, in fact the only fact-based argument he makes.<\/p>\n

And, from all the information I’ve seen, it’s completely full of it.<\/p>\n

I haven’t read Clarke’s book (yet), but I do remember the news accounts both at the time and afterward<\/a> of the arrest of Ahmed Ressam, was that he had acted hincky when at the border checkpoint, and a normal border patrol officer hunch caused them to pull him in for close inspection. They searched his car – for drugs – and he tried to run and was chased down.<\/p>\n

I missed the part in this story where – like at Waco – senior government officials stood by an open phone line and communicated closely with the troops on the ground. No one took credit for it in 2000, when it would have made a difference in an election. <\/p>\n

And I’ve got to believe that if Clarke is taking credit for it now – claiming that good senior staff work foiled the Millennium Plot – either he’s puffing like a freaking blowfish, or there’s some data out there that hasn’t made it to the public record.<\/p>\n

Here’s the story from the Seattle Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Coho arrived in Port Angeles in the dark, just before 6 p.m., the last boat of the day. Customs inspector Diana Dean stopped each car as it rolled off, asking the drivers a few basic questions and wishing them a good trip. <\/p>\n

The last car in line was a green Chrysler 300M with British Columbia plates. <\/p>\n

“Where are you going?” “Sattal.” <\/p>\n

“Why are you going to Seattle?” “Visit.” <\/p>\n

“Where do you live?” “Montreal.” <\/p>\n

“Who are you going to see in Seattle?” “No, hotel.” <\/p>\n

The driver was fidgeting, jittery, sweating. His hands disappeared from sight as he began rummaging around the car’s console. That made Dean nervous. <\/p>\n

She handed him a customs declaration to fill out, a subtle way of stalling while she took a closer look. He filled out the form and handed it back. By this time, Dean observed, he was acting “hinky.” <\/p>\n

She asked him to turn the car off, pop open the trunk and step outside. Noris was slow to respond but complied. <\/p>\n

At this point, the other customs inspectors were finished and waiting to go home. They came over to help process the last car of the day. Dean told them this might be a “load vehicle” … code for one used for smuggling. Inspector Mark Johnson took over the interrogation. <\/p>\n

“Habla espa\u00f1ol?” he asked. <\/p>\n

“Parlez-vous fran\u00e7ais?” the man replied, handing over his ID. Not a passport or driver’s license, but his Costco card. <\/p>\n

“So you like to shop in bulk? You know, the 120-roll pack of toilet paper?” Johnson joked. He escorted Noris to a table, where he asked him to empty his pockets. <\/p>\n

Inspector Mike Chapman searched the suitcase in the trunk. As he was doing that, inspector Danny Clem reached in and unscrewed the fastener on the spare-tire compartment. He opened the panel, looked inside and called out to Johnson. <\/p>\n

Johnson, grabbing Noris by the shoulders, led him over to the trunk. At a hefty 240 pounds, Johnson had no trouble maneuvering the slim Noris. They peered in and saw no spare tire. In its place were several green bags that appeared to filled with white powder, as well as four black boxes, two pill bottles and two jars of brown liquid. A drug dealer, perhaps? <\/p>\n

Johnson felt Noris shudder. He escorted Noris back to the table and patted him down for weapons. Inside Noris’ camel’s-hair coat was a bulge. As Johnson was slipping off the coat to take a closer look, he was suddenly left holding an empty garment. Noris was fleeing. <\/p>\n

By the time it sank in, Noris was nearly a block away. Johnson and Chapman took off on foot, yelling, “Stop! Police!” <\/p>\n

With his head start, Noris escaped. The inspectors couldn’t find him. Then Chapman noticed movement under a pickup parked in front of a shoe store. He squatted down, saw Noris, drew his gun and ordered him to come out with his hands up. <\/p>\n

Noris stood up, arms raised, and looked at Chapman, just 20 feet away with his gun drawn. Then he turned and ran. “Stop! Police!” <\/p>\n

Johnson joined Chapman on Noris’ tail. Noris bounced off a moving car but continued running. When he got to the middle of a busy intersection, he reversed direction, headed for a car stopped at the light and grabbed the driver’s door handle. The woman behind the wheel, startled, stepped on the gas, ran the red light and sent Noris spinning. Chapman and Johnson swarmed him. <\/p>\n

They took him back to the terminal and handed him over to the Port Angeles police, who put him in the back seat of a patrol car. <\/p>\n

Johnson took a sample of the white powder from the trunk to test. Was it heroin, speed, cocaine? Negative on each. As he shook the jars of brown liquid, Noris, who could see Johnson from the patrol car, ducked down to the floor. <\/p>\n

Within a couple of days, the inspectors would learn that the brown liquid Johnson had shaken was a powerful, highly unstable relative of nitroglycerin that could have blown them all to bits.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Funny, I don’t see Richard Clarke’s name anywhere in that story.<\/p>\n

Fred, care to shed some light on it for us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Update: Note that the Seattle Times itself makes the exactly the same point that I do (hat tip to Instapundit)] Fred Kaplan takes on Condi Rice in Slate. I’m not enough of a judge of inside-the-beltway baseball to have a sense whether Rice is a good bureaucracy wrangler or not. I do fully accept that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}