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Originally Posted by shek
So, what specific policy of Richard Clarke was reversed that then allowed 9/11 to happen.
As far as Gore-Clinton policies that did prevent the 9/11 plot from being broken open, the Gorelick wall comes to mind instantaneously.
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I'm sure you can name plenty of things that the Clinton adminstration could have done better. But, at least, there was some kind of focus on stopping events from happening instead of using the "let's think big and not swat at flies" theory. It has been awhile since I read Clarks book but he talks about how frustrated he got because nobody would take the threats seriously in the Bush administration. He was bascially run out of the Whitehouse after years of service (even before the Clinton administration).
Here's Clark in an excerpt from a Slate article I just found. He's comparing how things operated in '99 when they had information that there were plans to set off a bomb at LAX on New Years, versus, '01 when there were reports of a plan to fly planes into the world trade center.
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In December '99, every day or every other day, the head of the FBI or the head of the CIA, the attorney general, had to go to the White House and sit in the meeting and report on all of the things that they personally had done to stop the al-Qaida attack. So they were going back every night to their departments and shaking the trees personally, finding out all of the information. If that had happened in July of 2001, we might have found out in the White House, the attorney general might have found out that there were al-Qaida operatives in the United States. FBI at lower levels knew. Never told me. Never told the highest levels in the FBI.*
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Bush's catastrophic allergy to Clinton. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine