March 27, 2004 - The United States Senate used to be called the greatest deliberative body in the history of the world. It was in the United States Senate that the great issues of the day were discussed and resolved. Partisanship gave way to patriotism; confrontation became compromise when issues moved from the hot temper of the House of Representatives to the calm deliberation of the Senate. It is said when the Constitutional Convention was grappling with the construction of the Legislative Branch one delegate asked why we needed a Senate. Benjamin Franklin is said to have replied, “For the same reason a coffee cup requires a saucer – to cool the brew.”

Majority Leader William Frist broke the saucer this week when he stood in the well of the Senate to accuse Richard Clarke of perjury before the Congress. He said this:

“Second, in the August of 2002 interview I just referred to [a background briefing Mr. Clarke gave to reporters], Mr. Clarke gave a thorough account of the Bush administration's active policy against Al Qaeda. Mr. Clarke now explains away that media performance by suggesting that he was simply telling lies in an interview as a loyal administration official.

“A loyal administration official? Does Mr. Clarke understand the gravity of the issues being reviewed by the 9/11 commission and the gravity of the charges he has made? If, in the summer of 2001, he saw the threat from Al Qaeda as grave as he now says it was, and if he found the response of the administration as inadequate as he now says it was, why did he wait until the Sunday, March 21, 2004, to make his concerns known?

“There is not a single public record of Mr. Clarke making any objection whatsoever in the period leading up to or following the 9/11 attacks. No threat to resign. No public protest. No plea to the president, the Congress, or the public, to heed the advice he now says was ignored. If Mr. Clarke held his tongue because he was loyal, then shame on him for putting politics above principle. But if he has manufactured these charges for profit and political gain, he is a shame to this government.”

Senator Frist, never in his testimony under oath before the Commission did he suggest that he had lied. Indeed he emphasized those positive truths he could relate, he said, while, as a loyal
administration member, he de-emphasized the negative aspects of the Administration performance. He simply related what the Administration had done rather than describing that which it had failed to do.

The public record is lacking in a clear public expression of his concerns, but the private record now made public records that he raised the issues he now puts publicly repeatedly over the 8 pre-9/11 months of the Bush Administration – the latest time in an e-mail to Condoleezza Rice less than a week before the attacks. It was not that he was silent. It was that the decision makers had their ears so stopped with Iraqi oil that they did not hear and they did not heed. He was not permitted to make a plea to the President, nor indeed to the cabinet. He was restrained by the administration to underlings, assistants charged with filtering his advice before it got to the top. Mr. Clarke did not hold his tongue, it was stopped.

Do you doubt, Senator Frist, that in the summer of 2001 the threat from Al Qaeda was as grave as Mr. Clarke now says? The families of 3,000 citizens of the world do not doubt the gravity of that threat nor do the families of more than 200 Spanish citizens doubt that the threat still persists despite the brigades patrolling in Baghdad’s streets. There is no higher principle of government that that it should protect its citizens. It was not putting politics above principle when Mr. Clarke said, “I failed you.” We learn our most important lessons when we candidly examine our failures. When you refuse to hear and heed in the name of partisan advantage, it is you who put politics above principle and shatter the saucer on the Senate floor.