I remember when Paul Thompson use to post on DU

[paulthompson]

54. Clarke

Are you talking about the fact that he used my book in one of his classes at Harvard? If so, I was very pleased by that. And I think it says a lot about the validity of complaints against the "nothing to see here, move along" official version of 9/11 that the person who was the US counterterrorism czar in the time up to and including 9/11 used a book like mine.

I find it very, very interesting that a couple of years ago Richard Clarke stated that he thought two of the 9/11 hijackers (Alhazmi and Almihdhar) may have been protected by the CIA in some way. For a high-level establishment guy like Clarke, that's going out on a limb in a very risky way, so he must have felt strongly about that.

I've never met or spoken to Clarke, which is a shame, because I think he'd have a lot of interesting things to say. For instance, I heard him on NPR one day talking about how top Bush officials were looking for any excuse to invade Iraq even prior to the 9/11 attacks, including brainstorming possible staged incidents. I thought that was a pretty stunning revelation, but like so many things, it quickly disappeared down the memory hole. I did get an audio file of that interview though, and added it to the timeline.