an icepick through the keyhole

I didn't see the Fox News item (you'll forgive my initial recoiling at anything coming from Fox resembling news). From what I can gather though, the interview took place in August 2002, when Clarke was still an administration official. Clarke resigned only in March 2003, just prior to the Iraq war. Point being, it would have been a career killer to say on record that the President was derelict in his duty.

That aside, however, do his remarks really contradict what he's saying now? Take this excerpt:

Fox News correspondent Jim Angle, who was at the August 2002 briefing, asked Clarke to clarify: "You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?"

Clarke replied: "All of that's correct."

So Bush did not stop anything the Clinton administration was doing. But was the Clinton administration doing anything?

Another reporter referred to Clinton's alleged plan on al-Qaida and was interrupted by Clarke.

"There was never a plan, Andrea," he said. "What there was was these two things: One, a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat. And two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years, and which were still on the table."

So there was no plan for Bush to stop. If Bush continued to not do anything when Clarke submitted his recommendations, the statement would still be correct.

Here's an excerpt from a Newsweek article:

In his new book, Clarke recounts how on Jan. 24, 2001, he recommended that the new president's national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, convene the president's top advisers to discuss the Qaeda threat. One week later, Bush did. But according to Clarke, the meeting had nothing to do with bin Laden. The topic was how to get rid of Saddam Hussein. "What does that tell you?" Clarke remarked to NEWSWEEK. "They thought there was something more urgent. It was Iraq. They came in there with their agenda, and [Al Qaeda] was not on it."

A White House official countered that the true fault lay with Clarke for failing to propose an effective plan to go after Al Qaeda. On Jan. 25, this official told NEWSWEEK, Clarke submitted proposals to "roll back" Al Qaeda in Afghanistan by boosting military aid to neighboring Uzbekistan, getting the CIA to arm its Predator spy planes and increasing funding for guerrillas fighting the Taliban. There was no need for a high-level meeting on terrorism until Clarke came up with a better plan, this official told NEWSWEEK. The official quoted President Bush as telling Condi Rice, "I'm tired of swatting flies." Bush, this official says, wanted an aggressive scheme to take bin Laden out.

So the White House is saying that Clarke did make proposals in January 2001, but they weren't good enough, so they were tabled until a new plan was available.

Again, this is consistent with this excerpt from the earlier article about the interview:

Yet, in the August 2002 briefing, Clarke said Bush's newly appointed counterterrorism deputies came into office in late March and early April of 2001 and by the summer had "changed the strategy from one of rollback with al-Qaida over the course [of] five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of al-Qaida."

Clarke said President Bush was briefed throughout the process and received a final document of the plan Sept. 10, 2001, "I think."

Here, Clarke is talking about plans that were forumulated starting in March of 2001, and that he "thinks" Bush was handed the draft on September 10. Where's the contradiction?

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