Clarke is notgoing to be just a Monday story-for certain. He’ll be the star Wednesday, at the 9/11 commission hearing. Insider guy tells me:

Here’s the story Clarke may be helping the Commission Dems fly:
Even though the Cole bombing happened on Clinton’s
watch (Oct 2000), it was really too late in his term to have reasonably
expected him to do anything about it; therefore the failure to retaliate
against bin Laden (and, as the story goes, to neutralize him so that
9/11 could have been prevented) is Bush’s fault. I think Clarke will be
there to say this, and to tell the Commission — as [he’ll be telling the world on CBS Sunday night]– that
he was Cassandra screaming for something to be done about bin Laden
prior to 9/11 but he couldn’t get the Bush people to listen.
The story is total BS. First, even if there had not been an
unprecedented delay in resolving the 2000 presidential election, the
Cole attack happened almost a month before the ELECTION, not a month
before THE END OF CLINTON’s TERM; he was going to be president for
nearly 3 more months, and if Gore had won it would have essentially been
a continuation of the same administration. If a military response was
called for, it was incumbent on Clinton to respond . . . immediately.
If, as happened, Bush had emerged as the winner, it would have been
entirely appropriate for Clinton to coordinate what he was doing with
Bush and his transition team (just as Bush 41 coordinated what he was
doing in Somalia before Clinton assumed the office in 1993); but that is
not an excuse for not responding. Clinton didn’t do anything — and not
because he was deferring to a new admin, but because he NEVER wanted to
do anything if it meant meaningful military action, and because he was
too busy pardoning Mark Rich and the Weather Underground to be bothered
with bin Laden.
By the time the Bush got in, it was 3 mos after the Cole, and it
took another 1 to 8 mos to get the major players of his admin confirmed
and in place. Further, it makes no sense to look at the Cole attack in
isolation — it was part of a pattern of attacks by a growing entity;
that situation did not call for a specific retaliation for Cole but for
an entire rethinking about al Qaeda. Regardless of what Clarke says,
that precisely is what was done: a new counterterrorism policy was developed — shifting from containment to
eradication of al Qaeda and its sanctuaries — and drafts were
circulated at the cabinet level in June and the first week of September
2001 (the latter is virtually the same as the directive GWB signed after
the 9/11 attacks). Of course 9/11 happened despite all this, but that hardly means intense rethinking and
planning was not underway beforehand — rethinking and planning that had
lots to do with the spectacularly swift and decisive military campaigns
post-9/11. And Clarke is certifiably insane if he thinks Bush could
have garnered public support or put together a coalition BEFORE the 9/11
attacks. To do what we did required key help from countries (like
Pakistan) who would not have given us that help absent the 9/11
attacks. (Think about this: We’ve seen the various objections to the
military operation against Iraq — and that was AFTER 9/11 and involved
a country in open defiance of UN resolutions satisfaction of which were
the condition for ending the first Gulf War; what do you figure the
Dems, the NYT, CBS, etc. have said if Bush had decided to invade
Afghanistan BEFORE 9/11?)