Nuclear Beef

Richard Clarke has received lots of adulation as a result of his apology to the victims of 9/11. This apology has been advanced as proof of his sincerity and willingness to frankly admit his failures, on the record.

"Your government failed you," he said, his voice close to breaking. "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you." "We tried hard," Mr. Clarke went on, "but that doesn't matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask -- once all the facts are out -- for your understanding and your forgiveness."

It's difficult for me to accept this apology, because Clarke refuses to go on the record about another of his failures. Specifically, the genocide in Rwanda which occured while he was in a position to do something about it.

Frontline's Ghosts of Rwanda has interviews with many Clinton Administration officials, including Anthony Lake (National Security Advisor, 1993-1997) and Madeline Albright (who was US Ambassador to the UN at the time).

Curiously, Richard Clarke was not interviewed, although he was in charge of US peacekeeping policy at the time. Perhaps he was out of the loop?

Nope.

Madeline Albright

ALBRIGHT: The secretary-general basically came to the Security Council with three options: either to reinforce this UNAMIR group, which really was inadequate; to withdraw it completely; or to have a kind of medium option of some reinforcement of it. My instructions were to support full withdrawal. I listened to the discussion very carefully in the Security Council. I could see that our position was wrong, and especially in listening to the African delegate, Ambassador Gambari from Nigeria, [who] was very moving on this.
...
I felt that I would get a better hearing if I called the National Security Council, which I did, and they said, "Well, no, we're worrying about this, and these are your instructions." I actually screamed into the phone. I said, "They're unacceptable. I want them changed." So they told me to chill out and calm down. But ultimately, they did send me instructions that allowed us to do a reinforcement of UNAMIR; not a massive changing of the mandate and enlarging it or withdrawing it, but the middle option allowed me to support that.

Q: I have been told you talked to Richard Clarke, that the conversation was with him.

A: That is correct.

Q Why Clarke?

A: Because he was in charge of peacekeeping. The way the National Security Council was set up was that this was coming through those people that had been studying what the appropriate role of peacekeeping was at the United Nations. Now, this was a truly interesting time at the U.N., in terms of trying to figure out what the role of peacekeeping was. There had been a number of peacekeeping operations throughout the history of the UN, but they were primarily operations that came in to monitor cease-fires, to make sure that there was separation between contending sides. They didn't often have authority to get involved in any fighting. They were definitely the neutral observers.

All of a sudden, in the early 1990s, there was the recognition that the United Nations could have a much larger role. So we were looking generally at the role of peacekeeping, and Dick Clarke and others were in charge of developing a new peacekeeping policy that had begun to be discussed under the Bush administration, that ended up being this Presidential Decision Directive 25. And that listed how, and under what circumstances peacekeeping operations would be supported by the United States.

To be clear about this. Albright called Clarke at the NSC because she disagreed with his policy supporting complete withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from Rwanda. She was so upset by this policy that she screamed at him, eventually getting his consent to support the (skeletal) remains of the UN peacekeeping mission.

So why is there no Clarke interview? For the answer we must turn to the transcript, which is not yet available. In the narration of the episode, we learn that Clarke refused to be interviewed by Frontline for this report.

I'll believe that Richard Clarke is sincere about his apology for 9/11 when I hear an apology for his role in the Clinton/UN ignoring of Rwanda. I'll believe he's sincere when I hear his public apology to the loved ones of 800,000 murdered Rwandans.

UPDATE: Apparently Mark Steyn drew the same connection in this article from April 8th, 1 day before my post.