Clarke was a former Bush administration counterterrorism official who had made a name for himself by blasting the Bush administration’s failure to take the threat from al Qaeda seriously before 9/11. I remembered sitting in a charged Senate hearing room watching him testify before Hamilton and the other 9/11 commissioners, surprising the audience by apologizing to the 9/11 families present for failing to prevent the attacks. Now I listened as he voiced caution against a call to go after bin Laden in Pakistan.
