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Copyright 2003 The Washington Post

The Washington Post

March 13, 2003, Thursday, Final Edition

SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A21

LENGTH: 1476 words

HEADLINE: Anti-Terror Pioneer Turns In the Badge; After 11 Years, Clarke Leaves Legacy of Lasting Change ~ and
Enemies

BYLINE: Barton Gellman, Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:
On Feb. 21, the last day of an 11-year White House marathon, Richard A. Clarke walked into his office and turned in a
gear bag fit for a Hollywood spook. From pockets and cases he shed an encrypted mobile phone, a satellite phone, a
"priority service" mobile phone, a secure home phone and still another government cell phone.
Then came a .357 Magnum SIG-Sauer semiautomatic with jacketed hollow-points, and the special deputy U.S.
marshal's badge that went with it.
Clarke was one of only three White House officials ~ in any recent administration — known to have packed a pistol
for protection. There were times, friends joked, when he could have used it in interagency combat. The Secret Service
authorized the gun for another reason: Until last year, Clarke coordinated U.S. efforts to hunt and kill al Qaeda's senior
leaders, and there was evidence that al Qaeda preferred to reverse the transaction. In 1999, in an episode not disclosed
before, Clarke abandoned his house for a month and acquired a temporary Secret Service detail when Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat passed urgent (and ultimately uncorroborated) word that an al Qaeda hit team had been dispatched for
him.
Clarke's departure is a milestone of sorts in the war on terrorism - not only the one that dates from Sept. 11, 2001,
but the one that began in earnest five years earlier. And it tells government-watchers something about the decision-
making style of the national security cabinet under President Bush.
Clarke, 52, reached the peak of his influence under President Bill Clinton, after serving presidents Ronald Reagan
and George H.W. Bush as deputy assistant and assistant secretary of state. The present commander-in-chief is said to
like Clarke ~ he sent him a warm, handwritten note and invited him to the Oval Office on Feb. 19 for a goodbye chat ~
but Clarke's bulldozing style did not fit as well with the quiet consensus that the White House looks for now.
He submitted his resignation two months after White House foes blocked his selection as deputy secretary, under
Tom Ridge, of the new Homeland Security Department. Clarke had made it clear he would not accept a lesser position.
According to available records and memories, no one has served longer continuously on the senior White House
staff. The average stint is about two years. Clarke reached that mark in 1994. ,;.',
In New York recently, he made the rounds of a new world of opportunities ~ at a brokerage house, a television
network, two think tanks and a publisher who wants to commission a pair of books. Stopping for coffee and cheesecake
between meetings, a man long seen as a lifer in the Senior Executive Service described himself as relieved that he did
not get the Homeland Security job.
"I already dont miss it," he said of Washington. Asked to elaborate, he replied: "You know that great feeling you
get when you stop banging your head against a wall?"