Kerry Connection 'Discredits' Terror Czar Clarke, Say Critics

Former Clinton administration terrorism czar Richard Clarke, who has been portrayed in dozens of media accounts as a nonpartisan critic of the Bush White House's terrorism policies, faces new questions about his credibility after a report surfaced on Sunday suggesting he has close ties to the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry.

"One of [Clarke's] very close friends and colleagues for years - a man whom he taught a class with at Harvard, Rand Beers - is one of the top foreign policy advisers to Sen. Kerry," reported ABC White House correspondent Terry Moran.

Moran told ABC's "This Week" that Clarke's close relationship with the Kerry aide "discredited" him in the eyes of critics, with the White House maintaining that "this is essentially a Democrat making these arguments" that Bush dropped the ball in the war on terrorism.

Of Clarke's much-ballyhooed new book, "Against All Enemies," where the security expert charges that President Bush has done "a terrible job" fighting the war on terrorism, Moran noted that "[Republicans] say that this book is an audition for a place in the next Democratic administration."

Beers and Clarke both resigned from the White House within a month of each other last year, shortly before the Iraq war started in March. When Beers made a public show of joining Kerry's campaign, it set off political smoke alarms in Washington.

"I can't think of a single example in the last 30 years of a person who has done something so extreme," Paul C. Light, a scholar with the Brookings Institution, told The New Yorker magazine's Jane Mayer.

"He's not just declaring that he's a Democrat," Light said. "He's declaring that he's a Kerry Democrat, and the way he wants to make a difference in the world is to get his former boss out of office."

While Beers began publicly criticizing the Iraq war almost immediately, Clarke held his fire for a few months. But by last November it was clear he and Beers were on the same page.

"Fighting Iraq had little to do with fighting the war on terrorism, until we made it [so]," Clarke proclaimed to interviewers.

He was even critical when reacting to the news of the capture of Saddam Hussein, telling ABC News, "I don't think it's going to have a near-term positive effect on security. ... In the short term, we may have actually a worse problem."

Editor's note: