Richard A. Clarke

Richard Alan Clarke (born October 27, 1950) is an American national security expert, novelist, and former government official.

Richard Clarke was born to a worker in a chocolate factory and a nurse in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1950.

He attended the Boston Latin School, where he graduated in 1968.

He attended college at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1972.

He had been selected to serve in the Sphinx Senior Society.

After starting as a management intern at the U.S. Department of Defense and later working as an analyst on European security issues, Clarke went to graduate school.

In 1973, Clarke began work in the federal government as a management intern in the Department of Defense.

He worked in numerous areas of defense while in headquarters.

He earned a master's degree in management in 1978 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

From 1979 to 1985, he worked at the Department of State as a career analyst in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs.

Beginning in 1985, Clarke was appointed by the Ronald Reagan administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence—his first political appointee position as a Republican Party member.

During the administration of George H. W. Bush, he was appointed as the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs.

After Islamists took control in Sudan in a 1989 coup d'état, the United States had adopted a policy of disengagement with the authoritarian regime throughout the 1990s.

He coordinated diplomatic efforts to support the 1990–1991 Gulf War and subsequent security arrangements.

The influence of Islamists there waned in the second half of the 1990s, and Sudanese officials began to indicate an interest in accommodating US concerns related to Osama bin Laden.

In 1992, President George H. W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National Security Council.

During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Clarke advised Madeleine Albright, then–US Ambassador to the United Nations, to request the UN to withdraw all UN troops from the country.

She refused, and permitted Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire to keep a few hundred UN troops; his forces saved tens of thousands from the genocide.

Later Clarke told Samantha Power, "It wasn't in American's national interest. If we had to do the same thing today and I was advising the President, I would advise the same thing."

He supervised the writing of PDD-25, a classified Executive Order that established criteria for future U.S. participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations.

It also proposed a reduced military and economic role for the United States in Rwanda.

He served as the Counterterrorism Czar for the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-Terrorism for the United States between 1998 and 2003.

Clarke worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

President Bill Clinton retained Clarke and in 1998 promoted him to be the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism, the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council.

Under President George W. Bush, Clarke initially continued in the same position but no longer had Cabinet-level access.

He was later appointed as Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity.

Democrat Bill Clinton kept Clarke on in his administration, appointing him in 1998 as National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the National Security Council.

In this position, he had cabinet-level access to the president.

Clarke continued as counter-terrorism coordinator at the NSC during the first year of the George W. Bush administration, but no longer had access, as the position's scope was reduced.

His written recommendations and memos had to go through layers of political appointees above him.

In 2001, he was appointed as Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity and cyberterrorism.

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, however, some critics charged that the U.S. should have moderated its policy toward Sudan earlier.

Clarke left the Bush administration in 2003.

He resigned from the Bush administration in early 2003.

Clarke's positions inside the government have included:

Clarke came to widespread public attention for his counter-terrorism role in March 2004: He published a memoir about his service in government, Against All Enemies, appeared on the 60 Minutes television news magazine, and testified before the 9/11 Commission.

In all three cases, Clarke sharply criticized the Bush administration's attitude toward counter-terrorism before the September 11 attacks, and its decision afterward to wage war and invade Iraq.

Clarke was criticized by some supporters of Bush's decisions.

After leaving U.S. government, with U.S. government legal approvals, Clarke helped the United Arab Emirates to set up a cyber security unit intended to protect their nation.

Years after Clarke left, some components of the program were acquired by a sequence of firms, and it is reported they eventually surveilled women's rights activists, UN diplomats, and FIFA officials.