Richard Clarke Interview//Commentary Link
A “good summary”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/002737.html of the issues exposed by Richard Clarke’s interview. Basically, it appears that the US administration may have focused on the wrong issues in protecting their country before 9/11, and then continued to focus on the wrong issues thereafter, misleading themselves and their constituents.
March 23rd, 2004 at 3:47 pm
In his recent speech, President Bush said, “We’re helping former Soviet states find productive employment for former weapons scientists.” Bush referred to Defense Enterprise Fund (DEF), a venture capital fund financed by the US Congress. DEF was supposed to convert Russian WMD establishments while simultaneously realizing profit from high-technology joint ventures.
According to DoD Audit, DEF spent half of its grant on itself, which is twenty five times the industry average. As far as DEF’s investment portfolio of $30M, $20M disappeared from it. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (“DTRA”) maintains a DEF-related webpage. This page used to state that the number of former Soviet WMD scientists converted by DEF to peaceful pursuits was 3370. I questioned this figure and DTRA reduced it to 1250, which is a 66% reduction. But the real figure could not be more than 200 Russian scientists. DEF was closed as of December 31, 2003, its entire $67M grant lost, and nobody was punished, except the whistleblower, who was punished most viciously. http://nunn-lugar.com/def/