Chapter 8 Summary and Analysis

Clarke recalls that Clinton was serious about counterterrorism although the media talked of nothing but the Lewinsky scandal, which was portrayed as a "high crime and misdemeanor" by the Congress. On August 7, 1998, two nearly simultaneous car bombs killed more than 200 people in the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the capitals of Kenya and Tanzania. Al Qaeda claimed credit: Clarke notes that this was the first act of aggression after its earlier joint declaration of war with Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Clarke headed the CSG response to the embassy bombings, prioritizing tasks and assigning responsibility: only the Air Force was slow to respond. Israel sent the first military relief plane. Clarke was troubled that the CIA thought that, although there had been an al Qaeda cell in Kenya, it had eliminated it. Clarke comments on the less than lustrous...