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tougher stand against terrorism, and because we are the most open society
     on earth. But that very openness demands vigilance—the kind of vigilance demonstrated
     by a brave, determined customs inspector, Diana Dean, who stopped a man named Ahmed
     Ressam as he was on his way, in an auto loaded with explosives, to attack the Los
     Angeles airport on Millennium Eve. Diana,” Gore said, gesturing to the gallery, “we
     owe you and your colleagues a profound debt of gratitude.” And when the applause died
     down, he added, “I want to say to anyone, anywhere in the world, with malevolent intentions
     toward our country or any of our friends and allies: We will protect ourselves by
     finding you before you can turn your evil intentions into evil deeds. This is not
     a threat—it is a promise.”
    The applause that greeted this statement was loud but compulsory, reflecting the belief
     of the audience that the president was offering up a platitude with all the heft of
     cotton candy. But in the packed House chamber, barely half a dozen knew that this
     was one promise President Gore fully intended to keep.
    * * *
    It was an imposing office suite, eight floors up in the Executive Office Building,
     the wedding-cake structure across from the White House that had once housed the entire
     executive branch of the federal government; it featured twenty-two-foot ceilings,
     marble fireplaces, and an imposing view of the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington
     Monument. As he walked in, shortly before 8 a.m., Richard Clarke headed for the long
     conference table covered with newspapers and folders, offering perfunctory greetings
     as his staff came in with their coffee cups from the White House mess and joined him
     as he began looking for needles in a haystack. Somewhere in the mass of data—in the
     intel reports that had come in overnight from the NSA, the CIA, the State Department,
     and the Defense Department, from embassies and listening posts around the world, in
     a paragraph buried in an obscure, casual report of an informal chat from a friendly
     ally—might well be a hint of a coming attack on an American company or embassy—or
     on the United States itself. And in his mind, there was no question that just such
     an attack was coming. Finding it, preventing it, was his job. It also had become an
     obsession. And on this day, that obsession was about to bear fruit with the singular
     triumph of his life.
    For eight years, Clarke had been chairman of the Counterterrorism Security Group—President
     Bush had named him to the post, and President Clinton had kept him on, adding to his
     portfolio the lofty title of national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection,
     and counterterrorism. The post came with a seat on the National Security Council,
     and as his tenure grew, so did his conviction that the United States, now the world’s
     only superpower, faced a threat unlike any in its history, one that few if any of
     his colleagues grasped. That conviction had made Clarke a sure loser in the Miss Congeniality
     contest within the national security universe; he was a constant thorn in the side
     of the CIA, the FBI, Defense, and State, pushing for more focus on an outfit many
     had never heard of or had never taken with even a minimal amount of seriousness, demanding
     more resources, more focus, more pressure on America’s alleged allies.
    Contrary to the core assumptions of the Bush officials who had left office before
     Al Qaeda had emerged, the organization had been a threat that loomed larger with each
     passing year of the Clinton-Gore administration. (When Clarke had finished briefing
     George W. Bush foreign-policy advisor Condoleezza Rice after Bush’s nomination, he
     had remarked to an aide, “I got the distinct impression she had never heard the name
     before.”) Gore’s chief national security advisor, Leon Fuerth, was a regular participant
     at the “principals meetings” with key cabinet