MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It's a classic Washington power move - the late-on-Friday news dump. Well, this past Friday at 4:30 p.m. - start of a long holiday weekend - about half the staff of the National Security Council got emails asking them to leave by 5 p.m. - dozens of people abruptly dismissed. The restructuring of the NSC - that's how Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio has characterized it - it continues a trend in the second term for President Trump, a trend of radical downsizing. The Trump administration plans to cut thousands of intelligence and national security jobs across the government, the kind of jobs in which Richard Clarke served more than three decades - 10 of those years on the National Security Council. Dick Clarke, thanks for being here.
RICHARD CLARKE: Good to be with you.
KELLY: As you have tracked some of these changes over the last few months, I'm curious what has struck you, and I wonder if you would start with the departure of Trump's initial national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and now Secretary of State Rubio stepping in to do that job as well as being secretary of state.
CLARKE: Well, I think the president has to have a personal relationship of trust with his national security adviser. And apparently, the president didn't have that with Mike Waltz. I think Mike was very well-qualified to do the job, but if he didn't have that relationship, then he really couldn't do the job in the best way. So I understand the president asking him to leave. You can't be secretary of state and national security adviser. I know Henry Kissinger did that...
KELLY: I was about to say...
CLARKE: ...For a while.
KELLY: ...There is precedent.
CLARKE: Yeah.
KELLY: Yeah.
CLARKE: It wasn't a good precedent. They're two very different jobs. And in fact, one is meant to keep an eye on the other. And if you're the same person, that gives you a little bit of a problem. So I hope that doesn't continue.
KELLY: And then what about this purge over the weekend? Would you use that - is that the right word?
CLARKE: Well, it's a reduction in staff. I may surprise you by what I'm about to say. I have no problem with reducing the size of the NSC staff significantly, maybe even by half. It had grown over the course of the last two decades. It had grown out of all proportion. The question is really not how many people are on it. The question is what's its role. And when I heard that Rubio wants to change the role - change it to what? It performs a very essential role, and if you're going to change that, we're going to have problems in national security.
KELLY: Rubio spoke to this a little bit. These were in a statement to Axios, which was the first news organization to report the firings last week. And Rubio said, and I'm quoting, "the right sizing of the NSC is in line with its original purpose and the president's vision." Dick Clarke, speak to that second thing, the president's vision. To what degree is the National Security Council supposed to reflect the president's vision, and to what extent are they supposed to challenge it?
CLARKE: They are his staff. They are to give him options, and they are to keep an eye on the vast national security bureaucracy. You know, the State Department and the Defense Department, the CIA won't tell you everything that they're doing, and you need people that you trust on your staff who will keep an eye on them to make sure that they're implementing your directives. But the real job of the NSC is to identify issues that need presidential guidance, and then to give the president options and to analyze and compare those options. And what I see not happening in this administration is the analysis part. As far as I can tell, the...
KELLY: Do you see...
CLARKE: ...Decisions are made...
KELLY: ...Do you see - and I understand you're on the outside now - but do you see them giving him options or do you see...
CLARKE: No.
KELLY: ...Them being told, this is the plan, find a way to make it work?
CLARKE: No, I think it sounds like it's the latter.
KELLY: What have you seen that causes you to say that?
CLARKE: Well, everything - I mean, they have no economic analysis of the implications of their tariff decisions. They have no analysis of their decisions with regard to Russia. It's all intuitive. It's all gut. It's all his gut. And his gut's frequently wrong because he doesn't have experience in this area. And a good NSC staff comes up with options and compare all three or four or five options against a set of evaluative criteria that everyone can agree on. If you don't do that, you will regret it because you'll get mush. And I think that's what's happening.
KELLY: Just to make this concrete, is there an incident, an example you would point me to from your time in government, where there was debate, there was back and forth, the NSC came up with a menu of options, presented them, and the president maybe changed his mind?
CLARKE: Well, certainly - when Bill Clinton came into office, he wanted to not invade Haiti, not restore the democratically elected president. He wanted to keep the thousands of Haitian immigrants in various places around the Caribbean. And we pointed out to him, over time, that that wasn't going to work, and he had to reverse a campaign promise. And he did because the facts were the facts. But we presented him with the facts and with the analysis.
KELLY: I know that Marco Rubio - in his brief days so far running the NSC and the State Department - he's made the point that foreign policy - that the NSC is redundant in many ways and that foreign policy should be being conducted out of the State Department where they already have all these in-house experts. What's wrong with that view?
CLARKE: Well, they're not the only one that have equities. The president has equities. The Treasury Department has equities. The Commerce Department has equities, the Defense Department, the intelligence community. Yeah, the State Department is the lead implementer, and it should perhaps be the lead in developing an option. But there are a lot of other experts in the government and a lot of other interests that the State Department does not reflect.
KELLY: Just to read people in on your own history, Richard Clarke, you started on George H. W. Bush National Security Council. Bill Clinton came into office. He asked you to stay on a few months. I believe that became eight years.
(LAUGHTER)
CLARKE: It did. It did.
KELLY: Yeah. And then the second President Bush - Bush 43 - asked you to stay on a few months. That became a couple of years. So...
CLARKE: That's right.
KELLY: ...In other words, you have the long view on this. With the long view in mind, would you offer any advice to President Trump, to Marco Rubio, as they try to figure this path out?
CLARKE: Well, first, get a national security adviser. And get a full-time national security adviser. Secondly, agree on the role of the NSC. The number of people there is a secondary issue. Agree on the role, and the role ought to be coming up with what issues deserve presidential decision, No. 1 - No. 2, giving the president options and comparing them against a consistent set of evaluative criteria. And then three, oversee the implementation because presidents make the mistake that they think a policy is over when they decide it. No, it's only just begun when you have a presidential decision. The bureaucracy - I know this will surprise you - the bureaucracy will do what it wants over time and will ignore presidential orders.
KELLY: Richard Clarke, who held quite a few jobs, as you just heard, in U.S. government policy roles across decades. He is also the author of several books, most recently, "Artificial Intelligencia." Richard Clarke, thanks.
CLARKE: Thank you.
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