(Attribution:Tom Rinaldo)
The Author of "No Place to Hide", Robert O'Harrow Jr., fully vouches for Clark and the brief work he did on behalf of Axiom regarding screening plane passengers for possible terrorists trying to board immediately after 911 (I assume that's what you are talking about - Clark hasn't worked with them for years)
Here's what O'Harrow had to say about Clark and his involvement with Acxiom at this conference held in 2003:
"“NO PLACE TO HIDE: WHERE THE DATA REVOLUTION MEETS HOMELAND SECURITY”
MODERATOR:
P. J. CROWLEY, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS
FEATURING:
GENERAL WESLEY K. CLARK
JAMES X. DEMPSEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY
NUALA O’CONNOR KELLY, CHIEF PRIVACY OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
ROBERT O’HARROW, JR., REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST; AUTHOR, NO PLACE TO HIDE
ROBERT O’HARROW:
"...There is a guy that I think many of us in the room respect and admire deeply, General Clark, and he serves as a great example of someone who was deeply involved in representing a company called Axiom. And Acxiom was one of those companies that responded with – I know that from my reporting – very patriotic motives. They had a lot of that as a marketer and they shared it and they shared it to good effect; it helped. They also saw ways that they could change their business model and become part of the security industrial complex. And one of the people that was helping open doors for Axiom in Washington was General Clark. The reason I raise that is because I kept finding that General Clark got to places before I did and people spoke admiringly of his ability to say what he knew, to say what he didn’t know, to play it straight, and to in every case do it in the smart way, which is why people respect him."
Clark's with the good guys on this one, not the good old boys network.
Here is a link to a web site put up by O'Harrow and the Center for Investigative Journalism in case you are not familiar with O'Harrow's work:
http://www.noplacetohide.net/
Here's what Clark had to say himself about working with Axiom at that same event:
"...Can I just say one more thing about this impulse to privacy that you’ve mentioned, Bob, because when I was doing this – and I want to say this because Nuala is here, because when the government starts working programs and it does know where they go and where they going they are always cautious because everybody knows that these programs that do data are very sensitive. Before the government could even get a grip on some of these programs, when the word comes out on them they are blasted before people even understand it. So on the one hand, I understand exactly why there is an impulse for privacy. People – companies like Axiom were told, “Look, you just can’t compete for this contract if you talk about this to the press because we don’t know what the program is and we want to have – we want to be able to –“ this is – I’m speaking for the government – “We want to be able to see what data you have available. We want to figure out if we can use it, and we don’t want to have to answer a million inquiries from the press about it until we get it done. Then we’ll run it through.
You know, my instinct on it was a little bit different than the government’s, but I didn’t have any influence on them. I mean, my instinct would have to bring in the ACLU and to say, “Please create a group that’s sort of like a trusted group that we can bounce ideas off of and we want to run these ideas by you. And if you have strong objections, we want to hear them. We want to hear them right upfront. What we ask is that you will work with us in a collaborative sense so that – you know, you tell us before you run out to the Washington Post the next day and we have got (unintelligible.)” So, you know, we are just exploring ideas. We want to try to put this together and I do think there is a need for that. There is a need for enough privacy in governmental decision-making that the government can come out with programs and then have a chance to explain them, not to take anything away from the press because that balance is a dynamic balance. It’s fought by and maintained by hardworking reporters who make a lot of phone calls and get turned down a lot, but it’s a very important public duty.
So I am not sure if the balance is right is what I am saying. I don’t know if it’s right and that is one of issues we ought to explore..."
