'No' Not Part of His Vocabulary

"He owned the situation room," Winer said. "When the government got stuck on an issue, he would push it forward. I saw that again and again."

Others described him as an aggressive official who could not take "no" for an answer.

"Of course he made enemies," said Steven Simon, a Rand Corp. scholar who worked with Clarke on and off for 20 years. "People got annoyed. He thought nothing of bypassing the Pentagon to talk to military commanders, or going around the CIA to the [National Security Agency] to get to the bottom of an intelligence issue."

Clarke pushed the CIA to provide him better and more intelligence. He pushed the FBI to log progress on terrorism investigations related to terrorism, even though then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh was resisting pressure from the Clinton White House.

Associates said Clarke, who describes himself politically as an independent, didn't discuss policy in partisan terms. Simon said he believed that Clarke was "a dove in domestic politics, and a hawk in foreign policy."

One current CIA official said that Clarke was always seen as apolitical, and that his criticisms of the Bush administration were not a result of partisanship. But this official contends that Clarke has a stake in defending his legacy. "He's got his own record to defend," the official said. "The fact is that Sept. 11 happened on his watch, a watch that extended quite a few years. There's no doubt that he's been very serious for some time in defending those records."

The intelligence official said Clarke "has a bulldozer of a personality; he's rubbed just about everyone he's come in contact with abrasively. But he's ... an effective bureaucrat who got things done."

When Bush took office, Clarke was one of the few officials held over from the Clinton administration in a senior post. But his office was reduced in importance in a reorganization of the National Security Council.

In November 2001, he changed jobs, becoming special advisor on cyber terrorism. And in February 2003, two months after the White House blocked his selection as deputy secretary of the new Homeland Security Department, he submitted his resignation.

Bush invited Clarke to his office for a goodbye chat. Associates said senior White House officials thought he didn't fit into its low-key, consensus-oriented style. "The administration is very tribal, very-close knit, and Dick was not part of their crowd," Simon said.

For his part, Clarke in his final months felt growing frustration with the Bush team, associates said. Winer said Clarke told him "he couldn't work for these people anymore."

Although he didn't discuss details of the work, Winer added, "he expressed tremendous frustration about his inability to get done things that he thought were important."

Staff writers Greg Miller and Josh Meyer in Washington contributed to this report.