From W.N.Y.C. in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week, the White House came under attack from its former

counterterrorism chief Richard Clark, who had served in four administrations and who charged

the Bush team with sliding the war on terror for the war in Iraq. Clark has gained some extraordinary name recognition.

This week, a poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the press found that nearly nine

in ten of a little over a thousand American surveyed said that they had heard of him. Of those polled,

42 percent said they'd heard a lot about his claims, and 47% said they had heard a little.

Clark appeared on 60 Minutes Charlie Rose and Larry King, but most notably on the televised congressional

proceeding of the 9-11 Commission, now investigating how the attacks of that day came to pass.

Many Americans tuned in, but as United Press International editor Martin Walker told us,

there was also an eager audience in Europe and the Middle East.

Well, the European and the Middle Eastern press have been fascinated by it.

Al-Ahram, the Egyptian Daily, was noting today that critics of the Bush administration have long said that it has had a credibility problem, particularly over the allegation of weapons of mass destruction.

Now that credibility problem has been intensified with possibly dire effect, poor President Bush's hopes of the election, by the proceedings of the 9-11 Commission,

and in particular by the claims of the former catarerrorism chief, Mr. Clark.

That hasn't been a great departure for that newspaper, though, has it?

It hasn't, no, but I think it pretty much sets the tone.

Al-A-Ram is in some ways the times of the Arab world. It's the paper with a

very long and distinguished history. But it was also interesting, I thought, that the way

Le Monde put it today, they went straight into the political implications. They have a long article

saying that Richard Clark has become a public enemy number one for the White House. National security and what President Bush

calls the war against terrorism are the sole area in which President Bush is judged favorably by

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