By Al Kamen

Friday, April 2, 2004; Page A23

It's little wonder that former White House anti-terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke constructed the most riveting moment so far in the 9/11 commission hearings -- the moment when he stunned the audience, including many families of victims, and, in contrast to Bush and Clinton officials before him, apologized for failing to stop the terrorist attacks that day.

Clarke, after all, learned at the feet of the master, the Great Empathizer himself, former president Bill Clinton.

"Just before 1993 came to a close," Clarke recounts in his new book, "I received one last, memorable lesson in terror." The Clinton National Security Council had urged Clarke "to deal directly with the families" of the Pan Am Flight 103 attack in 1988, which was destroyed above Lockerbie, Scotland, by Libyan terrorists working with the regime of our new best buddy, Moammar Gaddafi.

The families, he writes, "were upset with their handling by the [first] Bush administration," which had turned down their request for a memorial in Arlington. Clarke had met with the families and then driven to Lockerbie with former NSC pal and now Kerry adviser Rand Beers to select a site for a memorial there.

Clinton went to the cemetery on the fifth anniversary of the attack for a ground-breaking ceremony for the memorial. He "asked a little boy who had lost his father on the plane to join him with the shovel," Clarke recounts. "He kneeled by the boy and whispered to him."

Afterward, Clarke asked the boy's mother what Clinton had said. "He said, 'My father died before I was born, too. Be good to your mom.' "

Nope, no wonder at all.

Al Qaeda and Iraq may dominate the headlines, but senior State Department officials have not stopped closely monitoring other world hot spots, including the electoral chaos in Taiwan.

The March election, a hotly disputed squeaker between incumbent Chen Shui-bian and Lien Chan, echoed the Florida 2000 turmoil. Lien demanded a recount, and demonstrators burst into the Central Election Commission trying to prevent it from declaring Chen the winner. There have been other unruly demonstrations.

The election commission certified Chen, the more aggressively independence-minded candidate, the winner. But there's talk Lien is looking to take this issue to the courts -- though it's not clear who'll play Justice Antonin Scalia. And the legislators are wrangling over how to conduct a recount and who should be responsible for certifying it.

The uncertainty is intensifying concern, and the Chicoms are rumbling that Taiwan and Washington better make sure this doesn't get out of control.

At a senior staff meeting last week, James A. Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, laid out the situation. "Maybe John Bolton needs to sort this out," he said, referring to the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

Bolton, it may be recalled, was a former assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration before his State Department days, and was part of the Bush 2000 recount team in Florida, sitting at the tables, peering at the disputed ballots.

"The undersecretary for chads," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell quipped.

"Spring training," Bolton deadpanned. For the November Classic.

The White House's request that Vice President Cheney and President Bush be together to chat with the 9/11 commission has sparked the usual snarky and wholly unfair media commentary about how Bush needs Cheney to get his story straight.

It could well be the other way around, as former New Jersey governor and commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean told reporters Wednesday.

"Can you say why you would agree to have the vice president and the president testify at the same time?" New York Post reporter Vince Morris asked Kean. "It seems . . . it might be to allow, you know, Mr. Cheney to help Mr. Bush with the answers. . . . It seems like it compromises your investigation to have them answer questions at the same time."

"Well, we recognize that Mr. Bush may help Mr. Cheney with some of the answers," Kean said to "scattered laughter," according to a transcript. "But . . . it was the suggestion of the White House," Kean said, "and it seemed to us, in exchange for getting all 10 commissioners to be able to ask any questions" and to have a staffer in there as well, "that we'd get the answers to the questions we needed to write the report."

Many Loop fans have inquired of the identity of " Eric," the Pentagon aide who happened to leave some of his notes for prepping Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the Sunday talk shows on a table at a D.C. Starbucks.

He's Eric Ruff, a Washington pro and effectively the No. 2 official in the Pentagon's public affairs shop.

Ruff, a longtime Senate aide, moved to the Pentagon eight weeks ago after heading the communications operation at the Interior Department. And no, he's not going to be punished, we're told. The Pentagon's view seems to be that anyone can make a mistake. Maybe just one, though.

Carl J. Truscott, assistant director for the Secret Service office that handles intelligence, threat assessment, technical security and other issues, and earlier the head of the division responsible for presidential security, has been picked to be director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Truscott replaces Bradley A. Buckles, who left in December to work for the Recording Industry Association of America.