When to Listen to a Dire Warning

Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism adviser to U.S. presidents
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, has made a career of investigating
disaster warnings. The way he sees it, catastrophes can happen at
any time, so why should decision makers ignore a Cassandra? Now a
cybersecurity firm CEO, Clarke is an expert at figuring out who is
a conspiracy theorist and who is a credible source. He explains his
method through a few case studies—on the Bernie Madoff Ponzi
scheme, the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, and others—from his
new book, “Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes.”