A Low-Key Leader for a High-Intensity Job

By ALAN COWELL

LONDON, July 4 — When Peter Clarke, Britain’s counterterrorism chief, delivered a major speech in April describing the threat posed by extremists, he chose the title “Learning From Experience.”

Failed car bombings in London and Glasgow last weekend have shown, above all, that the lesson, indeed the battle, is far from over. And the high drama of the attacks has contrasted with the low-key manner he has adopted as the public face of British counterterrorism.

Mr. Clarke, 52, a man of measured tones and cautious mien, has not rushed to the microphones to offer dramatic updates on the case. He has probably spent less than half an hour on camera at two news conferences — one in London and one in Glasgow — since the crisis erupted last Friday.

“The impression he gives is one of being determinedly low-key,” said Tim Newburn, a professor of criminology at the London School of Economics. “There’s something almost old-fashioned about his shunning of the limelight.”

“He is trying to strike that tricky balance between providing timely and accurate information without raising expectations,” Mr. Newburn said in an interview. “He’s been trying to dampen expectations, not to overplay the extent to which police can solve the problem of terrorism, because clearly they can’t.”

Mr. Clarke offers an almost avuncular public visage, more in the slightly bumbling manner of John le Carré’s George Smiley than Ian Fleming’s James Bond. When he speaks in public, his delivery is deadpan: the glib sound bite, the throwaway wisecrack are not his style.

That is partly for tactical reasons. Many high-profile American prosecutors use the news media as a weapon in their investigations, often hoping to flush out suspects. Mr. Clarke seems to prefer an inscrutable silence to keep them off balance. Even if he were to change his approach, British law severely limits the publication of information that could be deemed prejudicial to a fair trial.

Which makes perfect sense, said Paul Wilkinson, a counterterrorism expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “If you give too much information too soon, you damage the integrity of the investigation” and risk jeopardizing the ability to prosecute suspects in court, he said.

Mr. Clarke particularly abhors leaks, and few ever come from the people around him. He has even told the foreign law enforcement officers he deals with, in Europe and the United States, that he would prefer them to be discreet with shared intelligence, according to some foreign officials.

Leakers, he said in his speech in April, “compromise investigations.”

“They reveal sources of life-saving intelligence,” he said. “In the worst case they put lives at risk. I wonder if they simply do not care.”

Fellow officers regard Mr. Clarke as dogged and painstaking, police officers say. When he is displeased, his eyes harden and his tone sharpens. But, equally, when there is a joke — even on himself — his grin is almost boyish.

When he spoke in April, his manner was understated but his message was chilling. “The only sensible assumption is that we shall be attacked again,” he said. The forecast took less than three months to come true.

Mr. Clarke took over as chief of London’s counterterrorism force in 2002, with the world still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks. At that time in Britain, he said in his April speech, “the specter of a homegrown terrorist threat was not yet with us.”

That changed with several bloody events. Two Britons went to Israel in 2003 on a suicide bombing mission. On July 7, 2005, four suicide bombers killed 52 people on the London transport system. A second group of bombers tried to carry out attacks two weeks later but failed. In August 2006, Britons were again implicated in a plot to bomb trans-Atlantic airliners with liquid explosives.

Mr. Clarke is the product of a police effort in the 1970s to bring more college graduates into the force. A lawyer and alumnus of the University of Bristol, he spent most of his early policing days in London boroughs such as Tottenham, Hackney and Brixton, which were known for high crime rates and strained relations between the police and ethnic minorities.

In the 1990s, Mr. Clarke began a steady advance as a staff officer to the former police commissioner, Lord Paul Condon. He led the Diplomatic and Royal Protection Department in charge of providing close security for foreign dignitaries and members of the royal family.

He was in charge of the unit when Diana, Princess of Wales, died in 1997 in a car crash in Paris. Some police officers suspect that he knows far more than has ever been said in public about her final moments.

In his time with Scotland Yard, policing has moved from gumshoe plodding on the beat to the technology of keeping tabs on many of the people much of the time. Britons are subject to far greater surveillance than Americans, or any other Europeans for that matter.

Closed-circuit television cameras scan public places in shopping malls, on main streets, and in railroad cars, airports, stores and bars. Images from them have been used to track suspects in major cases, including the July 7 bombings and the current inquiry, where CCTV videotape helped trace the movements of cars laden with explosives. Detailed scrutiny of images and other evidence has been a hallmark of Mr. Clarke’s investigations.