WASHINGTON - The White House is disputing assertions by President Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator that the administration failed to recognize the risk of an attack by al-Qaida in the months leading up to Sept. 11, 2001.
National security deputies worked diligently between March and September 2001 to develop a strategy to attack the terror network, one that was completed and ready for Bush's approval a week before the suicide airliner hijackings, the White House said in a statement Sunday.
It said the president told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice early in his administration he was "'tired of swatting flies' and wanted to go on the offense against al-Qaida, rather than simply waiting to respond."
The point-by-point rebuttal confronts claims by Richard A. Clarke in a new book, "Against All Enemies," that is scathingly critical of administration actions.
Clarke wrote that Rice appeared never to have heard of al-Qaida until she was warned early in 2001 about the terrorist organization and that she "looked skeptical" about his warnings.
"Her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before," Clarke said in the book, going on sale Monday.
Clarke said Rice appeared not to recognize post-Cold War security issues and effectively demoted him within the National Security Council staff. He retired last year after 30 years in government.
Rice echoed the administration's rebuttal in a guest column in Monday's Washington Post and addressed Clarke's characterization of her obliquely.
"Before Sept. 11, we closely monitored threats to our nation," she wrote. "President Bush revived the practice of meeting with the director of the CIA every day - meetings that I attended. And I personally met with (director) George Tenet regularly and frequently reviewed aspects of the counterterrorism effort."
Clarke, who is expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel investigating the attacks, recounted his early meeting with Rice as support for his contention the administration failed to recognize the risk of an attack by al-Qaida.
He said that within one week of Bush's inauguration he "urgently" sought a meeting of senior Cabinet leaders to discuss "the imminent al-Qaida threat."
Three months later, in April 2001, Clarke met with deputy secretaries. During that meeting, he wrote, the Defense Department's Paul Wolfowitz told Clarke, "You give bin Laden too much credit," and he said Wolfowitz sought to steer the discussion to Iraq.
A spokesman for Wolfowitz, Charley Cooper, said Monday in a statement that the allegation that Wolfowitz dismissed the threat from al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden is false.
"He regarded al-Qaida as a major threat to U.S. security, the more so because of the state support it received from the Taliban and because of its possible links to Iraq, including Iraq's harboring of one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, Abdul Rahman Yasin, for nearly a decade," Cooper said.
The White House responded that the Bush administration kept Clarke as a holdover from the Clinton era because of its concerns over al-Qaida.
"He makes the charge that we were not focused enough on efforts to root out terrorism," Bush communications director Dan Bartlett said Sunday. "That's just categorically false."
Bartlett said Clarke's memo to Rice in January 2001 discussed recommendations to improve security at U.S. sites overseas, not inside the United States. "Each one of these, while important, wouldn't have impacted 9/11," he said.
Clarke harshly criticizes Bush personally in his book, saying his decision to invade Iraq generated broad anti-American sentiment among Arabs. He recounts that the president asked him directly almost immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks to find whether Iraq was involved in the suicide hijackings.
"Nothing America could have done would have provided al-Qaida and its new generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country," Clarke wrote.
He added: "One shudders to think what additional errors (Bush) will make in the next four years to strengthen the al-Qaida follow-ons: attacking Syria or Iran, undermining the Saudi regime without a plan for a successor state?"
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said Sunday he doesn't believe Clarke's charge that Bush - who defeated him and former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election - was focused more on Iraq than al-Qaida during the days after the terror attacks.
"I see no basis for it," Lieberman said on "Fox News Sunday." "I think we've got to be careful to speak facts and not rhetoric."
And Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., told ABC's "This Week" that while he has been critical of Bush policies on Iraq, "I think it's unfair to blame the president for the spread of terror and the diffuseness of it. Even if he had followed the advice of me and many other people, I still think the same thing would have happened."
Presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry said Sunday he asked for copies of Clarke's book to review. Kerry is vacationing at his Idaho home through Wednesday before returning to the campaign trail.
"I would like to read them before I make any comment at all," Kerry told reporters. "I have asked for them."
Kerry's adviser on national security, Rand Beers, is a close associate of Clarke and held the job as anti-terrorism adviser under Bush during part of 2002. Clarke quotes Beers in the book as asking his advice when Beers considered quitting because "they're using the war on terror politically."
The White House's Bartlett noted Clarke's friendship with Beers and the upcoming presidential election.
"We believe the timing is questionable," he said. "When (Clarke) left office, he had every opportunity" to make any grievances known.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
