Clarke says testimony raises new questions about readiness

He called on the White House to release the contents of a briefing paper.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said Thursday that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice did nothing to disprove his criticisms of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
If anything, Clarke contended, his former boss's lengthy testimony before the Sept. 11 commission raised additional questions about whether Rice and President Bush could have done more to counter the threat posed by the global terrorist network.
Like millions of other Americans, Clarke watched the proceedings on television, glued to a set in Cambridge, Mass., where he was teaching a class at Harvard University.
"It was pretty much a nonevent," Clarke said of Rice's testimony. "I don't think there is much in the way of a factual difference [between his testimony and hers]. It's in how you interpret it."
Overall, he said, it supported his statement that the White House didn't consider the avalanche of threats in the summer of 2001 to be an urgent concern.
Clarke's sharp and specific criticisms of the Bush administration two weeks ago were largely responsible for the commission's recent decision to demand that Rice testify, which the White House only reluctantly permitted.
Some of the commission members told Rice on Thursday that they thought Clarke's allegations were so credible that she needed to address them in the same forum where he had made them -- under oath and facing sometimes hostile questioning in a public setting.
Clarke expanded on those criticisms in a book that shot to the top of the best-seller lists, becoming part of the political debate during a presidential election year.
Rejected claims
Rice rejected claims by Clarke that the administration did not mobilize against Al-Qaida immediately upon taking office in January 2001, testifying that the president received more than 40 briefing items on Al-Qaida before Sept. 11, "and 13 of those were in response to questions he or his top advisers posed."
Clarke's response: "I say if the president was briefed about Al-Qaida that many times, why didn't he ever get involved in it personally, except to say once, 'Let's not swat flies'?"
Clarke said he listened particularly carefully to Rice's testimony about whether she had been told -- by Clarke -- about the potential for Al-Qaida strikes within the United States during the summer of 2001.
Rice acknowledged under questioning that Clarke told her in January 2001 that Al-Qaida "sleeper cells" were in the United States and that the CIA and other intelligence agencies had reported picking up alarming signs of an imminent attack.
Yet when asked by Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste whether she passed those concerns up the chain of command to the president, Rice said: "I really don't remember, commissioner, whether I discussed this with the president."
Clarke said Rice's inability to remember such a key detail was significant.
"There seems to be some logical disconnect there," Clarke said. "If the president is getting briefed all the time, by [CIA Director] George Tenet or somebody else, and Dr. Rice knows that I believe there are sleeper cells in the U.S., one might think that would trigger the national security adviser to tell the president that, by the way, your national coordinator for counterterrorism thinks there are sleeper cells here in the United States."
Briefing paper
Clarke also called on the White House to release the contents of a classified briefing paper the president received Aug. 6, 2001, saying that it would prove the administration was well aware of the possibility of a hijacking or other type of terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
The Bush administration says it plans to follow recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission and declassify the briefing, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."
The memo is a so-called Presidential Daily Brief. PDBs are a compilation of information from law enforcement and intelligence agencies to keep the president updated on threats around the world. They normally are circulated among only a select group of top administration officials.
Clinton defends policies
Meanwhile, former President Clinton defended his counterterrorism policies in a private meeting with the Sept. 11 commission and said intelligence wasn't strong enough to justify a retaliation against Al-Qaida for the 2000 bombing of a Navy ship.
Clinton met for nearly four hours with the 10-member bipartisan panel in a closed-door session shortly after the conclusion of Rice's public testimony.
Commissioners described Clinton's testimony as frank and informative.
A person familiar with the session said Clinton told the commission he did not order retaliatory military strikes after the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 because he could not get "a clear, firm judgment of responsibility" from U.S. intelligence before he left office the following January.
Next week, the bipartisan panel will examine law enforcement and intelligence failures surrounding Sept. 11, with scheduled testimony from Attorney General John Ashcroft, CIA Director George Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller, as well as from former FBI Director Louis Freeh and former Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard.
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