Hussein Directed Plot to Kill Bush, U.S. Says : Persian Gulf: Official calls the evidence ‘compelling.’ But no attack on the Iraqi leader was considered.

Before President Clinton ordered Sunday’s retaliatory strike against Baghdad, American intelligence concluded that it was Iraqi President Saddam Hussein himself who had directed the attempted car bomb assassination of former President George Bush in April and not a lower level of the Iraqi government or a Mideast extremist faction, a senior U.S. official said Monday.

But officials said that in weighing the American response, no serious consideration was given to trying to harm or kill Hussein. Administration officials cited not only the legal prohibition on assassination of foreign leaders but also the practical difficulty of hitting the elusive Iraqi leader with a cruise missile or a laser-guided bomb.

The intelligence determination about Hussein’s role in the Bush plot figured in Clinton’s decision to act quickly and to strike at the presumed nerve center of Hussein’s power apparatus, rather than at military, weapons or strategic targets.

Officials declined to discuss the nature of the intelligence on Hussein’s involvement--whether it was based on electronic surveillance or human sources in Baghdad. But they said that, taken as a whole, the evidence of Hussein’s involvement was circumstantial but “compelling.”

“It is inconceivable that an operation like this, conducted by Iraqi intelligence, could have been done without Saddam Hussein (ordering it), because that is not the way the Iraqi intelligence system and the Iraqi government operate,” the senior official said in an interview. “You can assume it.”

Clinton decided within a few weeks of the discovery of the plot against Bush that he would respond militarily if and when he received conclusive evidence of Iraqi government complicity, the official said.

By the time the FBI delivered its formal report to Clinton last Thursday, only the specific missile targets in Iraq were left to choose.

Senior U.S. officials said the Pentagon did not present the customary list of military options for dealing with Iraq because the Administration knew from the beginning that it would take some action but had ruled out early in the decision process the extensive use of U.S. aircraft or ground forces.

Instead, Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave Clinton a limited set of targets from which to choose and Clinton picked the headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service because it posed little risk of heavy civilian casualties.

The spy agency complex was also selected because destroying it would have a deterrent effect on Baghdad, both in terms of psychology and operations, the senior official said. Pentagon officials said over the weekend that portions of the complex containing key communications and computer equipment were demolished in Sunday’s attack.

“Our main concern is to deter Saddam Hussein as best we can, both from future terrorist acts but also to have a spinoff effect in encouraging him to abide by the (U.N.) resolutions, to keep him from attacking the Kurds or whatever,” the official said. “Also, in terms of international law, under Article 51, you don’t do punishment, you do deterrence.”

Article 51 of the U.N. Charter allows nations to take military action in self-defense but draws a distinction between retaliatory attacks and those designed to deter future violence.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev reiterated his government’s support for the bombing, citing Article 51.

“The international community cannot condone the hunting of presidents, no matter whether they are in or out of office,” he said.

“The United States had informed Russia in advance of its intention to make a strike on Baghdad,” Kozyrev said. “It presented its arguments at all levels, including the top.”

But Russian Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi, breaking with that stance, denounced the U.S. attack on Baghdad as “a one-sided police action.”

“No matter what the pretext for this military action against a sovereign state, it is justifiable neither on moral nor on political grounds,” Rutskoi, a political foe of President Boris N. Yeltsin, said in a statement.

The senior U.S. official declined to discuss the targets in Iraq that were not selected, “because they’re still there” in case the Administration decides to take further military action.

Clinton said Monday that the missile attack has “crippled” Iraq’s intelligence capacity and was intended to send a message to any group or government considering action against Americans anywhere.

In brief remarks to reporters before a Cabinet meeting, the President said: “I think other terrorists around the world need to know that the United States will do what we can to combat terrorism, as I said in my statement on Saturday evening. It is plainly what we ought to be doing.”

He praised authorities in New York for preempting a planned series of attacks on targets in the city last week and sought to reassure Americans that the Administration will be “very aggressive” in dealing with terrorism.

He said there were no domestic political considerations involved in the decision to hit Baghdad and said he had “no idea” whether it would help his sagging poll ratings.

“I did my job,” Clinton said. “It was my job, and I did it the best I could.”

Vice President Al Gore said the missile attack was “exactly proportionate” to the alleged attempt on Bush’s life and dealt a “devastating blow” to the headquarters of the agency involved in planning the assassination attempt and other terrorist acts.

He said the U.S. military action was not an effort to kill Hussein or topple his government.

“It was not designed to bring down the regime of Saddam Hussein,” Gore said in an interview on CBS television. “We’d love to see that happen, but that was not the end goal sought with this particular action. This was an action geared to the provocation.”

Times staff writer Sonni Efron, in Moscow, contributed to this report.