Terror Not a Bush Priority Before 9/11, Witness Says

Seven days before Sept. 11, 2001, then-White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke was so alarmed at the threats posed by Al Qaeda that he urged administration colleagues to visualize a terrorist attack that left hundreds of Americans dead, it was disclosed Wednesday.

Clarke urged policymakers “to imagine a day after hundreds of Americans lay dead at home and abroad after a terrorist attack, and ask themselves what else they could have done,” according to a portion of the confidential memo to national security advisor Condoleezza Rice that was paraphrased during a hearing of the commission investigating the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The disclosure capped two days of often-contentious charges and countercharges about whether federal officials stumbled in the U.S. war against Al Qaeda.

And it provoked furious rebuttals from Bush administration officials.

“I really don’t know what to make of this, what is a kind of a shifting story,” Rice said of Clarke’s contentions in a new book, television appearances and in his testimony before the commission Wednesday.

Clarke testified that while the Clinton administration treated Al Qaeda as an urgent and growing threat, the Bush administration did not, preferring to focus on going to war in Iraq and on other issues.

“The Bush administration saw terrorism policy as important, but not urgent, prior to 9/11,” Clarke told members of the panel formally named the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

Clarke, speaking before a hushed and packed hearing room, testified in a deliberate, measured manner about how he and CIA Director George J. Tenet had tried to create a sense of urgency about the terrorist threat. Both men were rare holdovers, Clinton officials kept on by the Bush administration for their expertise.

Clarke said he continued to tell the new administration that Al Qaeda was an urgent problem, but “I don’t think it was ever treated that way.”

Tenet also testified Wednesday. In contrast, he insisted under oath that the Bush administration took very seriously the growing threat posed by Al Qaeda and did all it could to counter that, despite long-standing problems finding “actionable intelligence” to pursue Osama bin Laden and his top aides in Afghanistan.

But Tenet also conveyed dire warnings, saying that despite the best efforts of the last two administrations -- including a prolonged war in Afghanistan -- Al Qaeda remained strong, deadly and intent on launching more Sept. 11-style attacks.

“It’s coming,” Tenet said of such plots, which he believes are in the works.

“They are still going to try and do it, and ... men and women here who have lost their families have to know that we’ve got to do a hell of a lot better,” he said.

In his defense, Tenet said, the CIA that he took over in 1997 had for years ignored putting spies on the ground to gather the kind of intelligence needed to locate and destroy mobile targets like Al Qaeda.

Under his direction, Tenet said, the CIA rapidly rebuilt that spy network and backed an aggressive plan to use unmanned aerial drones and other high-tech devices to monitor terrorists.

Such efforts helped locate Bin Laden on at least one occasion, but Tenet said he called off a missile strike because the intelligence was inconclusive.

Even if Bin Laden had been killed in the first months of the Bush administration, Tenet said, he believed the Sept. 11 plot was too far along to be stopped.

“I believe that this plot line was off and running; [alleged mastermind] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was in the middle of it, operators were moving into this country. This plot was well on its way,” Tenet said.

Rice and other White House officials continued to denounce Clarke, saying that his testimony and just-published book on his years in the White House contradicted one another.

Rice strongly defended the Bush administration.

“We were doing everything that we could,” Rice told reporters. “Now was it the only priority? Of course not. There were other things that had to be done as well. I will say that what we did suggests that we thought it both important and urgent.... We did everything during that period of time that we could.”

Also testifying Wednesday were Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and Clinton’s national security advisor, Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger.

Armitage sought to dispel perceptions that momentum on counterterrorism efforts was interrupted between the Clinton and Bush administrations, describing the transition instead as a “stunning continuity.”

Berger tangled with commission member John F. Lehman, the former Navy secretary, about why the Clinton administration took no retaliatory action against Al Qaeda for its role in the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen in October 2000.

Berger said the evidence that Al Qaeda was behind the attack, which killed 17 sailors and nearly sank the $1-billion ship, was too inconclusive for military action while Clinton was in office.

Once the CIA concluded Al Qaeda was responsible, “We should have acted,” Berger told Lehman in response to a question. “That did not happen on our watch, sir.”

“But, in fact, it did happen on your watch,” Lehman countered. “It happened in November and December.”

The point was left in dispute.

But it was Clarke’s testimony that dominated the daylong commission hearings and prompted several audience members to applaud -- and to call for Bush administration officials to be more forthcoming about their efforts prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Clarke, a career government terrorism expert who left the administration a year ago, defended the thesis contained in his new book that administration officials had ignored dire warnings about Al Qaeda and missed one opportunity after another to counter the threat posed by Bin Laden’s network.

Clarke opened his testimony with a stirring apology to the families of the victims of Sept. 11, who filled the front rows of the cavernous hearing room.

“Your government failed you,” he said. “Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness.”

Then, for more than an hour, Clarke summarized a litany of frustrations about what he said was the administration’s almost-casual response to dire indications of a terrorist attack that would occur within U.S. borders or overseas.

One of the most charged moments came when Commissioner Timothy J. Roemer, a former Democratic congressman, asked Clarke about the letter he wrote to Rice only a week before the attacks.

Although Roemer refused to release a copy of the full letter, he referred to a section of it in which Clarke appeared to be predicting an imminent attack.

“You urge policymakers to imagine a day after hundreds of Americans lay dead at home and abroad after a terrorist attack and ask themselves what else they could have done,” Roemer said to Clarke. “You write this on Sept. 4, seven days before Sept. 11.”

In response, Clarke simply replied, “That’s right.”

The memo was sent in anticipation of the first and only meeting of the Bush administration’s principals, or most senior Cabinet-level advisors, on the issue of Al Qaeda and terrorism before the attacks.

Clarke said he had been trying to organize the meeting since the first days of the Bush administration but that he was rebuffed time and again. On Wednesday, Rice denied that accusation. She characterized Clarke’s memo as a generic warning that was not based on any information that could be acted upon.

“It was a road map, as we call it, a guide for me to direct the meeting, to conduct the meeting,” she said.

In the memo, Clarke also criticized the military for what he said was its unwillingness to retaliate for the bombing of the Cole, or to strike at Afghan camps that sheltered Bin Laden and the Taliban government that provided him with a haven.

Clarke also accused senior CIA officials of trying to block an effort to use Predator drones to monitor Al Qaeda camps and fire deadly missiles at Bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda members.

Clarke was so concerned about Al Qaeda attacks within the United States that he tried to win approval for an air defense system ringing the nation’s capital to protect the White House, the Capitol and other identified Al Qaeda targets from attack by terrorists using aircraft as weapons, he said.

“It would have involved missiles, anti-aircraft guns, radar, helicopters,” Clarke said, adding that the Secret Service developed the plans for the program, would have been in charge of running it and had supported it enthusiastically.

“But they were unable to get the Treasury Department, in which they were then located, to approve it. And I was unable to get the Office of Management and Budget to fund it,” Clarke said.

He did not specify when the proposal was first issued. White House officials said Wednesday they were not familiar with the plan.

The hearings have assumed towering prominence with the publication this week of Clarke’s book and a presidential campaign that has hinged on questions of national security in the face of a worldwide terrorist movement.

Additional rounds of hearings are scheduled for later this spring, leading to the bipartisan panel’s final report in July.

Times staff writers Maura Reynolds and John Hendren contributed to this report.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Who’s who on the commission

The 10 members of the Sept. 11 commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States:

* Thomas H. Kean, Republican chairman. President of Drew University in Madison, N.J., former governor of New Jersey. Appointed by President Bush after Henry A. Kissinger resigned in December 2002 over potential conflicts of interest.

* Lee H. Hamilton, Democratic vice chairman. Director of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, former U.S. representative from Indiana. Appointed by Democratic congressional leaders in December 2002 after former Maine Sen. George J. Mitchell resigned, citing a reluctance to leave his law firm.

* Richard Ben-Veniste, Democrat. Partner in law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. Former Watergate prosecutor.

* Fred F. Fielding, Republican. Senior partner at law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Former counsel to President Reagan and deputy counsel to President Nixon.

* Jamie S. Gorelick, Democrat. Partner at law firm of Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration.

* Slade Gorton, Republican. Attorney at Preston, Gates & Ellis, former U.S. senator from Washington.

* Bob Kerrey, Democrat. President of New School University in New York City, former U.S. senator from Nebraska. Appointed by Democratic congressional leaders in December 2003 to replace former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), who left to become director of the Export-Import Bank.

* John F. Lehman, Republican. Chairman of J.F. Lehman & Co., a private equity firm, Navy secretary under President Reagan.

* Timothy J. Roemer, Democrat. President of the Center for National Policy, former U.S. representative from Indiana.

* James R. Thompson, Republican. Chairman of the law firm Winston & Strawn, former Illinois governor.

Source: Associated Press

Los Angeles Times