Senate Leader Assails Clarke, Asks to See Past Testimony
By DAVID STOUT
Published: March 26, 2004
ASHINGTON, March 26 — The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, today accused a former counter-terrorism official who has criticized the Bush administration of exploiting Sept. 11, 2001, and the senator wants to compare the official's recent public testimony with secret testimony he gave two years ago.
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Dr. Frist said it was "awesomely self-serving" of the former official, Richard A. Clarke, to say that President Bush had paid too little attention to his warnings about the dangers posed by Al Qaeda terrorists.
Far from accepting his own responsibility for any failures before the attacks, Mr. Clarke was "consumed by the desire to dodge any blame" even as rescuers were sifting through the rubble of the World Trade Center, Dr. Frist said in a speech on the Senate floor.
Dr. Frist said he would seek to declassify testimony that Mr. Clarke gave in July 2002 in closed meetings of the intelligence committees of both the Senate and the House. The majority leader said he wanted to compare that testimony with Mr. Clarke's testimony this week before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a 10-member, independent, bipartisan panel investigating 9/11.
Perhaps, Dr. Frist said, inconsistencies will be found. "Until you have him under oath both times, you don't know," the Tennessee Republican said.
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