Bush Failed To Act On Terror Threats
By Glenn Somerville
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former top U.S. security expert is harshly critical of the Bush administration for failing to act on terror threats before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but a Republican senator said on Sunday the blame reaches back to former Democratic President Bill Clinton (news - web sites).
In a book to be launched this week and in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview to air on Sunday night, former counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke said Bush "ignored terrorism for months" when he took office in early 2001.
But appearing on CNN's "Late Edition," U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) said there were many to blame for the failures, going back to the Clinton administration in which Clarke also had a top role as counter-terrorism coordinator.
"There is a lot of blame to go around in all quarters," said Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican. "I think if we had put all of the factors together in advance ... then 9/11 could have been prevented."
Clarke, who headed a cybersecurity board before resigning from the Bush White House in February 2003 after 30 years of government service, is one of several former Clinton administration officials scheduled to testify on Tuesday and on Wednesday before the independent commission investigating the 2001 hijacked airplane attacks in New York and on the Pentagon (news - web sites) that killed some 3,000 people.
WRONG FOCUS
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, told the CNN program the allegations in Clarke's book underlined how top Bush administration officials seemed "focused on Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), focused on Iraq (news - web sites)" rather than on the threat from the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), blamed by the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks.
In excerpts from the "60 Minutes" program, Clarke charged Bush had done "a terrible job" in combating the threat from terrorism.
"I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11," Clarke told CBS.
Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies," is to be published this week. Among other claims, it says the Bush administration ignored intelligence "chatter" in 2001 about possible terror attacks, according to CBS.
ABC's "This Week" program reported that Clarke was asked by President Bush (news - web sites) a day after the 9/11 attacks to "see if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way."
Clarke's response was that al Qaeda was responsible, though he agreed to look into Bush's request and did not find cooperation between Saddam and al Qaeda, ABC said.
Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), the ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the potential threat from al Qaeda should have remained the focus of concern when Bush took over from Clinton, but "we took our eye off the ball because of a preoccupation with Iraq."
Newsweek magazine quoted an administration official as saying Bush, embroiled in increasingly heated campaigning in the run-up to November elections, had "no specific recollection" of the post-9/11 conversation described by Clarke.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) declined comment but told reporters in Idaho where he was vacationing that he had requested excerpts of Clarke's book.
"I would like to read them before I make any comment," Kerry said. |
