White House Rebuts Former Official's 9/11 Criticism
Sun Mar 21, 2004 09:30 PM ET
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By Glenn Somerville
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former top U.S. security expert's harsh criticism of the Bush administration for failing to act on terror threats before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks drew a detailed point-by-point rebuttal from the White House on Sunday.
In a book to be published on Monday and in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview aired on Sunday night, Richard Clarke, the White House former counterterrorism coordinator, said President Bush "ignored terrorism for months" when he took office in early 2001.
Clarke, the president's top counterterrorism expert who resigned in February 2003 after serving in every U.S. government since the Reagan administration, said Bush had done "a terrible job" in combating the threat of 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 "60 Minutes."
In an unusually detailed statement seeking to debunk what it labeled "myths" from Clarke's book, the White House denied the assertion that Bush did not treat al Qaeda as a serious threat before it attacked the United States.
"The president specifically recognized the threat posed by al Qaeda and immediately after taking office the White House began work on a comprehensive new strategy to eliminate al Qaeda," The White House said.
"The president specifically told (national security advisor) Dr. (Condoleezza) Rice that he was 'tired of swatting flies' and wanted to go on the offense against al Qaeda, rather than simply waiting to respond."
Clarke, who headed a cybersecurity board before resigning, is set to testify this week before the independent commission investigating the 2001 hijacked airplane attacks in New York and on the Pentagon that killed some 3,000 people.
The White House rebutted Clarke's charge that before the Sept. 11 attacks the administration was focused on Iraq rather than on al Qaeda and that immediately after the attacks it searched for a way to blame Saddam Hussein.
Clarke said Bush took him aside the day after the 9/11 attacks and ordered him to "see if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way."
Clarke said he responded that al Qaeda was responsible and that Iraq was not linked to the attacks. However, he agreed to look into Bush's request and again found no cooperation between Saddam and al Qaeda. Continued ...
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