Wed, Mar 24, 2004 page7

• White House steps up criticism of Richard Clarke

  • AP
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  The White House intensified its criticism of former anti-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, accusing him of inaccuracies and election-year grandstanding in a book that is sharply critical of President George W. Bush's leadership in the war on terror. Clarke "wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff," Vice President Dick Cheney asserted.

  Cheney suggested Clarke "may have had a grudge to bear," that he had left the White House after being passed over for a promotion.

  On the eve of public hearings by the federal panel reviewing the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Cheney and other top administration officials on Monday sought to counter accusations by Clarke that Bush was so pre-occupied with Iraq both before and after those attacks that he failed to effectively confront threats from al-Qaeda.

  Cheney, in a telephone interview with conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, said Clarke "clearly missed a lot of what was going on" during the two years he worked at the Bush White House.

  National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on CNN, "I really don't know what Richard Clarke's motivations are, but I'll tell you this: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to."

  And the president's press secretary, Scott McClellan, told a White House briefing: "His assertion that there was something we could have done to prevent the Sept. 11th attacks from happening is deeply irresponsible. It's offensive and it's flat-out false."

  Clarke resigned his White House job 13 months ago, after holding senior posts under presidents Reagan and Clinton and the first president Bush.

  In his book, Against All Enemies, Clarke wrote that the current president "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide."

  Cheney said of Clarke's assertions, "I fundamentally disagree with his assessment both of recent history, but also in terms of how to deal with the problem" of global terrorism.

  The White House took issue with a conversation Clarke reported he and several other aides had with Bush in the White House Situation Room on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the terror attacks.

  "See if Saddam did this," Bush is quoted by Clarke as saying.

  McClellan said Bush "doesn't have any recollection" of such a meeting or conversation.

  Furthermore, McClellan said, "there's no record of the president being in the Situation Room on that day that ... you know, when the president is in the Situation Room, we keep track of that."

  At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that the administration had discussed early military action against Iraq, but not in the context of the Sept. 11 attacks. It was instead focused on the fact that Iraqi air defenses were targeting US and British fighter aircraft enforcing no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq.

  "That was the one place on the face of the earth where a country -- in this case Iraq -- was firing at aircrews of the United States and the United Kingdom that were enforcing UN resolutions. There is no question but that there was discussion about Iraq, and it was in that context," Rumsfeld said.

  McClellan and Rice portrayed Clarke as having left the White House after being passed over to be deputy of the new Department of Homeland Security. They also said he boycotted regular meetings held by Rice, and they cited his friendship with Rand Beers, a national security adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

  "It's important to keep in context we're in the heat of a presidential campaign and all of a sudden he comes out with a book that he is seeking to promote ... and he is making charges that simply did not happen," McClellan said.

  "This is Dick Clarke's American grandstand. He just keeps changing the tune," McClellan added.

  The stepped-up White House counterattack comes as the president's re-election campaign is showcasing Bush's role as a wartime president. And it comes a day before the Sept. 11 panel -- officially the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- turns its attention to the accountability of top government officials in two days of public hearings on counterterrorism.
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