Former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke said Thursday that national security advisor Condoleezza Rice did nothing to disprove his criticisms of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
If anything, Clarke contended, his former boss' lengthy testimony before the Sept. 11 commission raised additional questions about whether Rice and President Bush could have done more to counter the threat posed by the global terrorist network.
Like millions of other Americans, Clarke watched the proceedings on television, glued to a set in Massachusetts, where he was teaching a class at Harvard University.
"It was pretty much a nonevent," Clarke said of Rice's testimony. "I don't think there is much in the way of a factual difference [between his testimony and hers]. It's in how you interpret it."
Overall, he said, it supported his statement that the White House didn't consider the avalanche of threats in the summer of 2001 to be an urgent concern.
His sharp and specific criticisms of the Bush administration two weeks ago were largely responsible for the commission's decision to demand that Rice testify, which the White House reluctantly permitted.
Some of the commission members told Rice on Thursday that they thought Clarke's allegations were so credible that she needed to address them in the same forum where he had made them -- under oath and facing sometimes hostile questioning in a public setting.
Clarke expanded on those criticisms in a book that shot to the top of the best-seller lists, becoming part of the political debate during a presidential election year.
Rice rejected claims by Clarke that the administration did not mobilize against Al Qaeda immediately upon taking office in January 2001, testifying that the president received more than 40 briefing items on Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, "and 13 of those were in response to questions he or his top advisors posed."
Clarke's response: "I say if the president was briefed about Al Qaeda that many times, why didn't he ever get involved in it personally, except to say once, 'Let's not swat flies'?"
Clarke said he listened particularly carefully to Rice's testimony about whether she had been told -- by Clarke -- about the potential for Al Qaeda strikes within the United States during the summer of 2001.
Rice acknowledged under questioning that Clarke told her in January 2001 that Al Qaeda "sleeper cells" were in the United States and that the CIA and other intelligence agencies had reported picking up alarming signs of an imminent attack.
