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Terrorism not urgent issue for Bush administration before Sept. 11, former adviser testifies
March 24, 2004

Richard Clarke told a bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that "although I continued to say it (terrorism) was an urgent problem I don't think it was ever treated that way" by the current administration in advance of the strikes two and a half years ago. (Courtesy of CSPAN)

Washington, D.C. — (AP) The government's former top counterterrorism adviser testified Wednesday that the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than combatting terrorists while the Bush administration made it "an important issue but not an urgent issue." Richard Clarke told a bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that "although I continued to say it (terrorism) was an urgent problem I don't think it was ever treated that way" by the current administration in advance of the strikes two and a half years ago.

Clarke slid into the witness chair for widely anticipated testimony days after publishing a book that criticized President Bush for his response to the threat of terrorism. The White House has sharply criticized the book and mounted a counteroffensive against its author.

The white-haired former government official spoke after the commission released a written report saying that confusion about the scope of the CIA's authority to kill Osama bin Laden had hampered efforts to eliminate the man who heads al-Qaida. The result was a continued reliance on local forces in Afghanistan that had scant chance of success, the commission said.

"The commission needs to ask why that strategy remained largely unchanged throughout the period leading up to 9-11," it said.

But Clarke drew sharp questioning from Republican commissioners, who said his pointed criticism of Bush officials in his book contradicted his praise for the administration's policies as late as fall 2002.

"I hope you resolve that credibility problem, because I hate to see you shoved aside in the presidential campaign as an active partisan trying to shove out a book," said John Lehman, the former Navy secretary who now is chairman of J.F. Lehman & Co., a private equity firm.

Clarke responded that he was not working for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and had no political motivations.

"I will not accept any position in the Kerry administration should there be one," he said, adding that he voted Republican in the 2000 election.

The commission's report said that officials from Clinton's National Security Council had told investigators the CIA had sufficient authority to assassinate al-Qaida.

But it also said that agency officials, including Director George Tenet "told us they heard a different message. ... They believed the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation."

Sandy Berger, who served as Clinton's national security adviser, testified that the former president gave the CIA "every inch of authorization that it asked for" to carry out plans to kill bin Laden.

"If there was any confusion down the ranks, it was never communicated to me nor to the president, and if any additional authority had been requested I am convinced it would have been given immediately," Berger said in nationally televised testimony before the panel.

Tenet, who preceded Berger in the witness chair, was asked about the issue.

"I never went back and said, 'I don't have all the authorities I need,"' he replied.

"If I felt that I had developed access or capability that required dramatically different authorities, I would have gone in and said, 'This is what I have, this is what I think I can do; please give me these authorities,' and I don't doubt that they would have been granted," Tenet said.

The CIA director, whose tenure has spanned both the Clinton and Bush administrations, praised aides to both presidents for their attentiveness to terrorism. "Clearly there was no lack of care or focus in the face of one of the greatest dangers our country has ever faced" after the Bush administration took office, Tenet said.

He also said unambiguously the nation should be prepared for another attack.

"It's coming. They are still going to try and do it, and we need to sort of - men and women here who have lost their families have to know that we've got to do a hell of a lot better," he said. His remarks brought applause from members of victims' families seated in the audience.

The two days of hearings were remarkable by any account.

Secretaries of state and defense from the two administrations testified on Tuesday, followed on the second day by senior officials who served alongside them in a budding era of terrorism that finally struck home two and a half years ago.

Less than eight months before a presidential election, political jockeying was evident during the day.

Two Democrats on the panel, former Sen. Bob Kerrey, and Richard Ben Veniste, publicly lamented the refusal of the Bush administration to allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify in public.

Republican former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson asked Tenet whether he had ever been dissatisfied with the pace of preparation of an anti-terrorism plan by the new Bush administration in 2001. "No," he replied.

Berger was emphatic in his declaration that Clinton had given the go-ahead for plans to kill bin Laden.

"Some of these authorities were kill. Some of these authorities were capture or kill," Berger said.

"There could have not been any doubt about what President Clinton's intent was after he fired 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at bin Laden in August 1998," he said, referring to strikes at a camp in Afghanistan where the al-Qaida leader was believed present. Bin Laden escaped.

But the commission said Tenet and every other CIA official it had interviewed had a different view. "CIA managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to try and capture Bin Laden. ... They believed that the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation."

An unidentified former chief of the CIA's bin Laden section told the committee that officers "always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him," the written report said.

Additionally, the commission said that when the leader of one of the Afghan groups was given his instructions, he "laughed and said, `You Americans are crazy. You guys never change."'

The commission's preliminary written report said the CIA's reliance on local Afghan forces reduced the chances for success.

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