Clarke memo warned of terror attack before 9-11

By Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus
The Washington Post

	KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism adviser, testifies before the 9-11 Commission yesterday.
	E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Related stories Clarke known as a doer who wasn't afraid to step on toes

WASHINGTON — President Bush's top counterterrorism adviser warned seven days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that hundreds of people could die in a strike by al-Qaida and that the administration was not doing enough to combat the threat, the commission investigating the attacks disclosed yesterday.

Richard Clarke, who served as a senior White House counterterrorism official under three successive presidents, wrote to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sept. 4, 2001, urging "policymakers to imagine a day after a terrorist attack, with hundreds of Americans dead at home and abroad, and ask themselves what they could have done earlier," according to a summary of the letter included in a commission staff report. Clarke also cites the same plea in his new book, "Against All Enemies."

Clarke told the commission in testimony yesterday that although the Clinton administration treated terrorism as its highest priority, the Bush administration did not consider it to be an urgent issue before the attacks.

"I believe the Bush administration in the first eight months considered terrorism an important issue but not an urgent issue," Clarke told the 10-member panel. "... There was a process under way to address al-Qaida. But although I continued to say it was an urgent problem, I don't think it was ever treated that way."

Rice characterized Clarke's Sept. 4 memo as a generic warning that was not based on any information that could be acted upon. "It was a road map, as we call it, a guide for me to direct the meeting, to conduct the meeting," she said.

Clarke's appearance before the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, climaxed days of furor over claims in his book that the Bush administration did not do enough to pursue al-Qaida before Sept. 11, 2001, and has neglected the war on terrorism since then because of an obsession with waging war on Iraq.

The second day of this week's commission hearings also produced new revelations about events before the attacks, including a denial by the Central Intelligence Agency of the White House's long-standing claim that President Bush requested a briefing on the domestic threat posed by al-Qaida in August 2001.

But perhaps the day's most dramatic moment came at the start of Clarke's testimony, when he issued an apology that prompted sobs and cheers from the packed hearing room's front rows, which were filled with relatives of victims of the attacks.

"To the loved ones of the victims of 9-11, to them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you," he said. "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness."

Administration officials inside and outside the commission's meeting room continued to wage fierce attacks yesterday on Clarke's motives and credibility. The White House identified Clarke as the official who anonymously gave a background briefing for reporters in 2002 that included positive comments about Bush's anti-terrorism strategies.

Rice, who has refused to testify publicly before the commission, met with reporters late yesterday and said that Clarke has sharply changed his view of the administration's war on terrorism. "This story has so many twists and turns, he needs to get his story straight," Rice said.

She said he never raised concerns with her about the impact of the invasion of Iraq on counterterrorism efforts.

The White House released an e-mail from Clarke to Rice sent four days after the attacks that said the White House had warned law-enforcement agencies and the Federal Aviation Administration that top counterterrorism officials feared a major al-Qaida attack "was coming and it could be in the U.S. ... and did ask that special measures be taken."

The drama of Clarke's appearance nearly overshadowed a series of notable disclosures at yesterday's hearing. Among them:

• The CIA now says that a controversial August 2001 briefing summarizing potential attacks on the U.S. by al-Qaida was not requested by President Bush, as Rice and others had long claimed. The Aug. 6, 2001, document, known as the President's Daily Brief, has been the focus of intense scrutiny because it reported that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden advocated airplane hijackings, that al-Qaida supporters were in the United States and that the group was planning attacks here.

After the existence of the highly classified document was first revealed in news reports in May 2002, Rice held a news conference in which she suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer. But Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic commission member, disclosed at the hearing yesterday that the CIA informed the panel last week that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA.

• Commission investigators disclosed that during the Clinton administration, the president and other White House officials signed secret orders for covert action that, according to the top Clinton aides, authorized the killing of bin Laden by CIA proxies.

	CHUCK KENNEDY / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS CIA Director George Tenet testifies yesterday before the 9-11 Commission in Washington, D.C., regarding the formulation and conduct of U.S. counterterrorism policy.

But CIA Director George Tenet and other agency employees told commission investigators that they interpreted the orders as requiring them to attempt a "credible capture" of bin Laden and to kill him only if it was necessary as a part of that attempt. The report also found that Tenet and others at the CIA never told anyone in the Clinton White House that they felt constrained.

• In the summer of 2001, veteran counterterrorism officers privy to reports on al-Qaida threats "were so worried about an impending disaster that one of them told us that they considered resigning and going public with their concerns," according to one of two staff reports issued by the commission yesterday.

Tenet also said that the death of bin Laden, even in the summer of 2001, probably would not have stopped the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

In his testimony Clarke described the Sept. 4, 2001, National Security Presidential Directive, a strategy for addressing al-Qaida that administration officials have characterized as a bold departure from the Clinton years. But Clarke said the three-stage plan differed little from strategies already in place under Clinton that included first warning the Taliban government in Afghanistan, then pressuring it to turn over bin Laden and, finally, ousting it through third parties.

It was only after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the introduction of American forces was added, though contingent plans by both the CIA and the Pentagon existed, Clarke said.

He also said that he had wanted the directive to say "that our goal should be to eliminate al-Qaida," but that Bush officials called that "overly ambitious." Former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, a Democratic commission member, asked Clarke whether Rice's recent statement that the Bush plan before Sept. 11 "called for military options to attack al-Qaida and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets, taking the fight to the enemy where he lived" was accurate.

"No, it's not," Clarke said.

Material from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.

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