Former US counter-terrorism adviser, Mr Richard Clarke, is to give evidence to an independent commission in Washington today investigating intelligence failures before September 11th, 2001.
The commission started its work yesterday against a furious debate over allegations by Mr Clarke, that the Bush administration did not treat the al-Qaeda threat seriously enough.
Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, told the televised hearings yesterday that a pre-emptive strike against al-Qaeda would have made 9/11 look like retaliation, and there were few good targets in Afghanistan. He also warned bluntly that "another attack on the United States will be attempted."
The commission heard testimony confirming a claim by Mr Clarke's that some senior aides to President George W Bush were obsessed with finding a reason to attack Iraq. Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, confirmed that the Deputy Defence Secretary, Mr Paul Wolfowitz, had argued at a Camp David meeting four days after the 9/11 attacks for an invasion of Iraq, when it was known that al-Qaeda was responsible.
Mr Powell quoted Mr Wolfowitz as saying: "Iraq should be part of military action we were getting ready to take." Members of the public applauded when a Democratic commission member, Mr Richard Ben-Veniste, criticised the National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, for refusing a request from the commission to testify under oath.
In his first direct response to the charge that he ignored the threat of attack by al-Qaeda while focusing on Iraq, Mr Bush told reporters yesterday that the CIA director, Mr George Tenet, briefed him regularly about the terrorist threat.
"Had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11th, we would have acted," he said.
Mr Bush also expressed concerns about a threat from Hamas to retaliate against both Israel and the US following Israel's assassination of the Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Mr Clarke has been dismissed as "irresponsible" and "out of the loop" by the White House and accused of timing a book critical of the administration for publication this week to embarrass the Bush White House.
Mr Clarke said yesterday that White House lawyers had in fact held up publication for several months. In the book he said he warned Bush officials in a January 2001 memo about a growing al-Qaeda threat but it was not heeded by Ms Rice who "gave me the impression she had never heard the term al-Qaeda."
Ms Rice and her deputy, Mr Stephen Hadley, proposed a broad review of al-Qaeda that wasn't approved for seven months.