US: The White House went on the offensive yesterday to counter charges by former counter-terrorism aide Mr Richard Clarke that it failed to treat urgently the terrorist threat before the September 11th terrorist attacks.
US President George Bush, who has made his war on terror central to his re-election campaign, said that if he had known terrorists were going to use hijacked planes as weapons in 2001 he would have employed "every resource, every asset, every power of this government".
In testimony on Wednesday to the independent commission looking into events leading up to 9/11, Mr Clarke claimed that in its eight months in office before the attacks no new strategy had been worked out to counter al-Qaeda.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday challenged an allegation in Mr Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, that he had looked "distracted" at a key pre-9/11 meeting of cabinet members to discuss al-Qaeda.
"I wasn't in the meeting," he said. Asked about Mr Clarke's assertion that Mr Rumsfeld was preparing for war with Iraq immediately after 9/11 he told reporters that US pilots overflying the Iraq no-fly zones were being shot at daily and a pilot could have been shot down and killed or captured and this situation should not continue.
He disagreed with a claim by an anonymous Pentagon official that Mr Clarke was a "liar", but the former aide's credibility has been fiercely challenged by White House Press Secretary, Mr Scott McClellan and National Security Adviser Ms Condoleezza Rice.
The White House, in breach of its own rules, authorised Fox News on Wednesday to reveal that Mr Clarke was the anonymous official who had defended President Bush's anti-terrorism strategy on August 4th, 2002. In that briefing Mr Clarke said Bush officials had early on adopted a new plan for the "rapid elimination" of al-Qaeda.
Mr McClellan said that Mr Clarke "in his own words, provides a point-by-point rebuttal of what he now asserts".
Ms Rice told journalists: "This story has so many twists and turns, he (Clarke) needs to get his story straight."
Barely disguising her fury she said Mr Clarke, who testified at the televised hearing that Mr Bush had undermined the war on terrorism by attacking Iraq, had never raised such concerns with her, even at a farewell lunch she gave for him on his retirement last year.
Mr Clarke told the commission he had put a positive spin on Mr Bush's policies while working for him which was what "most people in the White House in any administration do when they're asked to explain something that is embarrassing to the administration".
Mr Clarke, who was a senior counter-terrorism official for the Clinton and Bush administrations, added that he chose "to put the best face" on the facts as they were.
Speaking in New Hampshire Mr Bush said that America had been made safer by the actions of his administration in creating a Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act to allow intelligence sharing between the FBI and CIA.
"Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people," he said.
Mr Bush is to give evidence to the 9/11 commission in private. Ms Rice has already spoken to the commission in private but has refused to testify under oath, citing presidential privilege.
The commission will hold further hearings next month and is due to deliver its final report in late July.