White House denies Bush obsession with Iraq

The White House yesterday denied accusations by a former antiterrorism adviser that President Bush could have stopped the September 11 attacks and has set back the war on terrorism with his obsession to pin the blame on Saddam Hussein.

Richard A. Clarke, in a book released yesterday, says he tried in vain to convince the president of the threat posed by terror network al Qaeda, then realized “with almost a sharp physical pain” that the administration would use the September 11 attacks as an excuse to invade Iraq.

The Iraq-obsession accusation also has been leveled by other former administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Joseph C. Wilson, who was with the National Security Council, and by United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix.

The White House was unusually sharp and quick with its rebuttal.

“His assertion that there was something we could have done to prevent the September 11th attacks from happening is deeply irresponsible, it’s offensive, and it’s flat-out false,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. “This is ‘Dick Clarke’s American Grandstand,’ and he keeps changing the tune.”

In his book, “Against All Enemies,” Mr. Clarke — who served as a terrorism analyst for the past four presidents — writes that several administrations missed chances to thwart the terrorist groups that engineered the September 11 and other attacks. His harshest criticism is leveled at the Bush administration, from which he resigned 13 months ago.

Mr. Clarke wrote that Mr. Bush ignored the threat of al Qaeda before the attacks despite the adviser’s repeated warnings, “and then [Mr. Bush] harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks.”

In a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast on CBS Sunday night, Mr. Clarke said he found it “outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism.”

“He ignored it,” Mr. Clarke told CBS’ Lesley Stahl. “He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We’ll never know.”

Mr. Clarke wrote that Mr. Bush “dragged” him into the White House Situation Room the day after the attacks and told him to “see if Saddam did this.”

Mr. Clarke said al Qaeda, and not Iraq, was behind the strikes. But Mr. Bush is said to have insisted: “I know, I know but … see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred.”

Mr. McClellan said White House records show no evidence of such a meeting between Mr. Clarke and Mr. Bush on Sept. 12, 2001, and that Mr. Bush “doesn’t have any recollection” of any such meeting or conversation.

Regardless, Mr. McClellan said, the administration was correct in the early hours after the attacks to consider every U.S. enemy a suspect.

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