Bush critic cites terror failures

A former White House counterterrorism official apologized yesterday for government failures in the September 11 terrorist attacks, but his credibility was challenged during a public hearing.

“Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you,” said Richard A. Clarke, the former national coordinator for counterterrorism in the Clinton and Bush administrations.

“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.”

The testimony came in the second day of hearings before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which is examining how the Clinton and Bush administrations dealt with al Qaeda before September 11, 2001. The attacks killed about 3,000 people when terrorists crashed hijacked airliners into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and a western Pennsylvania field.

Mr. Clarke testified that senior Bush administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, ignored his warnings about the threat of al Qaeda in the first seven months of the administration.

In his testimony, Mr. Clarke also revealed that he never was informed that two of the September 11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, had entered the United States secretly.

The former official, who has expressed his criticism in a book published this week, said he viewed the threat from al Qaeda as an urgent problem, but that “I don’t think it was ever treated that way” by the Bush White House.

In an interview with reporters last night, Miss Rice said she “has no idea what he’s talking about.”

“We did everything in that period of time that we could,” Miss Rice said, outlining how Mr. Bush in the 7 months between his inauguration and September 11 asked Pakistan to crack down on terrorists, authorized more CIA counterterrorism activity and went after domestic terrorists as part of a “more robust strategy to eliminate al Qaeda.”

“I don’t know what else you do to demonstrate that you think it is urgent and important,” she said.

At yesterday’s hearing, CIA Director George J. Tenet also said he regularly briefed President Bush directly, a process that differed from President Clinton, who was briefed by officials such as Mr. Clarke.

“Well, it gets your adrenaline flowing early in the morning, sir,” Mr. Tenet said of the presidential briefings. “And obviously it’s important … because there’s an active dialogue with the president on not only what we’re writing, but what we’re thinking.”

Mr. Clarke also said that after the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, he urged the Clinton administration to conduct “a series of rolling attacks against the infrastructure in Afghanistan.”

The attack plan was rejected by the Clinton administration, according to earlier testimony yesterday by Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton’s national security adviser.

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