White House Counters Clarke Criticism

In his briefing today, McClellan charged that Clarke has "been more focused on the process than the substance. It appears to be more about Dick Clarke."

He said Clarke now "wants to go out there and promote that book," adding, "Let's look at the politics of it. His best buddy is Rand Beers, who is the principal foreign policy adviser to Senator [John F.] Kerry's campaign."

Beers, a former Marine officer in the Vietnam war, served on the NSC staff in four administrations, including the current one. He resigned as senior director for combating terrorism in March 2003 to "protest the administration's rush to war," according to a statement he posted on Kerry's Web site. He began working for Kerry's Democratic presidential campaign in May last year as a coordinator on national and homeland security issues.

McClellan also told the briefing that Clarke now says he was against creating the Department of Homeland Security, "but we know that he actually sought to be the number-two person" at the department when it was created and left the administration a few months after being passed over for that position.

"It's also important to keep in context we're in the heat of a presidential campaign right now," McClellan said.

He said Bush "doesn't have any recollection of" the Sept. 12, 2001, meeting in which Clarke said the president implied he should try to blame Iraq for the previous day's terrorist attacks.

Rice did not dispute that the meeting took place, saying Bush wanted to "keep an open mind" on whether "there was some link, for instance, to Iraq, with whom we had a history, including Iraq's attempt to assassinate former president [George H.W.] Bush" during a visit to Kuwait.

In his conversation with Limbaugh, Cheney -- like Rice and McClellan -- emphasized Clarke's tenure during previous terrorist attacks, notably under Clinton.

"The question that ought to be asked is, what were they doing in those days when he [Clarke] was in charge of counterterrorism efforts?" Cheney said. "He was the head of counterterrorism for several years there in the '90s, and I didn't notice that they had any great success dealing with the terrorist threat."

Cheney said that in retrospect, an attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, when a truckload of explosives was detonated in a parking garage underneath the building, "was perhaps the first al Qaeda attack on the U.S. homeland." He said Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted of involvement in that bombing, turned out to be the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Cheney said there is evidence that Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan last year, "came up with the idea of using airliners to strike the World Trade Center in about 1996" and briefed bin Laden on the proposal that year. Cheney was not asked when U.S. authorities first learned this information, and he said he had "no idea" whether Clarke had been aware of it.