Rice Defends Refusal To Testify

In his hour-long "Meet the Press" interview, Clarke continued to defend Bill Clinton's counterterrorism record as president and continued to criticize Bush administration officials. "I think they deserve a failing grade for what they did before, because, frankly, they never got around to doing anything," he said.

Clarke said he voted for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election but declined to say whether he would support Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the presumed Democratic nominee, this year. On the Iraq war, Clarke said: Bush's "political advisers sought to capitalize on it, just as his political advisers are seeking to capitalize on 9/11 by the ads that they're running."

Clarke said that by invading Iraq, the Bush administration built support for al Qaeda by inflaming Islamic opinion, diverted resources from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and spent money that could have been better used to fortify domestic security. While saying he thinks bin Laden will be killed or captured this year, he warned: "We're going to face a second generation of al Qaeda."

In their bid to counter Clarke's allegations, three administration officials gave televised interviews yesterday to argue that they did more on counterterrorism before Sept. 11 than Clinton had done. Powell pointed to Bush taking direct briefings almost every morning from CIA Director George J. Tenet as "something President Clinton had not been doing." Rice said Tenet briefed Bush 46 times on al Qaeda.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, on ABC's "This Week," disagreed with Clarke that going to war in Iraq hurt the overall war on terrorism. Asked about charges by Clarke and others that CIA and Army Special Forces units, with key personnel who spoke Arabic, were moved from Afghanistan in early 2002 and sent to help prepare the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld said, "I don't think that is accurate."

The same Special Forces unit, Task Force 21, that was used to search for Saddam Hussein was redeployed a month ago to Afghanistan to support the search for bin Laden.

Rice said that when Bush met with his top advisers on Sept. 15, 2001, "not a single one of the president's principal advisers suggested that he do anything more than go after Afghanistan, and that's what we did." Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was at that meeting and did suggest that Iraq should be attacked, as described in detail in Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War."

Rice said the Bush administration's development of a counterterrorism plan before Sept. 11 was brisk.

The Bush administration has been sharply critical of Clinton and his antiterrorism policy for depending on diplomacy and law enforcement and not having military intervention as part of his plan to attack al Qaeda.

But Rice said yesterday that the United States is safer today because "we have an umbrella of intelligence and law enforcement worldwide."

Rice argued that "al Qaeda is not more dangerous today than it was on September 11" but said it is still dangerous. She also said, "The world is a lot safer and the war on terrorism is well-served by the victory in Iraq." When it was noted that there have been more terrorist attacks in the 30 months since Sept. 11 than in the 30 months prior, she replied: "That's the wrong way to look at it."

Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.