The White House said on Monday former US anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke had "no idea" what he was talking about when he accused the Bush administration of focusing on Iraq after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice made the rounds of morning news shows on Monday to answer Clarke, who also said in a new book that the White House ignored security threats prior to the hijacked airliner attacks. Clarke quit his White House job a year ago; he had served in four administrations.
"Clarke just does not know what he is talking about. He wasn't involved in most of the meetings of the administration," Rice told ABC's "Good Morning America."
Rice strongly took issue with Clarke's claim that Bush focused on Iraq after the September 11 attacks rather than on the Islamic militant group al Qaeda, which is blamed for the attacks in New York and on the Pentagon that killed some 3,000 people. "I can tell you that when we got to Camp David, it was a map of Afghanistan that was unrolled on the table."
Rice told NBC, referring to the president's retreat in Maryland where he gathered with top aides after the attacks to plan the ensuing retaliatory attack on Afghanistan, the al Qaeda base.
She did not recall Bush pulling Clarke aside the day after the attacks and asking him to look at Iraqi involvement but said the meeting could have taken place.
Clarke said the president told him on September 12, in a "very intimidating way," to look at Iraq's involvement.
"He wanted us to come back with the word that there was an Iraqi hand behind 9/11 because they had been planning to do something about Iraq from before the time they came into office," Clarke told ABC.
Clarke's bombshell accusations were first aired in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview on Sunday and outlined in his book, "Against All Enemies," which is being released this week.
He is the second former top administration official, after Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's recent book, to assert that Iraq was an overriding priority for the Bush White House from the time it took office.
Clarke is one of several former Clinton administration officials scheduled to testify on Tuesday and on Wednesday before the independent commission investigating the 2001 attacks.
On Monday, Clarke said the president made the war on terrorism worse by invading Iraq last March and said US soldiers had the impression they were going to war to avenge the September 11 attacks.
"Not that they (US solders) died in vain. They died for the president's own agenda which had nothing do with war on terrorism."
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