The White House may have mishandled accusations levelled by their former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke by attacking his credibility, keeping the controversy firmly in the headlines into a second week, political analysts said.
Clarke's charge that the Bush administration did not regard the threat posed by the al Qaeda organisation as an urgent matter in the run-up to September 11, 2001, has been superseded by a secondary issue of whether National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice should testify under oath before the national commission investigating that day's attacks.
"The administration's attempts to discredit Clarke have backfired. They have merely given the story legs and hurt the administration. The issue of whether Rice should testify should keep the story alive for several more news cycles," said University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape.
"The Bush administration and its allies have certainly not helped the story go away," said Howard Opinsky, a Republican operative who ran media relations for Arizona Sen. John McCain during his 2000 presidential bid.
Polls have shown that 90 percent of US voters were following the issue and that it was beginning to hurt Bush. A Newsweek poll released on Sunday found that 57 percent of voters approved of the way he had handled terrorism and homeland security, down from 70 percent two months ago.
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