I can't go public, says Bush security aide

White House allies and Republicans investigating the September 11 attacks pressed to hear open testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, with one commissioner calling her refusal a “political blunder of the first order”.

Rice said yesterday in a TV interview that she wanted to meet the families of the September 11 victims because she knew they were disappointed she could not testify publicly.

“Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify,” Rice told CBS’s 60 Minutes.

“I would really like to do that. But there is an important principle involved here. It is a long-standing principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress.”

President George Bush gave no ground, and several aides said he would not change his mind on letting Rice testify. But Bush sent her and other top administration officials out for television interviews to dismiss fresh attacks on the way his administration had handled the threat of terrorism.

Meanwhile, sharpening his criticism, former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke said President Bil Clinton was more aggressive than Bush in trying to confront al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden’s organisation.

“He did something, and President Bush did nothing prior to September 11,” Clarke told NBC TV.

“I think they deserve a failing grade for what they did before” September 11 2001, Clarke said of the Bush administration. ”They never got around to doing anything.”

But Rice said the Bush administration regarded terrorism as “an urgent problem”.

Clarke said a sweeping declassification of documents would prove that the Bush administration neglected the threat of terrorism in the eight months leading up to the attacks.

He said he sought declassification of all six hours of his testimony before a congressional committee two years ago. Some Republicans have said that his testimony about September 11 contradicts Clarke’s current criticism.

Clarke said he also wanted Rice’s previous interview before the independent September 11 commission declassified, along with e-mails between him and Rice and other documents, including a memo he sent on January 25, 2001 offering a road map to the new Bush administration on how to confront al-Qaida, and a directive that the National Security Council adopted on September 4, 2001.

The material would prove “they wasted months when we could have had some action”, Clarke said.

But Rice said the approach formulated over the eight-month span was “a more comprehensive plan to eliminate al-Qaida”.