Aides deny dragging feet on terror plan

WASHINGTON — Bush administration officials say they moved as quickly as possible to assemble a plan for eliminating the al-Qaida terror network, defending a review that took eight months and was completed only a week before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Clinton administration had handed off to the incoming Bush team detailed assessments of the threat, and offered ideas on how to counter al-Qaida.

But aides to President Bush took issue Sunday with a report in this week's Time magazine that the current administration's review of its predecessor's briefings became bogged down in bureaucracy.

The Bush White House denied receiving any firm plans for dealing with al-Qaida, which has been tied to the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

The Clinton administration did not present an aggressive new plan to topple al-Qaida during the transition, said White House spokesman Sean McCormack.

"We were briefed on the al-Qaida threat and what the Clinton administration was doing about it," he said. "These efforts against al-Qaida were continued in the Bush administration."

According to Time, Clinton's anti-terror czar, Richard Clarke, offered detailed proposals: arresting al-Qaida personnel, choking off the group's financing, aiding nations fighting the organization and increasing covert action in Afghanistan to deny al-Qaida sanctuary.

Clarke, who stayed on in the Bush administration, also called for a substantial increase in support for the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and for planning of air strikes on Afghan terror camps.

But a senior Bush administration official said Sunday the Clinton White House offered the incoming Bush team only ideas on how to "roll back" the threat over a three- to five-year period.

Soon after it began studying the issue, the new administration decided a rollback was inadequate and began planning for eliminating al-Qaida entirely, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, attended a meeting during the transition at which the Clinton and Bush teams discussed counterterrorism issues.

Berger did not return calls to his office on Sunday. A few days after Bush took office in January 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice asked for proposals for major presidential policy review and, based on a response from Clark, ordered a review of policy toward al-Qaida, the senior official said.

Top administration officials approved the "comprehensive strategy to eliminate al-Qaida" exactly one week before the Sept. 11 attacks, McCormack said.

Questions about the administration's planning against al-Qaida come on top of disclosures that U.S. intelligence officials intercepted communications in Arabic that made vague references to an impending attack on the United States. They contained the phrases, "Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match is about to begin."

The intercepts weren't translated until Sept. 12. Their relevance is uncertain.