Rice defends administration against fierce questioning

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Under sharp questioning, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice insisted Thursday President Bush fully understood the threat of terrorism before Sept. 11, 2001, but no intelligence foretold the deadliest attack ever on American soil.\nDisputing criticism that Bush was negligent, Rice told a national commission "there was no silver bullet that could have prevented" the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania.\nBroadcast live around the world, the hearing turned contentious as Democratic members questioned why alarms didn't ring when Bush was presented with an Aug. 6 classified memo titled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside United States."\nFormer Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Democratic member of the commission, described the memo as saying "the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."\nRice dismissed the document as "historical information based on old reporting" and said it did not warn of attacks inside the United States.\nCommission members unanimously asked the White House to declassify the memo, whose title had not been revealed previously. Sean McCormack, a National Security Council spokesman, later said, "We have every intention to declassify it at this time."\nRelatives of victims killed Sept. 11 sat in the audience behind Rice, scribbling notes and shaking their heads at times as she rebutted accusations by former counterterrorism aide Richard Clarke that Bush had fumbled opportunities to eliminate al Qaeda.\nUnlike Clarke, Rice offered no apology for the government's failure to prevent the attacks.\n"Accountability, ma'am, accountability," called out Carie Lemack, whose mother died on the first hijacked plane to hit the World Trade Center. After three hours in the witness chair, Rice shook hands with a few family members and then reached out to embrace a few more.\nWith much at stake for the president, Rice appeared composed and unruffled even as members challenged her responses and accused her of filibustering with long answers. Rice carried the responsibility of defending Bush's credibility on the issue he has made the cornerstone of his re-election campaign.\nAfter hearing from Rice, the commission met with former president Bill Clinton for more than three hours and said he was "forthcoming and responsive to questions." Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are to be questioned soon, also in private.\nRice, recalling a rash of vague warnings over the summer, said, "One of the problems here was there really was nothing that looked like it was going to happen inside the United States." \nShe said the threats pointed overseas to possible targets in the Persian Gulf, Israel or perhaps the summit in Genoa, Italy, of leaders of industrialized nations.\nBush and his wife, Laura, watched the testimony on television from their vacation home in Texas.\nRice was pressed about whether she had talked with the president about the existence of al Qaeda cells in the United States after being alerted by Clarke. She said she couldn't recall.\nRice also was challenged on why Bush's national security team met 100 times before it took up the subject of terrorism and whether she bore responsibility for the failure of FBI offices nationwide to be alerted about increased threats before Sept. 11.\nAfter swearing to testify truthfully, Rice sat alone at the witness table, her hands laced in front of her on a red tablecloth, as she read a prepared statement.\nRice said the United States, as far back as the Reagan administration more than 20 years ago, mounted an insufficient response to the gathering threat of terrorism. \n"The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them," Rice said.\nHistorically, democratic societies have been slow to respond to threats, she said, citing provocations before World Wars I and II.\n"Tragically, for all the language of war spoken before Sept. 11, this country simply was not on a war footing," Rice said.