SILENT  (CONT)

laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or 'roll back' the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al Qaeda network."

Rice asserted that while Clarke and others provided ideas, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." That same day, she said most of Clarke's ideas "had been already tried or rejected in the Clinton administration." But in her interview with NBC two days later, Rice appeared to take a different view of Clarke's proposals.

"He sent us a set of ideas that would perhaps help to roll back al Qaeda over a three- to five-year period; we acted on those ideas very quickly. And what's very interesting is that . . . Dick Clarke now says that we ignored his ideas or we didn't follow them up."

Asked about this apparent discrepancy, McCormack pointed a reporter to a Clarke background briefing in 2002 in which the then-White House aide was defending the president's efforts in fighting terrorism. Similarly, Rice implicitly criticized Clarke on CNN on Monday, saying that "he was the counterterrorism czar for a period of the '90s when al Qaeda was strengthening and when the plots that ended up September 11 were being hatched."

But in a White House briefing two days later, she said she kept Clarke on the job because "I wanted somebody experienced in that area precisely to carry on the Clinton administration policy."

McCormack said Clarke was kept on for continuity. Among the most serious discrepancies in Rice's claims to emerge this week is about a briefing on terrorism Bush received on Aug. 6, 2001. Rice had said on May 12, 2002, that the briefing was produced because Bush had asked about dangers of al Qaeda attacking the United States.

But at the commission hearing, Ben-Veniste said that the CIA informed the 9/11 panel last week that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA. McCormack said that when the CIA briefer presented the paper, he said it was in response to the president's questions.

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