Bush 'Ignored Terrorism for Months,' Top Terrorism Aide Tells '60 Minutes'

Bloomberg.com: The White House counter-terrorism coordinator at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks said it's "outrageous'' that U.S. President George W. Bush is running for re-election based on his record in fighting terror.

Richard A. Clarke said in a television interview airing Sunday that Bush "ignored terrorism for months'' before the 2001 attacks, then looked to attack Iraq rather than Afghanistan, the nation harboring the terrorist group al-Qaeda, which launched the attacks.

"I find it outrageous that the president is running for re- election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism,'' Clarke said in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes.'

Clarke served the last three presidential administrations as a senior White House adviser. He is chairman of Good Harbor Consulting LLC. His book, Against All Enemies, goes on sale Monday. He will testify before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks on Wednesday in Washington.

In the interview, Clarke said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld advocated military action against Iraq soon after the terror attacks of Sept. 11.

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq, and we all said, `No, no, al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan,''' Clarke said. "Rumsfeld said there aren't good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.''

Clarke said he believes administration officials wanted to believe there was a connection between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the Sept. 11 attackers.

"But the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying we've looked at this issue for years, for years we've looked for a connection, and there's just no connection,'' he said.

Clarke is the second former high-ranking administration official to say the Bush team was determined to attack Iraq before terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In a book about his tenure in the administration, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said Bush's advisers began planning to oust Saddam Hussein from Iraq months before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Clarke was assistant secretary of state in the administration of Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, and served as President Bill Clinton's coordinator for counterterrorism and the current president's adviser for cybersecurity.