CIA boss backs Bush over al-Qaeda

The CIA boss said he had no prior warning of 9/11

CIA director George Tenet has denied that the Bush administration under-estimated the threat from al-Qaeda before the 11 September attacks.

Mr Tenet told a special commission that both the Clinton and Bush governments had worked hard to tackle terror.

Later, a former Clinton aide said he had warned Mr Bush's national security adviser that she would spend more time on terror than anything else.

"I did my best to emphasise the urgency I felt," Sandy Berger told the panel.

WEDNESDAY'S HEARINGS CIA director George Tenet Former US national security adviser Samuel Berger Former US national counter-terrorism co-ordinator Richard Clarke

Mr Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, said his team gave specific briefings on al-Qaeda to his successor in the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice.

Later, the commission will hear from a former US official, Richard Clarke, who has strongly criticised President George Bush's handling of the al-Qaeda threat.

Afghan operations

Mr Tenet said that, despite intense efforts by his agency to tackle terror threats, the CIA had no prior warning of the 11 September plot:

"We didn't steal the secret that told us what the plot was," he said. "We didn't recruit the right people or... collect the data, notwithstanding enormous efforts to do so."

I think the president ignored terrorism prior to 11 September Richard Clarke

He said a special unit was set up track Osama Bin Laden in 1996, after he had moved to Afghanistan from Sudan.

In 1999, in an operation known as 'The Plan', the CIA set up a network of agents in Afghanistan to counter Bin Laden.

"We disrupted terrorist attacks that saved lives. There were actions in 50 countries, involving dozens of suspects, many of who were followed, arrested or detained," Mr Tenet said.

During the summer of 2001, which Mr Tenet said was an "intense period", there were arrests or detentions in Bahrain, Yemen and Turkey.

"We halted, disrupted or uncovered weapons caches and plans to attack US diplomatic facilities in the Middle East and Europe," he said.

"But despite these efforts, we did not penetrate the plot that led to the murder of 3,000 men and women" on 11 September, he said.

Mr Tenet acknowledged that US intelligence agencies needed to improve their performance.

"We need to have a... seamless flow of data from intelligence community to law enforcement community, so there is never the assertion that 'I didn't see this piece of information, it could have saved lives'," he said.

"Probably we had a lot of data that we didn't know about."

Plot to kill Bin Laden

In his testimony, Mr Berger strongly defended the Clinton administration's record on dealing with the threat from al-Qaeda.

He said the government took on an "active role" in tackling the terror threat during the 1990s.

Mr Berger said that following the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Clinton administration made a failed attempt to kill Bin Laden.

"Getting Bin Laden... became the top priority," he said.

But the only time the US had "actionable intelligence" on the whereabouts of Bin Laden was in August 1998.

It had launched cruise missile strikes on an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan - but missed the al-Qaeda leader by a few hours.

9/11 COMMISSION Investigating US policy before, and response after 9/11 attacks Bipartisan: Five Democrats, five Republicans Set up by Congress, Nov 2002 Eight public hearings so far, three more to go President Bush to meet privately with panel leaders To report findings on 26 July

Later on Wednesday, former anti-terror aide Richard Clarke will get a chance to explain allegations he has made in a book that Mr Bush ignored warnings before the attacks.

Mr Clarke has alleged that Mr Bush was too focused on Iraq to take the al-Qaeda threat seriously.

The president has strongly rejected the allegations, saying he would have acted if he had had prior knowledge.

The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says there has been no let up in the White House campaign to denigrate Mr Clarke and cast doubt on his motives.

Mr Clarke served as head of counter-terrorism under four consecutive US presidents, from Ronald Reagan to George W Bush.

This is the eighth public hearing held by the bi-partisan commission, established in 2002.

In a preliminary report on its findings so far, the commission said the Clinton and Bush administrations were too slow in moving away from diplomatic pressure to direct military action as a way of dealing with the al-Qaeda leadership.