US: Pressure is building on national security adviser Dr Condoleezza Rice to testify in public before the independent commission looking into events leading up to the September 11th attacks on the United States.
The commission's Republican chairman, former New Jersey governor Mr Thomas Kean, said: "I think this administration shot itself in the foot by not letting her testify in public."
The Bush administration may also have done itself damage by mounting an all-out attack on the character of former White House counter-terrorism expert Mr Richard Clarke for testifying to the commission that President George Bush and his top aides did not pay urgent attention to the terrorist threat before 9/11.
A cartoon on the editorial pages of the Washington Post yesterday showed Dr Rice admitting: "Maybe we didn't see the threat as soon as we might have. But since 9/11 we have been relentlessly focused on hunting down, one by one, and systematically destroying . . . anyone who says so."
In an editorial entitled "The Wrong Target", the New York Times yesterday accused the administration of "schoolyard name-calling" which it said made Mr Bush look more interested in undermining Mr Clarke's credibility than addressing his critique of policy failures.
The Senate Minority leader, Democratic Senator Tom Daschle, accused the administration of character assassination and Mr Clarke told ABC News that "these are mean and nasty people when it comes down to it". Dr Rice, who gave evidence in private on February 7th to the ten-member bipartisan commission, has cited a "long-standing constitutional separation between the executive and legislative branch" for refusing to testify under oath.
Critics have pointed out however that Dr Rice has given numerous media interviews on the subject and that two former national security advisers, Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski and Mr Sandy Berger, waived their immunity.
Ms Rice has offered to appear again in private to respond to what she called "mischaracterisations" of her positions, but may have to address several statements in which she has contradicted herself and colleagues.
She has already requested the commission to revise a statement she made publicly that she did not think "anyone could have predicted that these people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Centre". The commission heard evidence that Mr Clarke and intelligence agencies had raised the prospect of terrorists using airplanes as missiles before 9/11.
In an article she wrote for the Washington Post on Monday (published also in The Irish Times) Dr Rice stated that through the spring and summer of 2001 she and her officials developed a strategy to eliminate al- Qaeda that included "sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime" and the use of ground troops.
However Deputy Secretary of State Mr Richard Armitage, sent to testify on her behalf on Wednesday, said the military element was not in the plan before 9/11. The White House said yesterday that Dr Rice would justify her statement to the commissioners. The CIA has also contradicted her earlier assertion that the president had requested a CIA briefing in August 2001 because of elevated terror threats: the CIA told the panel the idea came from within the intelligence agency.
Dr Rice has herself contradicted an assertion by Vice President Dick Cheney on a conservative talk show that Mr Clarke was "out of the loop" in the administration.
Mr Bush's national security adviser has been criticised before for making statements that turned out to be overblown when the administration was making the case for war with Iraq. She claimed that aluminium tubes imported by Saddam Hussein were only suited for making nuclear weapons, a view now discredited, and warned about a "mushroom cloud" resulting from an attack by Iraq.
Meanwhile a poll by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre shows that nearly 90 per cent of Americans had heard of Mr Clarke's criticisms, which reflects extraordinary interest in a Washington controversy.
The book in which Mr Clarke detailed his allegations has become the US bestseller since it was published on Monday. Against All Enemies is now in its fifth print run with up to 500,000 copies in print, which would guarantee the former Bush aide some $2 million in royalties so far.
Asked at the commission if he had read the book, CIA Director George Tenet said he had not. Later Mr Armitage told the commission he was the "only honest person in Washington" and that he had given it the "Washington read" - i.e. he had flicked through the index looking for references to himself.