Terrorism report a bad blow for Bush

US: Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders were able to elude capture before the attacks on the United …

US: Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders were able to elude capture before the attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001 because both the Clinton and Bush administrations failed to react with sufficient urgency at different times to deal with him.

This is the conclusion of the 10-member independent commission set up by US President George Bush to review the 9/11 attacks.

The political implications for the Bush administration are far-reaching in a re-election year in which it is campaigning on its record in fighting terrorism.

The report, issued yesterday as the commission began open hearings in Washington, concluded that Bush officials failed to act immediately on increasing intelligence chatter and urgent warnings by its counter-terrorism adviser, Mr Richard Clarke, of al-Qaeda plans to mount a major terrorist strike.

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Senior members of the Bush cabinet did not have a formal meeting to decide on a new policy on al-Qaeda until September 10th, 2001, the report said.

At that meeting they agreed on a new three-year strategy. Direct and diplomatic pressure would be applied and support for anti-Taliban fighters would be increased. If this failed, the US "would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action."

The report notes that Mr Clarke, a 30-year career official, pushed the new administration urgently for aid to help Afghanistan's Northern Alliance defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but that this was rejected.

US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell set out to rebut the central allegation of Mr Clarke that it took eight months to decide on a new policy on the gathering al-Qaeda threat.

Mr Powell testified that the September 10th meeting decided on a "new level of engagement", not just to row back but to eliminate al-Qaeda.

He said that lethal strikes that "largely missed the target", a reference to Cruise missile attacks by the Clinton administration on al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, led al-Qaeda to conclude the US "lacked resolve".

Mr Powell's deputy Mr Richard Armitage acknowledged to the commission however that "Dick Clarke was quite impatient and was pushing the process quite well".

Mr Powell said that from the beginning National Security Adviser Ms Condoleezza Rice wanted a new policy and he had daily co-ordination meetings with her and other top White House aides to discuss the threat.

In the spring of 2001 the President decided they needed to be more aggressive, saying "I'm tired of swotting flies."

"President Bush and his entire national security team understood that terrorism had to be among our highest priorities and it was," Mr Powell said.

Former Secretary of State Ms Madeleine Albright told the commission of the frustration of the Clinton administration as they "did everything we could, everything we could think of, based on the knowledge we had, to protect our people and disrupt and defeat al-Qaeda." She rejected a charge from commission member, former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey, that they had "overbalanced" their policy in favour of diplomacy over military action.

"We did not authorise the launching of Cruise missiles for the purpose of delivering legal papers," she said caustically.

Ms Albright said it was "truly maddening" trying to capture Osama bin Laden, like trying to grab the prize in an arcade machine, that "always falls away".

With the military action the Clinton administration took "we were mostly accused of under-reacting, not over-reacting," she said.

Mr Kerrey berated both Ms Albright and former defence secretary Mr William Cohen for not taking military action against someone who was clearly a "serial killer" after the death of Americans on the USS Cole in October 2000.

"I keep hearing the excuse that military action was not practical," Mr Kerrey said. "What the hell did that tell al-Qaeda?"

In the autumn of 2000 it would have been impossible to rally the Congress to invade Afghanistan, Mr Cohen replied. Mr Kerrey retorted: "We had a round in our chamber and we didn't use it." "It's like mercury on a mirror," trying to pinpoint Osama bin Laden, Mr Cohen replied.

The commission disclosed that under US pressure, Saudi Arabia "a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism," won a commitment from the Taliban in 1998 to expel bin Laden, but it was not honoured.

The preliminary report said the US determined bin Laden was a key terrorist financier as early as 1995.

Ms Albright implicitly criticised the Bush administration attack on Iraq, saying it made the US more vulnerable, not less, and "the bottom has fallen out of support for the United States."