WASHINGTON - March 25 - With President Bush’s former top counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke issuing well-documented criticisms of the White House’s failure to defend America, the Bush Administration has resorted to distortions about what they knew leading up to the 9/11 attacks.

The President tried to deflect criticism, saying “had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11…” - a statement designed to deflect attention from the specific warnings that he personally received outlining an imminent al Qaeda attack that could involve hijacked planes being used as missiles.

“Apart from their efforts to slander Richard Clarke, who was their top advisor on counterterrorism at the White House, the Bush team seems to have no moral hesitancy to resort to manipulations and distortions,” said former Congressman Tom Andrews, National Director of Win Without War, a coalition of 42 national membership organizations.

Here are four other explicit distortions that the administration has told over the last few days, spelled out on the MoveOn.org special website www.misleader.org:

MISLEAD: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed that Clarke “chose not to” voice his concerns about the administration’s counterterrorism policy. But Clarke sent an urgent memo to Rice in January 2001 asking for a Cabinet-level meeting about an imminent Al Qaeda attack. The White House itself admits top Bush officials rejected Clarke’s request, saying they “did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat.”

MISLEAD: White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan yesterday denied Clarke's charge that the president ordered the Pentagon to begin drafting plans to invade Iraq immediately after 9/11. But according to the Washington Post, “six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2-and-a-half-page document” that “directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.” This was corroborated by a September 2002 CBS News report which reported that, immediately after 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq.

MISLEAD: Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley denied Clarke’s charge that there was an imminent domestic threat against America from Al Qaeda, saying, “All the chatter [before 9/11] was of an attack, a potential Al Qaeda attack overseas.” But, according to the bipartisan Congressional report on 9/11, “In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States” to “carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives.” The report “was included in an intelligence report for senior government officials in August [2001].”

MISLEAD: Bush National Security spokesman Jim Wilkinson claimed that “it was this president who expedited the deployment of the armed Predator” (the unmanned plane). But, according to Newsweek, it was the Bush administration who “elected not to relaunch the Predator” and who did not deploy the new armed version of it despite “the military having successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001.”

For the truth of George W. Bush’s 9/11 intelligence distortions and full citations, visit: www.misleader.org.

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