WASHINGTON, March 22 (UPI) -- National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice says the U.S. government worked hard to counter the threat posed by the terrorist group al-Qaida.
In an op-ed appearing in Monday's Washington Post, Rice says President George W. Bush and his incoming national security team were not ignorant of the dangers posed by the al-Qaida terrorist organization. "The seriousness of the threat was well understood," Rice writes, answering allegations raised in a new book by Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism official, that the incoming Bush team was so focussed on Iraq that they showed little concerns for other dangers.
"Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack" the United States, Rice wrote. "Even if we had known exactly where Osama bin Laden was," she continues, "the Sept. 11 hijackers almost certainly would have carried out their plan."
