President George W. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "looked skeptical" when she was warned early in 2001 about the threat from al-Qaida and appeared to never have heard of the terrorist organization, according to Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator.

　　"Her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before," wrote Richard A. Clarke in a new book - "Against All Enemies" - that is scathingly critical of Bush's response to the 2001 terror attacks against the US.

　　Clarke said Rice, who previously worked for Bush's father, appeared not to recognize post-Cold War security issues and effectively demoted him within the national security council. He said Rice has an unusually close relationship with Bush, which "should have given her some maneuver room, some margin for shaping the agenda."

　　Clarke, expected to testify today before a federal panel investigating the attacks, recounted his meeting with Rice as support for his contention that the Bush administration failed to recognize the risk of an attack by al-Qaida in the months leading to September 11, 2001. Clarke retired in March 2003 after three decades in the US government.

　　The Associated Press obtained a copy of Clarke's book.

　　Clarke said within one week of the Bush inauguration he "urgently" sought a meeting of senior Cabinet leaders to discuss "the imminent al-Qaida threat." Months later, in April, Clarke met with deputy secretaries. During that meeting, he wrote, the Defense Department's Paul Wolfowitz told Clarke, "You give bin Laden too much credit," and he said Wolfowitz sought to steer the discussion to Iraq.

　　The White House responded that it kept Clarke on its staff after the election because of its concerns over al-Qaida. "He makes the charge that we were not focused enough on efforts to root out terrorism," White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said on Sunday. "That's just categorically false."

　　Clarke harshly criticizes Bush personally in his book, saying his decision to invade Iraq generated broad anti-American sentiment among Arabs. He recounts that Bush asked him directly almost immediately after the September 11 terror attacks to find whether Iraq was involved.

　　"Nothing America could have done would have provided al-Qaida and its new generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country," Clarke wrote.

　　(The Associated Press)