Rice Quotes Contradict Clarke Account

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice warned of the threat posed by al-Qaida kingpin Osama bin Laden a full year before Clinton terrorism czar Richard Clarke claimed she expressed ignorance of the term al-Qaida.

In his book "Against All Enemies," Clarke paints Rice as someone who cared little and knew less about the terrorist threat, saying that when he briefed her on al-Qaida in January 2001, "her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before."

Turns out Clarke was 100 percent wrong, as an audio clip unearthed by Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity and aired on "Hannity & Colmes" last night shows.

During an interview on Detroit radio station WJR the year before the Clarke briefing, Rice mentioned bin Laden by name, then recommended: "You really have to get the intelligence agencies better organized to deal with the terrorist threat to the United States itself. One of the problems that we have is a kind of split responsibility, of course, between the CIA and foreign intelligence and the FBI and domestic intelligence."

Then, in a chillingly prescient comment, Rice named bin Laden a second time, warning, "There needs to be better cooperation because we don't want to wake up one day and find out that Osama bin Laden has been successful on our own territory."

Undoubtedly Mr. Clarke will be making his apologies to Dr. Rice when he testifies this afternoon before the 9/11 Commission.

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