Crawford, Texas - White House allies and Republicans investigating the September 11 attacks pressed to hear open testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, with one commissioner calling her refusal a "political blunder of the first order".
Rice said on Sunday in a television interview that she wants to meet with the families of the September 11 victims because she knows they are disappointed she cannot testify publicly.
"Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify," Rice told CBS's 60 Minutes. "I would really like to do that. But there is an important principle involved here: It is a long-standing principal that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress."
President George Bush gave no ground, and several aides said he will not change his mind on letting Rice testify. But Bush sent her and other top administration officials out for television interviews to rebut fresh attacks on the way his administration has handled the threat of terrorism.
Sharpening his criticism, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke said President Bill Clinton was more aggressive than Bush in trying to confront al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's organisation, who have been blamed by America for the attacks.
"He did something, and President Bush did nothing prior to September 11," Clarke told NBC TV.
"I think they deserve a failing grade for what they did before" September 11, Clarke said of the Bush administration. "They never got around to doing anything."
But Rice said the Bush administration regarded terrorism as "an urgent problem".
Clarke said a sweeping declassification of documents would prove that the Bush administration neglected the threat of terrorism in the eight months leading up to the attacks.
He said he sought declassification of all six hours of his testimony before a congressional committee two years ago. Some Republicans have said that testimony about September 11 contradicts Clarke's current criticism.
Clarke said he also wanted Rice's previous interview before the independent September 11 commission declassified, along with emails between him and Rice, and other documents, including a memo he sent on January 25, 2001 offering a road map to the new Bush administration on how to confront al-Qaeda, and a directive that the National Security Council adopted on September 4, 2001.
The material will prove "they wasted months when we could have had some action", Clarke said.
Rice says the approach formulated over the eight-month span was "a more comprehensive plan to eliminate al-Qaeda".
Asked about Clarke's request for the declassification, Secretary of State Colin Powell on CBS's Face The Nation, said: "My bias will be to provide this information in an unclassified manner not only to the commission, but to the American people."
White House spokesperson Jim Morrell said decisions on declassification "will be made in discussion with the 9/11 commission".
One senior administration official said the White House and intelligence community would never agree to release the September 4 national security directive, because it contains sensitive information on sources and methods.
Members of the September 11 commission made clear they will not relent in their pursuit of public testimony from Rice, but said they were not inclined to subpoena her.
The White House has declined to let her appear at the commission's televised hearings, citing the constitutional principle of separation of powers; the panel was created by Congress.
"Condi Rice would be a superb witness. She is anxious to testify. The president would dearly love to have her testify," Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters. "But the lawyers have concluded that to do so would alter the balance if we got into the practice of doing that."
Rice was interviewed by the panel behind closed doors on February 7. The administration has offered a second private session with Rice, but the commission has not accepted.
Rice was "very, very forthcoming in her first meeting with us", said former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, a Republican named by Bush to lead the commission.
"But we do feel unanimously as a commission that she should testify in public. We feel it's important to get her case out there. We recognise there are arguments having to do with separation of powers. We think in a tragedy of this magnitude that those kind of legal arguments are probably overridden," Kean told Fox News Sunday.
Commissioner John Lehman, another Republican, said Rice "has nothing to hide, and yet this is creating the impression for honest Americans all over the country and people all over the world that the White House has something to hide, that Condi Rice has something to hide".
"And if they do, we sure haven't found it. There are no smoking guns. That's what makes this so absurd. It's a political blunder of the first order," Lehman told ABC's This Week.
A White House ally, Richard Perle, said, "I think she would be wise to testify."
Perle, who resigned last month as an adviser to the Pentagon, said he recognised the constitutional concerns at issue. "Sometimes you have to set those aside because the circumstances require it," he told CNN.
Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic commissioner, noted in an interview with The Associated Press that several White House staff in recent years have appeared before legislative bodies, including former national security adviser Sandy Berger when he was in office. Rice's several media appearances also undermine the White House's position, he said.
"I fail to see the logic on the one hand relying on the confidentiality of such communications with the president and yet appearing everywhere except the one entity that has been created for the express purpose of investigating and holding public hearings on 9/11," he said. - Sapa-AP