'Terror threat political game'

[CShine]

Former White House counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke on Sunday accused members of the US administration of using terror warnings to manipulate voters ahead of the presidential election in November. Clarke, who resigned last year, said the conflicting assessments of the risk of terror attacks presented by US Homeland Security Department Secretary Tom Ridge and US Attorney General John Ashcroft last week showed how some officials sought to inflate the threat for political gain.

"That was ass-covering, or perhaps, dare I say it, politics in an election year," said Clarke, who was in Berlin on a book tour to promote his unflattering account of US President George W Bush's anti-terrorism policies, entitled Against All Enemies

He had been asked at a panel discussion whether frequent terror warnings by the US administration were "just bureaucratic ass-covering".

Clarke said Ashcroft had offered a far more alarmist view compared with Ridge's remarks "saying 'We're going into the summer and we should have heightened security but we have no new intelligence about it.'"

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