Condoleezza Rice was today at the heart of the US Administration’s escalating battle with a former CIA head and Washington’s most revered journalist over who should shoulder the blame for failing to anticipate the 9/11 attacks.

The State Department has admitted that a review of records has shown that George Tenet, the then CIA director, did brief Dr Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from al-Qaeda.

This appears to undermine comments made by Dr Rice to reporters this week when she claimed not to remember any such meeting. She added that it was “incomprehensible” that she ignored terrorist threats two months before the September 11 attacks.

Dr Rice’s aides have fought back, saying that records show she told Mr Tenet to take his concerns to, among others, John Ashcroft, the then Attorney-General.

Mr Ashcroft said: “Frankly, I’m disappointed that I didn’t get that kind of briefing. I’m surprised he didn’t think it was important enough to come by and tell me.”

The meeting was first disclosed by Bob Woodward in his book, State of Denial, who said Dr Rice - who was then President Bush’s national security adviser - had given Mr Tenet the “brush off”.

Woodward’s account appears to have forced the Administration on to the back foot over the issue of national security which Mr Bush had previously hoped would be the Republicans’ trump card in November’s Congressional mid-term elections.

But Woodward, the investigative journalist who helped break the Watergate scandal, has had to defend himself against concerted White House criticism of his reporting methods.

Dan Bartlett, the president’s adviser, has implied that the journalist had an agenda, saying it was clear he “approached this book different” than he had with two earlier volumes which were attacked by liberals for being too supportive of the Administration.

For instance, in his book, Bush at War, Woodward describes Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, as “handsome, intense, well-educated with an intellectual bent”. In State of Denial, Mr Rumsfeld is described as an “arrogant control freak whose micromanaging is almost comic”.

Woodward told CNN’s Larry King programme that both views were accurate at different times.

He compared writing the three books to reporting three baseball games involving the same team but which each had a different result. “This is a book about the people who made the decisions. These people aren’t Democrats - these are insiders,” he said.

State of Denial suggests Mr Tenet developed a particular dislike for Ms Rice over time, and that the former CIA director was furious when she publicly blamed the agency for allowing President Bush to make false claims about Iraq’s WMD.

He resigned from the CIA in 2004 and was honoured with a Presidential Medal of Freedom during a White House ceremony, even though he has since been heavily criticised for providing faulty intelligence on Iraq’s WMD.

He is now completing work on his memoirs in which he is expected to claim the CIA has been made the scapegoat for the war. In his book The One Percent Doctrine, Ron Suskind claims Mr Tenet saying he wished he “could give that damn medal back”.

Indeed, Woodward’s book is only the latest in a string of new literature documenting the Bush Administration’s alleged use of bad intelligence and flawed planning, as well as an apparent disregard for dissenting opinions.

Others include:

Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell by Karen DeYoung, which details the former Secretary of State’s doubts about the 2003 Iraq invasion, and describes the infighting between himself, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in developing a strategy for the war on terror.

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11 by Ron Suskind which claims that in August 2001, Mr Bush ignored CIA warnings of an impending al-Qaeda attack, telling an intelligence analyst: “All right, you’ve covered your ass now.”

Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a first-hand account on Americans in Iraq which shows how inept bureaucrats, appointed for their Republican loyalty rather than administrative ability, grotesquely mismanaged post-invasion rebuilding.

Blind Into Baghdad: America’s War in Iraq by James Fallows, a collection of prescient essays which unpick many of the arguments for war, the faulty intelligence used to justify the invasion and the Administration’s failure to anticipate the difficulties of occupation.

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E Ricks, which castigates Mr Rumsfeld for ignoring expert advice by invading Iraq with a “lean” force or coherent plan for rebuilding the country afterwards, arguing that dissolving the Iraqi army, as well as overly-aggressive tactics by the US military, enflamed the insurgency.

Hubris, The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, which quotes David Kay, chief weapons inspector, describing Mr Bush on being told that no WMDs had been found in Iraq: “I’m not sure I’ve spoken to anyone at that level who seemed less inquisitive.”

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