CONDOLEEZZA RICE was at the heart yesterday of the US Administration’s growing battle with a former CIA head and Washington’s most revered journalist over who should shoulder the blame for failing to anticipate the September 11, 2001, 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 al-Qaeda threat.

This appeared to undermine the claim by Dr Rice this week that she did not remember any such meeting. She added that it was inconceivable that she would have ignored the threat.

Dr Rice’s aides have fought back, saying that records showed that 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 and tell me.”

The meeting was disclosed by Bob Woodward in State of Denial, in which he says that Dr Rice, then President Bush’s National Security Adviser, had given Mr Tenet the “brush-off”. Mr Woodward’s account appeared to have forced the Administration on to the back foot over the issue of national security, which Mr Bush had hoped would boost the Republicans in next month’s congressional mid-term elections. But Mr Woodward, the investigative journalist who helped to expose 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 and had taken a different approach to the one he took in two earlier books that liberals had criticised for being too supportive of the Bush Administration. In Bush at War, Mr Woodward described Donald Rumsfeld, the 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”.

Mr Woodward told Larry King Live on CNN that both views were accurate at different times. “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 that Mr Tenet had developed a particular dislike for Ms Rice and that the former CIA Director was furious when she blamed the agency publicly for allowing Mr Bush to make false claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. He resigned from the CIA in 2004 and was honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Mr Tenet is completing his memoir, in which he is expected to claim that the CIA has been made a scapegoat for the war. In The One Percent Doctrine Ron Suskind says Mr Tenet wished that he “could give that damn medal back”.

WAR OF WORDS

Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, by Karen DeYoung, details the former Secretary of State’s doubts about the Iraq invasion, and describes the infighting between himself, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld over the War on Terror

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11, by Ron Suskind, claims that in August 2001, President Bush ignored CIA warnings of an impending al-Qaeda attack

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E Ricks, castigates Mr Rumsfeld for ignoring expert advice by invading Iraq with a “lean” force and lacking a coherent plan for its reconstruction

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

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

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