Rice disputes report she brushed off CIA chief

SHANNON, Ireland, Oct 2 (Reuters) US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today disputed a report that she brushed off the head of the CIA when he warned of a possible attack on the United States before September. 11, 2001.

She also described as ''simply ludicrous'' an account in a new book by Washington Post editor Bob Woodward that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had refused to return her telephone calls.

In ''State of Denial: Bush at War Part III'', Woodward describes a July 10, 2001 meeting in which George Tenet, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and his top counterterrorism aide Cofer Black sought to impress on Rice their fears that an attack on the United States was likely.

According to an excerpt published in the Washington Post, Tenet made an abrupt request for a meeting with Rice in the hopes of shaking her. The account said both Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice, who gave them a polite hearing and a ''brush-off''.

The release of the book, less than six weeks before the November.

7 mid-term congressional elections in the United States, has revived questions about whether US President George W Bush and his aides did enough to protect the United States before the September. 11 attacks.

Rice said she had no specific recollection of the meeting, stressed that the threat reporting at the time was about potential attacks abroad rather than at home, and denied she was given a warning of a possible strike on the United States.

''I don't know that this meeting took place ... what I am quite certain of is that (it) was not a meeting in which I was told that there was an impending attack and I refused to respond,'' Rice told reporters as she flew to the West Asia.

''I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States. And the idea that I would somehow have ignored that, I find, incomprehensible,'' Ms Rice added.

Ms Rice described steps she and others took before the July 10 meeting described in the book, including arranging a briefing for US domestic agencies such as the US Federal Aviation Administration, to warn them that an attack on the United States was possible even though intelligence suggested a strike abroad.

She said she and other U.S. officials were constantly sifting intelligence about possible threats, working with foreign governments to try to disrupt potential strikes abroad and taking protective measures, including moving the US Fifth Fleet.

Ms Rice also denied a report that she had trouble getting Rumsfeld to return her calls and that she tried to get him fired.

''The idea that he wasn't returning my phone calls is simply ludicrous,'' Rice said, adding that she talks to Rumsfeld several times a week.

Ms Rice said when Bush asked her to be his secretary of state, she had floated the idea of replacing his entire national security team because his aides had endured the September. 11 attacks and had overseen wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

''I said I think maybe you need new people,'' she said. ''I don't know if that somehow was interpreted - but (I) was actually talking about me.'' REUTERS BDP PM1401