WASHINGTON, April 1: Pentagon briefing notes found at a Washington coffee shop show that the White House was worried about the damaging testimony last week of a former counter- terrorism chief to a commission investigating the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.
"Stay inside the lines. We don't need to puff this (up). We need (to) be careful as hell about it," say the handwritten notes reported by a US news agency, United Press International.
"This thing will go away soon and what will keep it alive will be one of us going over the line." The notes were written by Pentagon political appointee Eric Ruff, who left them at a Starbucks coffee shop at Dupont Circle, not far from US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's home.
The notes are genuine, a Pentagon official said. They were compiled for an early morning briefing for Mr Rumsfeld before the Sunday morning talk shows, during which administration officials conducted a flurry of interviews to counter the testimony of Richard Clarke, President George Bush's former terrorism czar who left the post last year. Mr Rumsfeld appeared on Fox and ABC.
The Starbucks customer who found them gave them to a liberal advocacy group, the Center for American Progress, which published them on its Web site on Wednesday. Included in the notes was a hand-drawn map to Mr Rumsfeld's house, which is largely blacked out on the Web site for security reasons.
Mr Clarke told the commission investigating the Sept 11 attacks that the White House was obsessed with Iraq and ignored warning from him and others that the Al Qaeda network was the real threat to the United States.
Mr Bush signed an order on Sept 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, the commission staff reported. The Starbucks notes, printed on paper titled "Eric's Telephone Log" with a notation indicating the points came from a conference call, advised Bush administration officials to "rise above Clark" and "emphasize importance of 9/11 commission and come back to what we have done".
Since the notes were found, however, the White House has decided to allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify before the committee under oath. She will provide a direct answer to Mr Clarke's account.
One of Mr Clarke's most damaging allegations is that he crafted an anti-terrorism plan - a National Security Presidential Directive - to take on the Al Qaeda in Jan 2001. The NSPD was not approved until Sept 4 of that year, and neither was it substantially changed in the intervening months, according to Mr Clarke.
He has challenged the White House to release both documents to allow for a side-by-side comparison. The notes address this matter, saying the plan to attack the Taliban existed before Sept 4, 2001.