For all the sniping over efforts by the Bush and Clinton administrations to thwart terrorism, information from this week’s hearings into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks suggests that the two administrations were pursuing roughly the same policies until the terror strikes occurred.

Witness testimony and the findings of the commission investigating the terror strikes indicate that even the “new” policy to combat Osama bin Laden and his Taliban hosts, developed just before the terror attacks, was in most respects similar to the old strategy pursued first by President Clinton and then by President Bush.

The commission’s determination that the two policies were roughly the same calls into question claims made by Bush officials that they were developing a superior terrorism policy. The findings also put into perspective the criticism of Bush’s approach to terrorism by Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief: For all his harsh complaints about the Bush administration’s lack of urgency in the terrorism issue, he had no serious quarrel with the actual policy Bush was pursuing before the 2001 attacks.

Clarke did not respond to efforts to reach him for comment Friday.

Bush officials have claimed their al-Qaida strategy took eight months to develop because it was significantly more aggressive and sweeping than the tactics employed by the previous administration.

But according to details that emerged this week, most of the strategies approved by high-level Bush officials on Sept. 4 and Sept. 10, 2001, were nearly identical to the policies pursued by the Clinton team. The plans grew out of long-standing proposals made by Clarke in 1998 and 2000 — ideas derided this week by Rice as a “laundry list” of ideas that were previously “tried or rejected.”

Clarke’s 1998 and 2000 proposals were not formally adopted by the Clinton administration, but most of the ideas, except for his call for continuous bombings of al-Qaida and Taliban targets, served informally to guide policy. Clarke submitted both proposals, along with a request for short-term actions, on Jan. 25, 2001, to the new Bush team. The suggestions formed the basis for the Bush strategy that was adopted nearly eight months later.