Washington ? National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, at the center of a controversy over her refusal to testify before the Sept. 11 commission, Sunday renewed her determination not to give public testimony and said she could not list anything she wished she had done differently in the months before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Administration officials were searching for a compromise Sunday night with the commission that would limit the political damage from her refusal to testify. But a defiant Rice gave no hint of that as she defended the Bush administration’s counterterrorism performance on CBS’s “60 Minutes” — the same venue used a week earlier by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke to launch his criticism that the Bush administration did too little on terrorism before Sept. 11 and wound up strengthening al-Qaida by pursuing war in Iraq.

Rice has previously testified to the Sept. 11 commission in a closed-door session.

Top officials from the commission pressed Rice to meet with the panel again in open session, but they stopped short of threatening to subpoena her.

“To get into a court battle over a subpoena we don’t think is really appropriate right now, nor will it help us,” former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican and the panel’s chairman, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We are still going to press and still believe unanimously as a commission that we should hear from her in public.”

Something to hide?

Commission member John Lehman, another Republican and a former Navy secretary, called Rice’s refusal to testify in public “a political blunder of the first order” that has created the impression that White House officials have something to hide.

“If they do, we sure haven’t found it. There are no smoking guns. That’s what makes this so absurd,” Lehman told ABC’s “This Week.”

Rice has refused to answers the panel’s questions in public, citing the need to protect the confidentiality of her advice to President Bush.

“I would really like to do that, but there’s an important principle involved here,” Rice said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday night. “Sitting national security advisers do not testify before the congress.”

Clarke’s new challenge

Clarke on Sunday challenged the White House to declassify documents related to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Clarke also challenged the administration to release his communications with Rice when he was the top White House adviser on counterterrorism.

“Let’s take all of my e-mails and all of the memos that I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20th to September 11th, and let’s declassify all of it,” Clarke said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Clarke insisted there was no inconsistency between the testimony he gave the commission last week and his still-classified 2002 testimony. He said his critical book should be believed over his previous statements flattering Bush’s counterterrorism efforts “because I have no obligation anymore to spin.” Clarke said he was just being polite by praising Bush in a resignation letter that the White House released; he displayed a handwritten note from Bush saying, “You served our nation with distinction and honor.”

In his hourlong “Meet the Press” interview, Clarke continued to defend Bill Clinton’s counterterrorism record as president and continued to criticize Bush administration officials. “I think they deserve a failing grade for what they did before, because, frankly, they never got around to doing anything,” he said.

Clarke said that by invading Iraq, the Bush administration built support for al-Qaida by inflaming Islamic opinion, diverted resources from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and spent money that could have been better used to fortify domestic security. While saying he expects bin Laden will be killed or captured this year, he warned: “We’re going to face a second generation of al-Qaida.”

But Rice said that when the president met with his top advisers on Sept. 15, 2001, “Not a single one of the president’s principal advisers suggested that he do anything more than go after Afghanistan, and that’s what we did.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was at that meeting and did suggest that Iraq should be attacked, as described in detail in Bob Woodward’s book, “Bush at War.”

Rice said the Bush administration’s development of a counterterrorism plan before Sept. 11 was brisk. “I think for a new administration, the seven-and-a-half months is actually not very long,” she said.