Bush, Cheney to meet in private with full commission

Tuesday, March 30, 2004 Posted: 2:27 PM EST (1927 GMT)


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After days of intense pressure, the White House on Tuesday agreed to allow national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly and under oath before the commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks.

But Bush administration officials insisted on assurances that her appearance would not create a precedent for White House staff to testify before a commission created by Congress.

The White House also reversed its opposition to letting President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney face questions from the full commission, rather than just the panel's chairman and vice chairman.

In a letter to the 9/11 commission, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales said the panel must agree in writing that Rice's appearance would not set a precedent for testimony by White House staff and that no additional public testimony will be requested from any White House official, including Rice.

Commissioners said they accepted those terms and would work to schedule a session promptly.

Bush was expected to discuss the issue later Tuesday.

The White House had resisted letting Rice testify in public, arguing that it would be a violation of executive privilege.

Calls to waive that privilege have mounted since last week's testimony by former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who said the Bush administration did not put enough focus on the threat of terrorism before the 2001 terrorist attacks. (Clarke book a best seller)

Rice has blasted Clarke in numerous interviews, but she said her refusal to appear under oath and in public -- as her former aide did -- was a matter of principle. (Interactive: Bush and terrorism)

She already has spoken to commissioners for several hours privately without being under oath. The White House had offered to have Rice give a private, unsworn rebuttal to Clarke's testimony, but Democrats and Republicans on the independent commission said Rice's response should be public and under oath.

"A major part of our duty is to see to it that everything possible is released to the general public, and no compromise on a private visit by Condoleezza Rice is going to satisfy that need," former Sen. Slade Gorton, one of the commissioners, said.

A senior administration official said Bush decided Monday that the controversy over Rice was beginning to overshadow the commission's efforts to investigate the attacks. Bush discussed the matter with advisers over the weekend at his Texas ranch, the official said.

"Everyone is so focused on the process, not the substance, and it's never been a question of substance," the official said.

The panel -- formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- is scheduled to issue a report on its findings by July 26.

Rice's reluctance to testify drew criticism from families of victims killed in the attacks and from Bush's presumptive Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

"The question is why this White House only does the right thing under public political pressure," Kerry spokesman David Wade said Tuesday. "Their first instinct should be to answer questions about our security rather than launch a public relations offensive and when that fails, do what they should've done from Day One."

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, called on the White House to end what he called a campaign of "character assassination and retribution" by its supporters against Clarke, whose allegations also are detailed in a new book, "Against All Enemies: America's War on Terror."

"The commission should declassify Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony -- all of it, not just the parts the White House wants -- and Dr. Rice should testify before the 9/11 commission, and she should be under oath and in public," Daschle said.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, who suggested last week that Clarke may have perjured himself, applauded Bush's decision.

In a joint statement, Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, said that Congress recognizes Rice's testimony would be "a unique event."

"We do not believe Dr. Rice's testimony, before an independent commission, should be seen as setting any precedent, and it should not be cited as setting precedent for future requests for a national security adviser or any other White House official to testify before a legislative body," the statement said.

CNN's Dana Bash contributed to this report.


The WhiteHouse: reversing into the future! ;)


Mark

I put my comments on this in the "spills the beans" thread, where I also posted a similar article.

Oh, I'm sorry Timber I guess I was not paying attention.

I had a job interview today that went really well and I guess my head is in a spin. It would the first time in my life I could be working for a "GOOD" company!

I'm trying to pay better attention to everything else going on today and doing a lousy job! And it's hard to type with crossed fingers! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Mark

BTW the article Timber speaks of is here and is the 12th post down. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Mark

Good luck, Mark. Hmmmm.... a "good" company and Vermont -- ice cream comes to mind. :D

Timber I just got the call and I got the job!!!!

I start Thursday. It is a company called Imagistics and they sell and service copiers. The benefits are primo!

I can't wait to tell my wife when she gets home!!!!

:D :D :D :D :D

Mark

[ 03-30-2004, 07:03 PM: Message edited by: skywalker ]

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!! Here, have a

[img]graemlins/shine.gif[/img]
<font color=cyan> <font size=16>WEEKLY WONDER AWARD </font></font>
[img]graemlins/shine.gif[/img]

[img]graemlins/dancing.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/dance.gif[/img]

Congratulations Mark! [img]smile.gif[/img] Good luck at the new job!

About the Rice testimony thing...better late than never. At this point it is obviously more a political move than anything else. Doing an about-face and waiting til the pressure was on to decide to testify may backfire bigtime, especially if Condi doesn't dazzle with her testimony.

Well even if she flubs it up, Im sure the right-wing media machine will be able to spin it into something it is not. This whole Clarke character assassination attack debacle has taught me they are very good (but not perfect) at doing just that.

{sorry, totally off-topic}
Congratulations Mark!! [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Equally off-topic]

Congrats, Skywalker! [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

<FONT COLOR=ORANGE>Congratulations Mark! </font>

March 31, 2004
NY Times
PRECEDENT
Behind the Privilege That in the End Bowed to Politics
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, March 30 — The doctrine of executive privilege, which the Bush White House invoked in trying to keep Condoleezza Rice from testifying in public session before the terrorism commission, is widely viewed as one of the most ambiguous concepts in constitutional law.

Though the Constitution makes no explicit reference to the principle, the Supreme Court has recognized that a president and his advisers should be able to speak freely without fear that disclosure of those conversations will be compelled.

The last time the court directly addressed the issue, however, was in 1974, when it first formally recognized the privilege but said President Richard M. Nixon could not claim it as a way of withholding his secret tape recordings from the Watergate prosecutor.

In that case, the justices said the importance of a president's ability to speak confidentially with his closest aides had to be balanced against other needs. They ruled 8 to 0 that the needs of a criminal investigation outweighed the value of uninhibited advice.

The court has since provided no guidance on interpreting the privilege, and has never addressed how, in the absence of a criminal inquiry, to balance the president's needs against a desire by Congress simply to obtain information.

Presidents considering whether to invoke the privilege have had to do their own balancing: weighing the value of maintaining the principle against the political costs of appearing to be hiding something.

"Executive privilege is, in the end, a combination of law and politics," said Louis Fisher, a senior researcher at the Congressional Research Service, who has written a book on the issue.

"A president can invoke this privilege, but he can also waive it," Mr. Fisher said. "All presidents say they worry about the powers they hand over to their successors, but they also have to worry about their own credibility and the price they pay for what some people might perceive as a cover-up."

A study published in 2002 by the Congressional Research Service, a branch of the Library of Congress, cited 20 instances since World War II in which presidents, waiving the privilege, had allowed senior White House aides to testify before Congressional committees.

In the case of Ms. Rice, however, the White House said no other incumbent national security adviser had ever testified in public concerning policy matters.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter did allow his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss efforts by the president's brother, Billy, to lobby on behalf of Libya. But that proceeding was considered something akin to a criminal investigation.

Some members of the Sept. 11 commission have noted that in 1994, President Bill Clinton allowed Samuel R. Berger, then his deputy national security adviser, to testify about American policy in Haiti. But Alberto R. Gonzales, the Bush White House counsel, pointed out in a letter to the commission last week that Mr. Berger's appearance had been in closed session.

In a letter on Tuesday in which the administration agreed to make Ms. Rice available for public testimony, Mr. Gonzales said the White House was making an "extraordinary accommodation" that "does not set any precedent."

One authority on executive privilege, Peter Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University, disagreed. Professor Shane said that if anything, Ms. Rice's testimony would bolster the idea that there is no impediment to having the national security adviser testify publicly.

"If the argument is that such testimony will damage the presidency and she goes ahead and testifies and the presidency remains undamaged," he said, that only makes it more difficult to resist the next time.

It is precedent setting, all you need is a letter saying it's not precedent setting.

And even if she does DAZZLE, the Left-Wing media machine will be able to spin it into something it is not. [img]tongue.gif[/img] :: [img]smile.gif[/img]

And Congrats Mark!

And even if she does DAZZLE, the Left-Wing media machine will be able to spin it into something it is not. [img]tongue.gif[/img] :: [img]smile.gif[/img]

</font>[/QUOTE]Now that they actually have a machine (as in Air America the new "liberal" radio network), perhaps.

They still have nothing compared to the Limbaugh/Hannity/Ingraham/O'Reilly/Ect. spin machine, unless you buy into the old line that mainstream media is somehow perpetuating a vast liberal media conspiracy....

Of course if she says anything that does not match any statements she previously made, Condi will say she merely misspoke. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Mark

[ 04-03-2004, 08:01 AM: Message edited by: skywalker ]

Clarke's testimony was better!

Mark