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Thu 1 Apr, 2004 11:02 am
Posted on Wed, Mar. 31, 2004
Tag-team testimony from Bush, Cheney will limit divergent answers
By Ron Hutcheson
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - President Bush's plan to appear before the Sept. 11 commission with Vice President Dick Cheney at his side violates a fundamental rule of investigations, but the panel accepted the unusual arrangement to get the president's cooperation.
As anyone who has ever watched a cop show knows, witnesses and suspects are best grilled alone to expose any inconsistencies in their stories.
"Get 'em alone, keep 'em alone, and don't even let them talk to each other immediately after, if you can help it," former New York police detective Robert Louden said Wednesday, recalling the tactics he used during his 21 years on the force. "In an ideal world, you want them separated."
But Louden, who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said normal rules don't necessarily apply to a case involving the president.
Bush insisted on the joint appearance in agreeing to take questions from all 10 members of the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. He initially had offered to meet only with the commission's top two members, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, the chairman; and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, the vice chairman.
No date has been set for the tag-team testimony. The arrangement virtually eliminates any possibility of divergent answers from Bush and Cheney, and lets Bush pass off any question he'd rather avoid and makes it impossible for the commission to ask either man any follow-up questions.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush proposed the joint session to streamline the question-and-answer process.
"This is a good way to help them get the information they need and do so in a timely manner," McClellan said. "They can talk to both of them and help better understand how to piece together all the information that they've already received."
Although the joint appearance has some advantages for Bush, it might also give new ammunition to critics who view Cheney as the real power in the White House and the driving force behind the decision to invade Iraq.
Commission members accepted the arrangement Tuesday to end drawn-out negotiations over terms of Bush's appearance. Bush also insisted that he and Cheney testify in private without being placed under oath.
"This is an unusual situation. We've only got a limited amount of time to complete our work," said commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, a former prosecutor and one of the toughest questioners on the panel. "If this is an important condition, that both the president and vice president be in the room at the same time, we can accommodate that."
The panel faces a July 26 deadline for its final report. It also plans to hold separate sessions with former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is expected to testify in open session within the next two weeks.
Sitting presidents rarely appear before investigative panels or congressional committees, but it has happened. On Oct. 17, 1974, Gerald Ford became the only sitting president to testify under oath at a congressional hearing when he went before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice to explain his pardon of former President Richard Nixon.
Kean said he saw no need to place Bush under oath. "We're happy just to have him talk to us," he told CBS Wednesday.
Although Bush and Cheney have a close working relationship, they rarely appear together in public, especially since the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush and Cheney have had little to say about the specifics of former counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke's allegation that the administration downplayed the terrorist threat. But they have been consistent in defending their handling of the war on terror.
Cheney's initial effort to rebut Clarke seemed to backfire.
"He wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff," Cheney told conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on March 22. "He clearly missed a lot of what was going on."
Two days later, Rice directly contradicted Cheney.
"I would not use the word out of the loop. He was in every meeting about terrorism," she said.
By appearing together, Bush and Cheney can avoid any similar embarrassments.
"We recognize that Mr. Bush may help Mr. Cheney with some of the answers," Kean joked on Tuesday, drawing laughter. "We think we can get the information we need."
All this does is confirm to me that lies are being covered up. F*cking scumbags.
Bush-Cheney joint 9/11 panel appearance embarrassing
Pelosi scorns Bush-Cheney panel deal
Joint appearance called 'embarrassing'
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Saturday, April 3, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ
URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/03/MNGRI608E81.DTL
Washington -- House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco blasted the White House on Friday for insisting that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney testify together before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying it makes it look like Bush is a chief executive on training wheels.
"It's embarrassing to the president of the United States that they won't let him go in without holding the hand of the vice president of the United States,'' Pelosi, the House minority leader, told reporters in her Capitol offices. "I think it speaks to the lack of confidence the administration has in the president going forth alone.''
The joint Bush-Cheney interview behind closed doors was announced Tuesday as part of an agreement between the White House and the Sept. 11 commission that included a deal for Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, to testify publicly under oath. Her public testimony, which the White House had long resisted on the grounds of separation of powers, is scheduled for Thursday.
The Bush-Cheney appearance has yet to be scheduled but almost certainly will come after Rice's much-anticipated testimony. Until the deal was announced, the White House had insisted the president would appear only in private before the Republican chairman and Democratic vice chairman of the 10- member bipartisan panel. But under the agreement, all panel members will attend with no time limit set on the questioning.
The agreement doesn't bar the White House from taping the session or making a transcript for later release, according to former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, the commission chairman. He said Tuesday that the joint Bush- Cheney appearance was insisted on by the White House in negotiations, in return for letting all 10 members attend.
Asked how Bush would do before the panel if he appeared alone, Pelosi said, "I don't know. I guess no one wants to take that chance.''
She said the joint testimony would feed the perception that Cheney is the intellectual force behind the Bush presidency. "I think it reinforces the idea that the president cannot go it alone,'' she said.
White House spokesman Ken Lisaius Friday dismissed Pelosi's comments and said the commission had expressed appreciation for Bush and Cheney's planned appearance.
"This has been a development that the commission welcomes and said so in their own statement, so it certainly sets the minority leader apart from the commission," Lisaius said.
Still, the White House has been questioned the past week about why it insisted on the unusual joint interview.
"This is about making sure the commission has all the information they need to do their job and do it in the best way possible,'' Bush press secretary Scott McClellan said Tuesday. "And so now the commission will, after having received all this information and talked to all these officials, will be able to sit down with the president and the vice president and ask any questions that they want and move forward on their important work.''
McClellan also said the commission's tight timetable, with a scheduled public release of its report by July 26, also made a joint interview more practical.
The White House has been accused of being uncooperative throughout the work of the independent, congressionally created commission, formally named the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. But McClellan contends the administration has cooperated fully and provided the commission "all the information it needs.''
That claim was undercut Thursday when officials of the Clinton administration charged the White House had failed to turn over thousands of pages of classified counter-terrorism and foreign policy documents.
In a statement on that issue, Pelosi said, "It is long past time for the president's actions to match his words.
"Failing to provide the commission with the Clinton administration's documents is not consistent with the president's promise of cooperation. The White House must immediately stop stalling, and it must release these critical documents to the commission without further delay.''
On Friday, the Bush administration gave the commission all the documents in dispute. Speaking to reporters on a trip with Bush to West Virginia, McClellan said, "We have been fully responsive to the commission's request, and any allegation to the contrary is simply ridiculous.''
The pres will need a loose fitting jacket so that cheney's hand up the back of it will not be visible when he moves and speaks.
I haven't even seen anyone from the right attempt to forward a justification for this. Has anyone?
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