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Thu 1 Apr, 2004 05:27 pm
Rice to Testify Publicly to 9/11 Panel April 8
Apr 1, 4:49 PM (ET)
By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify publicly on April 8 before the Sept. 11, 2001, commission in an attempt to counter bombshell charges that President Bush did not make terrorism an urgent priority before 9/11.
Responding to heavy political pressure from both Republicans and Democrats, the White House made an abrupt about-face on Tuesday and agreed to allow Rice to testify publicly and under oath after insisting she only speak to the panel privately.
A key area of questioning for Rice is expected to be claims by former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke that Bush ignored an urgent al Qaeda threat before the 9/11 attacks and was fixated on Iraq.
At the White House, which was battered by criticism at the refusal to let Rice testify, there was hope that the appearance by the well-spoken Rice would allow the administration to get the last word on Clarke and turn the page on the bad news of the past week.
Bush's re-election strategy rests a great deal on his performance in the war on terrorism and the White House is sensitive to any suggestion that he was not doing enough to try to prevent the attacks.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a visit to Berlin, told ZDF German television that the Bush administration "did as much as we could, knowing what we knew about the situation."
"We raised our threat levels. We warned our embassies. We warned our people around the world. We made sure our military was safe and were not exposed... We did everything we could to protect ourselves," Powell said.
The White House fought against an impression left in an article by The Washington Post that Bush, Rice and others in the top echelon of power were more concerned about missile defense than terrorism in the months before 9/11.
MISSILE DEFENSE
The Post published excerpts of a speech that Rice was to deliver on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, that the newspaper said was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of the Bush administration's national security.
"You're talking about one speech," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "I think you need to look at the actions and concrete steps that we were taking to confront the threat of terrorism."
The White House would not reveal the entire text of the aborted speech, prompting a request from New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer that it be released.
Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution who worked on Democratic President Bill Clinton's National Security Council, said the Bush administration would be hard-pressed to find any reference to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden by any top officials in the months before Sept. 11.
The Rice speech, he said, "is just the final cherry on the pudding proving that what these people were concerned about was not al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden but madmen with missiles."
A new Los Angeles Times poll found 52 percent of Americans agreed with Clarke's charges that Bush failed to take the threat of terrorism seriously enough before 9/11.
Questions arose in Washington about contacts between the Bush administration and Republican commissioners as they prepared to grill Clarke about his charges last week.
People close to the commission said White House counsel Alberto Gonzales called commissioners Fred Fielding as well as James Thompson. The two commissioners went on to sharply criticize Clarke.
McClellan would not confirm the calls. He accused Rep. Henry Waxman, ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, of trying to "politicize" the commission's deliberations by asking the White House to detail Gonzales' conversations with the commissioners.
(Additional reporting by Adam Entous)
Did it really have to take her this long to rehearse her answers and get the "official" story straight? Well anyway, it's good she's gonna be a big girl and face the music. Then we can all move on to getting rid of this ridiculous administration and on to our next political abomination.
I'm clearing my schedule so I can watch Kinda Sleazy tell her side of the story.
When you see her head bobbing furiously and she starts blinking her eyes ninety-to-nothing, you'll know you're ass-deep in the lies.
My prediction of her testimony:
"Mr. Chairman, I am invoking my rights under the fifth amendment."
Kennedy, Daschle Fined for Celebration Over Rice Testimony
(2004-03-31) -- Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Tom Daschle face stiff fines for their "excessive celebration" over news that the Bush administration had succumbed to pressure to allow National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath before the 9/11 commission.
A little-known Senate rule, similar to one used by the National Football League, prohibits "excessive, prolonged and premeditated celebrations by Senators," and levies heavy fines for violations.
"Rather than politely welcoming the Bush decision to allow Rice to testify," said an unnamed expert, "Kennedy and Daschle did a virtual Snoopy-dance in front of the reporters. The Senate is supposed to be the more deliberative body of the bicameral legislature. Daschle and Kennedy are out there high-fiving each other, doing that break-dance head-spin thing and simulating two-handed pistol fire. What kind of example is that to set for junior Senators like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton?"
A spokesman for Mr. Kennedy said that he "merely knelt and made the sign of the cross," and that the dancing was actually "an ancient Celtic tradition which is protected as religious speech under the Constitution."
However Mr. Daschle's office acknowledged that, upon hearing the news, the Senate Minority Leader had "leaped into the mosh pit of reporters and was passed around over their heads for some appropriate interval."
ScrappleFace
Aljazeera has agreed to pay the fines eventhough their revenue is down due to the 9/11 hearings popularity with the terrorists, they just can't get enough of that show.
Quoted from above:
"A spokesman for Mr. Kennedy said that he "merely knelt and made the sign of the cross," and that the dancing was actually "an ancient Celtic tradition which is protected as religious speech under the Constitution."
You gotta love it.
Yea, but what is she going to testify to? She will not plead the Fifth - that is contradictory to the about-face on her appearing. But some things we know nothing about, and thus can't ask questions about. To wit:
Quote:White House Holds Back Clinton Papers
Former President's Aide Says 9/11 Panel May Lack Full View of Anti-Terror Effort
By Dan Eggen and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 2, 2004; Page A02
The White House has not turned over thousands of pages of documents from the Clinton administration to a commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, even though the records are relevant to the panel's mission, one of Clinton's attorneys said yesterday.
Bruce R. Lindsey, who represents the former president on records issues, said yesterday that the Bush administration has turned over about 25 percent of the nearly 11,000 pages of Clinton records that document custodians had determined should be released to the commission investigating the terrorist attacks. Lindsey said that, as a result, the commission may not have a full picture of the Clinton administration's anti-terrorism efforts.
"I was concerned that the commission was making findings of fact based on an incomplete record," Lindsey said.
White House spokesman Sean McCormack said documents that have not been turned over are not relevant to the inquiry. "We're applying the same standards to documents from our administration and from the Clinton administration," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43329-2004Apr1.html?referrer=email
That last paragraph has got to give one pause.
I'm hoping that her tendency to speak so fast will get her into trouble - that she will say something unwise, un-thought out.
Rice's testimony could be make-or-break moment for her, Bush
Posted on Fri, Apr. 02, 2004
Rice's testimony could be make-or-break moment for her, Bush
By Ron Hutcheson
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who once dreamed of becoming a concert pianist, has been performing in public since age 4. Now she's preparing for the role of a lifetime.
The soft-spoken foreign-policy expert will serve as President Bush's chief defender Thursday in a televised appearance before the independent panel that's investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Her mission is to rebut allegations that Bush failed to deal with the terrorist threat before Sept. 11, but her own reputation is also on the line.
Former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke's harsh critique of Bush's performance as commander in chief strikes at the core of Bush's presidency and undermines the theme of his re-election campaign. Bush has been telling Americans for months that he's made them safer. Clarke said the president failed to take the terrorist threat seriously and made the problem worse by launching a war in Iraq that diverted attention from Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.
If Clarke is right, some of the blame falls on Rice, Bush's closest foreign-policy adviser. Friends and aides said she was eager to give the administration's side.
Bush bowed to pressure and agreed to let her testify in public and under oath after initially vetoing both. In the end, Bush put aside his concern that public testimony would undermine the principle that presidents are entitled to confidential advice from their staff appointees without fear that Congress, or its creations, will make them reveal it.
"She's the best person to present the case," said Republican political consultant Charles Black, an informal White House adviser. "It might not end the discussion, but it will be the trump card that puts Mr. Clarke on the side."
That may be wishful thinking, but there's little doubt that Rice will be ready for battle.
She's had personal experience with terrorism, although not by Islamic extremists. In 1963, two girls from her racially segregated neighborhood in Birmingham, Ala., died along with two other children when racists bombed Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Rice, then 8, heard the explosion from a few blocks away.
Rice said those memories flooded back after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"It is a sound that I can still hear today," she told Stanford University students at a 2002 graduation ceremony. "I realize now that it is an experience that I overcame, but will never forget. And so it will be for all of us, you and me, who experienced Sept. 11."
Rice, 49, abandoned her plans for a career in music during her second year of college at the University of Denver and turned her attention to foreign policy. She credits Joseph Korbel, one of her professors and the father of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, with sparking her interest.
Rice went on to become an expert in U.S-Soviet relations. She ended up at Stanford, first as a professor and later in a top administrative role. Her connections there led to a job in the administration of President George Bush, the current president's father, as a Soviet expert on the National Security Council.
When the younger Bush decided to seek the White House, Rice traveled to Texas to tutor him on world affairs. They bonded quickly, brought together by a mutual passion for sports and a shared religious commitment.
"When I'm concerned about something, I figure out a plan of action, and then I give it to God. I just ask to be carried through it," she said in a 2002 interview with Essence magazine. "God's never failed me yet."
Rice was nominally a Democrat until the early 1980s. In 1984, she served as foreign policy adviser to former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"My perception is that she has become more ideological and more hawkish," Hart said in a telephone interview from his Denver office. "She's loyal to her boss. If the boss goes one way, she's going with him."
Hart, however, has some reason to question how seriously Rice and her boss took the terrorism threat before Sept. 11. In January 2001, shortly after Bush took office, Hart and former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., briefed top administration officials on the findings of their Commission on National Security, a bipartisan group that evaluated threats facing the country.
The commission warned of the likelihood of a terrorist attack against the United States and called for creating a federal homeland security agency.
In May 2001, Bush directed Vice President Dick Cheney to head a task force to look for ways to deal with the threat of terrorist attacks. On Sept. 6, five days before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Hart again stressed the need for action in a face-to-face meeting with Rice.
"Her only response was, `Well, I'll speak to the vice president about it.' And that was it," Hart recalled. "It was disheartening."
Rice's critics say she's been no match for Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in internal administration disputes. She's also been unwilling or unable to stop the administration from sending conflicting signals on the role of the United Nations in Iraq and U.S. policy on global warming.
Rice views herself as a behind-the-scenes player whose primary job is to present conflicting views to Bush and help him reach decisions.
"Her value to the president, and why he trusts her so much, is that she's been his interpreter. He gets her candid impressions, interpretations and assessments. That's not the same thing as being a forceful shaper of policy," said Charles Pena, the director of defense-policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, a research center in Washington. " You don't see a Condi Rice stamp of influence on U.S. foreign policy."
But Rice might leave her mark in the debate over Bush's handling of terrorism.
"Richard Clarke had his day in court, so to speak. Condi Rice is going to have hers," Pena said. "She gets the final word."
Will Condi tell the truth? Yes I expect she will since after all if caught in a lie under oath the penalties are quite severe. However, since the truth can be damning I expect she will have many lapses of memory.
John Dean said last noght on NOW, that if she couches in answers in the form of opinions, she is unlikley to be charged with perjury.
I would agree with that....and I am sure that she is being briefed very well. Again, it is her tendency to speak very rapidly which might get her into trouble.
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