9/11-PROBE POLITICS

After several months of negotiations, plus a few unseemly public threats, the federal commission investigating the events of 9/11 has reached agreeement with the White House for access to some of the nation's most classified intelligence briefings. This is a dramatic concession by the Bush administration: For the first time, outsiders be will be allowed to read daily briefing material meant for only the president and a tiny handful of top officials.

President Bush was right to approach this matter cautiously for fear of the precedents that are being set here. He's also right to warn that "the writers of the Presidential Daily Brief [must] feel comfortable that the documents will never be politicized and/or unnecessarily exposed for public purview."

The Panel will have failed in its responsibilities if it does not recommend that PDBs should never be shared with those not responsible for the security of the United States, especially when the opposition has strayed from evaluating the intelligence to examining their interpretation to embarrass a president, as the Rockefeller Memo so clearly shows.

To use or leak a PDB for political purposes is to destroy its usefulness. If dots are to be connected, national intelligence estimates must be kept apolitical and candid. Otherwise, future PDBs would have to be scrubbed of all details potentially embarrassing, including details that some groups would seize upon as politically offensive, or wrongly interpreted when examined with the benefit of hindsight. Democrats have again demonstrated they cannot be trusted with homeland security issues or with efforts to defend Americans.

"Reaching a deal on this vital issue will allow the commission to move forward - while removing any grounds for critics to charge "coverup" after it reaches its final conclusions."

Wanna bet? It's already started...with a "victims's" group...I would be VERY interested at the political profile of that "victim's group".

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