Posted on 03/25/2004 8:24:27 PM PST by Utah Girl
Under mounting pressure from Democrats about its response to the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House offered Thursday to have Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, answer more questions from the panel. At the same time, President Bush forcefully denied accusations that he had ignored the severity of the threat from Al Qaeda.
In announcing late Thursday that Ms. Rice would appear before the panel again but only in private and not under oath, the White House acted on a day when some Republicans said that Mr. Bush was being undercut by the perception that a senior White House official would not cooperate, at the very time that his aides were out pummeling Mr. Clarke.
The moves came as the White House also sought to deflect new criticism of Mr. Bush for his handling of counterterrorism issues in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks and contain the fallout of an investigation that Democrats and some Republicans said could cast a shadow over his re-election campaign.
The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, called on the White House to cease ``character attacks'' on Richard A. Clarke, the former senior Bush aide who disparaged Mr. Bush's handling of the Qaeda threat in his testimony before the commission and in a new book.
``I have a simple request for the president today: Please ask the people around you to stop the character attacks they are waging against Richard Clarke,'' Mr. Daschle said. ``Ask them to stop their attempts to conceal information and confuse facts. Ask them to stop the long effort that has made the 9/11 commission's work more difficult than it should be.''
An array of White House officials, including Ms. Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney, have gone on television to discredit Mr. Clarke's testimony as either politically motivated, to help John Kerry, or as a ruse to sell books.
In New Hampshire, Mr. Bush showed up at an event about the economy accompanied by the widow of a pilot of the plane that flew into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Only a day earlier, television news programs were filled with images of Mr. Clarke surrounded by thankful families of other Sept. 11 victims after he apologized to them for failing to head off the attack.
Mr. Bush prefaced his remarks by pointedly noting that the commission was looking at ``the eight months of my administration and the eight years of the previous administration.''
``Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people,'' Mr. Bush said to a burst of applause.
In a letter to the commission's chairman, the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, said a return session would allow her to clear up ``a number of mischaracterizations of Dr. Rice's statements and positions.'' Mr. Gonzales said she would not appear at a public session of the panel because, he wrote, it was critical that presidential advisers ``not be compelled to testify publicly before Congressional bodies such as the commission.''
James R. Thompson, the former governor of Illinois and a Republican member of the commission, said in an interview on Thursday that in the commission's private four-hour interview of Ms. Rice last month, she offered to meet again with the panel to answer other questions. ``She said, `If you need me back at any time, I'd be delighted,''' Mr. Thompson said. ``So my guess is that we will call her back.''
By publicly restating her offer on Thursday, the White House sought to deflect criticism that it was trying to block a full investigation of the Bush administration's performance in the months leading to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ms. Rice told commissioners that White House officials had told her she should not testify under oath. While the panel requires officials appearing in public to testify under oath, there is no such requirement for those testifying in private.
The decision by Mr. Bush to directly address this issue underlines the extent to which the questions raised by Mr. Clarke and the commission appears to have shaken the White House. It came during a trip that was intended to address economic issues and to focus on New Hampshire, a state with a battered economy that is expected to be a critical in the presidential election.
John Kerry, the expected Democratic presidential nominee, once again avoided on Thursday directly engaging Mr. Bush on this dispute. Several advisers said they argued that an attack by Mr. Kerry at this point might be a welcome distraction by the White House, and make it easier to portray the attacks as orchestrated by the Kerry campaign.
Some of Mr. Bush's advisers said that they believed that they had raised enough questions about Mr. Clarke's motives and credibility to negate any damage he might have caused Mr. Bush with his statements to the panel and in a steam of television appearances this week.
``Clarke's own words contributed to the end of his credibility with people,'' said Terry Holt, Mr. Bush's campaign spokesman.
However, Democrats and some Republicans not associated with the campaign questioned that assessment. They described Mr. Clarke's appearance before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States as compelling and said that Mr. Bush's campaign, which had already been criticized by some families of victims for using footage of World Trade Center destruction in its campaign advertisements, would have to deal with the emotional show of support by victims of Mr. Clarke after he said ``I failed you.''
In addition, even some Republicans questioned the wisdom of the White House involving itself in such a public and muscular campaign to discredit a critic who was, by his account, a Republican who served in Mr. Bush's own administration.
``While it was their intent to undermine Clark's credibility, it will be interesting to see if their credibility now comes into question more than his,'' said Don Sipple, a Republican consultant. ``I saw the parade of the victim's families on the morning shows who all applauded him. He was the first person who took any responsibility. What that does is underscore his perception as a truth teller. I think the American people are paying attention to this episode.''
With the economy faltering and Democrats so united, Mr. Bush's terrorism credentials are portrays by his supporters as the strongest assets he has going against Mr. Kerry. The revelations, in particular, the account offered by Mr. Clarke, could give Mr. Kerry ammunition to use to knock Mr. Bush off his foreign policy pedestal this fall.
Less obviously, Mr. Clarke's assertions mark the latest instance this year in which credibility of the White House and Mr. Bush has been challenged on such a fundamental issue, be it the existence of unconventional weapons in Iraq or the cost of the Medicare prescription drug bill. And it has come at the very moment that the White House has systematically been attempting to destroy Mr. Kerry's credibility by portraying him as a flip-floppers, and explaining why Mr. Clarke's testimony has provoked such a bare-knuckle attack on him from the White House.
Dr. Rice has requested another round of Q&A with the 9-11 commission, because she wants to set the record straight concerning what she sees as questionable (BS) rhetoric from Dick Clarke.
Assuming that Clarke is a "Republican," there is not enough room in that tent for both Clarke and myself to be RINO's (no I am not related Fahey, you kook you). Somebody is living a lie (or was a mole). I offer as Exhibit "A" that Clarke contributed early and often to Democrat campaigns. I contributed only to McCain, back when. And there you have it.
I've had it with Clarke, Sipple and the nouveau riche professional victims.
This is BS right here -- they have factually refuted what he said at the hearing not only with other evidence, but with his own words!
The type of people in this peanut gallery are literally the same people we've heard quoted over and over decrying Bush for 9/11 at every term -- the professional victims like Kristin Breitweister, Mindy Kleinberg, Lorie Van Auken, and Patty Casazza (the four 9/11 widows who got Gail Sheehy to write a Bush-bashing book about them.) In short, we heard these same whiners complaining about Bush mentioning 9/11 in his campaign ads. There's 10,000 9/11 victims' family members, but as far as the media is concerned, these women and few other professional victims are the only ones who ever get quoted.
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