Posted on 03/31/2004 8:11:53 AM PST by Pikamax
Hill pressure tipped the balance on Rice GOP lawmakers told White House stance ‘untenable’ By Jonathan E. Kaplan
President Bush’s decision yesterday to allow his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to testify publicly and under oath before an independent panel investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was prompted at least in part by concerns among senior lawmakers in the House Republican caucus.
getty images National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify in public.
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They had come to feel that the White House position had become politically untenable, The Hill learned.
The lawmakers conveyed their message through an intermediary, who asked to speak on the condition of anonymity. His GOP colleagues told him that the White House would have to give in, in light of the enormity what transpired on Sept. 11 – the single greatest loss of life on U.S. soil.
“Some colleagues wanted her to testify,” said Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Rules Committee.
Rice has been pilloried this past week for refusing to appear before the bipartisan commission while appearing on many TV news shows to give her side of what happened and to dispute the harshly critical account of events portrayed by former anti-terrorism official Richard Clarke.
In reversing course, White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez wrote to the commission on Bush’s behalf requesting that the group agree in writing that Rice’s testimony “does not set any precedent for future commission requests … for testimony by a national security adviser or any other White House official.”
In addition, Gonzalez asked that the commission not request to follow up with Rice or any other White House official. It was understood that those conditions were broadly acceptable to the panel.
Reaction among top congressional Republicans remained muted. Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) told reporters he had no reaction to the White House’s decision. “It does not serve any purpose for me to say that is a good idea or a bad idea. That is a decision [the White House] had to make based upon the situation.”
Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told The Hill: “It’s one of those things led by circumstance that I hate to see the absolute confidentiality of that relationship given up in any way. There are issues raised by Richard Clarke that the country needs to have answered.”
The decision follows a week of blistering Republican attacks on Clarke, the former counter-terrorism chief in the Bush and Clinton administrations. He told the commission last week the Bush administration did not take al Qaeda’s threat seriously enough and that Bush sought to link Iraq and al Qaeda without any proof to invade Iraq.
Some House lawmakers weighed in against Clarke, including DeLay, who said yesterday that Clarke’s performance was “shameless” and the “issue is a sideshow to divert our attention from the war on terror.”
Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.) demanded that Clarke’s 2002 testimony before a congressional inquiry be declassified, a demand that had been issued earlier by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) also backed Goss’s demand. “We need to lean forward in making as much information available to the public as possible, without compromising the national security,” Hastert said.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) also attacked Clarke last week, saying Clarke had been making “misleading allegations. … His comments have been timed to the release for sales of his book.”
In a letter to the 10-member commission, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) wrote that at least one of Clarke’s congressional briefings proved “uninformative” and that “Clarke was part of the problem before Sept. 11 because he too took too narrow a view of the terrorism threat.”
In a letter to Rice dated Jan. 21, 2001, Shays complained that Clarke “must be continually prompted … for information. We assume he either does not have the resources to respond, or his office chose to turn a deaf ear to our requests.”
Earlier, on July 5, 2000, Shays had written to Clarke to allege that his testimony before a House Government Reform subcommittee was “less than useful.”
Some nonpartisan staffers on the commission have reportedly been telling GOP insiders that Clarke met with former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.) to coordinate his testimony.
“It’s completely untrue. And I have not seen Roemer outside the hearings in the past six months,” Clarke told The Hill.
Roemer said he had met with Clarke on two occasions six to eight months ago to understand better how the National Security Council worked in the Clinton and Bush administrations. But he, too, strongly denied the allegation that he “coached” Clarke.
“Clarke is like Einstein and Rambo,” Roemer told The Hill. “He is going to say and do what he wants. I did have a meeting with Dick Clarke eight months ago. I don’t know him from a guy on the street. We sat down after an article appeared in Time magazine, and I wanted to find out how the NSC worked.”
He added, “I [also] sat down at a lunch with [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld a few months ago. I certainly have not being accused of coaching Don Rumsfeld.”
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman said in an e-mail that he was not concerned about Roemer’s meetings with Clarke and called the accusation “bullpucky,” also in an e-mail.
I can only surmise he means Clark has the toughness of Einstein and the brains of Rambo.
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