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<p>WASHINGTON -- Consider "Condi." National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is the Bush administration's star witness, sent forth to slay the Sunday-morning dragons with her combination of academic high-mindedness and the bulletproof poise of a talk-show host.</p> <p>Yet she is also an officer of the executive branch, not bound to Congress, and thus President Bush has asked her not to testify in public before the 9/11 commission set up by Congress.</p>

After resisting for months, White House officials worked yesterday to negotiate a compromise that would allow public release of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the independent commission looking into the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to administration aides. These aides said the White House believes Rice's refusal to testify is becoming a political problem and officials are looking for a way out. The leading possibility is for Rice to submit to another private session with the commissioners and allow them to release a transcript, the aides said.

<p>WASHINGTON — Two Democratic senators plan to attach to the welfare reauthorization bill being debated Tuesday an amendment that would require National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (search) to testify publicly and under oath before the panel investing pre-Sept. 11, 2001, anti-terror efforts.</p>

Statement by Speaker Hastert, Senate Majority Leader Frist on Public Testimony of Condoleezza Rice Before the 9/11 Commission 3/30/2004 11:25:00 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National Desk Contact: John Feehery or Pete Jeffries, both of Office of Speaker of the House of U.S. House of Representatives, 202-225-2800, Web: http://www.speaker.gov WASHINGTON, March 30 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following is a joint statement by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist regarding public testimony of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice Before the 9/11 Commission: "We applaud the decision of the President to allow the National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice,...

Unreal. I can't believe it!!!! They all will be testifying before the FULL Commission!!

<p>The White House will allow national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify in public and under oath before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks, a senior administration official said today. The White House had resisted letting Rice appear in public, arguing it would be a violation of executive privilege.</p>

The chairman and vice chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said on Monday that they would ask Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath in any future questioning because of discrepancies between her statements and those made in sworn testimony by President Bush's former counterterrorism chief. "I would like to have her testimony under the penalty of perjury," said the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, in comments that reflected the panel's exasperation with the White House and Ms. Rice, the president's national security adviser. Ms. Rice has refused to testify...

WASHINGTON, March 29 (Xinhuanet) -- The White House is seeking a compromise over the request from the federal commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks that Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, should testify in public. The White House was looking for a deal with the panel under which Rice would appear in private before the panel, with the hopeof limiting the political damage from her refusal to testify publicly, reports said on Monday. Tom Kean, former governor of New Jersey and a Republican, told "Fox News Sunday" that his commission feels unanimously that Rice should testify in public. "But...

(CBS/AP) Late Monday afternoon, White House officials were considering an about face on whether to bow to demands from the 9/11 commission to have National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testify in public and under oath, reports Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts. Roberts tells CBSNews.com the change in policy is being discussed at the highest levels in the White House. Rice reportedly believes that it might be positive for her to appear. But President Bush makes the final decision, and is thus far against it, says Roberts. The White House is under enormous political and public pressure to waive its...

WASHINGTON – Follow the bouncing story line. Richard Clarke, the White House former antiterrorism tsar, wasn't in the White House antiterror loop, Vice President Dick Cheney says. No, wait, he was in the loop, says National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice; he is just wrong about what was going on in the loop. But, truth be told, it doesn't matter whether he was in or out of the loop because, according to Senate majority leader Bill Frist, and the White House, and various voices on the right, he is a disloyal, lying war profiteer. If you've forgotten what it looks like...

<p>Condoleezza Rice: "It is a long-standing principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress."</p> <p>Watch CNN-USA now: Kyra Phillips looks at the controversy over Condoleezza Rice's position on 9/11 testimony and at the day's election campaign issues.</p>

While the Sept. 11 Commission is examining whether it can release former terrorism czar Richard Clarke's behind-closed-doors testimony, Commission Democratic Richard Ben-Veniste isn't waiting for any similar deliberation when it comes to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's classified account. On Friday Ben-Veniste began leaking snippets of Rice's confidential interview to friendly media outlets, detailing her still-classified explanation of public comments in 2002 where Rice said "I don't think anybody" could have predicted that al Qaeda would hijack an airplane and "slam it into the World Trade Center." In comments published on Saturday, Ben-Veniste told the New York Daily News that...

When George W. Bush asked Dick Cheney to head up his search for a Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2000, neither man expected Cheney himself to end up as Bush’s running mate.After all, Cheney was too old and his health too shaky to be considered. His last elected office was far in the past. Where was his constituency? What state’s electoral votes could he deliver? In a way, it was Bush’s first statesmanlike act, to nominate Cheney. A man who brought almost nothing to the table except experience – an asset, but one with ambiguous value – Cheney could only have...

I was all set to turn off 60 Minutes last night after its first segment -- a too-brief and entirely anticlimactic interview with Condoleezza Rice -- but if I had, I would have missed a small miracle. Judge Charles Pickering finally got the public hearing he deserved, and the competence, courage, and decency of the man shined through. Pickering was nominated by President Bush to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2001, but his appointment was blocked by Senate Democrats through 2003. Finally in January of this year, Bush made a recess appointment for Pickering. But when that...

It was interesting to watch just how much more intensely Condoleezza Rice was grilled by Ed Bradley last night on '60 Minutes' than was Richard Clarke a week earlier.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told CBS's “60 Minutes" Sunday evening that she wants very much to testify publicly before the 9/11 Commission, but that such a move would break with the important precedent of executive privilege. “I would really like to do that," she told Ed Brady during the interview at Washington’s Executive Offices building, “but there is an important principle -- it’s long standing that sitting National Security Advisors do not testify before the Congress.” When Brady pressed, arguing that the 9/11 attacks were such a defining moment that executive privilege should be put aside, Rice countered, “This...

<p>March 29, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice denied last night that President Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he ignored the threat from al Qaeda.</p> <p>Speaking on CBS's "60 Minutes," she added that 9/11 happened partly because terrorists saw the United States "cut and run" from Somalia.</p>

To an extent that, in my judgment, has no precedent in American history, the contemporary Democratic party has defined itself as a party of hate. The current frenzy over the self-contradictory and in some instances patently false claims of Richard Clarke has shown the Democrats at their most vituperative.A case in point is Paul Begala's recent hysterical attack on Condoleezza Rice on CNN's Crossfire. Begala said:[Dr. Rice] began this week with an op-ed in "The New York Times" [Ed.--actually, the Washington Post] in which she says among other things that there was no intelligence on a plot to use airplanes. Now...

WASHINGTON - For three years at the pinnacle of power, Condoleezza Rice has been a picture of steely self-confidence and a symbol of what brains, grit and poise can achieve in a country where her African-American ancestors, as she has said, were considered "three-fifths of a man." Now, having served as President Bush's close friend, confidante and adviser through two wars, while leading a revamping of U.S. foreign policy, Rice, 49, finds her credibility and competence under fire in a politically charged public duel with a former White House counterterrorism chief. For a few moments last week, flashes of anger...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the commission investigating the September 11 attacks has urged Condoleezza Rice to testify before it in public but the White House national security adviser has repeated her refusal to do so. Rice has refused to appear before the independent panel in public and under oath to answer charges from former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke that the Bush administration neglected the threat from al Qaeda. The White House has asked for a second private session for Rice. The commission's Republican chairman, former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, told "Fox News Sunday" his...