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WASHINGTON - Condoleezza Rice will provide a detailed accounting of the Bush administration's anti-terror actions before the 2001 attacks but won't attempt to offer a blow-by-blow rebuttal to former counterterror adviser Richard Clarke when she goes before the Sept. 11 commission. Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, said Rice planned a 20-minute opening statement to the bipartisan commission Thursday that will seek to make clear the administration worked strenuously to protect America's interests. "She will present the facts to the commission and the American people," McCormack said Wednesday. Rice is not expected to offer an apology to...

ALT="Support our Advertisers! Click Here!" BORDER="0"> href="http://www.reason.com/subscribe.html"> src="http://www.reason.com/ads/rsubadx.gif" alt="Subscribe to Reason" border="0">     Reason DailyRecent stories One For the Team (4/7) Free to Not Choose (4/6) Outrage Kabuki (4/5) Reason Daily archive April 7, 2004 One For the Team Will Condoleezza Rice be the fall guy for 9/11? Nick Gillespie It's virtually impossible to imagine National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's imminent testimony before the 9/11 commission without thinking of the so-brilliant-it-wasn't-cancelled-but-in-fact-ran-for-five-seasons '80s TV series, The Fall Guy. The unacknowledged zenith of Lee Majors' positively Himalayan career, The Fall Guy was like something dreamed up by the brilliantly insane—or...

Sept. 11 Commissioner, former Navy Secretary John Lehman is predicting that tomorrow's testimony by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice will be "compelling," based on her previous testimony to the Commission behind closed doors. "We had four hours with her in private and she was so articulate and so credible and so compelling that all of us felt that the American people had to hear her discuss what the Bush policies were," Lehman told radio host Sean Hannity. The 9/11 Commissioner complained that the hearings so far had been "monopolized by a view that basically accused Condi Rice of being...

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) has no plans to make a public apology for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in her public testimony before the 9/11 commission, a senior Bush administration official said on Wednesday. A dramatic apology by former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke two weeks ago in his appearance before the commission investigating the hijacked airliner attacks led to speculation that Rice might do the same. "Your government failed you, and I failed you," Clarke said. But White House officials indicated Rice had no intention of apologizing for the 9/11...

<p>WASHINGTON — Condoleezza Rice isn't the only one with a lot riding on her appearance Thursday before the Sept. 11 commission.</p> <p>If panel members appear politically motivated in their questioning of the national security adviser, it could raise questions about their credibility — and the findings in their final report this summer.</p>

Condoleezza Rice faces not just the 9/11 commission this week but the specter of Richard Clarke, the disgruntled former National Security Council terrorism expert who did his best to undermine the credibility of his former boss when he testified before the commission on March 24. The main thrust of Clarke's testimony was that Rice and the entire Bush team were insufficiently attentive to terrorism as an imminent threat because they were focused on other things, especially Iraq. And the media played right along, parroting Clarke's criticism with front-page news stories questioning Rice's pre-9/11 judgment, like this one in The Washington...

Much has been made of Condoleezza Rice's upcoming testimony before the 9-11 Commission. In some cases, interest is based on the most logical of reasons: As the national security adviser, she should know better than anyone what happened during the Bush administration's first eight months leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Otherwise, Rice has become part of a new evolving mythology surrounding the president and his womenfolk. Condi, as she's both affectionately and disaffectionately known, is viewed as the tough warrior woman come to defend her man, President George W. Bush. Several such stories have surfaced in...

<p>April 7, 2004 -- National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony tomorrow before the 9/11 Commission in Washington will air live, even on the broadcast networks.</p> <p>Cable's Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC are all covering the hearings, which begin at 9 a.m. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are also taking the rare step of pre-empting regular programming to cover Rice's testimony. Rice is expected to appear before the panel for 21/2 hours.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) - The scene was Goree Island in Senegal, a place of great beauty and horrific history. As Condoleezza Rice stood at the Door of No Return, the transit point for so many Africans sold into slavery, a lump swelled in her throat as she quietly wondered which of her ancestors might have passed this way. Rice, on that African trip with President Bush last year, marveled at the "tremendous spirit and toughness" of those unknown forebears who would somehow survive all the trials to come. "It just makes me extremely proud to be descended from those people," she...

Over half of Americans believe Bush administration is not telling all it knows about pre-9/11 intelligencePRINCETON, NJ -- National security adviser Condoleezza Rice's public testimony before the independent commission investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks will be one of the major news events of the week. The Bush administration has been under attack from former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke (and others) for the way it handled intelligence before the attacks, and for its focus on Iraq afterward. Rice is expected to answer questions about what the administration did or did not know in the first eight months of its tenure in...

<p>April 7, 2004 -- Tomorrow, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will be grilled before the 9/11 Commission in a pivotal moment for the presidency of George W. Bush. As an entire nation gets ready to watch her testimony, Washington Bureau Chief Deborah Orin reports on the remarkable woman behind the power suit.</p>

MUCH HAS BEEN made of Condoleezza Rice’s upcoming testimony before the 9-11 Commission. In some cases, interest is based on the most logical of reasons: As the national security adviser, she should know better than anyone what happened during the Bush administration’s first eight months leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Otherwise, Rice has become part of a new evolving mythology surrounding the President and his womenfolk. Condi, as she’s both affectionately and disaffectionately known, is viewed as the tough warrior woman come to defend her man, President George W. Bush. Several such stories have surfaced in recent...

DAY BY DAY, news report by news report, the stage is being set for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's highly anticipated testimony before the 9/11 Commission. It promises to bring the public closer to knowing answers to highly emotional questions of what kind of antiterrorism efforts President Bush employed prior to the Sept. 11 attacks and whether he should have done more. This may well turn out to be a vital test of our country's commitment to fairness and accountability, and we dare not botch it.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has refused to provide the panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks with a speech national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was to deliver on that day touting missile defense as a priority rather than al Qaeda, sources said on Tuesday. With Rice slated to testify publicly before the commission on Thursday, the commission submitted a last-minute request for access to Rice's aborted Sept. 11, 2001 address, sources close to the panel said. But the White House has so far refused on the grounds that draft documents are confidential, the sources said. A spokesman for...

US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, faces an awkward test when she testifies publicly before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks – accounting for a litany of contradictory statements and dubious claims. Preventing 9/11 The Bush administration's defence that it cannot be blamed for not preventing the 9/11 attacks is premised on its insistence that the attacks could not be foreseen and it did not receive sufficiently specific warnings. "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Rice said on 16 May 2002. She...

Campaigns have turning points, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's coming testimony to the 9-11 Commission might be one. If it is, it can only be for the worse. If it is not, it will remove from center stage the controversy begun in the carefully planned and stage-managed testimony of former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke. Dr. Rice, a Southern gentlelady, will need to perform out of character, more with the power of fact and rhetoric than grace. She is the President's principal surrogate spokesman on the policy of countering terrorism, and she needs to do more than just...

Peacemaking Operation in Kosovo Failed — Russian Defense Minister Created: 06.04.2004 11:42 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:58 MSK, 14 hours 29 minutes ago MosNews The international peacekeeping operation in Kosovo has failed, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Tuesday. Speaking to journalists in Norfolk, Virginia, he said that a serious danger of destabilization in the entire region had been caused because of “attempts to appease extremists from amongst Kosovo Albanians whose aim is to form a society of one nation", Interfax news agency reported. “NATO ought to, at long last, understand that it is impossible to flirt with political extremists and...

Zelikow Warned White House Counsel That Unless Rice Testified in Public, Photo Would '...Be All Over Washington in 24 Hours' NEW YORK, April 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Last Monday morning 9/11 commission executive director Philip Zelikow faxed a photograph to the White House counsel's office with a note saying that if the White House didn't allow national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify in public before the commission, the photograph would"...be all over Washington in 24 hours," Newsweek has learned. The photo, from a Nov. 22, 1945, New York Times story, showed presidential chief of staff Adm. William D. Leahy, appearing before...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Condoleezza Rice will be defending two futures when she makes an eagerly awaited appearance before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks on Thursday -- President Bush's and her own.The nation's first black female national security adviser is widely presumed to be a leading candidate for secretary of state if there is a second Bush term. How she performs under intense public scrutiny into the Bush administration's handling of the pre-eminent 21st century U.S. national security threat will affect her credibility as well as that of Bush, who is running for re-election against the presumed Democratic nominee...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Just so everyone knows she wasn't asleep at the switch, Condoleezza Rice is expected in her testimony Thursday before the 9-11 Commission to stress how the Bush administration was out to knock off the Taliban, bin Laden's support base, from the get-go. Not only did Bush want to "arm the Northern Alliance," she told Time last month, but to "find and develop relationships with southern tribes so that you could get the Taliban where it hurts." Trying to squirm out of George W. Bush's mess by taking on the Taliban just isn't likely to do the trick for Condi....