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The press attention is on the wrong commissioners. Richard Ben-Veniste and Bob Kerrey received the lion's share of media attention paid to last week's 9/11 Commission hearing with Condoleezza Rice, thanks to their generally intemperate questioning style. But while Ben-Veniste and Kerrey played to the cameras, it was their colleague, John Lehman, who was breaking new ground with the national-security adviser, but few noticed. Lehman's focus was the transition between the Clinton and Bush administrations. He told Rice that he was "struck by the continuity of the policies rather than the differences," and then he proceeded to ask Rice a...

From Sam Ervin to Earl Warren to Joseph McCarthy, high-powered investigative hearings in Washington have created heroes and villains, made and broken political careers, and rewritten history and biographies in unexpected ways. The Sept. 11 commission's hearings seem certain to take their place in that gallery. In three months, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States will offer its report on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the verdict is coming in on the players in this drama in a city that thrives on anointing winners and losers, and on spotting the political implications behind even...

Well that was a blow-out, wasn't it? After much media speculation, the famous article from the President's Daily Brief (PDB) of 6 August 2001 was declassified this past Saturday. Many feared (and some hoped) it would show the President had received 'actionable intelligence' about the 9/11 attacks more than a month before they occurred. But just read the PDB. You don't have to be James Bond to see there is no actionable intelligence there at all. Not a shred. This needless declassification of a Top Secret document was the result of a stunt by Richard Ben-Veniste, a member - as...

<p>The so-called "September 11 Commission" is supposedly trying to find out what happened, or failed to happen, that allowed the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 to succeed. But there is a big difference between trying to unearth facts about September 11, and trying to collect political ammunition for Nov. 2, 2004 — Election Day.</p>

<p>April 14, 2004 -- A group of 9/11 families has released an open letter thanking National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for her testimony to the commission probing the attacks and saying it should end "the incredible notion" that President Bush knew 9/11 was coming and did nothing. The letter signed by 40 relatives also blasts some members of the 9/11 commission for trying to "grandstand for political gain" in hopes of embarrassing Bush and thus politicizing the inquiry.</p>

This is how Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9-11 Commission and former Democratic senator from Nebraska, opened his questioning of Condoleezza Rice before the Commission last week:"Thank you, Dr. Rice. Let me say at the beginning I'm very impressed, and indeed I'd go as far as to say moved by your story, the story of your life and what you've accomplished. It's quite extraordinary."It is widely believed in universities and in the media that conservatives are more likely than liberals to be racist and sexist. I have long believed that the opposite is true, that most Democratic politicians and...

In her own words, or merely re-airing Democratic attacks? Thursday night's NewsNight with Aaron Brown on CNN included a five minute segment that Brown promised would reveal "in her own words...what Dr. Rice said in some of the more contentious moments" of her appearance before the 9/11 Commission that morning. But the MRC's Ken Shepherd discovered that Rice's actual comments amounted to just 2 minutes and 28 seconds of the segment, less than half of the segment. Nearly all of the remainder highlighted the lengthy and adversarial questions to Rice from the most blatantly partisan Democrats on the panel, former...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- The document at the heart of the most contentious moment of National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission last week was released by the White House on Saturday. The two-page Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 was made public as requested by all members of the panel. Former Watergate Prosecutor and high-powered Democratic lawyer Richard Ben-Veniste took Rice to task during her sworn testimony, demanding that she say the title of the PDB, which was "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." He tried to cut her off before she explained...

<p>April 12, 2004 -- Condoleezza Rice's performance before the 9/11 committee was exemplary and showed coolness under fire ("Rice thrives in the cooker," April 9).</p> <p>One can understand now why President Bush was reluctant to send his national security adviser into what was sure to be an ambush.</p>

<p>If you were expecting to get some kind of closure out of Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission, you were probably disappointed. It was never going to happen.</p> <p>The notion that the national security adviser was going to explain what was broken with our national security system that - had it been fixed - would have prevented the 2001 tragedy was misguided.</p>

WASHINGTON -- It was during her musings on the sources of terrorism before the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that Condoleezza Rice had her high-drama, "You go, girlfriend!" moment. A "You go!" moment is the hip-hop generation's version of a big applause line, a red-hot zinger that causes black audiences to bob their heads up and down and erupt with some verbal punctuation like, "That's right! That's right ...!" National Security Adviser Rice's moment came when former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) asked her how America might best deal with the deeply seated discontent and dislocation that generates...

She did.Many fans of 'Saturday Night Live were wondering if singer Janet Jackson would duplicate her Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction last night-and she did.But the nature of the skit in which she bared her bosom was a surprise.Jackson was spoofing National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice testifying before the 9/11 commission. When the questioning got tough, Jackson-portraying Rice-opened her blouse and pretended to reveal her right breast-the same one seen by millions during her Super Bowl halftime appearance.This time her chest wes obscured by a gray blob superimposed by the network. As part of the skit, comedian Darrell Hammond-portraying Vice...

Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission didn't resolve questions about what the Bush administration could, or should, have done to prevent the attack, but her comments made it clear how Bush policies since 9/11 have made Americans radically less safe. While Republicans and mainstream Democrats argue over what Bush and Clinton officials did or didn't do, the conventional wisdom - that Bush officials may have dragged their feet before 9/11 but have since acted decisively to protect Americans - goes unchallenged. But the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has done virtually nothing to prevent future terrorist attacks, and the Iraq...

'Ive already watched her all morning on TV,' said Gael Sandoval, a Royal Oak events planner, who said she admired the way Dr. Rice was holding up under the scrutiny of the September 11th Comission hearing.For women around the area, the surprising tug of Rice's testimony went largely unspoken and unreported -but you could watch it, see it, feel it.Women especially wanted to see how a woman-and in particular this very powerful one-would hold up to a barrage of carefully honed questions and international scrutiny. You could argue that you were watching the most powerful woman in the world. Whether...

Fighting the Wrong War By BOB KERREY Published: April 11, 2004 t Thursday's hearing before the 9/11 commission, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, gave a triumphal presentation. She was a spectacular witness. I was a tough critic of some of her answers and assertions, though I believe I was at least as tough with the national security adviser for President Clinton. At the beginning and end of every criticism I have made in this process, I have also offered this disclaimer: anyone who was in Congress, as I was during the critical years leading up to Sept. 11,...

CRAWFORD, Texas — President Bush was told more than a month before the Sept. 11 attacks that Al Qaeda (search) had reached America's shores, had a support system in place for its operatives and that the FBI had detected suspicious activity that might involve a hijacking plot. Since 1998, the FBI (search) had observed "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks," according to a memo prepared for Bush and declassified Saturday. White House aides and outside experts said they could not recall a sitting president ever publicly releasing the highly...

Janet Jackson spoofs Condi Rice by flashing at the 9/11 hearing on Saturday Night Live.Chaney was helping her prep for the interrogation, but tells her to "flash her headlight" to distract if things got tough.

The White House has released a classified intelligence document that warned a month before the September 11 attacks of a possible al-Qaida strike inside the United States.The document titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Inside the United States" was de-classified on Saturday amid an escalating row over whether the Bush administration had received any prior warnings about the attacks and if they had been ignored. National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice insisted in her public testimony to the 9/11 commission last week that the document relating to the 6 August, 2001 presidential briefing contained mostly historical information and did not warn...

Rice's response to Bob Kerrey (transcript -- scroll down) is amusing: KERREY: Why didn't we swat that fly? RICE: I believe that there's a question of whether or not you respond in a tactical sense or whether you respond in a strategic sense; whether or not you decide that you're going to respond to every attack with minimal use of military force and go after every -- on a kind of tit-for-tat basis. By the way, in that memo, Dick Clarke talks about not doing this tit-for-tat, doing this on the time of our choosing. RICE: I'm aware, Mr. Kerrey,...

Condoleezza Rice political cartoon.Apr. 10, 2004... Getting it right Editorial column by Roger Wm. Hughes A majority of Americans now say according to a recent poll that the Bush Administration could have done more to have stopped the 9/11 terrorist attacks and that the cost of the war in Iraq is not worth it. Troubling news for the Republic. One of the long held views that seems to be true is that democracies, even those tempered by being a Republic, are slow to act and go to war. This is true even when they need to do so to protect...