It was a big enough item that CNN sent out an e-mail alert: the White House was going to let National Security Advisor Rice testify - in public and under oath - before the 9/11 commission. The "under oath" qualifier may have been a bit of a red herring - it's not as if "with permission to lie" ever was on the table.
Still, this shouldn't have been such a news item. The Bush administration has promised to fully cooperate (or coöperate, as the New Yorker prefers to spell it) with the commission. It seems to me that Rice's appearance was mandatory if such cooperation were to have any meaning.
But as the New York Times points out today, there is this thing about executive privilege, and Rice serves at the pleasure of the president, not under the advice and consent of Congress. Of course, Congress could subpoena her and force sworn testimony, and that was probably a lever. But that wouldn't be pretty.
Rice has undoubtedly been rehearsing spin, and I'll bet that some of the commission members are accumulating information that'll put her on the spot.
The Bush administration has painted itself into a corner here - they simply can not credibly claim that their pre 9/11 take on Al Qaeda was better than the Clinton administration's, and they should stop trying. If they had said from the outset that while they took terrorist threats seriously, they were still sorting them out when the planes hit, it would have looked bad but believable. What's emerging is that the Bushies dismissed warnings about Al Qaeda simply because they came from Clinton folks.
This may be the deep psychological flaw in the Bush camp: the firmly held belief that Democrats - the enemy - have no merit, that they are morally impaired.
Sent from my Blackberry
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