Rice will not testify before 9/11 panel
Rice will not testify before 9/11 panel
Eyes on Bush ex-counterterror chief
Wire services
Mar. 22, 2004 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON – Starting Tuesday, the most important Sept. 11 Commission hearings yet will scrutinize counterterror efforts of two presidential administrations, but a star witness will not be there.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice refuses to testify under oath, insisting that presidential advisers need not answer to legislative bodies.
Rice’s no-show will leave the floor to a former subordinate on Wednesday, ex-counterterror guru Richard Clarke, who lambastes the White House in a new told-you-so book for failing to take seriously his warnings about al-Qaida in early 2001.
“Well, there’s a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too,” Clarke told 60 Minutes Sunday night. “But on January 24, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently – underlined urgently – a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al-Qaida attack. And that urgent memo wasn’t acted on.”
Acknowledged by foes and friends as a leading figure among career national security officials, Clarke served more than two years in the Bush White House after holding senior posts under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He resigned 13 months ago Sunday.
Clark alleges that Bush fruitlessly sought evidence of ties between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Clark says that on the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, Bush wandered alone around the Situation Room in a White House emptied by the previous day’s calamitous events.
Spotting his counterterrorism coordinator, Bush pulled him and a small group of aides into the dark paneled room.
“Go back over everything, everything,” Bush said, according to Clarke’s account. “See if Saddam did this.”
“But Mr. President, al-Qaida did this,” Clarke replied.
“I know, I know, but … see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred.”
Reminded that the CIA, FBI and White House staffs had sought and found no such link before, Clarke said, Bush spoke “testily.” As he left the room, Bush said a third time, “Look into Iraq . . . Saddam.”
For Clarke, then in his 10th year as a top White House official, that day marked the transition from neglect to folly in the Bush administration’s stewardship of war with Islamic extremists. His account – in Against All Enemies, which reaches bookstores today, and in interviews accompanying publication – is the first detailed portrait of the Bush administration’s wartime performance by a major participant.
On Tuesday, before the panel hears from Clarke, it will grill Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and those who held the jobs for Clinton: Madeleine Albright and William Cohen.
Up Wednesday along with Clarke are CIA Director George Tenet and former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger.
New School University President Bob Kerrey, ex-Nebraska senator and Democrat on the commission, said he will ask officials from both administrations why neither “declared war on al-Qaida” after bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.
“The question is … Why didn’t you attack them?” Kerrey said. “It’s a question for Rumsfeld, but it’s a better question for Rice.”
That’s the sort of finger-pointing the Bush administration feared when it opposed creating the commission. But when he signed it into law in November 2002, the president urged the panel to “carefully examine all the evidence and follow all the facts, wherever they lead.”
Since then, his aides have clashed with the panel at least eight times over access to intelligence and officials, including testimony from Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Rice. The disputes have led to two subpoenas and threats for several more.
Even Republican members, such as former Navy Secretary John Lehman, complained about stonewalling.
“We’ve gotten everything we’ve asked for, but always after a lot of resistance and criticism,” said Slade Gorton, a former Washington senator.