WASHINGTON (Reuters) — President Bush reversed course under heavy pressure on Tuesday and agreed to let his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, give sworn public testimony before the Sept. 11 commission.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney also agreed to meet together privately with the full panel, abandoning their earlier insistence that they would meet only with the commission’s chairman and vice chairman.
Rice was likely to testify toward the end of next week, with Bush and Cheney following sometime after that, a senior administration official said.
The dramatic about-face came in a White House letter to the panel that said Rice would appear in public if it was agreed it would not set a precedent under the constitutional separation of executive and legislative powers.
“We have observed this principle while also seeking ways for Dr. Rice to testify so that the public record is full and accurate,” Bush told reporters in a statement after months of White House resistance to calls for public testimony by Rice.
“I’ve ordered this level of cooperation because I consider it necessary to gaining a complete picture of the months and years that preceded the murder of our fellow citizens.”
The president made no reference to his impending appearance before the commission with Cheney. He did not take questions.
The 10-member commission insisted on public testimony from Rice after former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke’s bombshell allegations last week that the Bush White House ignored an urgent al Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and focused on Iraq as a likely culprit afterward.
Extraordinary circumstances
Until the announcement, administration officials discussed a possible compromise in which Rice would meet privately with the panel and then release her unsworn remarks.
“The president recognizes the truly unique and extraordinary circumstances underlying the commission’s responsibility to prepare a detailed report on the facts and circumstances of the horrific attacks on September 11, 2001,” the president’s legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, wrote to the commission chairman, Republican Thomas Kean, and vice chairman, Democrat Lee Hamilton.
Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York charged that the agreement on precedent simply provided the White House with a way to limit embarrassment while reversing its position on a major issue. “It was an act of face-saving,” he said.
The commission quickly agreed to the White House demands, including that it not seek additional public testimony from any White House official. The Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, gave similar assurances.
“In the end, I suspect the president and the White House understood it was very important for the public as well as for the commission’s work,” said Kean, who told reporters that agreement came late on Monday after days of extensive talks.
Kean and Hamilton also said the White House asked that Bush and Cheney appear at the same time in exchange for agreeing that they would meet with the full commission.
“The basic bottom line for us is always the report — is what we’re doing going to get us the answers to the questions we need to write the best possible report? And I think we came to the conclusion that this will,” Kean said.
The White House initially resisted creation of the commission, then adamantly refused to allow Rice to testify in public and said Bush would speak only to Kean and Hamilton instead of the panel’s five Republicans and five Democrats.
