[ OUR OPINION ]
Rice should bring
documents to commissionPRESSURE from the public and from the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks gave President Bush little choice but to allow his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to testify openly and under oath before the commission. The White House also should declassify documents needed to shed light on what precautions were recommended and either approved or rejected before the attacks.
THE ISSUE
President Bush will allow Condoleezza Rice to testify before a commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on America.
Last week's testimony by Richard A. Clarke, the president's top counterterrorism adviser in the months leading up to the attacks, has angered the Bush administration, but Clarke's credibility is intact. What has drawn the most hostility from the administration was Clarke's opinion that the invasion of Iraq had weakened the war against terrorism, but the issue of events following Sept. 11 is beyond the scope of the commission's investigation.
Clarke's assertions cannot easily be dismissed as partisan sniping by a holdover from the Clinton administration. He also was a holdover from the first Bush administration and had served in the State Department during the Reagan presidency.
Clarke testified before the commission last week that Bush and his top advisers had underestimated the threat from al-Qaida before Sept. 11. He said the Clinton administration -- which he also criticized -- had regarded dealing with terrorism threats as "urgent," while "the Bush administration saw terrorism policy as important but not urgent, prior to 9/11."
Bush has acknowledged as much. In Bob Woodward's 2002 book, "Bush at War," when asked about his focus on Osama bin Laden before Sept. 11, Bush was quoted as saying, "I was not on point. I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling."
Clarke has said he outlined a plan for fighting terrorism in a Jan. 25, 2001, memorandum. He said the plan called for boosting the U.S. effort to fight al-Qaida, aiding anti-Taliban rebels in Afghanistan and increasing funding for the Central Intelligence Agency.
In a letter to Rice the same month, Clarke asked to brief cabinet members about what he feared to be an imminent attack on the United States. Such a briefing was not conducted until Sept. 4, a week before the attacks.
Rice has commented on Clarke's testimony on numerous television programs. She said the White House had developed a "more robust" strategy against terrorism, drawing from a number of ideas that Clarke had included in the Jan. 25 memo. Her willingness during the past week to speak publicly about the issues made the White House's initial refusal to allow her public testimony before the commission seem ludicrous.
The commission should go beyond listening to a he-said-she-said standoff. Clarke has called for declassification of his 2002 testimony to a joint congressional committee -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has called it inconsistent with his book and commission testimony -- along with other memos, e-mails and materials from Rice and the administration. Keeping such pre-9/11 documents secret 2 1/2 years after the attacks would be as unwarranted and politically foolish as Rice's denunciation of Clarke everywhere but in front of the commission.
