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While President Bush is trying to quell public criticism by reversing his stance and allowing National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify in public and under oath before the Sept. 11 commission, Pepperdine professors are weighing in on the controversy.
The president announced Tuesday his cooperation as a way to gain “a complete picture” of the months and years leading up to the attacks, during a brief White House news conference.
Bush also said he and Vice President Dick Cheney will meet privately with all 10 members of the commission to answer questions, rather than only the panel’s chairman and vice chairman, as he previously said. Rice, however, will testify publicly and under oath.
Dt. Robert Lloyd, chair of the Center for International studies, said public testimony may be helpful in the long run.
“Whenever you air out dirty laundry, things can stink a little bit,” Lloyd said. “But it cleans things out a bit.”
The independent, bipartisan commission is investigating how the White House handled the intelligence on terrorism prior to Sept. 11 and what can be done better to prevent future attacks.
Rice’s testimony holds particular weight because her advising was deemed to hold significant weight with the president’s decisions both before and after the Iraq War, said Lloyd. Logically, the 10-person panel “wants to get a crack at her,” Lloyd said.
Initially, the White House and Rice refused to testify on the principle that this would compromise executive privilege, which allows a president to freely exchange ideas with an adviser without worrying they may become public.
“A president and his advisers, including his advisers for national security affairs, must be able to communicate freely and privately without being compelled to reveal those communications to the legislative branch,” Bush said.
Seeking a compromise, the White House asked for written assurance from the commission that Rice’s testimony would not set precedence and that no more public testimony from White House officials would be requested.
The commission granted that request and plans to move forward with the investigation.
A date for Rice’s testimony could be set by Friday, depending on scheduling within the White House, the commission’s chairman and former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean told CNN.
“We’re looking at as soon as we can practically do it,” Kean said.
The panel’s request was complicated by the allegations of Bush’s former counterterrorism director Richard Clarke and by Rice’s highly televised rebuttals. Clarke claimed that the president met with him immediately after the attacks and bullied him into pointing fingers at Iraq.
However, political science professor Dr. Dan Caldwell pointed out that Clarke’s voice is joined by other critics from the Bush administration, including former secretary of the treasury Paul O’Neil.
“Underscore that this is not just a one-man show,” Caldwell said.
Rice acknowledged Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that a meeting took place Sept. 12 between Clarke and Bush at which the president asked about Iraq, but she emphasized: “I have never seen the president say anything to people in an intimidating way. The president doesn’t talk to his staff in an intimidating way to get them to produce evidence that is false.”
However, Rice’s attempts to defend the president on television appear to have backfired. Critics said Rice damaged her credibility by speaking on so many TV news programs.
“It is contradictory at best to appear on all major networks yet be unwilling to appear before the commission,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell, who was interviewed prior to Tuesday’s decision, said he believed that the nature of the Sept. 11 attacks merited an exception to the “executive privileges” credo and expressed disappointment at Rice’s refusal to testify.
Incidentally, that is exactly why Bush opted to overturn his original decision. He said he agreed to let Rice appear because the attacks were a “unique circumstance.”
Lloyd said he believes the Bush administration is doing a “little bit of a dance” for public opinion. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll showed a majority of Americans believed the Bush administration was hiding something, though two-thirds of those polled doubted that the attacks could have been prevented.
The Bush administration doesn’t want to look as though they have secrets, Lloyd explained. After all, this is an election year.
The timing of Clarke’s allegations is early enough that Lloyd does not believe they will impact the presidential election.
When the Sept. 11 commission report is released in July, the story will “hit the airwaves again,” followed by “reverberations” in August. But by the time November arrives, the storm will have blown over, Lloyd said.
Likewise, political science professor Dr. Chris Soper anticipated that this “particular decision won’t be terribly decisive” in the election, assuming Rice does not drop any unexpected “bombshells.”
However, Caldwell believed the issue of how Bush handled terrorism and counterterrorism will be an important issue, if not the issue of the 2004 election.
Lloyd had a similar thought about the Sept. 11 commission. “The Democrats want to score political points and the Republicans want to cover their own political rear ends,” he said.
Submitted April 1, 2004
MALIBU, CA
