9/11 Panel Unlikely to Get Later Deadline :Wash Post

[jbfam4]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28025-2004Jan18.html

9/11 Panel Unlikely to Get Later Deadline
Hearings Being Scaled Back to Finish Work by May; Top Officials Expected to Testify

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 19, 2004; Page A09


President Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, virtually guaranteeing that the panel will have to complete its work by the end of May, officials said last week.

A growing number of commission members had concluded that the panel needs more time to prepare a thorough and credible accounting of missteps leading to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the White House and leading Republicans have informed the panel that they oppose any delay, which raises the possibility that Sept. 11-related controversies could emerge during the heat of the presidential campaign, sources said.

With time running short, the 10-member bipartisan panel has already decided to scale back the number and scope of hearings that it will hold for the public, commission members and staffers said. The commission is rushing to finish interviews with as many as 200 remaining witnesses and to finish examining about 2 million pages of documents related to the attacks.

Public hearings in coming months will include testimony from key Cabinet members in the Bush and Clinton administrations. The likely roster will include Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, CIA Director George J. Tenet, former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright, former defense secretary William S. Cohen, and the current and former directors of the FBI, two officials said. The next hearing, scheduled over two days beginning Jan. 26, will focus on border and aviation security issues.

[bluedeminredstate]

1. Bring it on!!

I hope they get Condoleeza Rice to testify. She's the worst national security advisor ever and has never been held to account for her failure of assessing the dangers coming our way. Not that I don't wear a little tin foil every now and then... but if they're telling the truth then she should have been fired long ago.
:grr:

[arcane1]

4. she is also...

one of the worst, most transparent liars I have ever seen...

[Military Brat]

2. God forbid that the bushies should know the truth

The rest of us know it all too well, but we don't want to shatter their rose-colored glasses, do we? Kristy B. must be thinking that the bush agenda has its top priority the betrayal of its citizens.

Jack Nicholson to Tom Cruise: "You can't handle the truth!" Maybe that should be the 2004 slogan.

:grr:

[lefty_mcduff]

3. Wouldn't this be 'playing politics' with the 9/11 dead?

"...they oppose any delay, which raises the possibility that Sept. 11-related controversies could emerge during the heat of the presidential campaign, sources said."

Somethings which the repukes have been braying about since 2001?

But lemme see if I can get this straight - pResident Evil doesn't want an investiagtion into 9/11 because it might uncover controversial stuff that will hurt his reSelection? Agghhhh! Why aren't people more outraged about this....