White House Trying to Explain Rice Policy

[0rion]

WASHINGTON - Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) says the Bush administration has a good story to tell about fighting terrorism and she's pouring it out in television appearances, interviews and newspaper articles. The one place she won't talk is in public, under oath, before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

That is blossoming into a public relations nightmare.

White House Trying to Explain Rice Policy

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Link doesn't work n/t

[whistle]

2. That's because Condi Rice is lying!

:freak:

[0rion]

3. Sorry, site is getting slammed right now....

nt

[indigobusiness]

4. Condi Unhappy

Condi Denied Cell Next To Martha


Get your honest news here:
http://sludgereport.blogspot.com

[JPZenger]

5. White House's Arguments Aren't Legitimate

The White House claims they need to maintain a precedent of not having White House staff be "compelled to testify in public before a legislative committee." This is bogus for the following reasons:

1. The 9-11 Committee is not a legislative committee.

2. Staff of the Clinton Administration at similar levels did testify before Legislative Committees, including the person who held the same office in the Clinton Administration - Sandy Berger.

3. If she testifies voluntarily, the issue of being compelled to testify is moot. It is only if she refuses and then is subpeonaed that the precedent the White House references may be overturned. If they want to maintain that precedent, she should volunteer.

I still have not found a straight answer to this question - when Rice testified in private before the 9-11 committee, was she under oath? Also, did she testify before the whole committee, or simply some of the members?

[polmaven]

6. Condi has NOT testified under oath

I think she did meet with the whole committee. Per MSNBC, the committee will review her "insistence" that she not testify under oath.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4601195/

<snip>
Clarke’s book, “Against All Enemies,” and his remarks in several interviews this week cast Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, in an especially unflattering light and renewed pressure on her to testify in public and under oath, both of which she has refused to do. She said Wednesday on “NBC Nightly News” that she had a responsibility to protect the president’s constitutional guarantee of executive privilege.

<snip>
I imagine that at some point along the way it will happen,” Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the commission, told MSNBC.com, adding that a response to the White House could come before or after a meeting Tuesday of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. But he said the “commission needs to discuss” Rice’s insistence that she not be required to testify under oath.

A source familiar with the commission’s operations told NBC News that the panel has consistently required anyone rebutting sworn testimony to be similarly under oath.