Clearly, this administration never learns nothin' about nothin'.
9/11 Panel: Bush White House Withheld Papers (Washington Post, registration required)
By Dan Eggen
Thursday, April 8, 2004; Page A04
The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks announced yesterday that it has identified 69 documents from the Clinton era that the Bush White House withheld from investigators and which include references to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and other issues relevant to the panel's work. The White House turned over 12 of the documents to the commission yesterday, officials said. But 57 others, which were not specifically requested but "nonetheless are relevant to our work," remain in dispute, according to a commission statement. The panel has demanded the documents and any similar ones from the Bush administration. [...] The discovery of the documents came as a result of a staff review this week of about 10,800 pages of material from the Clinton archives, including about 9,000 pages that the White House had not given to the commission despite the conclusion of federal archivists that they may be relevant. The administration had not notified the panel about the records, which Clinton attorney Bruce R. Lindsey discovered in February. [...] Kerrey said the panel was provided yesterday with a copy of a draft speech that Rice was scheduled to give on the day of the Sept. 11 attacks. It focused on missile defense and made little mention of terrorism. Some commissioners had complained that the document had not been turned over to the panel, and the presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) accused the White House yesterday of trying to "stonewall" the commission.
White House Refuses Panel Request for Rice Speech (NY Times, registration required, April 7, 2004)
The White House has refused to provide the panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks with a speech national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was to deliver on that day touting missile defense as a priority rather than al Qaeda, sources said on Tuesday. With Rice slated to testify publicly before the commission on Thursday, the commission submitted a last-minute request for access to Rice's aborted Sept. 11, 2001 address, sources close to the panel said. But the White House has so far refused on the grounds that draft documents are confidential, the sources said. A spokesman for the commission would neither confirm nor deny the request, or the administration's response.
The White House said it was cooperating with the investigation. "The White House is working with the commission to ensure that it has access to what it needs to do its job,'' White House spokesman Trent Duffy said.
Yeah. Sure it is. I'm sure we all believe that, now don't we?
Leaving that peculiar assertion aside, you have to wonder what it takes to get it through the White House's head that at this stage, any refusal will pretty much automatically become a bigger story than the information could possibly be worth. Let's be realistic, shall we? Nobody could reasonably expect that a speech on missile defense would have word one about terrorism or any other particular issue. At best, it will indicate that the administration had other defense priorities besides terrorism -- and, if you think about it, it should. Mind, in this day and age, missile defense is a spectacularly foolhardy priority. But nonetheless, the simple fact that the administration was looking at other defense issues is, in and of itself, meaningless.
This refusal is especially problematic because the grounds on which it is based -- that background documents and ungiven speeches are classified and confidential materials -- are not only invalid pretty much on their face, but the administration itself has freely violated that principle with wilful abandon whenever it so chooses. For example, in their ongoing attempts to smear Richard Clarke, the administration gave Fox permission to use his name and broadcast information from a background briefing that had been given on the explicit grounds that it was off the record or confidential.
Fox News Channel created a stir yesterday by broadcasting past remarks by a leading critic of the Bush administration that seemed to support the president's anti-terror efforts - although the comments were originally made on condition that their speaker not be identified.
In August 2002, the critic - former chief counter-terrorist official Richard A. Clarke - defended the White House's record on fighting terrorism in a "background" telephone conversation with a small group of reporters, including Fox News' Jim Angle, who taped the exchange. But the comments were considered "on background," an arrangement frequently used by the press. In "background" conversations, a source provides information to reporters on the condition that it not be directly attributed to him. At the time, Clarke's bosses at the National Security Council insisted that his quotes be attributed only to an unnamed counter-terrorism official, Angle said yesterday.
Clarke's remarks and identity were released yesterday, the same day he testified before a federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. Clarke also this week published a book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, in which he argues that in the months preceding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the president and his aides didn't take warnings about the threat posed by al-Qaida seriously enough. Yesterday, Angle got permission from the Bush administration to broadcast the remarks and to use Clarke's name. "We asked them to lift the rules, and for obvious reasons, they did," Angle said.
"For obvious reasons." Well. Yes. Quite.
In any event, if it's fair game to release attributable background materials when you want to try to discredit someone (although it didn't work at all the way they planned -- the only ones being discredited are Fox News itself and, as it turns out, the administration for allowing the revelation), then it should be fair game for attributable background materials to be released when requested for an investigation. Especially when it consists of a speech that was going to be given in public in the first place, for heavens sake. Had the attacks happened a few hours later, there wouldn't be any refusing, because the speech itself would be in the public domain.
When it comes to public relations, this administration seems suddenly to be quite ham handed and stupid.
In the meanwhile, now that we're all focused on 9/11 investigations and the ongoing rebellion in Iraq, it seems that we're missing one or two things elsewhere. For example, remember Afghanistan? The country where all this grand strategy theoretically started?
Afghan Warlord's Troops Storm Province, Governor Flees (Washington Post, registration required)
Thursday, April 8, 2004; 8:59 AM
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Forces of a northern strongman overran the capital of a remote Afghan province Thursday, the interior minister said, in a burst of factional violence undermining the authority of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai. Troops loyal to ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum swept into Maymana, the center of Faryab province, some 260 miles northwest of Kabul, on Thursday morning, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said. "Today, at 10 o'clock, militia troops loyal to General Dostum entered Maymana city," Jalali said. "They have control of the city." [...] The fighting was bad news for Karzai, and sure to lead to deep concern in Washington over the future stability of Afghanistan, just as American forces are facing a surge of violence in Iraq.
The city of Maymana fell before the arrival of hundreds of U.S.-trained Afghan soldiers, who left Kabul for Faryab on Thursday afternoon. It was the second major burst of militia violence to rock Afghanistan in less than a month, and threw into further doubt this country's readiness for national elections scheduled for September.
So, let's see: we've got a nicely overextended military, comprehensive rebellion from both Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, Iraqi rebels kidnapping foreign nationals to force their country's withdrawal, loss of control of a city in Afghanistan, and the administration trying -- again -- to stonewall an investigation at home.
My, things are going well, aren't they?
Posted by iain at April 08, 2004 11:27 AM
