George Bush will face the toughest questioning of his presidency on Thursday when he meets the national commission examining the government’s failure to prevent the September 11 attacks in the US.
However, he will give his answers behind closed doors and in the presence of the vice-president, Dick Cheney.
The commission’s hearings have proved to be politically difficult for the administration since they have provided a platform for former staff who believe the administration did not take the terrorist threat very seriously in the first months of 2001, despite warnings from the CIA.
Bush has said that none of the warnings was specific enough for meaningful precautions to be taken. However, one of the commissioners, Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator, suggested he would not accept that as an excuse.
”It won’t work to say that if somebody had told us that 19 [Middle East] men under the age of 35 were going to hijack airplanes — we’d have moved heaven and earth to stop them,” Kerrey told the Los Angeles Times. ”The facts are we knew al-Qaeda was in the United States, we knew they were part of an Islamic army, we knew they were capable of carrying out sophisticated attacks and that hijackings were among the things they were considering.”
On Wednesday Bush shrugged off persistent questions about why he was not prepared to appear before the commission alone, and said he was ready to cooperate fully with the September 11 inquiry.
”I look forward to giving the commissioners a chance to question both of us, and it will be a good opportunity for these people to help write a report that hopefully will help future presidents deal with terrorist threats,” he said.
The White House had initially opposed the creation of the commission, and tried to limit any presidential appearance to an hour and before only the two top commissioners.
However, a compromise deal was reached whereby those conditions would be dropped as long as Bush and Cheney made a joint appearance, the session was in private, their testimony was not given under oath, and no recordings or transcripts of their remarks were made.
The meeting with all 10 commissioners will begin at 9.30am and only handwritten notes will be permitted. Scott McClellan, the White House spokesperson, pointed out that the president was not giving formal testimony, and for him to do so would mean presidential power being infringed.
McClellan said: ”Let’s keep in mind that it is extraordinary for a sitting president of the US to sit down with a legislatively created commission. You should not look at this as an adversarial process. We are all working toward the same objective here.”
Some of the questioning is expected to focus on a presidential intelligence briefing, on August 6 2001, warning of a possible al-Qaeda attack on US soil involving hijacked planes. The White House, forced to declassify the brief under intense political pressure, has argued that it involved no details, but Bush is likely to be asked about follow-up action.
Bill Clinton and his vice-president, Al Gore, have already met the 10 commissioners, in a meeting which was also closed to the public and press, but which involved a recording and transcripts. White House officials pointed out that Clinton was not a sitting president and not subject to the same constitutional restraint.
The joint Bush-Cheney appearance has given ammunition to administration critics who have portrayed the president as being overly reliant on his more experienced deputy.
Members of the commission have also complained that the joint appearance will halve the time available for direct questioning of the president.
Al Gore, drawing from his 2000 campaign accounts, on Wednesday said he was donating more than $6-million to five Democratic party groups and to help John Kerry fight President Bush’s ”outrageous and misleading” re-election bid. – Guardian Unlimited Â