Panel Presses Rice to Testify

Top Republicans on the Sept. 11 commission joined Democrats on Sunday in calling for national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly about a former subordinate’s claims that the White House did not take seriously Al Qaeda’s threat to the United States.

One commissioner called her failure to appear in an open session “a political blunder of the first order.”

But Rice again refused to do so, saying such an appearance would violate the “long-standing principle” of executive privilege.

Thomas H. Kean, the Republican chairman of the 10-member bipartisan panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, said the commission had decided unanimously that Rice should offer public testimony in response to the allegations aired last week by Richard Clarke, who headed the National Security Council’s counterterrorism efforts in both the Bush and Clinton administrations. But Kean said the commission would not subpoena her.

White House lawyers have agreed only to allow Rice to meet with the commission in private and not under oath, arguing that to do otherwise would violate the executive privilege that allows presidents to avoid congressional questioning of their advisors.

“We feel it’s important to get her case out there,” Kean, a former New Jersey governor, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We recognize there are arguments having to do with separation of powers. We think in a tragedy of this magnitude that those kinds of legal arguments are probably overridden.”

Bush administration officials, however, dug in their heels, saying they would not change their position. Rice, in an interview Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” said she did not want to set a precedent.

“Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify,” Rice said. “I would really like to do that.”

But she said the commission “derives its authority from the Congress,” and added: “There is a long-standing principle that sitting national security advisors do not testify before the Congress.”

Rice acknowledged that some of her predecessors had appeared before congressional committees, but said those involved issues of “criminal intent or criminal allegations or impropriety” -- not administration policy.

Jamie S. Gorelick, a Democratic commission member who served as a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, said the separation-of-powers argument was not relevant, noting that President Bush, and not Congress, had appointed Kean chairman.

“We are distinguishable from Congress,” Gorelick said on ABC’s “This Week.” “And if that’s what they are worried about, they ought to put it aside.”

The pressure for Rice’s testimony was the latest exchange in a political storm that broke out after Clarke made his claims March 21 on “60 Minutes.” He followed his remarks with the publication of his book, “Against All Enemies,” last Monday and with his dramatic testimony before the commission Wednesday.

The White House struck back with intensity. Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell all took to the airwaves over the last week to question Clarke’s motives and his credibility.

On Sunday, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CNN’s “Late Edition,” Clarke urged a cease-fire from “character assassination.” He said the focus should instead be on his two main charges: that the administration did not make Al Qaeda an “urgent” matter before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and that Bush’s decision to invade Iraq hurt the war on terrorism by diverting resources from the search for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

As he had previously, Clarke said Bush’s advisors did not formally adopt a plan to confront Al Qaeda until Sept. 4, days before the attacks. He also said the war in Iraq removed Special Forces operatives from the hunt for Bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Administration officials challenged both of Clarke’s assertions. Rumsfeld, on “This Week,” called it “simplistic” to say that Special Forces troops had been diverted. Rice, on “60 Minutes,” said the Bush team had followed President Clinton’s anti-terrorism plan while it developed its more “robust” version adopted in September.

Also Sunday, Clarke urged that testimony he gave two years ago before a House-Senate intelligence panel be declassified. He challenged Rice to make public their e-mail exchanges to prove that he had been consistent in characterizing the Bush administration’s response to terrorism.

In his appearance on “Meet the Press,” Clarke dramatically displayed a handwritten letter, which he said Bush wrote after Clarke’s retirement last year, in which the president praised him for serving with “distinction and honor.”

“Dozens of people on the taxpayers’ rolls are engaged in the campaign to destroy me, personally and professionally, because I had the temerity to suggest that the American people should consider whether or not the president had done a good job on the war on terrorism,” said Clarke, who worked on terrorism issues for Republican and Democratic administrations. “The issue is not me. The issue is the president’s job on the war on terrorism.”

The focus Sunday, however, remained on Rice’s appearance before the commission.

In a letter last week seeking a second private meeting with the panel so that Rice could clear up Clarke’s “mischaracterizations” of her position, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales cited the need to preserve the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government.

Rice met with commissioners in private, and not under oath, for four hours in February. Bush has agreed to meet privately with the commission’s chairman and vice chairman.

“In order for President Bush and future presidents to continue to receive the best and most candid possible advice from their White House staff on counterterrorism and other national security issues, it is important that these advisors not be compelled to testify publicly before congressional bodies such as the commission,” Gonzales wrote.

Historically, presidents have invoked executive privilege in order to make sure that their advisors can give them the most candid advice possible without fear of being called before Congress to testify.

A 2002 study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found 20 instances in which presidential advisors summoned by Congress had testified and five in which the White House had refused requests.

In some cases, presidential advisors testified behind closed doors and in other cases in public.

At least two presidents have allowed their national security advisors to testify in public, but in both cases the issue involved political scandal.

President Carter allowed Zbigniew Brzezinski to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about allegations that Carter’s brother, Billy, had tried to lobby the government on behalf of Libya. And Clinton allowed Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger to appear in public before the House Governmental Affairs Committee on allegations of wrongdoing in campaign fundraising during the 1996 elections. Berger also appeared in private before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss Haiti.

Rice said none of the public testimony involved questions of public policy.

“We have yet to find an example of a national security advisor, sitting national security advisor, who has been willing to testify on matters of policy,” she said.

Analysts were skeptical about whether Rice’s refusal to testify would damage Bush. While a new Newsweek poll shows a decline in public approval of his handling of the war on terrorism, his overall approval ratings have remained stable at just below 50%.

“I think the question of Condi Rice testifying probably is not one that will cut very deep into the electorate,” said Fred Greenstein, a presidential historian at Princeton University. “It’s arcane. Real people out in shopping malls don’t have a picture in their head of the importance of testifying. If she is even visible to them, they’d say we see her on TV all the time.”

Nonetheless, several White House allies and Republicans on Sunday called for Bush to make Rice available to the panel.

Commissioner John F. Lehman, a Republican and former Navy secretary under President Reagan, called the decision to keep Rice behind closed doors a “huge mistake.”

Rice “has nothing to hide, and yet this is creating the impression for honest Americans all over the country and people all over the world that the White House has something to hide, that Condi Rice has something to hide,” Lehman said on “This Week.”

“If they do, we sure haven’t found it. There are no smoking guns. That’s what makes this so absurd. It’s a political blunder of the first order,” he said.

Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy Board and a member of the neoconservative Republican circle within the administration that was most supportive of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, also said he thought Rice should testify.

“She would be wise to testify.... I think she would acquit herself well,” Perle said on “Late Edition.” “She has nothing to conceal, nothing to hide. There’s a procedural and legal and presidential and constitutional issue here.... Sometimes you have to set those aside because the circumstances require it.”

Powell said Rice should not testify before Congress, and said he would have refused to do so if asked when he served as Reagan’s national security advisor.

“The president has to have a unique and confidential and private relationship with his immediate staff,” Powell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”