US Media agrees on 08/06/01-Intelligence Briefing: "Turn it Over!"

WP: It makes no sense for (Bush) to refuse it access to material"
Kristen Breitwieser: "Release 9/11 Documents!" (NY Times)
"He shouldn't impede the commission's work" (Palm Beach Post)
"Reason to distrust the White House's motives" (CBS/New Republic 10/31 -"Sounds Of Silence")

Turn It Over

WP -Friday, October 31, 2003; Page A24

IT IS NO particular surprise that the national commission charged with investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is clashing with the White House over access to highly sensitive intelligence documents that are key to its work.

After all, just about every administration eventually attempts to draw a line in producing documents to every substantial investigation of its affairs by an independent group. The Bush administration has given a great body of material to the commission, and the group of documents the commission now seeks is especially sensitive -- nothing less than the president's daily intelligence briefings and materials related to them.

Under normal circumstances, we would be sympathetic to the White House's reticence about handing over such material to outsiders. If a president's intelligence briefing is not a legitimate secret, after all, what is?

But this investigation is not a normal circumstance.

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Congress passed -- and President Bush signed -- a law creating the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States in order to produce an authoritative study of Sept. 11, 2001, and to make recommendations as to how to shield America better in the future. The question of what intelligence the president and his top aides were being given in the run-up to the attacks is obviously central to accomplishing the task with which the commission was charged.

If Mr. Bush did not mean to share the country's most sensitive secrets with the commissioners, he should not have signed the bill in the first place.

Since he did so, it makes no sense for him now to refuse it access to material its members regard as critical. It isn't reasonable to expect commissioners to put their names on a report they know to be based on incomplete information, only to look like fools when that information comes out and contradicts their conclusions.

Kean vs. Bush on 9/11: Disclose Documents

...The administration is dragging its feet on turning over some classified documents to the commission. Kean correctly says his panel can't do its job unless it has access to everything the government may have known about possible attacks prior to Sept. 11. Of particular interest - and potentially embarrassing to the administration - are daily intelligence briefings the president received in August 2001 reportedly warning of possible al-Qaida hijackings.

Release 9/11 Documents

To the Editor:

Re "Bush Weighing Decision on Release of Classified Documents to Sept. 11 Panel" (news article, Oct. 28):

As a family member who fought very hard for the creation of the 9/11 independent commission, I find it upsetting to read the White House spokeswoman's response to press inquiries that the White House believes that it is fully cooperating with the commission.

To me, it sounds awfully reminiscent of Condoleezza Rice's similar and carefully worded statement made last year that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile."

There is a big difference between thinking or believing and actually knowing, which is why this commission must get full, unfettered access to all of the summer 2001 Presidential Daily Briefings, the working notes behind those briefings and a list of all who got those briefings.

KRISTEN BREITWEISER
Atlantic Highlands,
N.J., Oct. 28, 2003

Getting To The Bottom Of 9-11

Zwire -October 31, 2003

President George W. Bush should stop stalling and turn over the White House documents sought by the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks...

Answer the 9/11 families

PalmBeach Post -Thursday, October 30, 2003

In words of one syllable, the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks needs to know who knew what and when. "We are looking backward," the panel said in its latest interim report, "in order to look forward."

That forward look is for ways to prevent more surprises. President Bush needs this study as much as anyone, so he shouldn't impede the commission's work. But he and Chairman Tom Kean, the former New Jersey governor, exchanged s-words about his files this week. Mr. Bush said his daily briefing papers are sensitive. Mr. Kean said he might subpoena them.

Sounds Of Silence

CBS -Oct. 31, 2003 (The New Republic) Editor’s Note: CBSNews.com is delighted to be offering stories from two distinguished new partners, The New Republic and The Weekly Standard. TNR and the Standard are the two most influential, interesting and, most important to us, fun political magazines in the country (and they both have handsome Web sites, too). Not coincidentally, they inhabit very different sides of today’s ideological spectrum, with TNR headed left and the Standard going right.

This commentary from The New Republic was written by the editors.

...Kean's not the only one who's upset. Other Republican members of the committee, including former Sen. Slade Gorton, a stalwart conservative, have echoed his complaints.

...Any lack of cooperation from the White House is troubling, but one key point of contention is especially disturbing: whether the commission will have access to daily intelligence briefings given to the president in the weeks before September 11, 2001. Particularly in light of revelations that at least one of these reports indicated that al Qaeda was planning to hijack U.S. airliners, these briefings are clearly relevant.

But the White House is blocking the commission from seeing the briefings. The administration claims they contain sensitive information that, if made public, could compromise national security. But so does limiting our understanding of the terrorist attacks. And there's little reason to think that a panel of seasoned statesmen like former Indiana Representative Lee Hamilton, the commission's co-chair, would expose classified intelligence.

The other key White House argument is that the release of past daily intelligence briefings will distort future ones. The White House argues that government officials might shape their advisories differently -- cover their asses, to put it bluntly -- if they have reason to think the briefings could become public someday. The Bush administration has repeatedly invoked this reasoning to defend "deliberative" internal documents on subjects as varied as Justice Department investigations, internal memos written by stymied judicial nominee Miguel Estrada, and Dick Cheney's secret energy policy sessions. While there may be theoretical merit to this argument, it is certainly less compelling than the need to fully account for a terrorist catastrophe and prevent another one. And it is badly undermined by the White House's tendency to invoke it only in cases when the administration may have something to hide. Consider, by contrast, the fact that Bob Woodward was readily shown hundreds of secret National Security Council documents revealing vast amounts of deliberative information for his hagiographic book, "Bush at War."

Another reason to distrust the White House's motives is its obvious, and loathsome, hostility to the commission itself. For months after September 11, the White House and its congressional allies blocked the creation of an independent panel. Last October, in fact, John McCain and Joe Lieberman complained to "The New York Times" that the Bush administration was "deliberately sabotaging their efforts to create an independent investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks." Even after Bush yielded to pressure from 9/11 survivors and allowed a commission, he failed to fund it in his budget request this year, forcing Congress to come to its rescue again. These crude White House tactics seem more than a little self-defeating. Because Congress can extend the commission's life, delays will only push any possibly embarrassing revelations closer to the 2004 election. Surely the White House realizes that the perception of a cover-up is more politically damaging than turning over a few intelligence reports. Unless, of course, it really does have something scandalous to hide.

Statement of the Family Steering Committee Regarding the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U. S. and the Need to Access Documents from Administration Agencies.

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