from the Stonewaller-in-Chief:
- Bush refuses to declassify thousands of Clinton-era documents for 9/11 commission
- Bush agrees to allow 9/11 commission to review Clinton documents
link
WASHINGTON -- In its second high-profile turnabout of the week, the Bush administration agreed yesterday to give the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks full access to the papers of former President Clinton.
The decision came after commission officials pressed the White House to turn over thousands of pages of documents that had been shipped from the former president's archives for review by the commission.
The White House received 11,000 pages of Clinton documents, but turned over less than 25 percent of them to the commission despite repeated requests for all of them, according to commission officials and a top aide to the former president.
The decision to release all the Clinton papers came two days after President Bush announced that White House national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice would testify publicly before the commission.
High profile turnarounds only emphasize that public pressure still matters, and that this 9/11 Commission story isn't nearly over.
Josh Marshall (as usual) has more:
The article says some commission members are now raising the possibility that the White House is withholding other documents as well.
And, finally, here is what has to be the quote of the day, from Commissioner Jamie Gorelick:"We can't afford to have documents that are relevant to our inquiry being withheld on a technicality. This is not litigation. This is finding facts to help the nation, and we should not treat this as if we're adversarial parties here."
Too bad some White Houses don't seem to see it that way.
And too bad for wall-to-wall TV. CNN/USA Today/Gallup says:
"Do you think the Bush Administration is or is not covering up something about its handling of intelligence information concerning possible terrorist attacks before September 11, 2001?"
Is Is Not No Opinion
3/26-28/04 53 41 6
I wonder why they think that?
Update [2004-4-3 14:12:24 by DemFromCT]: from AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal panel reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks will determine early next week whether thousands of classified counterterrorism documents from the Clinton administration were unduly held back by aides to President Bush.
The Bush administration granted the Sept. 11 commission access to the documents Friday after Bruce Lindsey, who was legal adviser to former President Clinton, said officials didn't turn over all of Clinton's records to the panel.
The commission's lawyers will begin reviewing the material Monday and should know by Tuesday if additional documents should be released, panel commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said Friday.
"Mr. Lindsey voiced a concern. We shared the concern. So they have come up with a way of assuring us that we have access to the materials we need,'' Felzenberg said. ``We'll know quickly if there are materials we should have or if they are duplicates.''
Until then, Felzenberg said, the commission is withholding judgment as to why some documents weren't released.
``There's a lot of paper flying around. Let's see if there's more to the charge than we know,'' he said.