Yesterday in a
diary I pointed out that NSA Condoleeza Rice made statements about a supposed pre-911 Bush war plan against AQ, that were then flatly contradicted by Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage.
The point of the diary was the curiously weird fact that the Times had exposed the contradiction in its early edition, only to edit it out in a later edition.
Today the Time's is following up on the Rice credibility issue, and should be applauded for doing so. I should note that the piece is written by yesterday's non-byline writer Elizabeth Bumiller with help from Philip Shenon.
In typical times fashion, the piece starts in the equivocal "White House says the sky is green. Democrats argue for Blue." sort of way.
The first half of the article focuses on the 911 panel's inability to get Rice to testify under oath, and then parrots back the White House's line that rice is "frustrated" too.
Ms. Rice has said repeatedly that if she had her way, she would testify, and late on Thursday she offered to be interviewed in private, as she was for four hours on Feb. 7. But President Bush, her close confidante, has been adamant, White House officials say, that any public appearance would violate longstanding precedent against incumbent national security advisers testifying before a legislative body.
Ms. Rice is described by administration officials as being frustrated at having to remain publicly silent before the commission and as being eager to make her arguments against the case that Richard A. Clarke, her former subordinate, has marshaled against her.
In other words, Rice would love to "set the record" strait by testifying under oath and really showing Richard Clarke what she's about.
A second Time's piece relates how Rice has been portraying herself as amenable to working with the 911 commission within the restrictions placed on her by the White House.
. . . Ms. Rice last month . . .offered to meet again with the panel to answer other questions. "She said, `If you need me back at any time, I'd be delighted,' " Mr. Thompson said. "So my guess is that we will call her back."
By publicly restating her offer on Thursday, the White House sought to deflect criticism that it was trying to block a full investigation of the Bush administration's performance in the months leading to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ms. Rice told commissioners that White House officials had told her she should not testify under oath. While the panel requires officials appearing in public to testify under oath, there is no such requirement for those testifying in private.
So there at least is the White House line on Rice's evasion. They would love to have Rice testify, but they can't risk violating the "longstanding precedent against incumbent national security advisers testifying before a legislative body." A precedent (while I'm sure must be real, I've never heard of it) which is more important than understanding what went wrong in leading up to the worst terrorist attack in American history, and preventing future attacks. Ok, they said it after all, not us.
But by now I am beginning to understand (hope) there may be a method to the Times seeming madness. After the first 1,000 words where only the detail minded fear-to-tread, Bulmiller explores several other Rice quotes delivered this week for press consumption.
Ms. Rice, in a briefing in her West Wing office on Wednesday called specifically to rebut Mr. Clarke's charges, said that Mr. Clarke had not been demoted and that she was puzzled by his remark that the current White House did not see terrorism as urgent.
"I don't know what it means," she said, surrounded by some 20 reporters, three National Security Council spokesmen and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley.
Ms. Rice then ticked off what she described as the administration's efforts on terrorism, particularly a plan to develop a "more robust" strategy, which she said drew from a number of ideas that Mr. Clarke had given to her in a memorandum on Jan. 25, 2001.
Ok, so here is where the Grey Lady starts to restore my faith in her . . .
But that memorandum was a source of another of Mr. Clarke's criticisms of Ms. Rice. In it, he outlined his plan for stepping up the government's effort to combat Al Qaeda, including covert assistance to anti-Taliban rebels in Afghanistan and more money for the Central Intelligence Agency.
But this week, Ms. Rice dismissed Mr. Clarke's memorandum as unrelated to the question of possible terrorist activity in the United States, including so-called sleeper cells, underground groups of terrorists.
"The Jan. 25 memo is somewhat remarkable for what's not in it," Ms. Rice said this week, adding that "there's one mention of sleeper cells -- at 10 pages, two words at the end of one line."
So to say what Time's reporter Bumiller can't say directly but has provided for us none-the-less:
Which is it Ms. Rice? Did Mr. Clarke's memo help you develop a "more robust" strategy to deal with terror, or was that memo remarkable only for "what's not in it"?
Bulmiller then sets up Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as the real voice of honesty on the White House's anti-terror policy.
Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, acknowledged in his own public testimony to the panel this week that the White House had moved too slowly in developing the adminstration's plans for eradicating Al Qaeda.
"I think it is the case -- it is certainly in hindsight -- that we weren't going fast enough," Mr. Armitage said. "You can make your own judgments about whether we were going faster or slower than other administrations."
Following, she is then the first to open a new line of attack against the White House. First, having demonstrated Rice contradicting her own story, second, having shown Armitage as the strait shooter he is, she then juxtaposes Armatage's sworn statements with Rice's unsworn statements and lets the reader's logic do the rest.
Mr. Armitage also raised questions about the accuracy of Ms. Rice's account of the counterterrorism policy that was about to be presented to Mr. Bush in early September 2001. Asked at the hearings this week about an opinion article that Ms. Rice had written for The Washington Post, in which she said that the policy could have resulted in "military options to attack Al Qaeda," Mr. Armitage said that there was no direct military component to the policy at the time of the attacks.
Icing the cake, Bulmiller simply let's Rice speak for herself.
On Wednesday, Ms. Rice was asked in one of her news briefings how damaging she thought the furor over Mr. Clarke and the 9/11 commission was to the Bush presidency.
Ms. Rice deflected the question, and instead told reporters that "the American people do not believe that the president of the United States is pursuing a folly in the war on terrorism."
Maybe so Ms. Rice, but it sure looks like folly pursuing a folly trying to get the truth out of you.
Nice work Elizabeth!
Two things:
1. Its clear that this story flows through Rice. The force of our efforts should be directed towards compelling her to testify publicly under oath. The Bush administration, through her statements is trying to make her appear tougher than she is. They are trying to make us think that she could really stick it to Richard Clarke if only the President would let her testify. This is quite transparently a bluff. Frankly, they seem terrified that she will be subpoenaed. Therefore our efforts should focus on ensuring that she is.
2. We need to support Elizabeth Bulmiller by mailing her editors at the Times. She has kept this story alive for two days now through her wits and tenacity. We spend a lot of time talking about "journalists" who are merely pundits or opinion miners. When an investigative journalist digs in like this to cover a story and push it along, she needs all the help she can get. Below are the email addresses for Elizabeth's bosses at the Time's. Please take two seconds to email them. In the email, praise her by name, cite the story "Panel Hasn't Heard From Official It Wants Most" and the date 3/26/04, and ask them to give her freer reign in pursuing Rice, and to feature the Rice inconsistencies closer to the lead of the piece.
executive-editor@nytimes.com
managing-editor@nytimes.com