Reluctant Witnesses -- Hertzberg

The Talk of the Town
http://newyorker.com/talk/content/?040412ta_talk_hertzberg

COMMENT
RELUCTANT WITNESSES
Issue of 2004-04-12
Posted 2004-04-05

After an unusually conspicuous episode of sullenness and stonewalling, the
Bush Administration has yielded—a little—to the importunings of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, the ten-member
bipartisan panel familiarly known as the 9/11 commission. Last Tuesday
afternoon, President Bush appeared at the lectern of the White House press
briefing room, quickly read a four-minute statement, and left as reporters
called out questions to his retreating back. The statement was an
announcement that Bush’s national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, “will
provide public testimony.” It added, as if in passing, that Bush and
Vice-President Dick Cheney “will jointly meet with all members of the
commission in a private session.”

Bush didn’t like the idea of a 9/11 commission to begin with. He fought its
creation for a year, until congressional pressure and the indignation of
families of the murdered forced him to make a deal. Ever since the
commission was established, in November of 2002, the keynote of his
relations with it has been grudgingness. He tried to make Henry Kissinger,
of all people, its chairman—a Cheney suggestion, which soon foundered on
Kissinger’s refusal to disclose the names of the clients of his consulting
firm. (Kissinger’s successor, Thomas Kean, a former Republican governor of
New Jersey, has a reputation for moderation and transparency.) It took
another year, until November of 2003, for the White House to allow four
members of the commission to have a look at the relevant copies of the
President’s Daily Brief, the intelligence summary that goes to the President
and a few other high officials each morning. The commission has at times
been forced to beg for funds, thanks to what has appeared to be deliberate
Administration foot-dragging. (The commission is budgeted to spend fifteen
million dollars, some fifty-five million less than Kenneth Starr & Co. spent
on the pursuit of Bill Clinton.) These and other delays, most of them caused
by the White House, were such that the commission issued urgent warnings
that its task could not be completed without an extension of its deadline,
originally May 27th of this year. It recently managed to pry an extra two
months out of Bush’s allies in the House of Representatives, but only after
John McCain and Joseph Lieberman threatened to hold up a highway bill in the
Senate.

The Administration’s latest concessions are a direct result of the emergence
from relative obscurity of Richard A. Clarke, the veteran federal bureaucrat
who, in nearly thirty years of extraordinary service in the Defense and
State Departments and on the professional staff of the National Security
Council, probably learned more, thought more, and did more about terrorism
and counter-terrorism than any other public official. In his
testimony—before the 9/11 commission, in his book “Against All Enemies,” and
in hours of television interviews—Clarke has presented a detailed and
extremely persuasive narrative of events that differs dramatically from the
version preferred by the Administration and its toadies in Congress and the
media. The Condoleezza Rice flip-flop represents an admission that the
question of whether Bush has effectively protected the United States against
terrorism—both before September 11, 2001, and after—is, abruptly, open. “The
nation needed thoughtful leadership to deal with the underlying problems
September 11 reflected,” Clarke writes in his book. “Instead, America got
unthinking reactions, hamhanded responses, and a rejection of analysis in
favor of received wisdom. It has left us less secure.”

The White House’s retreat got big headlines, but it was less far-reaching
than it may appear. The commission is having to pay dearly for what, in his
statement, the President called without irony “this level of coöperation.”
The fine print was in a letter from Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House
counsel, to Kean and his Democratic deputy, Lee Hamilton, a former chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee:

The necessary conditions are as follows. First, the Commission must agree in
writing that Dr. Rice’s testimony before the Commission does not set any
precedent for future Commission requests, or requests in any other context,
for testimony by a National Security Advisor or any other White House official.
Second, the Commission must agree in writing that it will not request
additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice.

Sounds a little repetitive, no? Gonzales, it would seem, wanted to leave
nothing to chance in making the White House’s point, which was this: We’ll
give you Rice for a couple of hours, but that’s it. No more questions in
public for anybody in the White House, for any reason, in any context, no
matter how many contradictions and unanswered questions are left. The end.
Now go away.

More small print from the counsel’s office:

I would also like to take this occasion to offer an accommodation on another
issue on which we have not yet reached an agreement—Commission access to the
President and Vice President. I am authorized to advise you that the
President and Vice President have agreed to one joint private session with
all 10 Commissioners, with one Commission staff member present to take notes
of the session.

A few weeks ago, the White House was still holding out for a pair of
one-hour sessions, each of which would have only three participants: Kean,
Hamilton, and either Bush or Cheney. Then it backed away from its insistence
on sixty minutes and not a minute more. And now it says it’s O.K. for the
commission to bring its commissioners. But when they get there they will
find a team: Bush and Cheney, Cheney and Bush—like Robin and Batman. Is it
too uncharitable to suggest that the White House prefers a double act
because it doesn’t trust the President to handle the questioning alone and,
perhaps more important, doesn’t want to risk too many glaring contradictions
between Bush’s memories and Cheney’s?

And what about that “one Commission staff member”? In Cicero’s Rome, having
a scribe take notes was the latest thing in audio technology, and so it
remained right through the days when the young Charles Dickens earned his
living in the press gallery of the House of Commons. Now, though, there are
more reliable ways of keeping track of what people say in important
meetings. Yet there will be no official electronic recording of
Bush-and-Cheney’s testimony (as there was none of Rice’s four-hour private
session with the commission on February 7th), and there will be no
transcript. Dickens knew how to take shorthand, but that is not among the
talents found on the commission’s staff. In its details and nuances, if not
in its broad outlines, the record of what the President and the
Vice-President say will necessarily be incomplete. This is the White House’s
choice, not the commission’s. Trust, but don’t verify.

-- Hendrik Hertzberg


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