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Bush agrees to limited questioning { March 10 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44408-2004Mar9.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44408-2004Mar9.html
Bush Backs Off Limit on 9/11 Questioning
Talk to Panel Leaders to Be Open-Ended
By Mike Allen and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 10, 2004; Page A03
President Bush backed off yesterday from one of the major limitations he had set for cooperating with the independent commission looking into the terrorist attacks of 2001 and will now submit to open-ended questioning instead of setting a one-hour limit.
The reversal came 36 hours after his opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), seized on the restriction in remarks that accused Bush of "stonewalling and resisting the investigation into what happened and why we had the greatest security failure in the history of our country."
The new flexibility, which White House press secretary Scott McClellan acknowledged under questioning at two briefings, came as Bush argued that Kerry tried to undermine the intelligence services during his 19 years in the Senate.
McClellan said the White House still considers a single hour before the commission to be "reasonable," but he pledged that Bush "is going to answer all the questions that they want to raise."
"Nobody is watching the clock," McClellan said.
Asked whether Bush was responding to Kerry's charges, McClellan said, "I don't think [Kerry is] someone who lets the facts get in the way of his campaign."
The time limit for submitting to questioning had become a symbolic issue as Bush embarked on his campaign. Democrats have complained that Bush is seeking to capitalize on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including authorizing an ad that uses a glimpse of a firefighter's remains being recovered from the World Trade Center, while withholding assistance from investigators.
Kerry, who had mocked Bush's trip to a Texas rodeo, said in a statement that it was "good to see that the president has finally found time in his schedule to spend more than an hour with the 9/11 commission to investigate the greatest intelligence failure in our nation's history."
The commission has clashed with the White House, which initially opposed the panel's formation and weathered two subpoena threats over access to presidential intelligence briefings. The administration eventually agreed to give a small group of commission representatives access to some of the documents, known as the President's Daily Brief, but would allow only an edited 17-page summary to be circulated to the rest of the commission.
Bush did not yield on other issues that are important to the commissioners. He still insists that his conversation occur only with Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton instead of with the entire panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
Vice President Cheney also planned to limit his testimony to an hour, and has said he will meet only with Kean and Hamilton. His staff would not say whether he will answer all the commission's questions, regardless of the clock.
Al Felzenberg, the group's spokesman, said the panel would welcome more time to interview Bush and Cheney but would like them to meet with the full commission instead of just the chairman and vice chairman.
Timothy J. Roemer, a commission member who is a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, called Bush's stance "a little bit of progress" but said it "certainly isn't full cooperation."
Bush's defenders argue that he has provided unprecedented cooperation to the panel. McClellan expressed frustration with news accounts of the restrictions Bush is imposing, and said people "need to quit reading some of the coverage and look at the facts."
"We've provided more than 2 million pages of documents," McClellan said. "We've provided more than 60 compact discs of radar, flight and other information; more than 800 audiocassette tapes of interviews and other materials; more than 100 briefings, including at the head-of-agency level; more than 560 interviews."
The White House initially opposed a commission request for a 60-day extension of its May 27 deadline, which the panel feared could not be met because of delays caused by the battles over documents. After Bush relented, Congress last week approved a new deadline of July 26 for a completed public report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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