Privilege and Politics!

[Gimpy]

March 31, 2004
Of Privilege and Politics


President Bush finally agreed yesterday to allow his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to testify publicly and under oath to the panel investigating the 9/11 attacks. But Mr. Bush did the right thing only under intense political pressure and after he had already undermined the principles he claimed to be upholding. His reversal came with disturbing conditions attached, wrapped up in a volley of spin. All in all, it leaves the impression of a White House less interested in helping the 9/11 panel perform its vital task than in protecting the president's political flanks.

There is merit to the argument that Mr. Bush's nearest adviser on war, terrorism and other such momentous issues is entitled to some confidentiality. But if upholding that principle was the administration's concern, Ms. Rice was obliged in return to show public discretion. Instead, she became part of the president's re-election machine.

The regularity with which Ms. Rice has popped up on television talk shows has become a running joke. It's hard to claim the need to protect your privacy when you're spending as much time doing television interviews as Ms. Rice has recently. She has been leading the administration's attack on Richard Clarke, the former presidential adviser who has criticized Mr. Bush's record on terrorism.

While Bush administration officials have accused Mr. Clarke of lying to promote a book, the White House has worked to unseal Congressional testimony by Mr. Clarke that had been delivered with the same understanding of confidentiality that Ms. Rice claimed. And when the 9/11 commissioners attempted to fulfill their mandate from Congress by trying to resolve the differences between Ms. Rice's version of reality and Mr. Clarke's, the president balked at allowing her to testify as Mr. Clarke did, under oath.

Yesterday, Mr. Bush's lawyer told the commission that Ms. Rice would testify. And after months of unacceptable delay, the lawyer said Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would also talk to the entire commission in private, not under oath. But the panel had to pay a price: it agreed, at the administration's insistence, that after Ms. Rice testifies, it will not call her back or ask any other White House official to testify in public.

The White House's initial refusal to allow Ms. Rice to testify and its cynical use of a confidential adviser as a public accuser would have been bad enough. But they fit an unpleasant pattern. This president has repeatedly abused his executive privilege while seeking to hide behind it, starting when Mr. Cheney invoked that privilege to gather business executives in secret to draft the administration's energy policy.

President Bush may be right in holding that this battle has harmed his important, but limited, right to executive privilege. If so, the wounds were self-inflicted.

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AMEN!