Saturday, March 27, 2004

White House retreat on 9/11 claims 1. By KENNETH R. BAZINET and THOMAS M. DeFRANK DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - A member of the 9/11 commission said yesterday that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice indicated in a private session she was wrong to have once stated no one expected terrorists to use planes as missiles. The White House reportedly also backpedaled yesterday on whether President Bush pressed counterterror czar Richard Clarke the day after the attacks to find evidence that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was involved. There is also a conflict between Dr. Rice's statements placing blame for the intelligence failures on Mr. Clarke while, at the same time, Vice President Cheney says that Clarke was out of the loop. Speaking for the White House, Scott McClellan admitted that when he previously had said that "Mr. Clarke was playing fast and loose with the truth" that "I just kinda made that one up." Clarke, Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will all appear on talk shows tomorrow to press their case. Rice, who has refused to testify before the panel without conditions, explained that while she would like to appear before the 9/11 commission in public and under oath, she was advised by the White House council that perjury was illegal. One issue was her May 16, 2002, statement at the White House when she said, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center . . . that they would try to use . . . a hijacked airplane as a missile." Intelligence reports had detailed such plans as much as five years before 9/11. Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the 9/11 panel, said that during a closed door session Rice revised that statement. "She corrected [herself] in our private interview by saying, 'I could not anticipate that they would try to use an airplane as a missile,' but acknowledging that the intelligence community could anticipate it," Ben-Veniste said. "No reports of the use of airplanes as weapons were briefed or presented to Dr. Rice prior to May 2002, or, if they were she never got around to reading them, or maybe she read them and forgot or her attention wandered or she got a phone call in the middle and lost her place" said her spokesman Sean McCormack. Even some of Rice's associates as well as congressional Republicans think muzzling Rice is a political blunder. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said yesterday, speaking under the promise of anonymity "Personally, I think her voice is so good, so powerful if she came before the 9/11 commission publicly she could probably get away with whatever whoppers we were pushing that day." 12:32:29 PM    comment []