White House Says Condi Can Speak Again, But Not Under Oath

by Steve

After several days of pummeling and less-than-flattering attempts on her part to tear down the man she designated to run the post 9/11 response efforts, the White House has announced that Condi Twin Mirrors will in fact be available to speak again to the 9/11 Commission after all. But she will not speak on the record or publicly. The White House refusal to have her testify publicly or under oath was based on a legal opinion from White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, who said that it is important that White House aides not be compelled to testify in front of congressional bodies such as the commission.

Except Al, this is an inquiry of why 3000 people were killed. This isn’t an examination of a NSA budget request, or even a partisan witch-hunt as to why a president got blowjobs and lied about it. (Funny, I don’t remember Mr. Gonzales or any other GOP legal expert expounding this position publicly at the time of the Lewinsky matter.)

It goes without saying that Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton should reject these terms and make Rice testify at least under oath. But knowing how Kean and Sleepy Lee have done their jobs so far, I’m sure they’ll cave on this too. Every time Rice speaks she manages to contradict herself and others around her, to the point that she now has reversed course about whether in fact the White House did receive specific warnings about commercial aircraft being used as missiles by terrorists.

That doesn’t stop Bush from saying, like he did yesterday, that if he’d received warnings about attacks like these he would have stopped them. But that’s the problem; the White House did receive these warnings. Either Rice didn’t pass them along to Bush, or she did and they didn’t act on them sufficiently. In either case, these guys are cooked on this, and they know it.