Chicago Tribune March 27, 2004
Rice faces down terror charges
Official defends Bush, herself in wake of attacks
By Bob Kemper
WASHINGTON -- She was George W. Bush's tutor on the campaign trail and remains his right hand in foreign affairs at the White House. She dazzled official Washington over the last three years not only as the first woman to run the National Security Council but as a concert pianist playing the Kennedy Center.
But the exalted stature that Condoleezza Rice, known for her strong work ethic and composure under fire, enjoyed in a town full of proud workaholics was damaged this week amid allegations that the White House paid too little attention to terrorist threats before the Sept. 11 attacks.
The charges from Richard Clarke, Bush's former top adviser on counterterrorism, were a pointed assault on the president's handling of the war on terrorism, the cornerstone of his re-election campaign. But they also were a direct indictment of Rice, whose job it is to oversee the national security apparatus on the president's behalf.
Even if Bush wins in November, Rice is expected to step down at the end of this year. So this battle over her handling of terrorist threats in the post-Sept. 11 era is for Rice a fight over her legacy.
"I would have to say that I don't necessarily know that Condi Rice is going to look very good in the history books in terms of her stewardship of the NSC," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a private defense and military think tank.
Rice's NSC has been "dysfunctional," said Pike, with the Pentagon and State Department at ideological odds and top Bush advisers--including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--going over Rice's head to the president on a number of foreign policy initiatives.
But Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush's father and a Rice mentor, defended her handling of the office. Above all else, he said, Rice has captured and maintained the confidence of the president and created processes that allow him to make critical decisions.
"There are real [ideological] differences within the administration that make her job very difficult," Scowcroft said. "I'm proud of her."
Rice's office did not return phone calls requesting comment.
Fierce defense
But in a 72-hour flurry of television interviews, a lengthy opinion piece in The Washington Post and unusual on-the-record meetings with reporters in her West Wing office, Rice fiercely defended Bush--and her own reputation and credibility.
"Let me be very clear, I really want people to know this story," Rice told one group of reporters, at times losing her signature composure.
"One of the reasons that I'm speaking . . . to the press is that the American people need to have an answer to the scurrilous allegations that somehow the president of the United States was not attentive to the terrorism threat," she said.
Republican lawmakers Friday came to the White House's aid with claims that Clarke's 2002 testimony before congressional committees investigating the attacks differed from his testimony this week before the independent Sept. 11 commission. Those lawmakers said they want to declassify all or part of Clarke's testimony to demonstrate that his story is inconsistent.
But even as Rice joined other White House officials in trying to discredit Clarke, she faced fresh criticism for making contradictory statements about Clarke and for refusing to testify publicly before the commission.
Commission members and some relatives of those killed on Sept. 11 questioned why Rice had time for live network interviews but not to testify publicly. When the White House sent Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to the hearing in Rice's place, the family members walked out of the hearing room in protest.
"This administration shot itself in the foot by not letting her testify in public," said commission Chairman Thomas Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey.
Democrats have seized on the issue to suggest that Bush is trying to keep secret the story of how he managed terrorist threats prior to Sept. 11 and the ensuing war on terrorism.
"I've reluctantly reached the conclusion that what really constrains Ms. Rice's full cooperation is political considerations," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said.
Private appearance
The White House late Thursday publicly requested that the commission allow Rice to appear before the panel--though in private and not under oath, as she has before--to rebut what the administration called "a number of mischaracterizations" about her positions and statements.
"I would like nothing better than to be able to testify before the commission," Rice told NBC Wednesday night. "I'm prepared to go and talk to them again, anywhere, any time, anyplace--privately."
The White House said Rice could not formally testify before the commission because Congress created the panel and such an appearance would breach the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government.
There is a precedent for national security advisers to appear before congressional bodies, however. At least three times since 1980 presidents have allowed their advisers to testify.
But the White House maintains that those national security aides testified in instances of alleged wrongdoing and not about specific administration policy, situations different from the Sept. 11 investigation.
Even as Republican lawmakers began to suggest that it was hurting Rice not to testify publicly, Scowcroft defended her right not to do so.
"She doesn't make the decision whether to testify," he said. "It's the president's decision."
Rice has faced public criticism before. In July, the White House was forced to admit that Bush's claim in the 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy uranium for a nuclear bomb was discredited by the CIA before the speech. Rice was responsible for vetting that portion of the speech.
Bush's defense of Rice at the time was unconditional.
"Dr. Condoleezza Rice is an honest, fabulous person, and America is lucky to have her service. Period," he said.
Rice has suffered relatively few slings and arrows in her job as Bush's top security adviser compared to Rumsfeld, a lightning rod for recriminations from the anti-war left, or Secretary of State Colin Powell, a favorite target of the hawkish right.
However, the portrait of Rice that has emerged in Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies," and two days of nationally televised hearings by the Sept. 11 commission is of a key presidential adviser stuck in a Cold War mentality.
Rice is an expert on Russia, which suited a White House whose top foreign policy objectives in 2001 included Russia, Iraq and missile defense, Clarke said. In one particularly bruising passage in his book, Clarke claimed that Rice, his boss, appeared confused when he first mentioned Al Qaeda to her in 2001.
"Her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before," Clarke wrote.
Rice called Clarke "arrogant in the extreme."
"Dick Clarke is sitting there reading my body language," she said this week. "I didn't know he was good at that too."
Rice said Al Qaeda was a foreign policy priority, but the new administration was dealing with other issues as well, including a U.S. spy plane that collided with a fighter jet and fell into Chinese hands in April 2001.
"Urgent priority?" Rice said of her handling of terrorist threats. "Absolutely. Only priority? No."
© Copyright 2004, Chicago Tribune
