Homeland Security

DATE=03/31/04

TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP

NAME=RICE TO TESTIFY

NUMBER=6-130319

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Assignments

TELEPHONE=203-4301

CONTENT=

INTRO: After intense, bi-partisan political pressure President Bush has agreed to allow his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify before a commission probing the 9/11 attacks. The president also says he and Vice President Dick Cheney will be interviewed together by the entire commission.

These decisions represent a dramatic turnaround from the administration's position of just days ago, when Mr. Bush insisted Ms. Rice would not be allowed to testify publicly and under oath. We're joined by V-O-A's __________with a sampling of press reaction in today's U-S Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: Until Tuesday [3-30] the president said having Ms. Rice testify would seriously damage the constitutional separation between the executive branch of government and the Congress. Presidential advisors, he said, must always be able to speak candidly, knowing their opinions will be kept secret.

But after Ms. Rice publicly attacked Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism expert who said the Bush team did not take terrorism seriously enough, politicians from both parties demanded she testify under oath to the commission as well. So did the press and finally the president relented. The Los Angeles [California] Times feels there was another motivation for the president's previous stance.

VOICE: At the heart of the bipartisan grumbling over the belated agreement to let [her] appear . is this fundamental principle: The people in a democracy have a right, indeed an obligation, to probe the thought processes that their leader pursued to arrive at policies . [Ms.] Rice's appearance should have been an easy call [Editors: slang for decision]. That it wasn't illustrates this administration's disregard for the public's right to know. . For [Mr.] Bush, the September 11[th] attacks offer a post hoc rationale for an obsession with secrecy that rivals that of any modern president.

TEXT: A frustrated New York Times has similar complaints.

VOICE: 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.

TEXT: Florida's Saint Petersburg Times is relieved.

VOICE: By dropping their legalistic objections, White House officials give [Ms.] Rice a chance to make a more constructive rebuttal of the charges made by . Richard Clarke. . In their frenzied efforts to destroy [Mr.] Clarke's credibility, the administration and its apologists in Congress have succeeded only in raising further questions about their own [credibility].

TEXT: On New York's Long Island, Newsday calls the new decision a tacit concession that President Bush blundered, while in New Hampshire, Manchester's Union Leader considers the previous refusal a political blunder. But back in Florida, The Tampa Tribune proposes:

VOICE: The politics isn't important. What is vital is that [Ms.] Rice has the opportunity to explain her decisions and answer allegations hurled at her by former subordinate Richard Clarke, who claims the Bush team did nothing in the months preceding the attacks to prevent them.

TEXT: Lastly, an impatient Detroit [Michigan] Free Press sums up:

VOICE: This administration, which so often seems to want to know everything and share nothing, for once found a situation . it could not duck [Editors: slang for avoid]. It is important to make sure the president gets good advice. But on the subject of 9/11, it's even more important that the nation gets the most complete answers possible.

TEXT: With that view from The Detroit Free Press, we conclude this sampling of editorial reaction to the White House decision to allow the national security advisor to testify before the 9/11 commission.

NEB/ANG/RH