Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

WASHINGTON, 31 March 2004 — President George Bush reversed his position and bowed to public pressure yesterday, announcing National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify in public under oath before an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Backing off his previous demand that questioning be conducted only by Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton, President Bush also capitulated on a second point and said he and Vice President Cheney will appear in one joint, private session — not public as some had insisted — with all 10 of the commissioners. Only one commission staff member will be allowed to take notes of the session, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales said in a letter to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly called the Sept. 11 commission, a White House official told journalists.

The decision for Rice to testify was made in the wake of the publication of former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies, Inside America’s War on Terror, in which he charges that the Bush administration was slow to act against the threat of Al-Qaeda.

Rice offered a televised rebuttal on a Sunday talk show to criticism by Clarke that President Clinton “did something, and President Bush did nothing” before Sept. 11 and that both “deserve a failing grade.”

Rice responded: “I don’t know what a sense of urgency — any greater than the one that we had — would have caused us to do differently.”

“I think the White House would have been better off if it had made the agreements sooner, but I’m delighted,” said Commissioner Slade Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington. “I have felt all along that her public testimony would be good for the country.”

Republican officials involved in the negotiations said that the twin announcements constituted recognition by the White House that the continued resistance to the commission’s request was beginning to look like stonewalling as the general election campaign gets under way.

Public attention to the longtime disputes between the White House and the commission had increased exponentially following last week’s testimony by Clarke.

The White House had contended that Rice’s appearance would undermine the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.

“This is an administration that is flailing about,” said David Mac Michael, a former analyst for the CIA. “It all has to be put in the context of the disillusionment following the ‘triumphant proclamation’ last May 1: Bush has suffered a widespread loss of credibility; no WMD has been found; the US is bogged down in the sand pit of Iraq; and there is no Iraqi link to Al-Qaeda.”