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White House Holding Notes Taken by 9/11 Commission
Panel May Subpoena Its Summaries of Bush Briefings
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 31, 2004; Page A02 Original
The White House, already embroiled in a public fight over the deadline for an
independent commission's investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is
refusing to give the panel notes on presidential briefing papers taken by some
of its own members, officials said this week.
The standoff has prompted the 10-member commission to consider issuing
subpoenas for the notes and has further soured relations between the Bush
administration and the bipartisan panel, according to sources familiar with
the issue. Lack of access to the materials would mean that the information
they contain could not be included in a final report about the attacks,
several officials said.
"We're having discussions on this almost hourly or at least daily,"
said the commission's vice chairman Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic
congressman from Indiana. "We retain all of our rights to gain the access
we need. . . . This is a priority item for us to resolve, and we are working to
resolve it."
The disagreement is the latest obstacle to face the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which is racing to complete its work
by a May 27 deadline after months of fighting over access to government
documents. The commission has asked that the deadline be pushed back at least
two months, but the White House and leading congressional Republicans oppose
that idea.
Such a postponement would mean releasing the potentially damaging commission
report on July 26, in the middle of the presidential campaign. Legislation to be
introduced next week in the Senate would extend the commission's deadline until
next January, avoiding the election altogether.
The latest dispute stems from an agreement reached in November that allowed a
four-member team from the commission to examine highly classified documents
known as the President's Daily Brief (PDB), including a controversial August
2001 memo that discusses the possibility of airline hijackings by al Qaeda
terrorists. The deal allowed the team -- made up of three commission members and
Executive Director Philip D. Zelikow -- to take notes on the materials that
would be passed along to the rest of the commission, but only after the White
House gave its approval.
The team completed its work several weeks ago but has been unable to reach an
agreement with the White House on how to share its summaries with the seven
commission members who were not privy to the material, officials said.
The standoff has prompted commission members to discuss using subpoenas to
obtain either the summaries or the entire catalogue of President's Daily Briefs,
several sources said.
Democratic commission member Timothy J. Roemer, a former Indiana congressman,
said that "the convoluted and tortuous process set up by the White House
has bottlenecked. If it's not resolved within the next few days, I believe we
have to pursue other options."
Commission member Jamie S. Gorelick, a deputy attorney general during the
Clinton administration, who served on the four-person review team, declined to
comment on the details of the impasse but said negotiations are continuing.
"All I can say is that we have followed the procedure that we contemplated
and we are discussing with the White House whether that can be made to work for
us," Gorelick said. "We are trying to ensure that we get the
information we need, while at the same time respecting the needs and desires of
the White House. . . . We have not been able yet to transmit [PDB summaries] to
the whole commission."
White House officials declined to comment on the details of the negotiations, or
to say why administration lawyers have objected to releasing the review team's
notes.
"The administration has worked closely with the commission, providing
unprecedented access to information and documents," said White House
spokeswoman Erin Healy. "We continue to have discussions on a number of
issues as the process moves forward, and we will continue to do so in a spirit
of cooperation."
But Kristen Breitweiser, widow of World Trade Center victim Ronald Breitweiser
and a member of a group of victims' families who monitor the commission's work,
called the White House position "unacceptable." She said the panel
should subpoena the documents it needs.
"The White House needs to stop being all talk and no action,"
Breitweiser said. "They say they're cooperating. It's time to show
that."
After months of delays last fall, the commission issued subpoenas for documents
from the Pentagon, the Federal Aviation Administration and the city of New York,
eventually working out agreements in all three cases. The panel also threatened
to subpoena the White House over the PDB issue, but settled on the compromise
because officials said they did not want to get bogged down in a court battle.
The White House indicated at the time that it would consider asserting that the
PDB documents were covered by executive privilege and not subject to review by
outside parties.
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