9/11 Panel Head Assails Delay :Inquiry Might Have to Be Limited

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9/11 Panel Head Assails Delay
Chairman Warns That Inquiry Might Have to Be Limited
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55891-2004Feb19.html?referrer=email

Another case of hypocrisy..........Bush says one thing...will do it his own way. See the last sentence....GOP worried about this information coming out before the election. HUMMMM Why?

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A03


The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will have to consider scaling back the scope of its inquiry and limiting public hearings unless Congress agrees by next week to give the panel more time to finish its work, its chairman said yesterday.

Former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean (R) also said in an interview that the commission has not decided whether to accept an offer from the White House under which President Bush would meet privately with a small delegation, rather than with the panel as a whole.

Kean's comments indicate that two of the most important issues facing the 10-member bipartisan panel have yet to be resolved just three months before its current deadline of May 27. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, created in late 2002 after months of fierce congressional debate, has been hobbled by a series of disputes with the Bush administration over access to documents and other issues.

The White House reversed course earlier this month and announced it would support a two-month extension of the commission's deadline, to July 26, with the panel shutting down a month later. But House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has said he is opposed to any delay. Many Republicans fear that a later deadline would put the release of a potentially damaging report on the terrorist attacks in the middle of the presidential campaign.

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1. another good article on this subject

Marie Cocco

Bush Plays Bait-and-Switch With 9/11 Panel

February 19, 2004

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpcoc193677317feb19,0,1094494.c...

(Warning: reading the entire article will make you angry.. The question remains: Who was in charge when 9-11 happened and who didn't do their duty to protect us? JB)


Article:
Let us finally put to rest a widely circulated and grossly inaccurate story that's been making the rounds: Rumors of President George W. Bush's cooperation with the panel probing the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are unsubstantiated.


"I've experienced two political bait-and-switches since I've been on the commission," said Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator and current president of the New School University in New York. And that's only about a month. "The bait-and-switch in politics is a technique that is intentionally designed to lead the public (to believe) that you're going to do something that you're not going to do."



Administration officials said any interview would be done in private. What's more, the president would not submit to questions from the full bipartisan panel, only from selected commissioners. Which ones? Only his damage-controllers know for sure.