Two's Company

When President Bush meets in a private session with the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, there will be one too many people in the room. Bush and the 10 members of what’s better known as the Sept. 11 commission will be joined by Vice President Dick Cheney, who will only testify with the president by his side. This would almost be laughable, if it didn’t seriously hurt the commission’s chances of doing its job.

The purpose of the Sept. 11 commission is to determine exactly how sloppy detective work, weak executive oversight and a series of intelligence failures let the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon happen more than two years ago. This is such an essential aim that the panel should have access to whatever—and whomever—it wishes with as few restrictions as possible to effectively gauge the circumstances surrounding the terrorist attacks. In the end, the panel will have to submit a report of its findings to the American people explaining where and how their government failed them, something long overdue years after the national tragedy. To do this, the commission members need as close to a full and honest account of the events from each witness as possible, not a coordinated party line manufactured by Republican political strategists.

So we are glad to hear that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice will testify under oath and in public before the commission. But the White House’s insistence on the president and the vice president appearing together, is disheartening at best. We are confident that Bush would not willingly manufacture blatant lies and mouth them to the commission; yet with Dick Cheney by his side, Bush will be able to keep his story perfectly consistent with that of one of his closest advisers. One of the most important things the commission has to do in the coming months is compare testimony from top officials, look for discrepancies and finally assign some blame for the administrative missteps that preceded Sept. 11, 2001. That’s impossible when the two most important witnesses get to give tag-team testimony in secret.

And there is every reason to worry that the president is more interested in saving his political hide than in helping the commission he opposed forming in the first place. It almost goes without saying that Bush does not have a stellar track record when it comes to telling the whole truth, especially when it gets in his way; indeed, his manipulation of the facts when it came to Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” points to an almost reckless disregard for the real truth. We believe that this time around, just like before, deception, not cooperation is on the president’s mind.

There is no way Bush appearing with Cheney will help the commission; it can only hurt the panel’s struggle to find the truth. We see little justification for joint testimony other than to allow the president and the vice president to avoid getting snared by their own half-truths and shifting stories. If President Bush were really tough on defense, he would be testifying alone like everyone else in an honest effort to aid the commission. But, for now, it looks like we’re stuck with the same old evasive tactics from this White House.