Why is this administration still hiding Clinton papers from the 9/11 Commission??

[dahunan]

9/11 Panel: Bush White House Withheld Papers
Commission Is Demanding Terrorism-Related Documents From Clinton Era
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 8, 2004; Page A04


The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks announced yesterday that it has identified 69 documents from the Clinton era that the Bush White House withheld from investigators and which include references to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and other issues relevant to the panel's work.



The White House turned over 12 of the documents to the commission yesterday, officials said. But 57 others, which were not specifically requested but "nonetheless are relevant to our work," remain in dispute, according to a commission statement. The panel has demanded the documents and any similar ones from the Bush administration.

Yesterday's announcement came just 14 hours before national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to testify publicly in front of the 10-member bipartisan panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The commission has feuded for months with the White House over access to documents and witnesses, and Rice's agreement to testify came after weeks of refusals from White House lawyers.

The discovery of the documents came as a result of a staff review this week of about 10,800 pages of material from the Clinton archives, including about 9,000 pages that the White House had not given to the commission despite the conclusion of federal archivists that they may be relevant. The administration had not notified the panel about the records, which Clinton attorney Bruce R. Lindsey discovered in February.

The commission said in its statement that "more than 90 percent of the material had already been produced, was irrelevant to our work, or was duplicative." The review team, including chief counsel Daniel Marcus, also concluded that "any errors in document production were inadvertent."

More at URL

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59534-2004Apr7.html

 

[CaptnKirk]

Possibly to delay information about the previous administration's trying to convey the threat of al Queda and terrorism,
until after the testimony of Condoleza Rice. They don't want to give the 9-11 panel any extra information that could be
used as a data base to frame questions to her with her testifying under oath, minimize the amunition.

After she makes her testimony public, and has been deposed of her information and knowledge, she will not need to
provide any additional information to the panel - that was one of the caveats to allowing her to make this apperance.

They also do not have to allow any other staff members to testify, another caveat.
So any damming evidence that were to surface in the Clinton papers is off the table, and not subject to scrutiny by the panel.

If something actually is found after the fact it would be an apperance of misunderstanding without punishment.

 

[dahunan]

Thank you and that is a perfect explanation.. Did you work in the legal system before

Here is a reminder of who is actually on that panel

A Bipartisan Panel?
Probing the 9/11 intelligence commission
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER



Sunday, Mar. 14, 2004
The Blue-Ribbon panel named by George W. Bush to study intelligence prior to the Iraq war has been billed as a bipartisan effort to get answers. But how evenhanded will it be? A TIME examination of the panel members' backgrounds reveals a web of sticky connections to the Bush team and, in one case, an alleged lack of investigative curiosity. The nine-member panel is co-chaired by a Democrat, former Senator Charles Robb, and includes at least one proven maverick, Senator John McCain, who was put there, according to an official, to provide "instant credibility." But retired U.S. appellate court Judge Laurence Silberman, the panel co-chair, is a Nixon-era friend of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's and Vice President Dick Cheney's. Panel member Henry Rowen, a Hoover Institution scholar and former Rand Corp. president, worked under Cheney at the Pentagon during the first Gulf War. In September 1990, with Cheney's backing, Rowen cooked up Operation Scorpion, a secret plan to invade Iraq from the west, go all the way to Baghdad and topple Saddam. (The plan went nowhere.) Another panel member, former CIA deputy director William Studeman, now with Northrop Grumman, contributed $250 to candidate Bush's campaign in 2000. His wife gave the Bush re-election committee $500 just a week before her husband was named to the panel last month.

Panel member Charles Vest, president of M.I.T., has been accused by a colleague of being slow to investigate allegations of fraud at a lab that does missile-defense work for the Pentagon. Ted Postol, an M.I.T. professor of technology and national security, says Vest was told in 2001 about allegations that officials at the school's Lincoln Laboratory misled federal investigators about the failure of a key test of the U.S. missile-defense system ? a top Bush priority. Postol claims that Vest "did not take action," even though he "knew there were potential criminal violations and scientific fraud." A spokesman for M.I.T., which received $726 million in federal work in 2003, said any suggestion that Vest ignored the claims is "categorically untrue."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040322-600885,00.html[/Q

 

[LordMagnusKain]

because, odd as it sounds, not everything related to terrorism needs to be part of a partisan politically motivated investigation.

 

[josphII]

if they havnt seen these documents then how do they know theyre relevant to the panels work?

 

[Chadder007]

Because really...Clinton and Bush are good friends and Bush doesn't want Clinton to get in trouble.