It keeps getting better, and better:

Philip Shenon, David E. Sanger, New York Times
Friday, April 2, 2004



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Washington -- The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said
Thursday that it was pressing the White House to explain why the Bush
administration had blocked thousands of pages of classified foreign
policy and counterterrorism documents from former President Bill
Clinton's files from being turned over to the panel's investigators.

The White House confirmed Thursday that it had withheld a variety of
classified documents from Clinton's files that had been gathered by
the National Archives over the last two years in response to document
requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and
law enforcement failures before the attacks.

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said some Clinton
administration documents had been withheld because they were
"duplicative or unrelated," while others were withheld because they
were "highly sensitive" and the information contained in them could be
relayed to the commission in other ways.

"We are providing the commission with access to all the information
they need to do their job," McClellan said.

The commission and the White House were reacting Thursday to public
complaints from former aides to Clinton, who said they had been
surprised to learn in recent months that three-quarters of the nearly
11,000 pages of White House files it was ready to offer the commission
had been withheld from the panel by the Bush administration.

The former aides said the files, which are now in the custody of the
National Archives, contained highly classified documents about the
Clinton administration's efforts against al Qaeda.

The commission said it was awaiting a full answer from the White House
on why any documents were withheld. "We need to be satisfied that we
have everything we have asked to see," said Al Felzenberg, a spokesman
for the bipartisan 10-member commission. "We have voiced the concern
to the White House that not all of the material the Clinton library
has made available to us has made its way to the commission."

The general counsel of Clinton's presidential foundation, Bruce
Lindsey, who was Clinton's deputy White House counsel and one of his
closest advisers, said he was concerned that the Bush administration
had applied a "very legalistic approach to the documents" and might
have blocked the release of material that would be valuable to the
commission.

He said he first complained to the commission about the situation in
February after learning from the archives that the Bush administration
had withheld so many documents.

"I voiced a concern that the commission was making a judgment on an
incomplete record," Lindsey said. "I want to know why there is a 75
percent difference between what we were ready to produce and what was
being produced to the commission."

The debate over the Clinton files was disclosed as the commission
announced that it had reached agreement with the White House to
schedule a public hearing for next Thursday, when Condoleezza Rice,
Bush's national security adviser, will testify under oath for 2 1/2
hours.

It also came as the White House, in an effort to bolster Rice's
credibility before the hearing, released some of the language of a
presidential directive awaiting Bush's signature on Sept. 11, 2001,
that instructed the Pentagon to plan action against al Qaeda
terrorists and their Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan, "including
leadership, command-control- communication, training and logistics
facilities."

White House officials said the language showed that the Bush
administration had a tougher, more comprehensive plan than the Clinton
administration in dealing with both Osama bin Laden's terrorist
network and the Taliban. Rice has cited the directive in recent
interviews in trying to undermine the credibility of Richard Clarke,
Bush's former counterterrorism director, who has accused the Bush
administration of largely ignoring terrorist threats before Sept. 11.

The disclosure that many Clinton administration files involving
counterterrorism had been withheld from the commission on the order of
the Bush administration took several of the members of the panel by
surprise Thursday.

"If it did happen, it's an unintentional mistake or it's another
intentional act of the White House that will backfire," said Bob
Kerrey, a former senator from Nebraska who is a Democratic member of
the commission.

Lindsey said Clinton and his foundation, which is based in Little
Rock, Ark., had given authorization to the National Archives to gather
evidence from Clinton's files that was sought by the independent
commission. But the Bush administration, he said, had final authority
to decide what would be turned over to the commission.

Lindsey, who is Clinton's liaison to the National Archives, said he
was surprised to discover from the archives that the Bush
administration, after reviewing the Clinton documents gathered by
researchers at the archives, had decided not to turn over most of the
material.

He said he had read through many of the 10,800 pages of Clinton White
House documents that were collected by the archives and believed them
to be valuable to the work of the panel.

"They involved all of the issues -- al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden,
terrorism, all of the areas with the commission's jurisdiction," he
said.

"The commission has voiced Lindsey's concern to the White House," said
Felzenberg, the commission's spokesman. "We made the concerns known,
and we are awaiting a definitive answer."