President to let Rice testify in public

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will allow national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to publicly testify under oath before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, reversing a position his administration had determinedly clung to in the face of mounting bipartisan pressure.

In another position switch yesterday, the president and Vice President Dick Cheney also offered to provide private, unsworn testimony in a joint appearance before all 10 members of the commission. Bush had previously agreed only to appear before the chairman and vice chairman of the commission. No dates have been set for the testimony of Rice, Bush, or Cheney, though White House aides said the national security adviser is likely to appear before the commission soon.

"The terrorist threat being examined by the commission is still present, still urgent, and still demands our full attention," Bush said in televised remarks yesterday from the White House, where he also described the voluminous amount of documents and testimony others in his administration have provided. "I've ordered this level of cooperation because I consider it necessary to gaining a complete picture of the months and years that preceded the murder of our fellow citizens on Sept. 11, 2001."

The Bush administration had vigorously objected to having Rice publicly testify under oath, arguing that the appearance of the president's national security adviser before a congressionally authorized panel would violate the separation of powers principle spelled out in the Constitution.

Yesterday's reversals came amid mounting insistence from Democratic and Republican commission members that Rice testify publicly, as well as rising White House concerns about the political costs of the strategy it was pursuing. At least one national poll showed that the public had begun to believe that the administration had something to hide about its pre-Sept. 11 actions. And the statements of former counterterrorism specialist Richard A. Clarke -- who asserted that Bush ignored his repeated warnings before Sept. 11 that Al Qaeda was about to strike -- underscored the need to have Rice rebut those accusations. Left unchallenged, those accusations could undermine the central theme the president is relying upon as he seeks reelection -- his aggressive defense of the nation against terrorism.

Rice met with commission members for four hours last month and in recent days has said she would welcome the opportunity to do so publicly. Even as she adhered to the administration's position of not testifying publicly, she granted a wave of media interviews and was in the vanguard of the White House's counterattack on Clarke, who told commission members that the Bush administration deemed Al Qaeda a high priority but not an urgent one.

In a letter to commission chairman Thomas H. Kean yesterday, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales reiterated the administration's belief that the separation of powers principle gives the president "the legal authority to decline to make Dr. Rice available to testify in public."

"Nevertheless," Gonzales wrote, "the president recognizes the truly unique and extraordinary circumstances underlying the commission's responsibility to prepare a detailed report on the facts and circumstances of the horrific attacks on Sept. 11, 2001."

Gonzales offered the position switches in exchange for an agreement by the commission that Rice's testimony should not be seen as precedent-setting and that the commission agree not to request additional public testimony from any White House official, including Rice. The commission, formally called the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, accepted both conditions.

"I think it was, as all things are, a negotiation," Kean said yesterday in describing the agreement with Gonzales and the White House, which was completed Monday night. "In the end, I suspect that the president and the White House understood that it was very important for the public, as well as for the commission's work, that Dr. Rice be allowed to testify in public."

Kean said the commission has no plans to ask other White House officials to testify, and vice chairman Lee Hamilton pointed out that the agreement does not preclude members from seeking private testimony from White House officials.

Rice's spokesman, Sean McCormack, said yesterday that she "looks forward to sitting down with the commission. She has made it clear that's something that she looks forward to doing."

Key members of Congress were generally supportive of the decision to allow Rice to testify. Some relatives of those killed in the attacks have accused the administration of not cooperating fully with the commission's investigation. Noting the Bush administration's refusal to have Rice testify, some victims' relatives said that it was hypocritical for the Bush-Cheney campaign to use images of the World Trade Center rubble in reelection television ads. Yesterday, however, they greeted the administration's about-face as good news.

"We think it's great that Condoleezza Rice is going to testify in public," said Stephen Push, spokesman for Families of Sept. 11, a victims' advocate group. "We've been pushing for that, and we're thrilled it's going to happen."

In addition to strong differences of opinion on how seriously the administration took the Al Qaeda threat before Sept. 11, Rice and Clarke have also offered different comments on how the White House was moving to meet that threat.

Clarke told the commission that he tried unsuccessfully to get the administration to sign off on a plan to eliminate Al Qaeda, rebutting Rice's assertion that Bush had an aggressive strategy to attack the terrorist group and its supporters in Afghanistan, the Taliban.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, traveling with Bush yesterday to Wisconsin, said the president asked his aides over the weekend to explore whether there was a way to allow Rice to testify without setting a precedent violating the separation of legislative and executive powers.

Some of Rice's predecessors have testified before congressional committees, but administration officials have made a distinction between testifying on criminal matters and on issues of policy.

David Rivkin, who served as associate White House counsel under George H.W. Bush, said he believes having Rice testify sets "a horrible precedent." "Once you make an exception, you don't have anything," he said. "How are you supposed to maintain the integrity of policy deliberations if your closest aides can be hauled before Congress and be forced to disclose who said what and who didn't say what?"

Charlie Savage of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Wayne Washington can be reached at wwashington@globe.com.