What is the White House Hiding?

Ever since al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration has been less than cooperative with the various investigations trying to find out what happened and how future attacks can be prevented. To cite just one example, the White House took a hatchet to the Congressional 9/11 report, blacking out twenty-eight full pages. (While the contents of the blacked-out pages are officially unknown, it was quickly leaked that they contained information on al Qaeda links with the Saudi royal family. Given the Bush family's long history of business connections with Riyadh, as well as the constant White House efforts to downplay the fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, there was prompt speculation that this was done more to protect the royals than anything else.)

But as the Congressional investigation could only go so far, public opinion began calling for a truly independent and bipartisan inquiry into why the signs that al Qaeda was planning a major attack were so prevalent and yet so missed. The White House fought the establishment of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (popularly known as the 9/11 commission) tooth and nail until President Bush grudgingly created it, but afterwards treated it with foot-dragging, stonewalling and general non-cooperation.

Even given that the Bush Administration has a secrecy mania unseen since the Nixon years (for Exhibit A, one need look no further than Vice President Cheney's now-infamous Energy Task Force and his insistence that the public has no right to know who makes public policy), its refusal to work with the 9/11 commission has raised eyebrows. Bush and Cheney originally said they would meet with only with the two lead commissioners, do so privately and not under oath, and only for one hour apiece. They retreated – somewhat – after loud public grumbling, but the general air of contempt continues.

This week's public commission hearings are a case in point. Bush, Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice all flatly declined to testify publicly before the commission, and sent in their stead Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA director George Tenet, and former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke.

In his testimony, Clarke criticized both the Clinton and Bush Administrations for not doing more about al Qaeda, disappointing the blame-Clinton-for-everything crowd. But he also became something of a hero to many 9/11 families when he did something the Bush Administration never did – he publicly apologized for the security and intelligence failures that led to the attack. "To them who are here in the room," he said, "to those who are watching on television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you... And for that failure, I would ask – once all the facts are out – for your understanding and for your forgiveness." His candor was a refreshing change from the Administration's usual we-did-nothing-wrong attitude.

Clarke's testimony came in the aftermath of the bombshell 60 Minutes interview in which he claimed that the Bush Administration all but ignored al Qaeda pre-9/11, then actively tried to pin the attacks on Iraq afterwards. In what has become an expected ritual, the White House responded with a take-no-prisoners defense, furiously smearing him as a partisan political hack despite his serving administrations both Republican and Democratic. Cheney went on Rush Limbaugh's radio show to assail Clarke, as did Rice on numerous morning TV news shows – all while claiming that she did not have the time to testify publicly before the commission.

Even compared to other White House assaults on disapproving former insiders, the immediacy and viciousness of the attack says that Clarke struck a nerve – and it's a dead giveaway that there is at least some truth to his allegations.

All of this begs an important question: what is the White House hiding? Is it just the Administration's way of saying, "bug off, we stole the 2000 election fair and square; we can do anything we want and we don't have to answer to the likes of you?" Is this simply standard operating procedure for a White House that believes everything should be done secretly and out of the public eye?

Or is it something else?

With the Bush Administration's steadfast refusal to answer any questions about 9/11 that even slightly deviate from the official version, one has to wonder why. Much speculation centers on a classified CIA briefing given at Bush's Texas ranch on August 6, only a month before the attacks, which reportedly warned Bush in explicit and specific terms that al Qaeda was planning a terrorist attack involving hijacked airliners. (The exact contents of the briefing are unknown, as the White House refuses to say anything about it.) The briefing was apparently ignored, as nothing was done.

Some of the wilder accusations claim that Bush et al knew 9/11 was coming but deliberately let it happen, claiming that he "needed" the attack to boost his poll numbers or some such reason. This is, to put it mildly, hard to swallow. The Bush Administration may be politically tone-deaf or even energetically dumb at times, but saying that it is actively malicious with American civilian lives is just too much.

Rather, the explanation for the Bush Administration's intransigence appears to be a mixture of two factors:

1. The complete refusal to pay any attention to anything the Clinton Administration handed down, concerning al Qaeda or anything else.
2. The equally complete refusal ever to admit that they just might have been wrong, regardless of the consequences.

In other words, political pigheadedness combined with rank incompetence. It's a bad combination for any government, but especially so for a government led by a man who calls himself a "wartime President."

The truth behind the Administration's pre-9/11 actions does not appear to be the sinister web woven by some of Bush's more far-out opponents. Far more sadly, it seems to be simple ineptitude, but the White House's see-no-evil attitude, combined with the scorched-earth approach to anyone who contradicts them, threatens to turn it into something far worse.