According to tomorrows Washington

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

According to tomorrow’s Washington Post, the White House has quickly capitulated on the question of these 9,000 Clinton-era terrorism related documents that they had thus far refused to hand over to the 9/11 Commission.

The lede reads …

The Bush administration agreed yesterday to let the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks review about 9,000 pages of documents from the Clinton archives, which the White House had earlier refused to release, despite the conclusion of federal researchers that they were relevant to the panel’s work.

But then there’s this: “But in comments to <$Ad$>reporters in Huntington, W.Va., McClellan declined to say whether the White House would agree to actually hand over any of the disputed documents at issue, raising the possibility of further disputes.”

Is this an issue of whether the Commission gets physical custody of the documents, as opposed to reviewing them at some facility controlled by the White House, as has been the case with other material?

The article says some commission members are now raising the possibility that the White House is withholding other documents as well.

And, finally, here is what has to be the quote of the day, from Commissioner Jamie Gorelick:”We can’t afford to have documents that are relevant to our inquiry being withheld on a technicality. This is not litigation. This is finding facts to help the nation, and we should not treat this as if we’re adversarial parties here.”

Too bad some White Houses don’t seem to see it that way.

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: