9/11 panel: Rice to go public on Apr 8

Condoleezza Rice, the White House National Security Adviser, will testify publicly next Thursday before a Commission studying government fai...

Condoleezza Rice, the White House National Security Adviser, will testify publicly next Thursday before a Commission studying government failures leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the panel announced.

Commission members may ask Rice to respond to claims by Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism chief, that President Bush underestimated the threat of terrorism in the months before the attacks, and that the war on terrorism was hampered by Bush’s insistence on waging war on Iraq.

Also on Thursday, a top aide to former President Clinton said that only a fraction of the documents the Clinton archives had sent to the White House to assist the panel’s investigation had been passed on to the Commission.

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Bruce Lindsey, Clinton’s legal representative for records and longtime confidant, said the Clinton archive had sent 11,000 pages of documents to the White House in response to queries from the commission, but that only 25 per cent of those records were forwarded to the panel. Lindsey said he did not know why the White House retained the remaining 75 per cent of the documents.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said some Clinton documents had been withheld as they were ‘‘duplicative or unrelated,’’ while others were withheld as they were ‘‘highly sensitive’’ and the information in them could be relayed to the Commission in other ways.

‘‘We are providing the Commission with access to all the information they need,’’ McClellan said. Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the Commission, said the panel was negotiating with the White House to determine the nature of the documents being held back. Rice’s testimony may colour the way voters view Bush’s handling of terrorism, which the president has made a pillar of his argument for re-election. — (LAT-WP)

Anjana Krishna, IPS officer who stood firm against Ajit Pawar, is no stranger to overcoming setbacks

Anjana Krishna, who stood against Ajit Pawar, is no stranger to overcoming setbacks

India4 hr ago

Maharashtra-cadre IPS officer Anjana Krishna V S, who was in the news for being “reprimanded” by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar while taking action over alleged illegal mining, grew up on the outskirts of an area of Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram district that has become notorious for the illegal granite mining.

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