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Nod for panel to review 9/11 intelligence

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON NOV. 14. The Independent Commission looking into the causes for the terror attacks of 9/11 and the response of the federal government has come to an understanding with the White House on the review of highly classified intelligence materials that has been withheld by the administration.

Now, a small sub-committee of the Commission will examine the most sensitive documents and report back to the main committee. The four-member panel has not yet been formally appointed even as there is some misgiving within the Commission on the kind of arrangement that has been worked out. The ten-member Commission is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

The Commission said that the agreement reached "will prove satisfactory" and would help get the job done; and the White House seemed pleased by the development.

"We look forward to the recommendations to make America safer," a spokeswoman said. The U.S. President, George W. Bush, had said last month that the core of the dispute had to do with materials related to his daily written intelligence briefs. And the original impression was that the White House was prepared for a showdown — invoking Executive Privilege if it came down to that in a courtroom.

The White House admitted that in one of the reports received by the President in August 2001, there had been the warning from the intelligence community that the Al-Qaeda might try and hijack American commercial planes. The National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, argued that the intelligence brief was more of an analysis and that the hijacking was in a more traditional sense than in the manner it all unfolded on Sept 11,2001.

The release of the panel report next May depended on the kind of cooperation from thegovernment departments and federal agencies. The Republican Chair of the Commission, the former Governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean, recently criticised the attitude of the White House and warned that the panel might resort to the issuance of formal subpoenas if the administration was unwilling or refusing to cooperate.

The panel had already issued subpoenas to the Federal Aviation Authority and the Pentagon after coming to the conclusion that these two departments had not fully complied with the request for documents

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