Rice offers to meet with panel, privately

WASHINGTON - The White House on Thursday asked the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to give national security adviser Condoleezza Rice another opportunity to talk privately with panel members.

The White House said, in a letter to the commission chairman and vice chairman from counsel Alberto Gonzales, that such a session would allow her to clear up "a number of mischaracterizations of Dr. Rice's statements and positions."

Rice still would not testify publicly before the panel, as the members and many relatives of victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks want. Gonzales wrote that is important that presidential advisers such as Rice "not be compelled to testify publicly before congressional bodies such as the commission."

Rice had said Wednesday that she was willing to return for another private session with the commission.

But the letter from Gonzales to former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican and the commission chairman, and commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, represented the White House's formal offer of Rice's return.

Rice met privately with the commission, formally the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, for about four hours on Feb. 7.

In indicating her desire to return, the White House said she wanted to rebut statements made in this week's public testimony before the panel. In particular, Gonzales said Rice wanted the chance to argue that she was not inaccurate when she wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece this week that the administration's post-Sept. 11 plan called for military options to strike al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Gonzales also sought to set the record straight about the obligation of a presidential aide to testify publicly. He said that statements that other national security advisers have testified before Congress in open sessions were wrong.

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