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White House refuses Rice speech to be given to 9/11 panel

US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice listens to President George W. Bush speak about Iraq during a news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House. PHOTO: AP

The White House has refused to provide the panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks with a speech national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was to deliver on that day touting missile defense as a priority rather than al-Qaeda, sources said on Tuesday.

With Rice slated to testify publicly before the commission today, the commission submitted a last-minute request for access to Rice's aborted Sept. 11, 2001 address, sources close to the panel said.

But the White House has so far refused on the grounds that draft documents are confidential, the sources said.

A spokesman for the commission was unable to either confirm nor deny the request, or the administration's response.

The White House said it was cooperating with the investigation. "The White House is working with the commission to ensure that it has access to what it needs to do its job," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said.

Critics of the administration have seized on Rice's scrubbed speech to back up charges that US President George W. Bush and his top advisers ignored an urgent al-Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Washington Post, citing former US officials, reported last week that the speech was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups.

Daniel Feldman, who was a director at the National Security Council under Bush's predecessor, Democrat Bill Clinton, said the excerpts appeared to"reflect the intellectual underpinnings for the administration's pre-9/11 neglect of counterterrorism."

"That's why it's critical that the White House release the full text of the speech and for the commission to ask Dr. Rice about the apparent inconsistencies," Feldman said.

A main area of questioning for Rice is expected to be claims by former US counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke that Bush ignored the threat posed by al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks and was fixated on Iraq.

The White House has rejected the assertion that Bush, Rice and others in the top echelons of power were more concerned about missile defense than terrorism.

"You're talking about one speech," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week. "I think you need to look at the actions and concrete steps that we were taking to confront the threat of terrorism."

The White House could still back down and provide the full speech to the panel.

Bush has backed down in the past.
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