WASHINGTON – Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., issued the following statement Thursday in response to a statement from the National Commission on Terrorism Upon the United States detailing the agreement it reached with the White House on access to the President’s daily intelligence briefings:
“Now that the details are known, I am even more troubled by the unreasonable restrictions that the White House has imposed on access to the most important set of documents that the 9-11 Commission has sought. “The Commission deserves credit for negotiating hard with an intransigent White House and for retaining the right to take stronger action in the future. Nevertheless, the White House has insisted on a controlling role that is far more intrusive than anything that I envisioned when Senator McCain and I drafted the legislation creating the commission. “At most, only four individuals will be allowed to view some of the President’s daily intelligence briefings, and many of the documents will only be reviewed by two of those four members of the Commission review team. The White House has insisted on selecting the documents to be reviewed, and on approving the summaries written by the members of the Commission review team before those summaries can be shared with the full Commission. “The Administration fought the creation of the Commission and now it seeks to place a veil of secrecy around documents central to determining the Administration’s role in the events leading up to September 11, 2001.”