Those who lost the most that tragic morning are
leading this country...
Kelly Wallace & Paul Hirschkorn, CNN: Stephen Push, whose wife, Lisa, was killed on the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, was among those who wanted to know more. "I was disappointed she spent so much time trying to evade responsibility both for herself and the administration and so little time answering the questions that were asked of her," Push said. "She seemed to have selective amnesia. I personally wanted to see more candor."
"She spent a lot of time trying to push the blame off either on the previous administration or on Dick Clarke or on amorphous structural problems, and very little admitting to the fact that this happened on her watch and they failed," Push said.
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/08/rice.families/index.html
Some families criticize Rice's testimony
Others say she and Bush did the best they could
>From Kelly Wallace and Phil Hirschkorn
CNN
Thursday, April 8, 2004 Posted: 10:43 PM EDT (0243
GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- About 50 relatives of victims of
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks filled three
of the front rows of the hearing room on Capitol Hill
Thursday where Condoleezza Rice answered questions
under oath for three hours.
Many of them were under-whelmed by the national
security adviser's testimony before the independent
commission investigating the attacks.
Stephen Push, whose wife, Lisa, was killed on the
hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, was
among those who wanted to know more.
"I was disappointed she spent so much time trying to
evade responsibility both for herself and the
administration and so little time answering the
questions that were asked of her," Push said. "She
seemed to have selective amnesia. I personally wanted
to see more candor."
Push had advocated strongly for the 9/11 commission to
be created and personally testified before it last
year.
Like a number of family members, Push had hoped that
Rice would take some personal responsibility for the
security lapses that preceded the attacks, as former
White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke did
two weeks ago.
"She spent a lot of time trying to push the blame off
either on the previous administration or on Dick
Clarke or on amorphous structural problems, and very
little admitting to the fact that this happened on her
watch and they failed," Push said.
Bill Harvey also was disappointed. Harvey's wife of
one month, Sara, was killed after the first hijacked
plane crashed into the World Trade Center's north
tower.
"She's a very, very smart woman, but she was playing
rope-a-dope a little bit today with the commission,"
Harvey said.
"She tried to play semantical games in answering some
of their questions -- is something 'urgent' or is it a
'priority.' What's the difference?" Harvey asked.
Harvey questioned whether Clarke's January 2001 memo
recommending a more aggressive stance against al Qaeda
was "a 'think piece' or 'action plan?' What's the
distinction?"
Harvey was among a contingent of New York families
that attended the hearing, hoping to hear what the
Bush administration was doing to combat terrorism
during its first eight months in office.
Henry and Elaine Hughes wore large buttons bearing a
picture of their son, Chris, who worked on the 87th
floor of the trade center's south tower.
"She wasn't as forthright as she could have been,"
Henry Hughes said. "When something like this happens,
someone has to be able to stand up and say, 'You know
what? We didn't do the right thing here, and now we
are going to make it better.' "
"To say she's the new kid on the block, they are only
there 233 days, that's the poorest excuse I ever
heard," Elaine Hughes said.
At the end of the hearing, Elaine Hughes approached
Rice.
"Not to shake her hand -- to tell her that her
government wasn't doing enough, didn't do enough, and
she didn't have a response," she said.
Mary Fetchet, who also lost her son, Bradley, a
securities trader, in the New York attack, felt Rice
was not straightforward with the commission about the
information she passed on to President Bush.
"Of course, every government agency failed. What is
her job as national security adviser? My sense is it
is her responsibility to get information from all
these agencies that aren't communicating," Fetchet
said.
But Rice also had supporters, who found her answers
credible.
"It was evident that she truly was doing her best --
at least to me -- to tell the truth, be as thorough
and deal with the crisis our country is dealing with,"
said Hamilton Peterson, whose father, Don, and his
stepmother were aboard the plane that crashed in
Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
"I thanked her for coming, and I thought she did a
great job."
Peterson said he did not blame the Bush administration
for the attacks occurring under its watch.
"I think that's unfair, I think President Bush was in
office a very brief period of time. I think he has
been extremely aggressive," Peterson said.
Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles, piloted the
plane that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon,
said it didn't matter who was in the White House on
September 11.
"Those guys were already in place. The men that were
on my brother's airplane entered this country in
January of 2000," she said, referring to hijackers
Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
"I blame 19 men who boarded airplanes with the intent
of killing as many Americans as they could, and I
blame the sponsor of those 19 men," she said,
referring to al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden,
who remains at large.