The White House announced today that it will allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify before the 9/11 commission, in public, and under oath. The Bush Administration originally refused to allow Condi to testify in public, citing the U.S. Constitution's principle of the separation of powers. In other words, the president’s advisers answer only to him, and not to Congress. The general idea is that if presidential advisers are always under the gun of Congressional grilling, they may be unwilling to give straightforward advice to the president. I agree. So does the Washington Post’s editorial board:

PRESIDENT BUSH is within his legal rights in preventing national security adviser Condoleezza Rice from testifying publicly before the Sept. 11 commission. Precedent is on his side. And we see no reason to credit Democratic insinuations that Ms. Rice has something to hide, given that she spent four hours answering the commission's questions in closed session and has offered to answer more. Yet Mr. Bush is making a mistake when he blocks her public testimony.

I also agree that it was a mistake for the administration to hold out on Condi’s testimony. Withholding information smacks of having something to hide, no matter what precedents are being violated. Time to come clean and get it over with. The administration has nothing to hide, and the accusations made by former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke have already been discredited.

Clarke has claimed that the Bush Administration did nothing about al-Qaeda before 9/11. But Mr. Clarke’s own words have shown otherwise. On Thursday, March 25, Condi released an email written by Clarke himself which claimed the administration had taken measures to prepare for a terrorist attack before 9/11:

- In late June, an interagency counterterrorism security group, which Clarke chaired, warned of an upcoming "spectacular" al Qaeda attack that would be "qualitatively different."

- On July 5, representatives of federal law enforcement agencies were summoned for a meeting at which they were warned "that we thought a spectacular al Qaeda terrorist attack was coming in the near future," Clark wrote. Among the agencies represented were the FBI, Secret Service, Federal Aviation Administration, Customs Service, Coast Guard, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

"We asked that they take special measures to increase security and surveillance," he wrote.

Summarizing his thoughts to Rice, Clarke wrote, "Thus, the White House did insure that domestic law enforcement (including FAA) knew that the [counterterrorism security group] believed that a major al Qaeda attack was coming and it could be in the U.S. ... and did ask that special measures be taken."

Clarke's initials -- "rac" -- are typed at the end of the e-mail.

I in fact look forward to Condi Rice’s testimony. She is a brilliant strategist who can hold her own in front of Congress. She was born in 1954 and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama – the “deep south.” Despite the specter of segregation, she worked "twice as good" as her peers, graduated from the University of Denver at the tender age of 19, went on to get both a masters degree and Ph.D., and became the first non-white, female and youngest provost of Stanford University. Condi is probably the closest of President Bush’s advisers. Not bad for a woman whom the idiotic racist Harry Belafonte called an “Uncle Tom.”

Condi: “You go, girl.”