Bird of Prey
04-26-2007, 06:18 AM
Democrats authorize subpoena for Rice
http://sg.yimg.com/xp/afp/20070426/08/3563401426.jpg (http://sg.news.yahoo.com/070426/1/48360i.html)
AFP Photo
A congressional committee took steps Wednesday toward issuing a subpoena for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify about discredited assertions about Iraq's prewar nuclear intentions, but her spokesman said she would resist.
Democrat Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said the panel is interested in learning how the White House came to make bogus assertions that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had been trying to obtain enriched uranium from Niger.
Waxman said at a hearing Wednesday that Rice's tenure as President George W. Bush's national security adviser during his first term in the White House gives her unique insights into why the administration pressed its claim about the Niger uranium, which the president amplified in a State of the Union speech shortly before the 2003 invasion.
But her spokesman Sean McCormack said her discussions with the president on the matter were off limits to the committee.
"It's the position of the White House that those matters are covered by executive privilege," Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Wednesday, when asked whether she would comply if subpoenaed. http://sg.news.yahoo.com/070426/1/48360.html
http://sg.yimg.com/xp/afp/20070426/08/3563401426.jpg (http://sg.news.yahoo.com/070426/1/48360i.html)
AFP Photo
A congressional committee took steps Wednesday toward issuing a subpoena for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify about discredited assertions about Iraq's prewar nuclear intentions, but her spokesman said she would resist.
Democrat Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said the panel is interested in learning how the White House came to make bogus assertions that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had been trying to obtain enriched uranium from Niger.
Waxman said at a hearing Wednesday that Rice's tenure as President George W. Bush's national security adviser during his first term in the White House gives her unique insights into why the administration pressed its claim about the Niger uranium, which the president amplified in a State of the Union speech shortly before the 2003 invasion.
But her spokesman Sean McCormack said her discussions with the president on the matter were off limits to the committee.
"It's the position of the White House that those matters are covered by executive privilege," Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Wednesday, when asked whether she would comply if subpoenaed. http://sg.news.yahoo.com/070426/1/48360.html