US President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney took questions today for more than three hours from the Sept. 11 commission about whether they considered al Qaeda an urgent priority before the catastrophic attacks.
Bush and Cheney, in a historic session with potential election-year ramifications, sat down in the Oval Office with the panel of five Republicans and five Democrats. The session ended after three hours and 10 minutes.
An hour earlier two Democrats on the panel, Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton and former US Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, left the White House before the meeting was over.
Bush agreed under pressure from victims' families and the commission to answer questions from all panel members, but only on condition he have Cheney at his side and they meet in private, with no recording of the session. They were not under oath.
The meeting took place in the very heart of presidential power, the Oval Office, rather than in a room that would have provided a traditional table-and-chair setting.
Bush was joined by White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales and two other, unidentified White House lawyers who were there to take notes. The commission was allowed to bring one staffer for note-taking.
Past testimony has established that elements of the US intelligence apparatus were aware of threats to American targets from the militant al Qaeda network, led by Osama bin Laden, before the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacking attacks.
Bush was braced for close questioning about his response to an Aug. 6, 2001, presidential intelligence memo entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike In US." It said al Qaeda members were in the United States and that the FBI had detected suspicious patterns of activity "consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks."
Bush was likely to be asked why he did not launch the U.S. government into battle stations based on the memo, which he received while on vacation in Texas.
Bush's advisers were worried the commission's findings will be critical of the president, who is running for re-election in November on his record of fighting terrorism. The panel is working to complete its final report by July 26, well into the campaign season.
A Harris Poll released yesterday said 62 percent of those polled believed the Bush administration was warned by intelligence reports "about possible terrorist attacks in this country."