To: Wayners who wrote (481319 ) 10/26/2003 2:20:32 AM From: Raymond Duray Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769667 BUSH suffering major embarrassment over 9/11 cover-up: Bush accused of stonewalling blue ribbon commission This is the front page news at the NY Times today. nytimes.com 9/11 Commission Could Subpoena Oval Office Files By PHILIP SHENON Published: October 26, 2003 ADISON, N.J., Oct. 25 — The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks says that the White House is continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he is prepared to subpoena the documents if they are not turned over within weeks. Advertisement The chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, also said in an interview on Friday that he believed the bipartisan 10-member commission would soon be forced to issue subpoenas to other executive branch agencies because of continuing delays by the Bush administration in providing documents and other evidence needed by the panel. "Any document that has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach," Mr. Kean said on Friday in his first explicit public warning to the White House that it risked a subpoena and a politically damaging courtroom showdown with the commission over access to the documents, including Oval Office intelligence reports that reached President Bush's desk in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. "I will not stand for it," Mr. Kean said in the interview in his offices here at Drew University, where he has been president since 1990. "That means that we will use every tool at our command to get hold of every document." He said that while he had not directly threatened a subpoena in his recent conversations with the White House legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, "it's always on the table, because they know that Congress in their wisdom gave us the power to subpoena, to use it if necessary."