The Bush administration has finished reviewing a half million pages of classified documents on the Sept. 11 attacks and is not seeking to limit access to them by an independent commission, the panel's spokesman said Wednesday. WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration has finished reviewing a half million pages of classified documents on the Sept. 11 attacks and is not seeking to limit access to them by an independent commission, the panel's spokesman said Wednesday.
The entire collection of documents _ some 500,000 pages, many of them classified, compiled by a joint House-Senate intelligence committee _ will now be available for review by the 10-member National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, said spokesman Al Felzenberg.
Last week, the commission's staff agreed to wait several days before seeking sensitive documents compiled by the congressional inquiry so the Bush administration could first review them.
The commission's executive director, Philip Zelikow, described the agreement as a simple courtesy. But it drew a rebuke from a member of the commission, Tim Roemer, a Democrat and former congressman from Indiana.
Roemer tried Friday to review transcripts of certain closed-door hearings held by the joint congressional committee.
Because of the commission's agreement with the administration, he was denied permission to see them _ even though he served on the congressional committee and therefore had read the material before.
On Wednesday, Felzenberg said the administration has completed its review and will not assert executive privilege to keep any of the documents secret. A spokesman for the White House said he was looking into the matter.
Roemer said he looks forward to examining all the material but still feels the committee was overly deferential to the Bush administration, which initially opposed an independent panel on Sept. 11.
``I continue to strongly believe that no entity, individual or organization should sift through or filter our access to material,'' Roemer said.
He said he intends to raise the topic at the commission's meeting Thursday in Washington. ``I want to make sure we don't agree to these kind of arrangements in the future,'' he said.
Commission chairman Thomas Kean, a former governor of New Jersey, said last week that he did not object to the decision by the panel's staff to give the White House several days to review the material.
The commission, by law, must build upon the work of the congressional inquiry, which found that organizational problems and human failings prevented intelligence agencies from unraveling the Sept. 11, 2001, plot.
The bipartisan commission has until May 2004 to report on causes of the Sept. 11 attacks, preparations to guard against future terror and the response to the airline hijackings that killed thousands at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in southwestern Pennsylvania.
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