"UNPRECEDENTED" COOPERATION

Please explain. Now.

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said on Thursday that it was pressing the White House to explain why the Bush administration had blocked thousands of pages of classified foreign policy and counterterrorism documents from former President Bill Clinton's White House files from being turned over to the panel's investigators.

The White House confirmed on Thursday that it had withheld a variety of classified documents from Mr. Clinton's files that had been gathered by the National Archives over the last two years in response to requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement failures before the attacks.

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said some Clinton administration documents had been withheld because they were "duplicative or unrelated," while others were withheld because they were "highly sensitive" and the information in them could be relayed to the commission in other ways. "We are providing the commission with access to all the information they need to do their job," Mr. McClellan said.

Yeah, right. Fortunately, commission members have the same concern:

The commission and the White House were reacting to public complaints from former aides to Mr. Clinton, who said they had been surprised to learn in recent months that three-quarters of the nearly 11,000 pages of files the former president was ready to offer the commission had been withheld by the Bush administration. The former aides said the files contained highly classified documents about the Clinton administration's efforts against Al Qaeda.

The commission said it was awaiting a full answer from the White House on why any documents were withheld.

"We need to be satisfied that we have everything we have asked to see," Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the bipartisan 10-member commission, said. "We have voiced the concern to the White House that not all of the material the Clinton library has made available to us has made its way to the commission."

In other words, "cough cough bullshit cough cough".

The story goes on to note that Clinton counsel Bruce Lindsey has been voicing his concerns about this for a couple of months now.

Sooo... the explanation for this could either be

1) That there's an honest reason for the witholding of the documents relating to what McClellan said, though Lindsey and some commission members state their doubts about that, or

2) This is part of the White House's plan to perpetuate the myth that the Bushies had terrorism on the front burner -- or any burner at all, really -- before 9/11, while the Clinton administration did not.

Hopefully, answers will come shortly. Though I do enjoy how classified material goes back and forth in the eyes of Republicans, from being a sacred trust to being open season, sometimes simultaneously.