Something to Hide

Bush, after today’s meeting with the 9/11 Commission:

If we had something to hide we wouldn’t have met with them in the first place. We answered all their question. I came away good about the session because I wanted them to know how I set strategy, how we run the White House, how we deal with threats” Bush said.

This reasoning must explain — straight from the President himself — why the administration is fighting so hard to keep the Energy Commission records closed and still hasn’t released all of Bush’s military records, and [insert description of act of secrecy here] …

I suppose Bush’s inadvertent candor also sheds some light on why they resisted testifying for so long, and did so only without recordings or transcripts, why Dr. Rice initially wouldn’t testify under oath, why the administration fought against extending the deadline for the Commission’s report, and [insert act stonewalling the 9/11 Commission here] …

AB

UPDATE: Over at Tapped, Matt Y. noticed the same quote that I did and fills in some of the blanks:

… in the real world of course, Bush did refuse to meet with the commission, only to back down in the face of public pressure. Then he refused to meet for more than one hour and, again, he wound up backing down in the face of public pressure. Finally, he agreed to let the commission ask their questions, but only on the dual condition that Cheney be at his side and that no transcript of the meeting be released. That doesn’t sound at all like the pattern of behavior of a president who’s trying to hide something. Why, it’s been “unprecedented cooperation” from the get-go. And we all remember how eager Condoleezza Rice was to testify. . . .