9/11 Commission Wants Condoleezza Rice To Testify Publicly
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: CNN SATURDAY is ahead, but first these headlines. Israeli TV reports prosecutors want Prime Minister Ariel Sharon indicted. They've already indicted a business man they say bribed Sharon several years ago. Today's report says it will be up to a month before Israel's attorney general decides whether to follow the prosecutor's recommendation. Senator John Kerry will have shoulder surgery Wednesday to repair a torn rotator cuff. No, he didn't hurt it skiing. His campaign says he aggravated an old injury when he grabbed a bus seat while campaigning in Iowa. The bus made a sudden stop. In Los Angeles, a rock and roll legend is dead. Jan Berry of the duo Jan and Dean died last night at 62 after a seizure. The pair's 1960s hit included "Surf City," "Dead Man's Curve," and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena." I'm Carol Lin and welcome to CNN LIVE SATURDAY. Also this hour, he was the big story all week, but will Richard Clarke's digs at President Bush bleed into the presidential campaign? Who pays the most for healthcare? And who's getting squeezed? Also, he's got only one leg, but a whole lot of heart. We're going to talk to one man on his incredible journey. But right now there is new and bipartisan pressure on Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly before the 9/11 Commission. As a new polls shows, the president's approval rating in his fight against terrorism may be slipping. Here's CNN's White House correspondent Dana Bash.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The White House insists National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice refuses to publicly testify before the 9/11 Commission as a matter of executive privilege. But a Republican member of the commission says by standing on legal principle, they're shooting themselves in the foot politically.</s>JOHN LEHMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: I think the White House is making a political blunder, an important miscalculation of the political impact of this. Condoleezza Rice should testify before our commission.</s>BASH: Democrats aren't letting it go.</s>SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If Condoleezza Rice can find time to do "60 MINUTES" on television before the American people, she ought to find 60 minutes to speak to the commission under oath.</s>BASH: The stepped pressure for Rice to testify even from within GOP ranks comes as the White House continues to blanket the airwaves, to try to stop political hemorrhaging over Richard Clarke's charge the president wasn't aggressive enough in confronting terror threats leading up to 9/11.</s>ANNOUNCER: Steady leadership in times of change.</s>BASH: Mr. Bush is building his re-election campaign around his stewardship against terrorism. It has been, aides say, his best political asset. But a new poll suggests approval of how the president handles terrorism has dropped eight points since last month from 65 percent to 57 percent. Republicans say the counteroffensive to discredit Clarke as someone's whose changed his story must continue.</s>GLENN BOLGER, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: There's going to be a very small group of voters in the middle who have to kind of weigh both sides and make up their mind on who they trust, Richard Clarke before he wrote his book or Richard Clarke after he wrote his book.</s>BASH: Democrats call this character assassination and predict it will further hurt, not help, the president.</s>MICHAEL FELDMAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: The ferocity of the attacks against Dick Clarke this week could backfire against the Bush administration because I think Americans deserve and expect real answers to be underlying charges.</s>BASH: And Senator Kerry wouldn't answer a reporter's question on whether he thinks the president did everything possible to prevent the September 11th attacks. For its part, the Bush campaign issued a statement very quickly on the senator's new pressure on Condoleezza Rice to publicly testify at a hearing, saying he is now politicizing the commission - Carol?</s>LIN: All right, so Dana, are there no other options then for Condoleezza Rice to at least answer some of these questions in some sort of form?</s>BASH: Well, what the White House is trying to do and what the White House counsel sent a letter asking for on Thursday is a chance for her to meet again privately with members of the commission. She's done so once before back in February. But today, members of the commission said that they're not all that eager, if you will, to set that up as soon as possible because they are still hoping that she will testify publicly. If they give her a chance they believe to testify privately - or publicly, it will make it hard for her to at least do so at this time.</s>LIN: Right. Her interview with "60 MINUTES" is going to air tomorrow night, Sunday. Any preview on that? Any word on what she actually said to the reporters?</s>BASH: Well, Carol, she has been very, very angry in some private meetings with reporters about the charges that Richard Clarke has made, specifically even against her and what her knowledge was leading up to September 11th, and of course what the administration knew or didn't know on the September 11 attacks. So that is likely what we are going to hear from her. It is her chance, the White House believes, to hit back. Obviously as we've talking about, what the commission wants is for her to do so at a public hearing under oath - Carol.</s>LIN: All right, thank you very much, Dana Bash, traveling with the president. Well, CNN is going to have much more on the 9/11 Commission hearings. Sunday's "Late Edition" tackles Richard Clarke's testimony. In fact, Richard Clarke will be one of Wolf's guests. That's tomorrow at noon Eastern. Well, this week, testimony before the 9/11 Commission was particularly painful for those who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks. CNN's Elaine Quijano met with some family members of the victims.</s>ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Some days, Rosemary Dillard can't bear to step outside.</s>ROSEMARY DILLARD, SEPTEMBER 11 WIDOW: And I lay there and I hold his picture, and I talk to him, because he's all I had.</s>QUIJANO: Her husband, Eddie, was on board American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. This week, Dillard tried to move closer to accepting her husband's death by attending the September 11th Commission hearings.</s>DILLARD: Because the answers to these questions, the answers to how this happened, we have all got to know.</s>QUIJANO: Abraham Scott knows that pain, too. His wife of 24 years, Janice, was working at the Pentagon that day.</s>ABRAHAM SCOTT, SEPTEMBER 11 WIDOWER: She was a loving and kind wife, an honorable mother.</s>QUIJANO: Scott was also there, as U.S. officials past and present testified. Both neither he nor Dillard was completely satisfied.</s>DILLARD: When the questions were answered, they were never answered.</s>QUIJANO: What the families did appreciate, the apology by former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke.</s>DILLARD: Yes, that was the most amazing thing. This man turns around and tells the families I'm sorry. You know, your heart just dropped.</s>SCOTT: It meant that he was sincere. He was - that I've heard of, the first one from that administration or any administration to apologize for what occurred on 9/11.</s>QUIJANO: And while both are disappointed National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice may not be publicly with the commission, other victims' family members accept that.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I think if she gives her testimony in private behind closed doors, and gives it to the authorities that I trust the system.</s>QUIJANO: Ultimately families hope the commission's work will give them some peace.</s>DILLARD: I think it will kind of help soften the blow in my heart. And I can say, Eddie, I worked on this. Eddie, I got involved in everything. I can feel good about what I did in my husband's name.</s>QUIJANO (on camera): Rosemary Dillard knew the flight attendants on board American Airlines flight 77. She was their supervisor. Dillard plans to travel to Madrid to lend support to family members who lost loved ones in the terrorist train bombings there on March 11th. Elaine Quijano, CNN, Washington.</s>LIN: And now we move on to the Middle East. It is not violence that's making news there today. It's potential legal trouble for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. CNN's Paula Hancocks reports.</s>PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONENT: Israeli television network channel 2 is reporting this evening that prosecutors have recommended indicting Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister. Now the story is that this bribery scandal has been going on some time. And David Apple, an Israeli business man, has been charged back in January of bribing Ariel Sharon. He is alleged to have given $690,000 to Sharon's son, Gilad, to try and bring Ariel Sharon to help him in a real estate development that he was planning back in the late 1990s when Ariel Sharon was foreign minister. Now he was trying to build a tourism venture on a Greek island, which wasn't going well. And allegedly, he paid this money to the Sharon family so that Ariel Sharon and his deputy prime minister Ehud Almet (ph), who was at the time was the mayor of Jerusalem, would go and talk to Greek government officials to try and push the project forward. In return, allegedly, Apple would help the two in their political campaigns. Now this evening, the justice ministry and the prime minister's office are refusing to comment, although Ariel Sharon had denied any wrongdoing in the past. And David Apple himself had denied any wrongdoing when he was indicted back in January. We spoke to a legal expert a little earlier on. And he said not to read too much into the situation until we find out whether or not Ariel Sharon is going to be indicted. Channel reporting we could hear that from the attorney general within the next month or so. There's no law stating that if Ariel Sharon is indicted, he has to step down. But pressure and public pressure and pressure from the opposition parties is likely to mean that if he is indicted, he could have to suspend himself from office during legal proceedings. Paula Hancocks, CNN, Jerusalem.</s>LIN: Remember when Mach 1, 2, and 3 were such a big deal? NASA attempts Mach 7. That's about 5,000 miles an hour. And...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Violence, threats, and insults are forbidden. From an operational standpoint, particularly in the long run, humiliating the civilian population leads to the widening of the cycle of violence.</s>LIN: A new CD-ROM program in Israel teaches checkpoint etiquette. And our grossest moment of the day.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The tarantula tastes a bit like fried shrimp.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I brought my own fork. I just want to be prepared for anything that might crawl or creek or run around on the plate.</s>LIN: Yum. Tarantulas are not the most bizarre things on the menu.