Word: kean
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...Bush White House trying to put the brakes on the congressional panel created last fall to investigate 9-11 attacks? Sources tell TIME that the White House brushed off a request quietly made last week by the 9-11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, to boost his budget by $11 million. Kean had sought the funding as part of the $75 billion supplemental spending bill that the president just requested to pay for war with Iraq. Bush's recent move has miffed some members of the 9-11 panel...
...Kean and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the panel's top Democrat, requested additional funding in a letter to the administration last week. The money was to pay for a staff of about sixty and their resources. Kean plans to field a separate task force for each of nine areas that the law establishing the commission requires it to investigate. The panel has until the end of May 2004 to complete its work, but it will spend the $3 million it was originally allotted by around August 2003 - if it doesn't get the supplement. "We hope that this request will...
...Tuesday night, the White House sidestepped the issue of why the request wasn't granted in the Iraq spending bill. "We've just recently received the letter and we're reviewing it and we look forward to talking about it with Gov. Kean," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Questions beyond that would be kind of jumping ahead of where it is right now," McClellan said when asked whether the White House had discussed the matter with Kean or plans to back the budget increase in the future. This afternoon, McClellan added: "We have received a request from the Commission...
...Moments after the White House updated its position on Wednesday, Kean told TIME in a phone interview that the White House had just told him they would likely back his request. "The wording they gave me - because I always pay attention to how people word thing - was 'Please be assured that the White House wants this commission funded adequately.'" Kean said the White House told him this afternoon that "they had hoped to be able to go over our budget last week. They just weren't able to." Kean added that they wanted to keep a "clean bill...
...Kean is contemplating a staff of at least 50 divided into several task forces that will sift through classified documents and interview current and former officials. One reason for the increased budget: the commission wants to hire its own staff and not rely on officials on loan from the very agencies under investigation. "They want people independent of the agency," said one source. "Everybody's got oxen to grind." The commission also has yet to receive a copy of the highly classified 800-plus-page report from last year's joint House-Senate inquiry on 9/11. Meanwhile, Congress is still...