Sitting Duck

Rice: No, it wasn't.

She has to accomplish two things, says Blacker, who has known Rice for 20 years, since they were Soviet affairs experts at Stanford, and has kept in close touch.

"She has to verify under oath that her characterization of what they did both before and after September 11 is consistent with what she has said in her appearances before the media," Blacker says. And "she needs to demonstrate that she is firmly in command of both the substance and the process."

The camera shutter-snapping will undergo a cicada-like crescendo when Rice raises her right hand to take the oath.

Close your eyes and fix the tableau for history. Rice's day in the chair will take its place among the classic examples of this so-Washington political performance art -- the hearing-room confessional, the showdown under oath. A lone figure takes a seat before a long panel of somber inquisitors to tell a true story -- or get cross-examined out of the spin cycle. Always there's the feeling that it's a story coming out only now, before your eyes, live.

Always there's the assumption that the country will finally get to the bottom of something terrible. In this case, the Sept. 11 commission's purpose is to determine whether the 2001 attacks could have been prevented, and what can be done to keep them from happening again.

Always the stakes could hardly be higher.

Who has been here before?

John Dean, the White House counsel testifying in 1973 during the Watergate scandal. Oliver North testifying in 1987 during the Iran-contra scandal. Richard Clarke, whose performance March 24 already is a classic of the genre.

"She's got a lot to carry up there to counter what a man who's got a career in this subject knows about it," says Dean. This week he published a book, "Worse Than Watergate," which criticizes the Bush administration for its secrecy.

North, testifying in his Marine uniform with a crew-cut air of gung-ho earnestness, showed that how you say it can be at least as important as what you say.

"There's no question to be a good witness you have to appear a good witness," says Dean. He testified wearing glasses, though normally he wore contact lenses. Critics said he was trying to create an image of knowledgeability. In fact, he had just scratched a cornea. "If I'd have been up there in my contacts, blinking and winking, I would have looked like a less-than-credible witness," he says.

Rice, 49, grew up the only child of middle-class educators in segregated Birmingham and then Denver. Her parents pushed her to excel in all things. She could read piano sheet music before she could read books and was speaking French before most young people have mastered English. She graduated from the University of Denver at 19.

A poised foreign-policy wonk, she became an academic fellow and assistant professor at Stanford at 26, then served in the George H.W. Bush White House before becoming provost of Stanford in 1993.