A 'Path Forward'?

The White House softens, slightly, its hard-line stance on officials testifying before Congress.

IT'S NOT exactly a watershed moment, but the Bush administration appears to be easing up a bit in its tug of war with Congress over the questioning of executive branch officials.

For months, the White House has stuck to its claim of executive privilege to bar administration officials from testifying before Congress on a host of matters, including the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. The White House has agreed to allow officials to be interviewed only under the strictest of conditions: in "private . . . without need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas," as White House counsel Fred F. Fielding put it in a letter to Congress in March. Democrats rightly rejected those conditions.

Now, Mr. Fielding has opened the door -- however slightly -- to a more flexible approach in response to the inquiry by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform into the case of Cpl. Pat Tillman, whose death by friendly fire was initially covered up by military personnel. Mr. Fielding invokes executive privilege to argue that Congress cannot compel the testimony of former White House communications director Dan Bartlett, former press secretary Scott K. McClellan and former speechwriter Michael Gerson (now a Post columnist) on the Tillman matter. And he insists that the administration will allow them to be interviewed only if they're questioned without having to recite an oath and without a transcript being made. But Mr. Fielding no longer is foreclosing the possibility that the former officials could testify at subsequent congressional hearings or depositions.

We have argued that congressional interviews of administration officials should be transcribed, and we urge lawmakers to continue to insist on that. But in an Aug. 2 letter to Mr. Fielding, Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and ranking Republican Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) were right to call the White House's most recent offer a possible "path forward" that could help "avert a conflict between the branches." The arrangement allows Congress, in the initial "off the record" sessions, to determine whether present and former officials have information relevant to the Tillman probe. If Congress determines that they don't, the matter ends there. If the witnesses have relevant information, the committee can then ask the White House for permission to question them in a hearing or deposition. In either case, the new approach allows Congress to move ahead with its inquiry while respecting the White House's legitimate need to protect executive privilege. It's a tiny step but one in the right direction.