Bush Will Meet With 9/11 Panel

President Bush has agreed to meet privately with the leaders of a federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but he spurned their suggestion that he appear before them in public, officials said Friday.

“We believe the president can provide all the requested information in the private meeting, and there is no need for any additional testimony,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said in a statement released Friday night.

The bipartisan panel, which was created by Congress to investigate government failures that preceded the 2001 attacks and its actions afterward, is known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

A commission official said that Thomas H. Kean, the commission chairman, and vice chairman Lee H. Hamilton were still discussing with White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales the timing of their meeting with the president.

After initial resistance, Bush recently agreed to extend the 10-member commission’s deadline for reporting its findings, from May 27 to the end of July.

Bush’s agreement to meet with the commission would seem to pave the way for other administration officials to do so as well.

The 10-member panel has requested meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, CIA director George J. Tenet and former President Clinton.

The panel is likely to accept Bush’s rejection of a public session, “because we are going to be asking about ... the most sensitive secrets this country holds,” said Phillip Zelikow, the commission’s staff director.