Washington, D.C.
President Bush dropped his opposition to an independent investigation of last year’s terrorist attacks to avoid a showdown with a formidable foe—angry relatives of 9/11 victims, Newsweek reported this week. Bush had argued that probing government failures would divert resources from the war on terrorism. But recent revelations of unheeded intelligence warnings brought renewed demands for a full accounting. In secret White House meetings, family members demanded a thorough investigation, and they threatened to publicly embarrass the administration if it refused. “There was a freight train coming down the tracks,” a White House official said.
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