Finally

Condoleezza Rice will testify before the 9/11 commission, in public, under oath.

In a reversal, the White House has agreed to allow national security adviser Condoleezza Rice testify in public and under oath before the Sept. 11, 2001 commission, NBC News has learned. In addition, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have agreed to testify before the entire commission, not just the two co-chairmen.

The commission and Congress have agreed that Rice’s testimony would not be considered precedent setting, NBC’s Tim Russert reported.

The White House and Rice had earlier insisted that allowing a national security adviser to testify under oath would compromise the principle of “executive privilege,” where a president can exchange ideas freely with that adviser without fearing it will be made public.

At issue is how seriously the Bush administration took the threat of terrorism before 3,000 people died in the worst strike on U.S. soil.

I’m going to have to be near a television for this; one that has C-SPAN.

I can’t really say exactly what this means, though I’ll be interested to hear how some more politically savvy bloggers spin this particular news. I can’t help but wonder whether Rice has had enough time to get her story straight, or whether we’ll get yet another White House version of what supposedly happened when, who was in what meeting, and what was said to whom. Then again, this might be a shift in strategy, allowing Rice to testify just to muddy the waters enough that the issue gets lost in all the various versions of what happened.

We’ll see.