Hearing starts 6 AM PST: "For one thing, at the outset of the new administration, Bush and Rice decided to keep Richard Clarke--a veteran of the first Bush and the Clinton administrations--in his job as National Security Council counterterrorism director. Second, in a break with past practice, the president insisted that Clarke report to him exclusively through Rice.

That made Rice solely responsible for what the president learned about appraisals of terrorist threats from Clarke and others in the months before Sept. 11. She was also responsible for coordinating counterterrorism efforts, including ranking its priority relative to other threats and problems."