Two recent television docudramas suggest lessons for how leaders can level with the public in a time of war. In one, Winston Churchill told citizens the truth about security lapses leading up to World War II. In the other, President Lyndon Johnsonócertain that voters would not tolerate bad news from Vietnamóhid the true cost and trajectory of that war.

Ý Ý Ý

Perhaps the Bush White House was watching the wrong one. The long-hidden warnings, given to George W. Bush, of possible Al Qaeda hijackings last summer suggests less a ìfinest hourî than a return of LBJís ìcredibility gap.î

This furor is more than just another round of Washington ìgotcha.î To be sure, we do not yet know whether a wider dissemination of these warnings or a stepped-up antiterrorism effort would have made any difference. Still, the controversy will have consequences. Once again, an administrationís focus on, even obsession with, control of information risks undercutting its central foreign policy goal.

All of this was easily avoidable. To lead in crisis and war, presidents must do several things. They need to offer inspiration, as President Bush did in the weeks after September 11, and a firm sense of direction. But even more than eloquence, successful leaders must provide a constant flow of accurate facts, reports and details. The president is not just the commander in chief; he is the information officer in chief. People thirst for accuracy; bad news as well as good news. Thatís the only way to earn and sustain public trust.

ìLet it all hang outî is easy for pundits to say, but often hard for presidents to do. Compulsive candor runs counter to much of human nature and instinctósomething like the drivers-ed advice to step on the gas, not the brake, when your car swerves on an icy road. Presidents routinely rage against leaks. Anxious aides scurry to control the torrents of information gushing from government. As an official in the Clinton White House, I know what it feels like at a time like this. Demands for information can feel like persecution. Far too often, people in power hope that if the bad news is kept quiet for just a little longer, maybe the demand for it will simply go away. Reluctance to provide full answers to questions about the original Whitewater investigation convinced the press that something was being hidden. Clintonís untruths about his personal life cost him far more than honesty would have (even if the questions were unfair in the first place).

Each president, it seems, must learn from his own mistakes. The Bush White House sometimes seems preoccupied with secrecy. Examples abound. The bipartisan General Accounting Office, in an unprecedented move, had to file a lawsuit to seek information about Vice President Dick Cheneyís energy task force. President Bush signed an executive order restricting historical scrutiny of previous presidentsí papers. This approach has extended to the war on terror. Bush appointed former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge to coordinate homeland security, but wonít let him testify before Congress. By all accounts, officials have pressured Congress not to investigate the security lapses that led up to September 11.

Now we see the cost of all this stealth. Simply, Congress can no longer take the administrationís word on faith. Were the multiple warnings throughout the intelligence community unusual, or the normal ìnoiseî? Should more have been done? Why didnít anyone connect the dots? How can the obviously broken intelligence system be fixed? These are legitimate and important questions. Had we seen early honesty, demand for answers would be far less severe. Now, after eight months of evasion, Congress understandably wonders what else has been hidden. The path for President Bush should be clear: He, not his aides, should take responsibility. He should direct his White House to cooperate with congressional investigations. This is no time for constitutional chest-thumping.

Perhaps the greatest mystery is why presidents donít learn. LBJís refusal to let the public in on the truth about Vietnam sapped support for the war. By contrast, Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 offered a different lesson. In the World War IIís early days, when our forces were falling back all across the Pacific, Roosevelt urged people to buy maps, then delivered a ìfireside chat.î In painstaking fashion, he told citizens where our troops were. The news was mostly bad. But he won their trust for a bloody struggle that took years. Today, the public strongly supports necessary action against Al Qaeda and terrorism. But when the news is bad, the White House may come to regret its decision to hide the facts.