Criticism of the 9/11 Commission

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Criticism of the 9/11 Commission includes a variety of criticisms of the 9/11 Commission, the congressional commission set up to investigate the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Because the investigation was controversial and politically sensitive, many participants have been criticised during the process. Leading critics include members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee and the Jersey Girls, who were instrumental in overcoming government resistance to establishing the 9/11 Commission in the first place, according to the documentary 9/11: Press for Truth. The 9/11 commission members were appointed by George W. Bush as well as Congress, which led to the criticism that it was not a truly independent commission. The commission stated in its report that "[their] aim has not been to assign individual blame," a judgment which some critics believed would obscure the facts of the matter in a nod to consensus politics. In addition, some members of victims' families have claimed that the commission has numerous conflicts of interest.

Contents 1 Claims of conflicts of interest 2 Claims of lack of cooperation from the White House 3 Commission chairmen accuse CIA of deliberately impeding investigation 4 Commissioners suspected the Pentagon was deceiving the Commission 5 Commissioners believe the Commission was set up to fail 6 Claims that the investigation lacked adequate funds 7 Claims the commission was used for partisan purposes 8 Claims the commission ignored or censored key government evidence 9 Claims the commission ignored information regarding Able Danger 10 FBI director's critique regarding Able Danger 11 Sandy Berger convicted of stealing and destroying copies of classified terror documents 12 References

[edit] Claims of conflicts of interest

Members of the 9/11 Commission, as well as its executive director Philip Zelikow, had conflicts of interest.

Philip Shenon a New York Times reporter in a book released in February 2008 entitled "The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation" claims that Zelikow had closer ties with the White House than he publicly disclosed and that he tried to influence the final report in ways that the staff often perceived as limiting the Bush administration’s responsibility and furthering its anti-Iraq agenda. According to the book, Zelikow had at least four private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove, and appears to have had many frequent telephone conversations with people in the White House. The Commission staff kept a record only of calls Zelikow received, but Government Accountability Office records show his frequent calls to the 456 telephone exchange in the 202 area code used exclusively by the White House. Also, the book states that Zelikow ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls, although the Commission's general counsel overruled him. Zelikow had pledged to have no contact with Rove and Condoleezza Rice during his work for the 9/11 Commission.^[1]

The book also reports that some panel staffers believed Zelikow stopped them from submitting a report depicting Rice's and Bush's performance as "amounting to incompetence or something not far from it". Zelikow has denied discussing the commissions work with Rove and further added "I was not a very popular person in the Bush White House when this was going on" and remarked the staffers were disgruntled.^[2]

According to Shenon, Karl Rove always feared that a Commission report that laid the blame for 9/11 at the president's doorstep was the one development that could most jeopardize Bush's 2004 re-election. Therefore, White House lawyers attempted to stonewall the creation of the Commission and to hamstring its work from the outset. When Bush terrorism "czar" Richard Clarke could no longer be prevented from testifying about his urgent warnings over the Summer of 2001 to Rice about the imminent threat of terrorist attack on US soil, Shenon reports, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and his aides feverishly drafted tough questions and phoned them in to Republican commissioners to undermine Clarke's credibility." According to Shanon, it was this defensive strategy that Zelikow may have been coordinating with the White House.^[3]

Further, according to Shenon's book, Zelikow attempted to bolster the Bush administration's false claim of a link between al-Qaida and Iraq by trying to change a 9/11 Commission staff report to state that the terrorist network repeatedly tried to communicate with the government of Saddam Hussein, a claim of cooperation the administration had cited to justify the war in Iraq. Zelikow backed down when the 9/11 Commission staff refused to go along with his attempted change.^[4]

In addition, other members had ties which could be viewed as conflicts of interest. Jamie Gorelick, while serving in the Department of Justice under the Clinton administration, developed the policy that prevented communication between various government law enforcement and intelligence agencies, specifically the FBI and CIA. (the "wall memo").^[5] She also is on the board of United Technologies. Gorelick's firm has agreed to represent Prince Mohammed al Faisal in the suit by the 9/11 families. The families contend that al Faisal has legal responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.

The commission's defenders claim that these do not represent significant conflicts of interest, and that the commission maintained its neutrality.

[edit] Claims of lack of cooperation from the White House

In April 2002, Bush said that the investigation into 9/11 should be confined to Congress because it deals with sensitive information that could reveal sources and methods of intelligence.^[6] But by September, the White House came under intense fire concerning the commission from many victims' families,^[7] and thus President Bush finally agreed to the creation of an "independent" 9/11 commission. But many 9/11 victims' families believed that the scope of the investigation by the Commission did not go far enough in investigating the US government's failures because the Commission was not to investigate intelligence failures.^[8]

However, the White House insisted that it was to appoint the commission's chair, leading some to question the commission's "independence". The initial person appointed to head the commission, Henry Kissinger, has been accused by many of having been involved in past government coverups in South America (specifically, the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile), and of having on-going business relationships with members of the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia.

Even after Kissinger resigned, the White House was often cited as having attempted to block the release of information to the commission^[9] and for refusing to give interviews without tight conditions attached leading to threats to subpoena.^[10] The Bush Administration has further been accused of attempting to derail the commission by giving it one of the smallest independent commission funding levels in recent history ($3 million),^[11] and by giving the commission a very short deadline. The White House insists that they have given the commission "unprecedented cooperation".

While President Bush and Vice President Cheney did ultimately agree to testify, they did so only under several conditions:

• They would be allowed to testify jointly;
• They would not be required to take an oath before testifying;
• The testimony would not be recorded electronically or transcribed, and that the only record would be notes taken by one of the commission staffers;
• These notes would not be made public.

The commission agreed to these conditions, and the President and Vice President gave their testimony on April 29.

[edit] Commission chairmen accuse CIA of deliberately impeding investigation

Commission chairmen Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean accused the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) making a conscious decision to impede the commission’s inquiry after reading a memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow, the panel's former executive director. This memorandum came after a review by former commission members of thousands of classified documents after the disclosure that in November 2005 the CIA destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives. The review concluded that the commission made repeated and detailed requests to the agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of al Qaeda, and were told by a top CIA official that the agency had "produced or made available for review" everything that had been requested. The memorandum concluded that "further investigation is needed" to determine whether the CIA's withholding of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.

John E. McLaughlin, the former deputy director of central intelligence, said that the CIA insisted that agency officials had always been candid with the commission, and that information from the CIA proved central to their work. "We weren't playing games with them, and we weren't holding anything back" he added. Also a CIA spokesman said that the agency had been prepared to give the commission the interrogation videotapes, but that commission staff members never specifically asked for interrogation videos. ^[12]

[edit] Commissioners suspected the Pentagon was deceiving the Commission

For more than two years after the attacks, officials with North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances. Authorities suggested that US air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington, D.C..

The Commission reported a year later that audiotapes from NORAD's Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft—American Airlines Flight 11—long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.^[13] For example, Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold and Col. Alan Scott told the commission that NORAD had begun tracking United 93 at 9:16 a.m., but the commission determined that the airliner was not even hijacked until 12 minutes later. According to later testimony, the military was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.

The Commission was forced to use subpoenas to obtain the cooperation of the FAA and NORAD to release evidence such as audiotapes. The agencies' reluctance to release the tapes—along with e-mails, erroneous public statements and other evidence—led some of the panel's staff members and commissioners to believe that authorities sought to mislead the commission and the public about what happened on September 11. "I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described," said John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who led the staff inquiry into events on September 11, in an August 2006 interview.^[14]

[edit] Commissioners believe the Commission was set up to fail

In their book "Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission" on their experience serving as co-chairs of the Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton devoted the first chapter to their belief that the Commission was set up for failure. Hamilton listed a number of reasons why they thought this, including the late start of the Commission and the very short deadline imposed; the insufficient funds, 3 million dollars, initially allocated for conducting such an extensive investigation (later the Commission requested and received additional funds, but the chairs still felt hamstrung); the many politicians who did not want the Commission formed; the continuing resistance and opposition to the work of the Commission by many politicians, particularly those who did not wish to be blamed for any of what happened; and the denial of access by various agencies to documents and witnesses. "So there were all kinds of reasons we thought we were set up to fail."^[15]

[edit] Claims that the investigation lacked adequate funds

". . .Whereas the investigation of the Challenger disaster received $50 million, Bush promised only $3 million for the investigation of the much more deadly and complex disaster of 9/11. He then initially resisted when the commission asked for an additional $8 million."

from David Ray Griffin's The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. p.284

[edit] Claims the commission was used for partisan purposes

Some conservatives believe that the Democratic Party used the commission for partisan advantage during the 2004 election campaign. Rather than focusing equally on all factors, critics predicted that Congressional Democrats would ignore any policy errors made by Bill Clinton while emphasizing the mistakes of President Bush.^[16]

In contrast, many opponents of the Bush administration believe that the commission was set up to perform a superficial examination of the background of the attacks, thereby meeting public demands for an investigation while still preventing any substantive examination. They also argue that Republicans on the commission and in Congress ignored mistakes of the Bush administration while exaggerating those made by former President Clinton.

Four books that critique the official Commission are Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert, The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute, by Paul Thompson, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, A Critique of the Kean-Zelikow Report by David Ray Griffin, and Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror, by Peter Lance. All describe conflicts of interest that the Commissioners had and point out problems in the official narrative that suggest the attacks were allowed to happen, or perhaps made to happen, in order to achieve long-sought policy changes (the Iraq war and "Homeland Security").

Newsweek, in late February, 2006, reported that a draft of the 9/11 Commission Report expressed skepticism about Dick Cheney's claim to have spoken with President Bush before giving an order to shoot down United Flight 93. According to Newsweek, White House officials successfully fought to have those parts of the report toned down.^[17]

[edit] Claims the commission ignored or censored key government evidence

Former FBI, NSA and other federal intelligence experts claim the 9/11 Commission report was fundamentally flawed because the Commission refused to hear, ignored, or censored testimony about the many pre-September 11 warnings given to the FBI and US intelligence agencies. These federal whistleblowers claim that in an effort to avoid having to hold any individual accountable, the 9/11 Commission turned a blind eye on FBI agent-provided evidence before September 11 regarding the 9/11 plot.^[18]

[edit] Claims the commission ignored information regarding Able Danger

In August 2005, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer claimed he had informed 9/11 Commission Executive Director Dr. Philip D. Zelikow about a highly classified data-mining project called Able Danger that had identified two of the three terrorist cells responsible for 9/11. Shaffer said Dr. Zelikow was initially very interested and gave Shaffer his card to contact him again. However, Shaffer claims when he contacted Dr. Zelikow, he was no longer interested in information about Able Danger.^[19] The commission later issued a response saying they found Shaffer "not sufficiently reliable" and the information was "lacking historical significance" and did not warrant further investigation. [1] Subsequently, four additional "credible witnesses" have come forward to support Shaffer's account of Able Danger.^[20]

Former Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), a member of the Commission, said: "Bluntly, it just didn't happen and that's the conclusion of all 10 of us." A search for documents on Able Danger has not been very productive, leading US Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) to speculate that a coverup may have occurred. The Pentagon investigated the matter and has not been able to find any documentary evidence confirming the allegations.^[21] Pentagon spokesman Army Maj. Paul Swiergosz said: "We've interviewed 80 people involved with Able Danger, combed through hundreds of thousands of documents and millions of e-mails and have still found no documentation of Mohamed Atta." But Weldon claims that the Pentagon ordered the destruction of a large volume of documents related to Able Danger.^[22]

Further information: Able Danger

[edit] FBI director's critique regarding Able Danger

Former FBI director Louis Freeh criticized the 9/11 Commission for ignoring key evidence from Able Danger, which he alleged resulted in false statements being made in the final 9/11 Commission report. For example, the 9/11 Commission concluded that "American intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks," which Mr. Freeh stated appears to be false. He stated that Able Danger had identified Mohammed Atta, the alleged ring-leader of the 19 hijackers, as an Al Qaida man active in the United States and was tracking him for many months.

Further, Director Freeh criticized the Commission for allowing the Pentagon to withhold key evidence about the facts found by Able Danger and concluded that these inadequacies raised serious questions about the credibility of the 9/11 Commission.^[23]

[edit] Sandy Berger convicted of stealing and destroying copies of classified terror documents

Main article: Sandy Berger#Convicted of mishandling classified terror documents

[edit] References