Before the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, there was 9/11
A Brief History of the 9/11 Investigations Through Dec. 2003
The Bush administration has built its waning wartime
credibility on a “defensive” response to the attacks of 9/11 once thought to be
unassailable. Now its credibility on 9/11 is also beginning to seriously erode.
In January 2002, both Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney
individually asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle that inquiries be limited
to the congressional Intelligence Committees. In February, The House and
Senate, controlled by opposing parties, responded by forming a Joint
Intelligence Committee, an action which has been called “unprecedented.”
[2/12/2002 Washington Post]
On May 22, 2002, amid Joint Committee strife and
continuous administration warnings of new terrorist attacks, Daschle called for
an independent commission to investigate government action before the Sept. 11
attacks. He said such a panel was needed for greater public scrutiny,
involvement, and understanding.'' [5/22/02 NYT]
Although Joint Committee Leaders Senator Bob Graham
and Representative Porter Goss hoped to make rapid progress, scuffles regarding
staffing caused a number of scheduling delays. Attention turned to the Senate
Judiciary Committee, which revealed a number of FBI irregularities, including
Headquarters’ thwarting the recommendations of Phoenix and Minneapolis field
agents prior to the September attacks. These embarrassments sparked a war of
FBI, CIA, and NSA leaks of 9/11 related information to the press. Revelations
included an August 6, 2001 President’s Daily
Briefing (PDB) by the CIA and, in response to news reports, the White
House acknowledged the briefing suggested Al Qaeda might be planning to hijack
aircraft.
The Joint Inquiry finally got underway on June 4,
2002, but was effectively shut down by Vice President Dick Cheney on June 20
when he denounced it as a source of a "National Security Agency
leak": News networks reported the texts of two NSA intercepts received the
day before 9/11, but not translated until the day after. Even though the White
House itself had earlier released this information, the Joint Inquiry was
obligated to submit to an investigation by the FBI to determine the source of
the “leak.” The FBI counter investigation was only the most visible of
extensive administration attempts to control damage. The Administration refused
to provide the Joint Committee access to the President’s Daily Briefs, citing
executive privilege, [11/08/03 NYT] and also refused to allow test-imony from
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld or Secretary of State Colin Powell.
On September 5, 2002, Richard Shelby, the ranking
Repub-lican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressed doubts
that the committee's investigation into 9/11 would accomplish anything, and
supported an independent investigation. "You know, we were told that there
would be cooperation in this investigation, and I question that. I think that
most of the information that our staff has been able to get that is real
meaningful has had to be extracted piece by piece." He adds that there is
explosive information that has not been publicly released. "I think there
are some more bombs out there ... I know that." [9/10/02 NYT ]
Republican Senator John McCain noted the Bush
Administration “slow-walked and stonewalled” the inquiry, which issued its
final report on December 10, 2002. It was not permitted to tell the full story,
to make the president accountable, or to propose legislation for reform.
[Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2003, Slow Walked and
Stonewalled by John Prados.]
The National 9/11 Commission: A National Scandal?
Mr. Bush successfully opposed creation of a National
Commission for over a year. Then on September 20, 2002, in the wake of the
damaging Joint Committee revelations, Mr. Bush reversed course. [Newsweek,
9/22/02] On November 27, 2002, Title VI of Public Law 107-306 established a new
Congressional National Commission, formally known as the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. This commission was to examine and
report upon the facts and causes of the attacks; to ascertain, evaluate, and
report on the evidence developed by all relevant governmental agencies, and
build upon the investigations of other entities. It was to complete this work
by the end of May 2004.
Mr. Bush insisted on the right to name its chairman, Henry Kissinger, to “Follow the facts no matter where they lead.” A New York Times editorial suggested the White House initially appointed Henry Kissinger as Commission Chairman “to contain an investigation it has long opposed.”[11/29/02 NYT] Facing questions about potential conflicts of interest, Kissinger resigned from the Commission on Dec. 13.
Publicly, the White House pledged cooperation with the National Commission, but privately, cooperation was less than obvious. From the commission's inception, commissioners and others say, the White House put obstacles in its way. [Newsweek http://www.msnbc.com/m/pt/printthis.asp?storyID=910676
The Commission was originally allotted $3 million. In
March 2003 Commission Chairman Tom Kean requested an additional $11 million,
based on an analysis of what commissions members believed they needed to
provide a staff of 60 for the 18 month study. The initial request was ignored
and funding was delayed. [3/26/03 Time] Weeks later, the administration
provided $9 million in supplemental budget. This meager funding to investigate
why 3000 people died has been compared with the $50 million provided to
investigate the Columbia tragedy in which seven people died, and the $50
million provided to investigate Whitewater and “Monicagate.”
While the law establishing the commission required it
to build on the classified Joint Intelligence Committee report, the White House
initially blocked the commission's access to that report. A declassified
version was finally released in July 2003, eight months into the Commission’s 18
month allotted life. On orders of the Bush administration, numer-ous selections
were redacted, including a 28-page section dealing with suspected Saudi ties to
the 9/11 plot, and NSA Director Michael Hayden’s June 18, 2002 testimony.
Still the declassified report was
damaging to the admini-stration. For example, Commissioner Max Cleland, a
triple amputee veteran of the Vietnam war and former Democratic Senator from
Georgia, learned that “an FBI informant in San Diego … was living with two of the hijackers, and
FBI head-quarters
didn't even tell him that they should have been … looked at because the CIA
didn't tell the FBI.” Cleland further observed: “…the NSA didn't pass it on to
the CIA or the FBI. They were picking up intelligence as early as 1994 about a potential attack in this
country using aircraft. What we have here [in this report] is a devastating indictment of the
intelligence community.” [7/3/03 Bill Moyers Show, PBS: http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_cleland.html]
At the White House's insistence, an adviser to
Attorney General John Ashcroft reviewed all of the commission's requests for
documents and interviews sent to federal agencies. Cleland, said the White House
was "cherry picking" documents it wanted to withhold. "It's
obvious that they're sifting the information to the 9/11 commission now,"
he says. "We're way, way late here. The picture is not encouraging."
[7/7/2003 WSJ]
In July, the Commission acknowledged its work was
being hampered by the failure of executive branch agencies, especially the
Pentagon and Justice Department, to respond quickly to requests for documents
and testimony. Commission Chair Thomas Kean also suggested the administration’s
insistence on using “minders” during testi-mony amounted to intimidation of
witnesses. [7/8/03 NYT]
Cleland became the first panel member to say publicly
that the commission could not complete its work by its May 2004 deadline and
the first to accuse the White House of withholding classified information from
the panel for purely political reasons. "It's obvious that the White House
wants to run out the clock here," he said in a Washington interview. He
also said Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission
was uncovering in its investigation. "As each day goes by, we learn that
this gov-ernment knew a whole lot more about these terrorists be-fore September 11 than it has ever admitted."
[10/26/03 NYT]
Administration
officials acknowledged fear that information in the President's Daily Briefs
might “be construed to suggest that the White House had clues before Sept. 11,
2001, that Al Qaeda was planning a catastrophic attack.” [11/13/03 NYT]. Their
fears are well founded. At a July 5, 2001 National Security Council White House
gathering of the FAA, Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and INS, Director of
Counter-Terrorism Richard Clarke stated that "something really spectacular
is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon."
[www.nypress.com/16/53/news&columns/feature.cfm.]
In an interview, former Clinton advisor Sidney
Blumenthal said Clarke, who has since left the NSA, “urgently tried to draw the
attention of the Bush administration to the threat of al Qaeda. … on August 6,
2001, George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on
terrorism. I believe he told Richard Clarke that he didn't want to be briefed
on this again, even though Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Bush
was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible."
[http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/010504A.shtml]
On Nov. 12, 2003, the commission announced that after
months of talks and the threat of subpoena it reached agreement for the White
House to provide limited access to the President's Daily Briefs. Under the
accord only two members of the 10-member commission would have access to the
full library of daily briefings prepared in the Bush and Clinton
administrations and two other members would be allowed to read just the copies
of the briefings the White House deemed
relevant to the inquiry. [11/13/03 NY Times]
Although the agreement appeared to have the support of
most of the commissioners, it was denounced by two: Timothy J. Roemer and Max
Cleland. Mr. Roemer said in an interview that the White House was continuing to
place unacceptable limits on access to the Daily Presidential Briefings.
"I am not happy with this agreement, and I will not support it."
Cleland’s response was much more scathing: "This is a scam, it's disgusting.
America is being cheated." [11/13/03 CNN with Wolf Blitzer: 9/11] In an
interview with Eric Boehlert of Salon, Cleland noted “The president’s …
decision compromised the mission of the 9/11 commission, pure and simple.”
"It is a national scandal." [11/21/03 salon.com]
Immediately after his
comments on CNN and Salon, Cleland, was “approved” by Mr. Bush to serve on the
board of the Export-Import Bank. Because statutes governing the panel bar
anyone who holds a federal job, he had to leave the commission. [Washington
Times] The Commission subsequently announced on December 9 that Bob Kerrey,
former Nebraska Senator and current President of the New School University of
Manhattan NY would replace Cleland. Kerrey has already made it known the
commission should not be a vehicle to bash President Bush. The commission will
have to do its work “respectfully - but forcefully,” he said, so as “not to
embarrass the president." (NY Villager, 12/17/03.) This stance qualifies
Mr. Kerrey as a Bush insider, and again compromises the efforts of the
commission to carry on an independent investigation.
On Nov. 20, 2003, Commission Deputy Communications
Director Al Felzenberg announced that the Commission had selected four
representatives to "examine” the Presidential Daily Briefs: Chairman Kean,
Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, and Staff Executive
Director Philip Zelikow. Only notes are permitted, and only Kean, Hamilton,
Gorelick, and Zelikow may view their own notes—and only at the White House. Only
Gorelick and Zelikow will have direct access. The other seven commission
members will only be able to read a "summary” subject to White House
review. The 9/11 Family Steering Committee responded in writing: "This
Agreement is replete with varying levels of 'editing' by the White House. It
shows a lack of cooperation by the White House in facilitating this
Commission's investigation.”
The 9/11 Commission website
[http://www.9-11commission.gov] reveals that Jamie Gorelick has close ties with
both the CIA and the administration. Zelikow was a member of the transition
team from the Clinton to Bush administrations. This transition involved
downgrading the importance and visibility of the Counter-Terrorism Security
Group. Although he recused himself from involvement in the investigation of the
transition, it was revealed on January 15, 2004 that both Zelikow and Gorelick
were both still so closely involved in the events under investigation that they
have been interviewed as part of the inquiry. "Did he interview himself
about his own role in the failures that left us defenseless?" asked Lori
Van Auken, the widow of Kenneth. "This is bizarre." [1/15/04 UPI]
Further, Zelikow retains close professional and informal ties to members of the
Administration, including Condi Rice and Carl Rove. As Executive Director, he
retains the power to hire all Commission staff and coordinate the flow of
Kean's investigation. He also has access to all testimony—past and present, and
manages all upcoming witnesses, document requests and subpoenas. [11/21/03
www.tomflocco.com] Victim families complained of Zelikow’s conflicts of
interest in an Oct. 3 letter to the Commission, but were rebuffed. [10/14/03
Washington Post] Was it only coincidence that he and Gorelick were the only commission
members granted access to all PDBs?
In a striking new development, Chairman Kean disclosed
on December 17 that the attacks could and should have been prevented, and is
now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame. "There
are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position
they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed." Kean
also promised major revelations in public testimony beginning in January from
top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, National Security Agency and
possibly President Bush and former President Clinton. [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/17/eveningnews/main589137.shtml]
Only after almost 11 of
its 18 month lifespan, the commission voted unanimously in October 2003 to
issue its first subpoena to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has
withheld dozens of boxes of Sept. 11 documents. [10/26/03 NYT] After encountering
''serious delays'' in obtaining certain information from the Defense
Department, it voted to subpoena the Pentagon for documents, tapes and
transcripts involving the actions of the North American Aerospace Defense
Command, or NORAD. Commission members also say they want access to information
about communications between NORAD and Air Force One, on which President Bush
was traveling on Sept. 11. [11/08/03 NYT]
The commission also
announced on Nov. 20 that it had issued a third subpoena to New York City for a
variety of police tapes and other material related to the attacks. The panel
said the city's refusal to hand over the material had "significantly
impeded the commission's investigation [NYT 11/21/03]. After initially
refusing, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s office abruptly reversed its position,
under the condition that on site review and note-taking be permitted, but only
edited versions would be released..