The Commission
by Harry Reynolds
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In the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, 2,750 persons were murdered and, of these, only 292 whole bodies were found. A fierce inquiry into the cause of the horrific slaughter was expected, but the dead had died eight months into the presidency of George W Bush. Where widows saw lost husbands, Karl Rove saw the loss of Bush's presidency. When the widows and others clamored for an inquiry, Bush, Vice-President Richard Cheney, and Speaker Dennis Hastert, strongly fought to block it, but their supporters in Congress, whose political necks were on the line, could not risk the opposition of the widows. In November, 2002, Public Law 107-306 established, and poorly funded, the 9/11 Commission, five Republicans and five Democrats, to inquire into the causes of the attacks. In July, 2004, the Commission released its report.
Philip Shenon of The New York Times covered the Commission's work. His Pulitzer worthy book, The Commission, written in crisp, swift-moving prose, is the result. It should be given to high school students in order that they may watch truth struggle with political hypocrisy even on the graves of the 9/11 dead. They might be surprised by what they see.
They will see a report that was based only on facts and opinions unanimously found and held, thus encouraging trades between Commissioners, which actually occurred, and effectively inhibiting dissenting voices. They will see a report that holds no one personally accountable, in short, a lockstep report shaped by politicians and handed down during a presidential pre-election period of intense political partisanship.
They will see a Commission that compromised its duty to state the evidence that 9/11 was caused by America's identification with Israel. Too controversial, said the Commissioners off stage. (Ernst R May [noted historian and Senior Adviser to the Commission] When Government Writes History, A Memoir of the 9/11 Commission, May 23, 2005, The New Republic 33-34.). Surely, in the absence of a supervening cause, it is the duty of any nation to protect the lives of its men, women, and children by refraining from its identification with any nation that will cause terrorist attacks on it. Such an issue was before the Commission. It hardly lay in anyone's mouth to claim that because it would generate controversy the issue should not be laid before the people.
An archery award should be given to Shenon for his descriptions, among others, of the mind-boggling failures of President Bush, the incompetent Condoleezza Rice, the CIA and FBI, to track and keep under surveillance the 9/11 hijackers, some of whom were seeking big craft flying lessons in the United States. With an equal eye for telling details, Shenon describes counter terrorism Richard Clarke's now historic memorandum of September 4, 2001, to Condoleezza Rice that virtually shouted that a 9/11 type attack was actually imminent. One reads with fixed attention the Department of Transportation's ignorance of terrorist warnings, the FAA's ignorance that the State Department had a watch list, the FAA's failure to alert our Aerospace Defense Command that a passenger plane had been commandeered, the outright lying of generals concerning military reaction to the hijacked planes, the CIA's 150-foot butcher sheet scroll listing minutely the CIA's antiterrorist efforts against Al-Qaeda prior to 9/11, the CIA's plans to kill Bin Laden in the 1990's, and the neanderthal computer equipment of the FBI, including its lack of an email system on 9/11. It may be that Shenon's criticism of former FBI Director Louis Freeh for the FBI's incapacity to deal with terrorism may be harsh. Shenon believes that Freeh's best gift to the FBI was his leaving it in June, 2001, else, writes Shenon, had Freeh been the Director on 9/11 the commission might have dismantled it, treating Freeh responsible for the FBI's condition during his tenure in 1993-2001. However, Freeh had a full plate with President Clinton's numerous scandals, to say nothing of the moral revulsion had for Clinton by the intelligence services and the Pentagon. Indeed, Freeh claimed in My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror, that he spent most of his time as Director investigating President Clinton.
For dramatic lying, an award to Cheney might be given for denying that on 9/11 he had unlawfully authorized the shooting down of passenger planes that were disobedient to military orders. Necessity, according to Shenon, tempers faulting Cheney. Therefore, for lying long and on a panoramic scale, the lying medal, with a cluster diamond heart pendant, should go to George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, for his world-class dysfunction in recalling his conversations with Bush and facts such as a written directive to the CIA to kill Bin Laden. High school students might see dimly the equivalence between Tenet's lying and President Bush's award of the Presidential Medal of Merit to Tenet in December, 2004, following Bush's election.
For quick thinking by a patriot, the prize should be extended immediately to Henry Kissinger, first chairman of the commission. He met with the 9/11 widows who, he must have thought, had just come from a soccer game. Instead, they demanded that he make his client list public. When they asked whether he had Saudi clients, or clients named Bin Laden, the frightened Kissinger, Shenon reports, nearly fell to the floor from his couch. Kissinger resigned the next morning, 16 days after his appointment.
Philip Zelikow, the Commission's executive director, dubbed by the staff the White House mole, was the iron handed ruler, and micro watcher of the work of the investigators who despised him. He had been part of Bush's transition team, author of Bush's paper supporting pre-emptive war, co-author of a book with Condoleezza Rice, and, from the Commission, secret communicator with Rice and Rove. He was a walking hotbed of conflicts of interest, a fact that did not stop the Commission's chair and vice-chair from stating publicly that they did not detect in Zelikow any conflict of interest, an opinion that arched the eyebrows of the Commission's staff. When appointed Secretary of State, Rice appointed the grateful Zelikow her counselor, a job that he had always wanted, presumably even as he sat in the Commission's office.
The granting of the Master Criminal award for ingenuity would unquestionably attract high school students to Sandy Berger as a recognizable classmate. Berger had been President Clinton's national security adviser and liaison with the Commission. In October, 2003, Berger, tasked by Clinton, went to the National Archives to examine classified national security papers of the Clinton administration copies or notes of which could not be made and taken from the archives. On a prior visit, he was seen cleverly walking to the men's room with papers rolled around and sticking out of his socks. On his October visit, however, the archivists, having set a trap, caught him. For his life of archival crime, Burger netted a misdemeanor conviction, a three-year loss of security clearance, and a $50,000 fine.
In November, 2004, Bush was re-elected with the help of the Commission's report, for it made the nation mindful of the threat of another 9/11 attack and, in connection with that attack, no fault was found by the Commission in Bush. And so Rove had his presidency and the widows were left with no one who had been held accountable.
