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October 26, 2003
9/11 commission starting to bare it's teeth
In late 2002, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States - also known as the "9/11 Commission" was established to look into the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. In most cases where there's been an attack or disaster (such as the the attack on Pearl Harbor or the shuttle explosions), commissions quickly established after the events to determine what went wrong and what was needed to prevent it from happening again, but not so with 9/11. It took over a year for the 9/11 Commission to be authorized and even then it was given only 18 months in which to do all of its work.
Of course, first the commissioners had to be chosen. Initially, Henry Kissinger was picked to lead the panel, but when he learned that Senate ethics rules would require him to disclose his client list, he resigned. Eventually, Thomas Kean, a former Governor of New Jersey was appointed to head the commission, and he seems determined to do a thorough job.
After spending several months trying to get a variety of documents from different government agencies as well as from the White House, Kean has started using the "s" word - subpoena.
"Any document that has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach," Mr. Kean said on Friday in his first explicit public warning to the White House that it risked a subpoena and a politically damaging courtroom showdown with the commission over access to the documents, including Oval Office intelligence reports that reached President Bush's desk in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.In the continuing "perception gap" that seems to exist within the White House, Ashley Snee, a White House spokeswoman, said that the White House "believed" it was cooperating fully with the commission. Apparently some of the documents that are in dispute are considered very sensitive and are highly classified, but Kean feels strongly that the commission should have access to them nevertheless."I will not stand for it," Mr. Kean said in the interview in his offices here at Drew University, where he has been president since 1990.
"That means that we will use every tool at our command to get hold of every document."
"These are documents that only two or three people would normally have access to," he said. "To make those available to an outside group is something that no other president has done in our history.Kean does note that, for the most part, the White House has been very cooperative, but that they are committed to getting every document they need for the investigation."But I've argued very strongly with the White House that we are unique, that we are not the Congress, that these arguments about presidential privilege do not apply in the case of our commission," he said.
"Anything that has to do with 9/11, we have to see it — anything. There are a lot of theories about 9/11, and as long as there is any document out there that bears on any of those theories, we're going to leave questions unanswered. And we cannot leave questions unanswered."
There are concerns, however, that the time limit on the commission - the term expires in May 2004 - may run out before the commission can finish all of their work. One commission member, Max Cleland, has said that he believes the White House is intentionally delaying in handing over documents, in order to prevent the commission from finishing the job.
"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here," he said in an interview in Washington. "It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents — it's disgusting."It should be noted that Cleland recently lost his Senate seat in what was considered a very dirty campaign, and thus may hold a grudge against the Republican part in general, but given how hard the White House fought to prevent the commission from being established in the first place, and the lengths they've previously gone to in order to prevent any serious investigation into the attacks at all, Cleland's concern is certainly within the realm of probability.He said that the White House and President Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted."
If the time constraints do become an issue, the commission could ask for an extension, but the same forces that delayed the start of the commission for so long may also work to prevent an extension, though not all view it as hopeless.
"If the families of the victims weighed in — and heavily, as they did before — then we'd have a chance of succeeding," said Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was an important sponsor of the legislation creating the commission. He said that, given the "obfuscation" of the administration in meeting document requests, he was ready to pursue an extension "if the commission feels it can't get its work done."I find the White House's stonewalling on the commission deplorable. We, the citizens, have a right to know why the attacks happened and why our government and law enforcement agencies were unable to prevent it. I'm glad to see the commission making it known that they intend to get every document they think they need and that they will use the powers granted to them to demand that the documents be turned over. I only hope that if the clock does run out, Congress will do the right thing and allow them an extension, even if it threatens to interfere with President Bush's re-election plans.
Posted by thorswitch at October 26, 2003 02:17 PM
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