Talking Points on 9/11 Investigation Story
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5 Minute Guide on 9/11 Investigation Story
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September 11th was not something that had to happen. It was the result of policy failures, misplaced priorities, and a lack of imagination. The Bush administration is not fully cooperating with the 9-11 commission trying to get to the bottom of those failures.
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The chair of the independent commission investigating 9/11 Thomas Kean, a Republican former governor of New Jersey, declared that "[September 11th] was not something that had to happen." The final report will "name individuals still in the government who were culpable" for September 11th, according to chairman Kean. Kean later backtracked on some of his accusations, another recurring phenomenon in the Bush administration.
The most vocal critics of the administration’s hostility to getting to the bottom of the policy failures that led to 9-11 have been those that felt it most, the families and loved ones of the victims. [Salon 6/18/03]
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The administration opposed the independent commission’s creation, they initially appointed Henry Kissinger to lead it, and they have consistently blocked its efforts.
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Families of the victims of September 11th, along with House and Senate Democrats, started pushing for an independent investigation into the causes of September 11th in mid May, 2002. [ABC News 5/17/02; Fox News 5/16/02; Letter to Rep. Sensenbrenner 5/17/02] Their push for a hearing increased after the surfacing of the "phoenix memo," an intelligence briefing from Arizona with warnings about terrorist pilots "compromising the civil air defense system." [New York Times 5/17/02]
Ari Fleischer, then President Bush’s spokesperson, immediately slurred their push for an investigation as "political." [CNN 5/17/02] Administration officials said that "an independent inquiry would tie up too many officials involved in fighting terrorism and could lead to release of classified information." [AP 5/22/02] House Republican leadership quickly rebuffed the call, saying it could "compromise federal investigations." [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 5/21/02] President Bush claimed that an independent commission would jeopardize the US capacity to gather intelligence. [White House Press 5/23/02]
Tom Delay accused Democrats of being "irresponsible" and making "Osama bin Laden’s job easier." [Delay Press Release 5/24/02]
Flip-flopping under public pressure, the administration forgot its former concerns and announced its change of heart in a letter from a White House aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, determining that a "focused inquiry" into the causes of September 11th would "strengthen our ability to prevent and defend against terrorism."
[CNN 9/20/02] The administration wanted the inquiry to focus on everything except intelligence failures, obviously the topic most in need of investigation. [CBS News 9/24/02] Soon after the administration announced its change in position, the Senate authorized a commission with strong bipartisan support. [Washington Post 9/25/02]
Lead by Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration promptly began to undermine the Congressionally designed commission. First, the White House wanted sole authority to appoint the commission’s chairman, rather than its co-chair, as under the congressional agreement. [Washington Post 10/11/02] Second, Cheney worked to reduce its subpoena power, increasing the number of commission members necessary to issue a subpoena. [MSNBC 10/21/02]
Those two points of contention were resolved in the administration’s favor after Bush threatened to circumvent the commission altogether through executive order. [Washington Post 11/14/02], Bush signed the legislation [9-11 Commission Authorization] authorizing the commission in late November, 2002, urging it to "examine all the evidence and follow all the facts, wherever they lead." [White House Press 11/27/02]
Bush immediately used one of his hard-earned powers to nominate Henry Kissinger chairman. [CNN 11/27/02; PBS 11/27/02] Kissinger’s nomination produced a firestorm of criticism from the right, the left, the center, and the bizarre. Criticism quickly coalesced around John Kerry’s argument that Kissinger had conflicts of interest between his position as a consultant for foreign countries and his role as an impartial investigator. [Washington Post 12/1/02] Kissinger refused to reveal his list of clients, and eventually turned down Bush’s offer of the chairmanship. [Washington Post 12/13/02; Kissinger’s Decline Letter]
Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, was quickly nominated to replace Kissinger. [White House Press 12/16/02] Kean was known for his bipartisanship, but had not spent much time in Washington and was not familiar with many of the substantive areas the commission would need to investigate. [Washington Post 12/13/02]
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The administration opposed the 9-11 commission’s funding. They denied the commission access to the essential briefings and documents. They opposed giving the commission access to the president and his senior cabinet members, initially at all, now for longer than an hour. They refused to allow interviews of administration officials without Department of Justice "minders" present. They opposed extending the deadline for the completion of the investigation.
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Funding
The administration provided only $3 million in "startup" funding for the commission. [Fox News 1/27/03] It was clear from the outset that at least $14 million would be necessary for the investigation. It refused to include necessary funding ($11 million) for the 9-11 commission in its $76 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq, [Time 3/26/03] before eventually providing $9 million. The New York Times asked if the administration was "resorting to budgetary starvation as a tactic to hobble any politically fearless inquiry." [International Herald Tribune 4/1/03]
Information Denial
The commission basically had one purpose: to collect and filter information from government agencies that had responsibilities related to anti-terrorism, and locate where the process broke down. The administration’s refusal to give the commission access to the information it needs directly undermines that purpose. Much of the initial stonewalling is detailed in the commission’s July interim report. [9-11 Commission Interim Report 7/8/03]
The very foundation of the independent commission was the product of a Joint Congressional Inquiry into September 11th. [Kansas City Star] Tim Roemer, a Democratic commission member and retired Congressman from Indiana, sat on the Joint Inquiry that produced the report. In April 2003 he wanted to review his report to refresh his memory on some of its findings, but was denied access to it by the administration, which wanted "to determine if the president wants to invoke executive privilege to keep the material out of the panel’s hands." [MSNBC 4/30/03] Republican Senator John McCain said that this excessive secrecy "reduces the public’s confidence in government," [Dallas Morning News 5/23/03] and in testimony before the commission, said: "I was disheartened that members of your commission were until recently denied access to the report of the joint Congressional investigation into the September 11th terrorist attacks. Using the Congressional committee's report as the baseline for your work, as Administration officials proposed and which we agreed to include in the commission's enacting legislation, would theoretically have allowed the commission to hit the ground running. Instead, you've been stuck in the quicksand of negotiating access to a document you should have been entitled to examine on a priority basis at the beginning of your tenure.
I find it particularly troubling that Commission member and former Congressman Tim Roemer, who helped write the Congressional report as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, was until this month denied access to his committee's own product. While I don't want to believe such a basic lack of cooperation was intentional, it nonetheless creates the appearance of bureaucratic stonewalling." [9-11 Commission Hearing]
Republican Senator Richard Shelby said that the report should be "declassified except for portions that might compromise an ongoing investigation. [Miami Herald 5/5/03]
The commission had to resort to its administration-limited subpoena powers early in the process just to get information on the logistics of the attacks. It had to subpoena flight information from the Federal Aviation Administration to end its stonewalling. [9-11 Commission Press Release 10/15/03] [CBS News 10/25/03] [MSNBC 10/15/03] It had to subpoena NORAD information from the Pentagon to end its stonewalling. [9-11 Commission Press Release 11/7/03] [Miami Herald 11/8/03] [Washington Post 11/7/03]
Much of the most important intelligence information was located in the President’s daily intelligence briefings, known as PDBs. The independent commission investigating September 11th had to threaten a subpoena of the White House before it would allow even partial access to the PDB. [AP 10/27/03] [CBS News 12/17/03] [SF Chronicle 11/13/03] [Washington Post 11/12/03] [Boston Globe 10/27/03] This, despite the fact that the administration had already shown the documents to the reporter Bob Woodward, who was writing a sympathetic portrayal of the administration. [MSNBC 2/18/04] After granting limited access to the briefings, and after being publicly praised by the commission for its "unprecedented access," [9-11 Commission 11/15/03] the administration confiscated and withheld the commission members’ own notes on the PDBs, necessitating yet another subpoena threat from the commission. [Washington Post 1/30/04; Findlaw.com 2/8/04] Eventually the White House released to the full committee redacted versions of the notes taken by four commission members, which three commission members voted not to accept. [NJ Ledger; 9-11 Commission 2/10/04]
Testimony by Senior Administration Officials
Former President Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore have agreed to be interviewed by the full commission for an unlimited time, in public. [Fox News 3/2/04; Salon 3/2/04] President Bush is still nominally insisting that only two members of the commission interview him and for only an hour, [White House Press Briefing 2/27/04] though he appears to be wavering on the one-hour limitation. [New York Times 3/9/04] Coincidentally, Sen. John Kerry noted Bush’s misplaced priorities just the day before spokesman Scott McClellan announced the President’s flip-flop. [CBS News 2/27/04; New York Times 3/10/04]
The commission was able to interview National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, but only in private and without the benefit of prior access to Presidential Daily Briefings. Administration officials continue to refuse to testify in public. [9-11 Commission Press 2/25/04; Boston Globe 2/8/04] At the urging of families of September 11th victims, the panel is considering subpoenaing Rice to force her to testify in public. [Salon 2/25/04; MSNBC 3/2/04]
Minders
The administration has insisted on having agency "minders" at every commission interview of an administration official, a practice the commission thinks is an attempt at intimidation. [9-11 Commission Press 7/8/03; UK Guardian 7/10/03] New York Senator Chuck Schumer called for an investigation of the practice by the inspectors general at the Pentagon and the Department of Justice. [Schumer Press Release]
Time Extension
It has been clear since July 2003 that the commission would need more time than the statutorily designated deadline of May 27, 2004 to prepare its report if the Bush administration didn’t end its stonewalling. [9-11 Commission Press 7/8/03] [9-11 Commission 9/23/03] The administration ramped up political pressure to prematurely end the 9-11 commission just as the commission began revealing information that could be politically damaging to the White House. [Philadelphia Inquirer 1/29/04] In late January 2004, the administration still adamantly opposed an extension for the investigation. [Washington Post 1/18/04; Salon 1/24/04] The administration claimed to change its mind in early February, [9-11 Commission 2/4/04] but Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert continued to fight against extending the deadline. It wasn’t until the end of February that Hastert disingenuously acceded to pressure from the Senate to extend the deadline, [9-11 Commission Press 2/27/04] claiming that his objection was based on taking legislative action on the report’s findings sooner rather than later. [Washington Post 2/27/04; CNN 2/27/04] He is still objecting to granting the commission "wind-down" time after it releases its report.
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Despite their unparalleled hostility to an exceptional investigation into the extraordinary September 11th, the Bush administration misleadingly claims to have given "unprecedented cooperation."
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The administration wants to maintain the ability to use September 11th for partisan political purposes, like Bush’s disgraceful television advertisements. A thorough examination of the intelligence and policy failures that led to the tragedy will reduce his ability to politicize it.
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The administration’s use of September 11th imagery simply emphasizes their betrayal of their promises from that period. [Boston Globe 3/6/04] An impartial inquiry into September 11th will eliminate the only electoral leg they have to stand on. [Salon 3/2/04]
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