9/11 Commissioners Kean and Hamilton: The CIA Made a Conscious Decision to Impede the Sept. 11 Commission's Inquiry

9/11 family members Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie Van Auken, in a lengthy letter in the New York Times today, point out the need for a real investigation of the events of 9/11. They write:

 "Re '9/11 Panel Study Finds That CIA Withheld Tapes' (frontpage, Dec 22): Our government's official story regarding the attacks of Sept.11, 2001 tells us that 19 Arab hijackers successfully defeated the United States military by hijacking four commercial airliners within two hours on a budget of approximately $400,000. These men, armed only with small knives, boxcutters and Mace, were able to knock down the World Trade Center towers in New York City and strike the Pentagon.

 Because our loved ones were murdered on 9/11, we felt that the details of how the hijackers succeeded should be thoroughly investigated, so we fought for an independent 9/11 Commission. It seemed logical that our government would want to know what happened so as to prevent another attack.

 When the legislation for the 9/11 Commission was passed, it gave the commissioners full subpoena power. Unfortunately, that subpoena power was rarely used.

 You report that "the panel made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda," But while the panel did make"document requests" to the CIA, it did not subpoena the CIA for the documents and tapes.

 A subpoena would have meant that the CIA would have had to answer the commission as to whether the documents and tapes existed, and the agency would have had to explain its reasons for not turning these documents and tapes over to the panel. We would have had a paper trail about the evidence.

 You also report, "In interviews this week, the two chairmen of the commission, Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean, said their reading of the report had convinced them that the agency had made a conscious decision to impede the Sept. 11 commission's inquiry."

 The question is: Are Americans satisfied with this?

 The 9/11 Commission did not fulfill its mandate to thoroughly investigate the 9/11 attacks. A real investigation into the events of Sept 11 that examines all of the evidence has never been done and is still needed."  Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg.

 

They correctly point out that the Commission's legislative mandate gave the Commission subpoena power, but this power was seldom used. Instead, as is being brought out in the investigation of the destroyed CIA interrogation tapes, "document requests" were the preferred method of inquiry by the Commission, a choice which gave the CIA the option to deny or ignore the request, which it did.

 Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission Philip Zelikow issued a memo to Commission Co-Chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton stating in its summary: "The Commission made broad initial requests for intelligence information from interrogation, specifically including Zubaydah and Nashiri. After evaluating the responses, the Commission followed up with repeated requests for very detailed information about the context of these interrogations... ...Further investigation is needed to determine whether these nondisclosures violated federal law." Repeated requests for documents were made, but the documents were never subpoenaed. Mr. Zelikow was in the position to at least call the CIA's hand concerning the nondisclosures through the subpoena power the commission held. He did not. He let the nondisclosures impede the investigation he was supposed to be conducting.

 Philip Zelikow was brought into the Bush Administration by Condeleesa Rice, and is responsible for authoring the administration's policy for pre-emptive war, the policy justification under which Iraq was invaded, and Iran is threatened with attack. The events of 9/11, indirectly linked repeatedly by official government spokespeople and corporate media reports to Iraq and Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, was never thoroughly investigated. There was no need. The policy for war had already been implemented, and the false flag operation necessary to get the American public behind the war was accomplished with stunning success. Plausible deniability that an investigation was being performed was provided by multiple "document requests,"while the truth was deliberately covered up. The revelation of the destruction of the tapes is only now raising questions about the work of the commission former Senator Max Cleland, triple-amputee Vietnam veteran, called "compromised," and "a national scandal."

 My question is also, Are Americans satisfied with this? Are you satisfied with this?

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic." John F. Kennedy

A real investigation into 9/11 might dispel the myth perpetuated by the 9/11 commission report.