9/11 victim's families suspicious of report

Here's some darn good reasons why:

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President
Kennedy, also known as the Warren Commission after Supreme Court
Chief Justice Earl Warren, was conducted primarily behind closed
doors, blamed the murder on a lone assassin, failed to identify
those actually responsible, and issued a report that is rejected
by 80% of the American people.

The investigation into the deaths of 9 astronauts on the space
Shuttle Challenger was funded at a level of $55 million dollars
and lasted for a longer period that the 9/11 Commission study
into over 3,000 deaths.

But more Importantly:

Since its inception in the late 1940's, America's huge intelligence
structure, shrouded in secrecy and classification, has required
that those investigating its operations have been part of that
network or meet its security vetting criteria. This contradiction,
more than issues of partisanship, had the potential to both blind
the Commission in its premises and prevent a thorough investigation.

Commissioner and former Senator Max Cleland made many statements
about his belief that White House obstructions and the Commission
process would fail to find the truth about the events of September
11th. He left predicting a flawed report and a cover-up.

And even MORE importantly, Bios of members:

key members appointed to the Commission and the staff they appointed had severe conflicts of interest in relation to the investigation. Commissioner Jamie Gorelick and executive director Philip Zelikow had to recuse themselves to appear as witnesses before the Commission regarding their earlier roles in the events leading up to September 11th. Governor Kean, responding to demands from the families and the public
that Zelikow resign due to conflicts, stated that 'We are aware
of these conflicts and Mr. Zelikow has recused himself at points
during our investigation, as all of us will have to recuse ourselves
at some point,' thereby conceding that every member of the Commission was sufficiently conflicted to require recusals (Statement to press and families at Second Interim Report).

Family members also complained that many members had ties to
the airline industry. Many had ties to the national security state. Some of the staff appointed to investigate intelligence agencies came out of those agencies themselves.

This is a review of some of the most troubling potential conflicts of interest among the Commission members and staff:
Chairman Thomas Kean
Served on the board of Delta Hess, a merger of Delta Oil and
Amerada Hess, Serves on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy, which has served as a cover to the Central Intelligence Agency's covert operations abroad.
Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, was quite candid when he said in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED…From 1994 to 1996, NED awarded 15 grants, totaling more than $2,500,000, to the American Institute for Free Labor Development, an organization used by the CIA for decades to subvert progressive labor unions...NED successfully manipulated elections in Nicaragua in 1990 and Mongolia in 1996 and helped to overthrow democratically elected governments in Bulgaria in 1990 and Albania in 1991 and 1992. In Haiti in the late l990s, NED was busy working on behalf of right wing groups who were united in their opposition to former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his progressive ideology. NED has
made its weight felt in the electoral-political process in numerous other countries… The Endowment played an important role in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, funding key components of Oliver North's shadowy "Project Democracy" network, which privatized US foreign policy, waged war, and ran arms and drugs. (Excerpted from Rogue State, 'Trojan Horse: The NED', William Blum, Common Courage Press, 2000).
Not mentioned on Kean's official Commission biography was his
role as director of Amerada Hess Corporation, which in 1998 formed
joint venture Delta-Hess, with Delta Oil, in part owned by Khalid
bin Mahfouz. Mahfouz inherited a controlling interest in the
National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, the country's largest
bank, and was a director with 20% interest in BCCI, the now defunct
financial conglomerate involved in money laundering, bribery, support of terrorism, arms trafficking and other crimes. Mahfouz paid $225 million to escape prosecution for his role in the BCCI scandal. Mahfouz also inherited the assets of the Saudi bin Laden group when Salem bin Laden died in a 1988 plane crash. These included an interest in Arbusto Energy, a Houston, Texas oil company founded by George W. Bush. Bin Mahfouz's interests were managed in part by James R. Bath, a close friend of Bush, who served in the Texas ANG with him. Bath's name was inexplicably redacted in Bush's Air National Guard military medical reports.
One critical conflict arises in the 1998 Senate testimony of then CIA director R. James Woolsey, Jr., who testified that Mahfouz's younger sister married Osama bin Laden. Thus, the prime suspect
in the 9-11 murders is the brother-in-law of Kean's business partner. (Senate Judiciary Committee - FNS - Sept. 3, 1998)

Interesting huh? But wait, there's more...

Lee H. Hamilton
had no problem getting a security clearance for his work on the Commission, having served on the House Intelligence Committee, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has a track record in leading investigations that have limited the scope of the inquiry and failed to hold accountable key government officials who broke the law. For example, he chaired the Congressional panel that looked into the Iran-Contra scandal, and then-Senator Dick Cheney was Vice Chair. Hamilton explained to PBS Frontline that he didn't think a full and open investigation into Contragate would be 'good for the country.'

Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste
Works at the international law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw,
is a former New York prosecutor and was chief of the Watergate
Task Force of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office (1973-75).
Watergate was another massive scandal that was never fully investigated
or revealed. He was also chief counsel of the Senate Whitewater
Committee, and served as attorney for CIA-linked and drug smuggler
and pilot Barry Seal. (The Washington Monthly - 06/09/97).

Commissioner Jamie Gorelick
Serves on the President's Review of Intelligence and the CIA's National Security Advisory Panel. Also served as counsel for the Department of Defense. Jamie S. Gorelick works with the law firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, and is a former Justice Department lawyer. She also works for United Technologies Corporation, a major defense contractor. She sits on the Council on Foreign Relations, and the board of Schlumberger Ltd., a company with a history related to the Bay of Pigs covert operations against Cuba. Her role in support of the division between intelligence and law enforcement, referred to as 'The Wall' that allegedly
prevented effective intelligence sharing in relation to the terrorist
plot, led to yet another unrevealed connection of a Commission
member to the events of 9/11, and she was forced to recuse her
role to testify to her own Commission.

Commissioner James R. Thompson
Works at the law firm Winston & Stawn, which represents General
Electric, Philip Morris and American Airlines. He is a former
Chicago prosecutor. Families noted the potential conflict with
an airline company some were suing for negligence because of
the attacks.

Commissioner Fred F. Fielding
Served as a counsel to several Presidents, including Nixon prior
to his resignation, Reagan and Vice President Bush. He is a member
of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. He was recently named in
a university study as a prime candidate for 'Deep Throat' in the Watergate scandal.

Executive Director, Phillip Zelikow
Besides having served in the Navy and on the National Security
Council, Zelikow is also a member of the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board and was executive director of the
Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information
Age. (See: http://www.markle.org/markle_programs/index.php and
www.9-11commission.gov biographies). Zelikow is also the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, which drew up plans to limit free press access at White House briefings out of 'respect for the President.' The Miller Center has established a reputation for
being a repository for Presidential history. Zelikow, and his fellow 9-11 Commission staff consultant, Ernest May, are the co-editors of 'The Kennedy Tapes,' based on their own transcriptions of Oval Office audio tapes from the Kennedy administration. Former JFK Presidential Librarian Sheldon Stern compared the transcripts to the original recordings at the library and questioned the Miller Center's translations, which are supposed to be verbatim and not open to interpretation. Stern said no student or scholar could rely on Zelikow's work. ('What JKF Really Said', Atlantic Monthly, May 2000 - http://theatlantic.com/issues/2000/05/stern.htm
and a March 15, 2004 follow-up http://hnn.us/articles/3934.html).

Only Zelikow and Commissioner Gorelick were permitted to read
the full Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs), and summarize them
for the other Commissioners. When asked why we should trust Zelikow's
summary of the PDBs when we know he botched the JFK Oval Office
transcripts, Commissioner Gorelick said that the Chairman and
Vice Chair would also read the PDBs, so they weren't depending
upon Zelikow's version alone.
In addition, the President and Vice President's testimony before
the commission was not recorded or transcribed, with only notes,
allowed to be taken by Zelikow.
What really disturbed the Family Steering Commission were the
revelations of his role on the Bush-Chaney Transition Team, to
establish their National Security Council, which was not mentioned
in his Commission biography. He sat in on warnings about imminent
terrorist attacks from Clinton's National Security Director Sandy Berger as well as the incoming White House advisor on terrorism, Richard Clark in the months before 9/11, which went seemingly unheeded by Rice and the President. These contacts forced him to become a witness before the 9/11 Commission inquiry.
Zelikow's association with the President's National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, with whom he wrote a book ('Germany Unified and Europe Transformed.') was an additional concern. But public calls for his resignation because of these blatant conflicts of interest went unheeded.

Senior Counsel, Dietrich SnellThis underscores the paradox that only those already inside the system are qualified to investigate it.
http://www.911citizenswatch.org

Who among us read of this in our newspapers, or heard much about it on TV? How independant could that panel actually be?