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Wed 2 Aug, 2006 09:30 am
9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon
Allegations Brought to Inspectors General
By Dan Eggen
The Washington Post
Wednesday 02 August 2006
Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.
In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.
"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth.... It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."
Although the commission's landmark report made it clear that the Defense Department's early versions of events on the day of the attacks were inaccurate, the revelation that it considered criminal referrals reveals how skeptically those reports were viewed by the panel and provides a glimpse of the tension between it and the Bush administration.
A Pentagon spokesman said yesterday that the inspector general's office will soon release a report addressing whether testimony delivered to the commission was "knowingly false." A separate report, delivered secretly to Congress in May 2005, blamed inaccuracies in part on problems with the way the Defense Department kept its records, according to a summary released yesterday.
A spokesman for the Transportation Department's inspector general's office said its investigation is complete and that a final report is being drafted. Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said she could not comment on the inspector general's inquiry.
In an article scheduled to be on newsstands today, Vanity Fair magazine reports aspects of the commission debate - though it does not mention the possible criminal referrals - and publishes lengthy excerpts from military audiotapes recorded on Sept. 11. ABC News aired excerpts last night.
For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington.
In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD's Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft - American Airlines Flight 11 - long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.
Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold and Col. Alan Scott told the commission that NORAD had begun tracking United 93 at 9:16 a.m., but the commission determined that the airliner was not hijacked until 12 minutes later. The military was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.
These and other discrepancies did not become clear until the commission, forced to use subpoenas, obtained audiotapes from the FAA and NORAD, officials said. The agencies' reluctance to release the tapes - along with e-mails, erroneous public statements and other evidence - led some of the panel's staff members and commissioners to believe that authorities sought to mislead the commission and the public about what happened on Sept. 11.
"I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described," John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who led the staff inquiry into events on Sept. 11, said in a recent interview. "The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years ... This is not spin. This is not true."
Arnold, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, told the commission in 2004 that he did not have all the information unearthed by the panel when he testified earlier. Other military officials also denied any intent to mislead the panel.
John F. Lehman, a Republican commission member and former Navy secretary, said in a recent interview that he believed the panel may have been lied to but that he did not believe the evidence was sufficient to support a criminal referral.
"My view of that was that whether it was willful or just the fog of stupid bureaucracy, I don't know," Lehman said. "But in the order of magnitude of things, going after bureaucrats because they misled the commission didn't seem to make sense to me."
This is potentially the tip of the iceberg in regards to the 9-11 cover-up. At every turn, information has been withheld by our very own government. Bush and Cheney testify in secret, not under oath, together and with no formal record. Why? Maybe it's because of the unbelievable incompetence of the Bush administration. Incompetence exemplified by this:
Where was all the forensic evidence regarding the WTC? Why is there not a single image of what hit the Pentagon, a facility with radar tracking for incoming threats and counter measures for ANY potential attacks? Where are the videos captured by nearby gas stations security cameras? Why has the public not seen ANY of this?
There is SO much that has been kept from the American people. SO much. I'm afraid that the bombshell that could follow any major revelation would be devestating for the American people.
Chris Matthews, one of the surpreme idiots on MSNBC, said this:
Quote:In a discussion with Mark Green, Democratic candidate for New York attorney general, and KT McFarland, a Republican running for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) Senate seat, about President Bush's efforts to protect New York City from terrorism on the July 31 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews claimed that "[w]e know" President Bill Clinton "didn't stop" the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the World Trade Center.
WTF is that supposed to mean? Did he forget that it was Bush who was president when we were attacked? Did he forget that it was Bush who received the memo regarding bin Laden wanting to attack us with planes?
Incompetence, thy name is the Bush regime, and 3,000 + Americans needlessly died because of them.
The fact that they went ahead and published their report, then wrote a book about the discrepencies that they didn't include in the original report make them complicite, IMO.
The Commission was to determine and report to the American People what happend. They failed. I wouldn't give them a dime for their new book that tells the truth which should have been told BEFORE the 2004 election. As far as I'm concerned, the Commission has blood on its hands, too.
Panel Backed Off Grilling Giuliani Due to Editorials
New Book on 9/11 Probe Says Panel Backed Off Grilling Giuliani Due to Editorials
E & P
August 04, 2006
The Sept. 11 commission was so frustrated with repeated misstatements by the Pentagon and FAA about their response to the 2001 terror attacks that it considered an investigation into possible deception, the panel's chairmen say in a new book.
Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton also say in "Without Precedent" that their panel was too soft in questioning former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani due t9 newspaper editorials ?- and that the 20-month investigation may have suffered for it.
The book, a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation, recounts obstacles the authors say were thrown up by the Bush administration, internal disputes over President Bush's use of the attacks as a reason for invading Iraq, and the way the final report avoided questioning whether U.S. policy in the Middle East may have contributed to the attacks.
Kean and Hamilton said the commission found it mind-boggling that authorities had asserted during hearings that their air defenses had reacted quickly and were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93, which appeared headed toward Washington.
In fact, the commission determined ?- after it subpoenaed audiotapes and e-mails of the sequence of events ?- that the shootdown order did not reach North American Aerospace Command pilots until after all of the hijacked planes had crashed.
The book states that commission staff, "exceedingly frustrated" by what they thought could be deception, proposed a full review into why the FAA and the Pentagon's NORAD had presented inaccurate information. That ultimately could have led to sanctions.
Due to a lack of time, the panel ultimately referred the matter to the inspectors general at the Pentagon and Transportation Department. Both are preparing reports, spokesmen said this week.
"Fog of war could explain why some people were confused on the day of 9/11, but it could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue," the book states.
The questioning of Giuliani was considered by Kean and Hamilton "a low point" in the commission's examination of witnesses during public hearings. "We did not ask tough questions, nor did we get all of the information we needed to put on the public record," they wrote.
Commission members backed off, Kean and Hamilton said, after drawing criticism in newspaper editorials for sharp questioning of New York fire and police officials at earlier hearings. The editorials said the commission was insensitive to the officials' bravery on the day of the attacks.
"It proved difficult, if not impossible, to raise hard questions about 9/11 in New York without it being perceived as criticism of the individual police and firefighters or of Mayor Giuliani," Kean and Hamilton said.
Congress established the commission in 2002 to investigate government missteps leading to the Sept. 11 attacks. Its 567-page unanimous report, which was released in July 2004 and became a national best seller, does not blame Bush or former President Clinton but does say they failed to make anti-terrorism a high priority before the attacks.
The panel of five Republicans and five Democrats also concluded that the Sept. 11 attacks would not be the nation's last, noting that al-Qaida had tried for at least 10 years to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
In their book, which goes on sale Aug. 15, Kean and Hamilton recap obstacles they say the panel faced in putting out a credible report in a presidential election year, including fights for access to government documents and an effort to reach unanimity.
Among the issues:
Iraq. The commission threatened to splinter over the question of investigating the administration's use of 9/11 as a reason for going to war. The strongest proponent was original member Max Cleland, a Democratic former senator who later stepped down for separate reasons.
If Cleland had not resigned, the commission probably would not have reached unanimity, according to the book. Ultimately, commissioners decided to touch briefly on the Iraq war by concluding there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida; the administration had asserted there were substantial contacts between the two.
Israel. The commission disagreed as to how to characterize al-Qaida's motives for attacking the U.S., with Hamilton arguing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the presence of U.S. forces in the Middle East were major contributors.
Unidentified members believed that "listing U.S. support for Israel as a root cause of al-Qaida's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy," which those commission members did not want.
Ultimately, the panel made a brief statement noting that U.S. policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq are "dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world."
Access to detainees. The panel pushed for direct access to detainees, at one point proposing to be at least physically present or to listen by telephone during interrogations so they could gauge credibility and get unvarnished accounts.
The administration resisted, citing concerns about national security. Officials also said they feared setting a precedent of access by a nongovernment entity that could undermine the administration's position that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees classified as "enemy combatants."
The commission agreed to submit questions and receive written responses. Later, allegations emerged of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay that probably played a factor in the government's resistance, the book states.
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