Comment: 9/11 Commissioners Kean and Hamilton NYT January 2, 2008 Op-Ed Article: "Stonewalled by the C.I.A."

by Elizabeth Woodworth, January 11, 2008.

On January 2, 2008, the New York Times carried an op-ed article entitled "Stonewalled by the C.I.A." by 9/11 Commission Chair Thomas Kean and Vice Chair Lee Hamilton (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html).

It is difficult to understand why there has been so little follow-up to Kean and Hamilton’s emphatic charges that the CIA wilfully obstructed their investigation.

The tapes in question were destroyed in 2005, long after the Commission had collected its evidence in 2003 and early 2004.

This revelation constitutes a new and highly visible public schism between the Chairs of the 9/11 Commission and the CIA, the only agency they thanked twice in the Preface to their official Report.

Commissioners Kean and Hamilton wrote: "There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations." They concluded: "As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.’s failure to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one [of] the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction."

In their 2006 book, "Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission," Kean and Hamilton went further, reporting that their greatest difficulty lay in "obtaining access to star witnesses in custody....who were the only possible source for inside information about the plot." They were "receiving information thirdhand" through a CIA "project manager" who asked the questions, and the Commission "never even got to meet with the people conducting the interrogations." "We had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information. How could we tell if someone such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was telling us the truth?" (pp. 118-24).

According to constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald, author of "How Would a Patriot Act?" (2006): "It's hard to imagine a more serious scandal than this....It is a confirmed fact that Alberto Gonzales and David Addington -- the top legal representatives of George Bush and Dick Cheney, respectively -- participated in discussions as to whether those videotapes should be destroyed. The White House refuses to disclose what these top officials said in those meetings. Did they instruct that the videos should be destroyed, or fail to oppose their destruction? The NYT previously quoted one ‘senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter [who] said there had been "vigorous sentiment" among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes.’" (Ref: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.peace/browse_thread/thread/17d7c5ebcc9e380a)

Regarding interrogation methods, Kean and Hamilton wrote: "The commission did not have a mandate to investigate how detainees were treated; our role was to investigate the history and evolution of Al Qaeda and the 9/11 plot." As they rightfully point out, these are two entirely separate issues.

The bottom line is that first the Commission was limited to investigating the above presupposition, and then it was denied access to the very sources that it had been charged to investigate. The whole inquiry now appears to have been a circular, self-defeating, window-dressing exercise.

It is clear that both the CIA and the White House have foiled a full investigation into an event that has, in our resulting ignorance, profoundly damaged American civil liberties and deeply fragmented the world. We have all been stonewalled.

The need for a new and thoroughly independent inquiry should now be abundantly clear. This time the scope of the inquiry should be expanded to include not only al-Qaeda, which was immediately named and then studied to the exclusion of all else, but all public offices that have obstructed our knowledge of what happened on that horrendous world-changing day.

Elizabeth Woodworth

Writer/Professional Librarian