Part 1 & 2 below.

Could there have been a worse and more conflicted individual to run the 9/11 Commission than Philip Zelikow? OK, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, and a handful of their neocon friends “may” have been slightly worse, but Zelikow definitely makes the short list being a close associate and confidant of the one person most responsible for keeping America safe on 9/11, the President’s National Security Advisor, Ms. Condoleeza Rice. Shenon provides many instances of Zelikow’s bias and manipulation of the Commission in order to spin a favorable impression of Rice and the Bush Administration in its many many failures around 9/11, and who would expect anything different given Zelikow’s following history with Rice:

1. Zelikow and Rice worked closely together in the first Bush White House as aides to former National Security Adivsor, Brent Scowcroft. Rice reportedly hired Zelikow and both started in 1989 and left in 1991.

2. A few years after leaving the White House, Zelikow and Rice co-authored a book together which was published in 1995 (Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft).

3. The two associated once again when Zelikow directed the Aspen Strategy Group, a foreign policy strategy body co-chaired by Scowcroft. Rice, along with Cheney and Wolfowitz, were members.

4. After the 2000 election, Zelikow worked on Rice’s NSC transition team and is believed to be responsible for Richard Clarke’s demotion which helped put terrorism on the back burner of the Bush White House (it also appears that Zelikow did not disclose this fact before accepting the 9/11 Commission appointment).

5. Prior to heading the 9/11 Commission, Zelikow was appointed to President Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and is the person responsible for rewriting and completing the Bush Doctrine on Preemptive War (upon Rice’s request).

6. After the 9/11 Commission ended, Rice hired Zelikow as her special counselor at the State Department. If this act of cronyism was not so pathetic, it would actually be kind of funny if we were a third world country.

When there is such a significant conflict of interest, you can almost be assured of poor transparency and a cover-up which is exactly what America got in the white washed Zelikow Commission Report. Zelikow even outlined the entire Commission Report before the investigation began, basically guarantying the omission of any evidence that did not agree with his preconceived idea of what transpired around 9/11. Similar to the Warren Commission searching out only information that backed the lone gunman theory and ignoring all contradicting evidence of a conspiracy, the Zelikow Commission followed the exact same ignorance and accomplished the exact same feat with another set of patsies four decades later. Zelikow knew he was creating the 9/11 public myth when he wrote the significantly erroneous and flawed 9/11 report, and like the authors and researchers who have subsequently proved the Warren Commission wrong, it’s now up to 9/11 researchers to show the sham of the Zelikow Commission Report (note: even the government’s House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979 that the JFK assassination was a “probable conspiracy”).