Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld Had Lunch With 9/11 Commissioners Before Completion of Report
In a speech titled "Paul Nitze's Legacy: For a New World", delivered on April 15, 2004 before the Aspen Institute, Paul Wolfowitz revealed that he and Donald Rumsfeld had lunch with members of the 9/11 Commission before the report was complete:
"When Don Rumsfeld and I had lunch with members of the 9/11 commission recently, one member asked what could they do to ensure that their report would make a real difference, that it would be read five or 10 years from now, instead of just filed away on a dusty shelf. I realize now that I gave them a pretty tall order. What I told them, basically, was to write something similar to George Kennan's long telegram or Paul Nitze's NSC-68. I told them that, rarely to my knowledge, has anyone other than historians with a specific interest in the subject, gone back to read the report of the Pearl Harbor Commission. NSC-68, on the other hand, is still studied in colleges and universities, including colleges for strategists like the war colleges of our military services or our National Defense University."
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This bit says it all: "What
This bit says it all:
"What I told them, basically, was to write something similar to George Kennan's long telegram or Paul Nitze's NSC-68. I told them that, rarely to my knowledge, has anyone other than historians with a specific interest in the subject, gone back to read the report of the Pearl Harbor Commission"
"It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it."
"It's a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."
"The ideas dictate everything, you have to