In These New Times

By Richard Payne/Guest Columnist Wicked Local
Thu Jul 31, 2008, 09:40 AM EDT

The late Senator Sam Ervin used to bang on about the virtues of honesty and the dearth of honest men in public life. Unfortunately, as Ervin’s Senate Watergate Committee discovered, politics and honesty do not travel well together. It’s not that politicians and public servants do not tell the truth but rather that they, like George Smiley’s errant spy Ricky Tarr, fail to tell the whole truth. That is because they dare not in the interests of professional survival.

Nowhere is that principle illustrated more trenchantly than in a current book by New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, which exposes the sham behind the report of the so-called 9/11 Commission, set up to investigate the facts surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. The Commission established by the Bush Administration in 2002 wrote a report that was published in June, 2004. The report was widely acclaimed at the time as the definitive word on the events surrounding 9/11. But in his brilliant, penetrating analysis Shenon shows that it is nothing of the sort. According to Shenon the report is a product of Washington politics at its very worst, replete with distortions, omissions and shadings of the truth that render it all but worthless as a historical document.

The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11 were by far the worst encroachment on American soil since Pearl Harbor. It demonstrated unequivocally the vulnerability of the American homeland to attack on a huge front of which using commercial airplanes as missiles as in the 9/11 attacks was merely one small facet. It became clear that the entire complex economy was hostage to all kinds of attacks including the nightmare possibility that terrorists might acquire and detonate a nuclear weapon.

But none of this was news to the people in government. To many people the potential for a terrorist outrage on the scale of 9/11 was only too real. When the blow fell it quickly became obvious that government had been negligent. In fact the advance warning of the attacks and the intelligence gathered by various government agencies suggested that the attacks could and should have been headed off. The story behind the 9/11 Commission that Shenon so devastatingly uncovers is the effort by those in power to hide the truth and avoid responsibility at all costs.

The Commission had to be bi-partisan for political reasons thus ensuring in advance that any conclusions or recommendations would have to be drastically watered down in order to be broadly acceptable, and in fact this is what happened. The Bush Administration succeeded in installing an executive director for the Commission, Philip Zelekov, who was a personal friend of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and who therefore could be relied upon to protect the interests of the Administration. One of the most disturbing aspects of the 9/11 tragedy was the almost total incuriousness of people like Rice to the strong possibility of terrorist attacks on which they were being warned daily during the summer of 2001.

When Rice finally agreed after months of refusing to testify under oath before the Commission her approach was one of obstructionism. Her questioners on the Commission were limited to a 10-minute stint. Her answer to an opening question therefore was typically a wordy circumlocution that used up all the questioner’s time and precluded any follow-up. Commissioner Robert Kerrey, a former senator, accused her of filibustering. Nothing of consequence emerged from her testimony.

In the run-up to 9/11 during the summer of 2001 there were numerous clues that something big was about to happen. Strong hints of developing events were picked up but not coordinated and followed up among the various responsible agencies. There was a crescendo of chatter on the Internet and other communications channels pointing in the same direction.

Richard A. Clarke, the counter-terrorism czar in the Clinton Administration who continued in the role under the Bush Administration, led the charge to alert the administration to the developing danger. However, his dire warnings fell on deaf ears. In fact his role in the administration was being steadily diminished. By early 2001 Clarke had had enough. He was working on a book “Against all Enemies” that was widely expected to blow the lid off Bush’s re-election hopes. The book was eventually published shortly before Clarke’s testimony before the Commission and, as expected, was a devastating indictment of the Bush Administration.

The reaction to the people in power had nothing whatsoever to do with getting at the truth. Rather they embarked on character assassination in order to discredit Clarke and devalue his testimony. By this time Clarke was a partner in a consulting firm. He proposed to his partners severing his relationship with them on the understanding that they would otherwise never again be able to get a government contract. Clarke was about to be black-balled for telling the truth.

Similar treatment was handed out to Commissioners and staff on the Democratic side of the Commission. When attorney General John Ashcroft was being briefed on the developing storm he astonishingly told his advisors in all irritation that he had no interest and asked them never to raise the issue again. But when he was interviewed by Commissioner Jamie Gorelick who had been deputy attorney general in the Clinton Administration his response was a personal attack that was aimed at, and came close to, ending her Washington career.

The Commission’s report was written in great haste during the summer of 2004. Huge swaths of the available intelligence – in particular the voluminous files of the National Security Agency had been overlooked. The gross negligence of the New York authorities under popular Mayor Rudy Giuliani in preparing for terrorist attacks was glossed over for political reasons. The FBI under its new director Tom Mueller was allowed to talk itself out from under the proposed re-organization it so richly merited by its inept role in the disaster. Obstruction of the investigation by George Tenet Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was never resolved.

And when the report was being written the guidelines in effect were that there was to be no finger-pointing and hence no meaningful conclusions in the interests of maintaining unanimity across sharply-divided political lines. The report when it emerged was lauded as a brilliant analysis of what happened and the events surrounding 9/11. In fact, as Shenon shows, it was nothing of the kind but rather an exercise in spin and control of the truth for political purposes. The nation deserves better.

Richard Payne is a research laboratory manager and a longtime resident of Sudbury. He can be reached at rpsudbury@msn.com