After the shock began to subside after the devastating attack on the World Trade Center, the nation began to clamor for an independent investigation into what went wrong on September 11th. At first the Bush Administration fought against having a task force outside the White House conduct an investigation, but public pressure was just too great. Nonetheless, Bush and his cronies managed to stymie efforts to find out all of the facts that commission members wanted to know.
From RawStory:
Two recent segments delve into a new book that accuses the head of the ostensibly independent 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, of being beholden to the Bush Administration during his tenure.
The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, by New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, indicts Zelikow on his ties with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and his frequent contact with senior political adviser Karl Rove, during what was touted as an independent investigation into the events surrounding the 2001 World Trade Center attack. This seeming conflict of interest, the book says, led Commission staffers not to trust Zelikow.
"We found him to be very fair-minded," counters co-chair Lee Hamilton, "quite impartial, very rigorous in his searching out of the facts; and he certainly did not try to protect the Bush Administration, or to protect anybody else."
9/11 Commission member John Lehman goes on to tell MSNBC that it was impossible not to go through Karl Rove when documents such as presidential daily briefings were needed. Many Commission members, he says, pressed the White House to provide more information and lift restrictions on a regular basis.
Lehman and Hamilton's support of Zelikow definitely helps his case, but the fact that many more people in the Commission had trouble with him is disconcerting. The question is...is this book coming out tomorrow a important addition to the discussion of the responsibility of the Bush Administration in 9/11 or simply a red herring?
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