Kangaroo Kommission? (Part One)
By Tom Barrett (04/19/04)
The published Mission of the 9/11 Commission is “To provide an authoritative account of the 9/11 attacks and recommend how to prevent future attacks.” Nowhere in that statement do I see authority for the Commission to play The Blame Game. But that is what is happening. The Commission has become a vehicle for partisan bickering and taking cheap shots designed to affect the presidential election.
The televised hearings of the Commission haven’t exactly drawn the attention that the O.J. Simpson trial did. But millions of Americans have been watching either the live feed of the hearings or the replays on C-SPAN and the other networks. And they are getting a much distorted view of a very complicated process.
Here is the published profile of the mission and makeup of the Commission:
Following is background about the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States:
• Created: By law enacted in November 2002.
• Mission: To provide an authoritative account of the 9/11 attacks and recommend how to prevent future attacks.
• Composition: Five Republicans and five Democrats.
• Leaders: Chairman Thomas Kean, a Republican and former New Jersey governor; Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat and former U.S. House member from Indiana.
• Resources: A staff of 65 and a $14 million budget.
• Work so far: Conducted more than 1,000 interviews, collected more than 2 million pages of documents and held seven public hearings.
• Deadline for filing report: July 26, 2004.
The stated purpose is noble, but as in most things, the devil is in the details. The people that serve on the Commission are the key to whether it serves a useful purpose in preventing another 9/11, or becomes just another Kangaroo Court, out to serve its own purposes. The details that were left out when the Commission was established were:
1) How to keep it from being just one more Washington exercise in partisan politics. Precious little rational thought went into the makeup of this Commission.
2) How to keep the members under control. Members of such Commissions should have been required to keep their opinions to themselves until the entire body comes to a consensus conclusion. As we will see, that has been anything but the case.
We will cover the first point this week, and conclude with some very interesting information about the unethical conduct of Commission members next week.
Let’s look first at the oft-repeated claim that the Commission is non-partisan. Absolute hogwash! The makeup of the Commission emphasizes rather than discourages partisan politics. Five Democrats and five Republicans! That’s not non-partisan. At best it is multi-partisan!
The questioning of the witnesses proves the point. The Democrats on the Commission have harassed and belittled any witness who has anything good to say about the Bush Administration’s efforts to fight terrorism. They have lobbed softball questions at pro-Clinton witnesses and lavished them with compliments. And I am ashamed to say that the Republican members have been almost as bad.
“Well, how else can we keep it fair other than having an even number from each party?” How about choosing members who have a reputation for fairness, regardless of their party affiliation? Why not choose members whose integrity has been proven through long public service?
I am not saying that all the members of the Commission are unqualified. But I have serious concerns about the way the Commission members were chosen. Five from each party? I have a news flash for the Washington insiders on both sides of the aisle: There are more than two political parties in this nation. Why not choose Congressman Ron Paul, who has a sterling reputation for standing up for the PEOPLE instead of the POLITICIANS? Because he is not a member of the monopoly – he was elected to Congress as a Libertarian (www.LP.org).
What about the other so-called “third parties”? (Even that term rankles; we have the two “important” parties, and the dozens of other parties are dismissively lumped together as the “third parties”. Sounds sort of like “third world”, doesn’t it?) I for one would like to see the views of the American Reform Party (www.AmericanReform.org) represented on the Commission. After all, it is obvious from what we have seen so far in the hearings that the US government needs some serious reform. And with all the questions regarding the constitutionality of some of the efforts to fight terrorism, wouldn’t it be helpful to hear from a representative of the Constitution Party (www.ConstitutionParty.com)?
I’m not endorsing the views of any of these parties. But I found thirty US Political Parties
listed on Yahoo (http://dir.yahoo.com/government/u_s__government/politics/parties/). Some are ridiculous, like the Pot Party. Some are subversive, such as the Communist Party USA. But isn’t it possible that among this diversity we could have found some people of integrity who could have broken the deadlock of partisanship that defines the Commission?
And then there is the fact that some of the members are definitely not qualified to sit on the Commission. I could give several examples, but in the interests of space, I will mention one. Commission Member Jamie Gorelick is as responsible for 9/11 as any of those she is questioning. She wrote a memo in 1995 while serving as Clinton’s Deputy Attorney General which strengthened the legal wall that prevented the flow of information between the CIA and the FBI. (Make sure you read “Gorelick’s Conflict” by Linda Chavez; link below.)
It is interesting that in the Commission’s official biography of Gorelick that salient fact is totally absent (see link below). There is a long listing of all her degrees and honors, and detailed descriptions of all her other jobs. But the reason she is on the Commission is her service as Deputy Attorney General, and only one short, vague sentence is devoted to that service. And (surprise, surprise!) not a single mention of the infamous memo that bears so heavily on the work of the Commission.
But the American people are starting to discover the truth. On www.Vote.com (a website that allows Americans to express their views on important issues), fully 90% of respondents (6,946 of 7701 votes cast) said that Gorelick should resign from the Commission.
The problem did not start with Gorelick, but she and Clinton definitely made it worse with her memo. Congress originally put up a wall between the FBI and the CIA because they feared FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was an evil man who used his office to gain enormous power over many people, including members of Congress. Many of them had dirty secrets and Hoover used his agents to discover all of them (see link below). He used this power to blackmail politicians and exert influence over their decisions. Congress feared that if Hoover had access to the CIA’s resources, he would become even more powerful.
Gorelick didn’t create the problem, but she could have started dismantling the wall Congress built with her memo. Instead, she shored the wall up, making it even more difficult for the CIA and the FBI to share information. I believe that when all the facts are in, it will be clear that since the nation was not on the war footing Bush put us on after 9/11, the tragedy that was 9/11 could not have been prevented. But the only slim chance we might have had would have been if the FBI and CIA had not been prevented by law from sharing the pieces of the puzzle that each held. And history will blame Clinton and Gorelick for strengthening that ill-considered law.
Finally, almost all of the Commission members are politicians or former politicians. And six of the ten members are attorneys! What rocket scientist came up with this? On any list of the least trusted and most despised professions in America, politicians and attorneys are always at the top. Why do they think we will trust anything that comes out of a Commission made up of people that we as a nation do not trust?
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a two-part series. This week we have discussed how the makeup of the Commission has hurt its credibility. Next week we will consider how the actions of some of its members have done the same.
INTERNET LINKS:
Official Website of the 9/11 Commission
http://www.9-11commission.gov/
Article: Gorelick’s Conflict
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/lc20040414.shtml
Rice: No 'Silver Bullet' Could Have Prevented 9/11
http://www.gopusa.com/news/2004/april/0409_rice_testimony.shtml
Article: Condi's Day at Court
http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/vfiore/2004/vf_0408.shtml
Biographical Information Regarding J. Edgar Hoover
http://www.crimelibrary.com/hoover/hoovermain.htm
Testimony of Dr. Condoleezza Rice before the 9/11 Commission
http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing9/rice_statement.pdf
Biographies of Commission Members
http://www.9-11commission.gov/about/bios.htm
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