9/11 Commission a whitewash? (Gail Sheehy)

[Grins]

The Moms are mad. Another good reason to question Bush's choices for investigative commissions like this. No doubt the Intel/WMD Commission is also in trouble. Has to be - look who heads it!

Gail Sheehy column. Here's a snip:

"The Moms had tried to get their most pressing questions to the commission to be asked of Mr. Rumsfeld, but their efforts had foundered at the hands of Philip Zelikow, the commission’s staff director.

"Indeed, it was only with the recent publication of Richard Clarke’s memoir of his counterterrorism days in the White House, Against All Enemies, that the Moms found out that Mr. Zelikow - who was supposed to present their questions to Mr. Rumsfeld - was actually one of the select few in the new Bush administration who had been warned, nine months before 9/11, that Osama bin Laden was the No. 1 security threat to the country. They are now calling for Mr. Zelikow’s resignation.

"Ms. Gorelick sees their point.

"This is a legitimate concern," Ms. Gorelick said in an interview, "and I am not convinced we knew everything we needed to know when we made the decision to hire him."

"(The Moms) …point out that it is Mr. Zelikow who decides which among the many people offering information will be interviewed. Efforts by the families to get the commission to hear from a raft of administration and intelligence-agency whistleblowers have been largely ignored at his behest. And it is Mr. Zelikow who oversees what investigative material the commissioners will be briefed on, and who decides the topics for the hearings. Mr. Zelikow’s statement at the January hearing sounded to the Moms like a whitewash waiting to happen: "This was everybody’s fault and nobody’s fault."

"The Moms don’t buy it."

Good article. Read all of it here:
<http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage2.asp>
, the commission

[Miss Authoritiva]

1. Sheehy's been very close to this....

This is the latest of several insightful columns that Sheehy's written about the victims' families and their pursuit of something reasonably approximating the truth about pre-9/11 government activities. And each column always leaves me a little bit angrier and even more sorrowful.

Thanks for the post.