Shrub vs 911 Commission: who is hiding what?
www2.observer.com
"What Mr. Bush understandably chose not to highlight, however, is his administration’s continuing determination to undermine, restrict and censor the investigation of the most significant event of his Presidency: the attacks on New York and Washington of Sept. 11, 2001...
In the latest development, the President’s aides refused additional time for the 9/11 commission to complete its report. Although the original deadline in the enabling legislation is May 27, the commissioners recently asked for a few more months to ensure that their product will be "thorough and credible."...
But the President’s political advisers, concerned about the political impact of the commission’s report, are unsympathetic to its requests for additional time...
Perhaps inadvertently, Mr. Kean provided a clue to the answers in his Times interview. Asked whether he thinks the disaster "did not have to happen," he replied, "Yes, there is a good chance that 9/11 could have been prevented by any number of people along the way. Everybody pretty well agrees our intelligence agencies were not set up to deal with domestic terrorism …. They were not ready for an internal attack." Then, asked whether "anyone in the Bush administration [had] any idea that an attack was being planned," he replied: "That is why we are looking at the internal papers. I can’t talk about what’s classified. [The] President’s daily briefings are classified. If I told you what was in them, I would go to jail."
But the commission’s final report may well indicate what the President was told in his daily briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, when he was sunning himself in Crawford, Tex.—as well as the many warnings he and his associates were given by the previous administration." |
