In a case of too little too late.......
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9/11 commission members told to avoid partisanship, source says<font size=3>
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
New York Daily News
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - <font size=4>Members of the 9/11 commission were warned this week to avoid partisan attacks when the nation's top intelligence and law enforcement officials testified, sources told the Daily News.
Fears that the perception of partisanship could harm the credibility of the commission's ultimate findings compelled Republican Thomas Kean, the chairman, and Democrat Lee Hamilton, the vice chairman, to tell their colleagues to cool it.
"This is seriously hurting us," fretted a commission source.
Kean's scolding came the day before Attorney General John Ashcroft, former FBI director Louis Freeh and former Attorney General Janet Reno testified.
A week earlier, the panel appeared to split along party lines during the grilling of former counterterror czar Richard Clarke and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
"A number of Republicans and Democrats spoke out to say we've really got to get away from (partisanship)," the source added, noting that commissioners went easy on most witnesses at the hearings into FBI and CIA missteps before the 9/11 attacks.
Republicans on the panel saw most of the partisanship
coming from Democrats who the source said are "politically
on the attack against President Bush in the press and in
hearings."
They cited former congressman Tim Roemer, former prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste and former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick.
Some Republican commissioners were cheered when Ashcroft pinned partial blame for 9/11 on Gorelick for her role in a controversial 1995 Justice Department legal policy that kept criminal and intelligence agents from sharing information.
"I was delighted to see somebody in the Bush administration go on the counterattack so the Republican commissioners don't have to," the source said.
But partisanship might be seen the other way by Democrats. Republican Fred Fielding is the designated Bush liaison on the panel and talks daily with White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, the source admitted.
When asked Wednesday whether commissioners pulled punches with witnesses such as ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh and Ashcroft, Kean said, "I don't think people were particularly easy on the (witnesses)."
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