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The National Commission on a Terrorist Attack, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002 "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks.

The Commission was also mandated to provide recommendations designed to guard against future attacks. Given its significant importance in investigating one of the most important events in American history and providing recommendations to defend the U.S. against future terrorist attacks, some have compared the Commission to that of the Warren Commission of 1963–1964 in its mammoth global and national significance.

Chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, the Commission comprised five Democrats and five Republicans. The Commission was created by Congressional legislation, with the bill signed into law by President George W. Bush.

The Commission's final report was a lengthy book, based on extensive interviews and testimony. Its primary conclusion was that the failures of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) permitted the terrorist attacks to occur and that had these agencies acted more wisely and more aggressively, the attacks could potentially have been prevented.

After the publication of its final report, the Commission closed on August 21, 2004.

History

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After pressure from the relatives of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States was set up on November 27, 2002, by President George W. Bush and the United States Congress. The 9/11 Commission was in session for more than a year and a half and released its final report on July 22, 2004.

Members

The members of the Commission were:

The members of the Commission's staff included:

  • Philip D. Zelikow, The Commission's Executive Director; Christopher Kojm, the Commission's Deputy Executive Director; Daniel Marcus, the General Counsel; Janice Kephart, of counsel.
  • Al Felzenberg, the commission's spokesman.

President Bush had initially appointed former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to head the commission, but he withdrew shortly afterward because he would have been obliged to disclose the clients of his private consulting business.

Officials called to testify

Then government officials who were called to testify before the Commission included:

Past government officials who were called to testify before the Commission included:

President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former President Bill Clinton, and former Vice President Al Gore all gave private testimony without oaths. President Bush and Vice President Cheney insisted on testifying together, while Clinton and Gore met with the panel separately. As the National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice was not required to testify under oath because the position of NSA is an advisory role, independent of authority over a bureaucracy and does not require confirmation by the Senate.

Report

The cover of the final 9/11 report, which can be purchased in bookstores across the United States and around the world
Main article: 9/11 Commission Report

The commission issued its final report on July 22, 2004. After releasing the report, Commission Chair Thomas Kean declared that both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had been "not well served" by the FBI and CIA. The commission interviewed over 1,200 people in 10 countries and reviewed over two and a half million pages of documents, including some closely-guarded classified national security documents. Before it was released by the commission, the final public report was screened for any potentially classified information and edited as necessary.

Additionally, the commission has released several supplemental reports on the terrorists' financing, travel, and other matters.

Criticisms

Main article: 9/11 Commission Report

Because the investigation was controversial and politically sensitive, many participants have been criticised during the process. Leading critics include members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee and the Jersey Girls, who were instrumental in overcoming government resistance to establishing the 9/11 Commission in the first place, according to the documentary 9/11: Press for Truth.

Claims of bias within the commission

The 9/11 commission members were appointed by George W. Bush as well as Congress, which led to the criticism that it was not a truly independent commission. The commission stated in its report that " aim has not been to assign individual blame," a judgment which some critics believed would obscure the facts of the matter in a nod to consensus politics. Some members of victims' families have claimed that the commission has numerous conflicts of interest.

9/11 CitizensWatch, in particular, called for the resignation of Philip D. Zelikow, the executive staff director. Zelikow is a Bush-appointee who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He spent three years on the President George H. W. Bush's National Security Council. Zelikow worked closely with Bush NSC advisor Condoleezza Rice and even co-wrote a book with her. Zelikow may have been using his power on the to deflect blame from Rice and the Bush Administration. Both the Family Steering Committee and 9-11 Citizens Watch demanded his resignation, without success.

The Shenon revelations

Philip Shenon a New York Times reporter in a book released in February 2008 entitled "The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation" claims that Zelikow had closer ties with the White House than he publicly disclosed and that he tried to influence the final report in ways that the staff often perceived as limiting the Bush administration’s responsibility and furthering its anti-Iraq agenda. According to the book, Zelikow had at least four private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove, and appears to have had many frequent telephone conversations with people in the White House. The Commission staff kept a record only of calls Zelikow received, but Government Accountability Office records show his frequent calls to the 456 telephone exchange in the 202 area code used exclusively by the White House. Also, the book states that Zelikow ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls, although the Commission's general counsel overruled him. Zelikow had pledged to have no contact with Rove and Condoleezza Rice during his work for the 9/11 Commission.

The book also reports that some panel staffers believed Zelikow stopped them from submitting a report depicting Rice's and Bush's performance as "amounting to incompetence or something not far from it". Zelikow has denied discussing the commissions work with Rove and further added "I was not a very popular person in the Bush White House when this was going on" and remarked the staffers were disgruntled . According to Shenon, Carl Rove always feared that a Commission report that laid the blame for 9/11 at the president's doorstep was the one development that could most jeopardize Bush's 2004 re-election. Therefore, White House lawyers attempted to stonewall the creation of the Commission and to hamstring its work from the outset. When Bush terrorism "czar" Richard Clarke could no longer be prevented from testifying about his urgent warnings over the Summer of 2001 to Rice about the imminent threat of terrorist attack on US soil, Shenon reports, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and his aides feverishly drafted tough questions and phoned them in to Republican commissioners to undermine Clarke's credibility." According to Shanon, it was this defensive strategy that Zelikow may have been coordinating with the White House.

Further, according to Shenon's book, Zelikow attempted to bolster the Bush administration's false claim of a link between al-Qaida and Iraq by trying to change a 9/11 Commission staff report to state that the terrorist network repeatedly tried to communicate with the government of Saddam Hussein, a claim of cooperation the administration had cited to justify the war in Iraq. Zelikow backed down when the 9/11 Commission staff refused to go along with his attempted change.

In addition, many members had ties which could be viewed as conflicts of interest.

Members of the 9/11 commission. Top row: Ben-Veniste, Lehman, Roemer, Thompson, Kerrey, Gorton. Bottom row: Fielding, Hamilton (Vice-Chairman), Kean (Chairman), Gorelick.
  • Jamie Gorelick, while serving in the Department of Justice under the Clinton administration, developed the policy that prevented communication between various government law enforcement and intelligence agencies, specifically the FBI and CIA. (the "wall memo"). She also is on the board of United Technologies. Gorelick's firm has agreed to represent Prince Mohammed al Faisal in the suit by the 9/11 families. The families contend that al Faisal has legal responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.

The commission's defenders claim that these do not represent significant conflicts of interest, and that the commission maintained its neutrality.

Claims of lack of cooperation from the White House

In April 2002, Bush said that the investigation into 9/11 should be confined to Congress because it deals with sensitive information that could reveal sources and methods of intelligence. But by September, the White House came under intense fire concerning the commission from many victims' families, and thus President Bush finally agreed to the creation of an "independent" 9/11 commission. But many 9/11 victims' families believed that the scope of the investigation by the Commission did not go far enough in investigating the U.S. government's failures because the Commission was not to investigate intelligence failures.

However, the White House insisted that it was to appoint the commission's chair, leading some to question the commission's "independence". The initial person appointed to head the commission, Henry Kissinger, has been accused by many of having been involved in past government coverups in South America (specifically, the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile), and of having on-going business relationships with members of the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia.

Even after Kissinger resigned, the White House was often cited as having attempted to block the release of information to the commission and for refusing to give interviews without tight conditions attached leading to threats to subpoena. The Bush Administration has further been accused of attempting to derail the commission by giving it one of the smallest independent commission funding levels in recent history ($3 million), and by giving the commission a very short deadline. The White House insists that they have given the commission "unprecedented cooperation".

While President Bush and Vice President Cheney did ultimately agree to testify, they did so only under several conditions:

  • They would be allowed to testify jointly;
  • They would not be required to take an oath before testifying;
  • The testimony would not be recorded electronically or transcribed, and that the only record would be notes taken by one of the commission staffers;
  • These notes would not be made public.

The commission agreed to these conditions, and the President and Vice President gave their testimony on April 29.

Commission chairmen accuse CIA of deliberately impeding investigation

Commission chairmen Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean accused the Central Intelligence Agency making a conscious decision to impede the commission’s inquiry after reading a memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow the panels former executive director. This memorandum came after a review by former commission members of thousands of classified documents after the disclosure that in November 2005 the C.I.A. destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives. The review concluded that the commission made repeated and detailed requests to the agency 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested. The memorandum concluded that “further investigation is needed” to determine whether the C.I.A.’s withholding of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.

John E. McLaughlin the former deputy director of central intelligence, that the C.I.A said that that agency officials had always been candid with the commission, and that information from the C.I.A. proved central to their work.“We weren’t playing games with them, and we weren’t holding anything back” he added . Also a C.I.A. spokesman said that the agency had been prepared to give the commission the interrogation videotapes, but that commission staff members never specifically asked for interrogation videos.


Commissioners suspected the Pentagon was deceiving the Commission

For more than two years after the attacks, officials with North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington, D.C..

The Commission reported a year later that audiotapes from NORAD's Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft—American Airlines Flight 11—long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center. For example, Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold and Col. Alan Scott told the commission that NORAD had begun tracking United 93 at 9:16 a.m., but the commission determined that the airliner was not even hijacked until 12 minutes later. According to later testimony, the military was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.

The Commission was forced to use subpoenas to obtain the cooperation of the FAA and NORAD to release evidence such as audiotapes. The agencies' reluctance to release the tapes—along with e-mails, erroneous public statements and other evidence—led some of the panel's staff members and commissioners to believe that authorities sought to mislead the commission and the public about what happened on September 11. "I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described," said John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who led the staff inquiry into events on September 11, in an August 2006 interview.

Commissioners believe the Commission was set up to fail

In their book "Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission" on their experience serving as co-chairs of the Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton devoted the first chapter on how they believed the Commission was set up for failure. Hamilton listed a number of reasons why they thought this, including the late start of the Commission and the very short deadline imposed; the insufficient funds, 3 million dollars, initially allocated for conducting such an extensive investigation (later the Commission requested and received additional funds, but the chairs still felt hamstrung); the many politicians who did not want the Commission formed; the continuing resistance and opposition to the work of the Commission by many politicians, particularly those who did not wish to be blamed for any of what happened; and the denial of access by various agencies to documents and witnesses. "So there were all kinds of reasons we thought we were set up to fail."

Claims that the investigation lacked adequate funds

". . .Whereas the investigation of the Challenger disaster received $50 million, Bush promised only $3 million for the investigation of the much more deadly and complex disaster of 9/11. He then initially resisted when the commission asked for an additional $8 million."

from David Ray Griffin's The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. p.284

Claims the commission was used for partisan purposes

Some conservatives believe that the Democratic Party used the commission for partisan advantage during the 2004 election campaign. Rather than focusing equally on all factors, critics predicted that Congressional Democrats would ignore any policy errors made by Bill Clinton while emphasizing the mistakes of President Bush.

In contrast, many opponents of the Bush administration believe that the commission was set up to perform a superficial examination of the background of the attacks, thereby meeting public demands for an investigation while still preventing any substantive examination. Also they argue that Republicans on the commission and in Congress ignored mistakes of the Bush administration while exaggerating those made by former President Clinton.

Four books that critique the official Commission are Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert, The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute, by Paul Thompson, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, A Critique of the Kean-Zelikow Report by David Ray Griffin, and Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror, by Peter Lance. All describe conflicts of interest that the Commissioners had and point out problems in the official narrative that suggest the attacks were allowed to happen, or rather made to happen, in order to achieve long-sought policy changes (the Iraq war and "Homeland Security").

Newsweek, in late February, 2006, reported that a draft of the 9/11 Commission Report expressed skepticism about Dick Cheney's claim to have spoken with President Bush before giving an order to shoot down United Flight 93. According to Newsweek, White House officials successfully fought to have those parts of the report toned down.


Claims the commission ignored or censored key government evidence

Former FBI, NSA and other federal intelligence experts claim the 9/11 Commission report was fundamentally flawed because the 9/11 Commission refused to hear, ignored, or censored testimony about the many pre-September 11 warnings given to the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies. These federal whistleblowers claim that in an effort to avoid having to hold any individual accountable, the 9/11 Commission turned a blind eye on FBI agent-provided evidence before September 11 regarding the 9/11 plot.

Claims the commission ignored information regarding Able Danger

The reputation and credibility of the commission has recently been damaged by evidence of a lack of thoroughness or possibly a coverup. In August 2005, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer claimed he had informed 9/11 Commission Executive Director Dr. Philip D. Zelikow about a highly classified data-mining project called Able Danger that had identified two of the three terrorist cells responsible for 9/11. Shaffer said Dr. Zelikow was initially very interested and gave Shaffer his card to contact him again. However, Shaffer claims when he contacted Dr. Zelikow, he was no longer interested in information about Able Danger. The commission later issued a response saying they found Shaffer "not sufficiently reliable" and the information was "lacking historical significance" and did not warrant further investigation. Subsequently, four additional "credible witnesses" have come forward to support Shaffer's account of Able Danger.

Former Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), a member of the Commission, said: "Bluntly, it just didn't happen and that's the conclusion of all 10 of us." A search for documents on Able Danger has not been very productive, leading U.S. Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) to speculate that a coverup may have occurred. The Pentagon investigated the matter and has not been able to find any documentary evidence confirming the allegations. Pentagon spokesman Army Maj. Paul Swiergosz said: "We've interviewed 80 people involved with Able Danger, combed through hundreds of thousands of documents and millions of e-mails and have still found no documentation of Mohamed Atta." But Weldon claims that the Pentagon ordered the destruction of a large volume of documents related to Able Danger.

FBI director's critique regarding Able Danger

Former FBI director Louis Freeh criticized the 9/11 Commission for ignoring key evidence from Able Danger, which, he alleged, resulted in false statements being made in the final 9/11 Commission report. For example, the 9/11 Commission concluded that "American intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks," which, Mr. Freeh stated, appears to be false, given that Able Danger had identified Mohammed Atta, the alleged ring-leader of the 19 hijackers, as an Al Qaida man active in the United States, and was tracking him for many months.

Further, Director Freeh criticized the Commission for allowing the Pentagon to withhold key evidence about the facts found by Able Danger, and concluded that these inadequacies raised serious questions about the credibility of the 9/11 Commission.

Sandy Berger convicted of stealing and destroying copies of classified terror documents

Main article: Sandy Berger § Convicted of mishandling classified terror documents

Commission recommendations

Parenthetic numbers refer to page numbers in the Commission Report

1. The U.S. government must identify and prioritize actual or potential terrorist sanctuaries. For each, it should have a realistic strategy to keep possible terrorists insecure and on the run, using all elements of national power. (367)

2. United States should support Pakistan’s government in its struggle against extremists with a comprehensive effort that extends from military aid to support for better education, so long as Pakistan’s leaders remain willing to make difficult choices of their own. (369)

3. United States and the international community should make a long-term commitment to a secure and stable Afghanistan, in order to give the government a reasonable opportunity to improve the life of the Afghan people. Afghanistan must not again become a sanctuary for international crime and terrorism. The United States and the international community should help the Afghan government extend its authority over the country, with a strategy and nation-by-nation commitments to achieve their objectives. (370)

4. The problems in the U.S.-Saudi relationship must be confronted, openly. The United States and Saudi Arabia must determine if they can build a relationship that political leaders on both sides are prepared to publicly defend—a relationship about more than oil. It should include a shared commitment to political and economic reform, as Saudis make common cause with the outside world. It should include a shared interest in greater tolerance and cultural respect, translating into a commitment to fight the violent extremists who foment hatred. (374)

5. The U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors. America and Muslim friends can agree on respect for human dignity and opportunity. (376)

6. Where Muslim governments, even those who are friends, do not respect these principles, the United States must stand for a better future. One of the lessons of the long Cold War was that short-term gains in cooperating with the most repressive and brutal governments were too often outweighed by long-term setbacks for America’s stature and interests. (376)

7. We need to defend our ideals abroad vigorously. America does stand up for its values. The United States defended, and still defends, Muslims against tyrants and criminals in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. • Recognizing that Arab and Muslim audiences rely on satellite television and radio, the government has begun some promising initiatives in television and radio broadcasting to the Arab world, Iran, and Afghanistan. These efforts are beginning to reach large audiences. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has asked for much larger resources. It should get them. • The United States should rebuild the scholarship, exchange, and library programs that reach out to young people and offer them knowledge and hope. Where such assistance is provided, it should be identified as coming from the citizens of the United States. (377)

8. The U.S. government should offer to join with other nations in generously supporting a new International Youth Opportunity Fund. Funds will be spent directly for building and operating primary and secondary schools in those Muslim states that commit to sensibly investing their own money in public education. (378)

9. A comprehensive U.S. strategy to counter terror-ism should include economic policies that encourage development, more open societies, and opportunities for people to improve the lives of their families and to enhance prospects for their children’s future. (379)

10. The United States should engage other nations in developing a comprehensive coalition strategy against Islamist terror-ism. (379)

11. The United States should engage its friends to develop a common coalition approach toward the detention and humane treatment of captured terrorists. (380)

12. Pre-venting the proliferation of warrants a maximum effort—by strengthening counterproliferation efforts, expanding the Proliferation Security Initiative, and supporting the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. (381)

13. Vigorous efforts to track terrorist financing must remain front and center in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The government has recognized that information about terrorist money helps us to understand their networks, search them out, and disrupt their operations. Intelligence and law enforcement have targeted the relatively small number of financial facilitators—individuals al Qaeda relied on for their ability to raise and deliver money—at the core of al Qaeda’s revenue stream. (382)

14. The United States should combine terrorist travel intelligence, operations, and law enforcement in a strategy to intercept terrorists, find terrorist travel facilitators, and constrain terrorist mobility. (385)

15. The U.S. border security system should be integrated into a larger network of screening points that includes our transportation system and access to vital facilities, such as nuclear reactors. The President should direct the Department of Homeland Security to lead the effort to design a comprehensive screening system, addressing common problems and setting common standards with systemwide goals in mind. (387)

16. The Department of Homeland Security, properly supported by the Congress, should complete, as quickly as possible, a biometric entry-exit screening system, including a single system for speeding qualified travelers. It should be integrated with the system that provides benefits to foreigners seeking to stay in the United States. (389)

17. We should do more to exchange terrorist information with trusted allies, and raise U.S. and global border security standards for travel and border crossing over the medium and long term through extensive inter-national cooperation. (390)

18. Secure identification should begin in the United States. The federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as drivers licenses. (390)

19. The U.S. government should identify and evaluate the transportation assets that need to be protected, set risk-based priorities for defending them, select the most practical and cost-effective ways of doing so, and then develop a plan, budget, and funding to implement the effort. The plan should assign roles and missions to the relevant authorities (federal, state, regional, and local) and to private stakeholders. In measuring effectiveness, perfection is unattainable. But terrorists should perceive that potential targets are defended. They may be deterred by a significant chance of failure. (391)

20. Improved use of “no-fly” and “automatic selectee” lists should not be delayed while the argument about a successor to CAPPS continues. (393)

21. The TSA and the Congress must give priority attention to improving the ability of screening checkpoints to detect explosives on passengers. (393)

22. As the President determines the guidelines for information sharing among government agencies and by those agencies with the private sector, he should safeguard the privacy of individuals about whom information is shared. (394)

23. The burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially enhances security and (b) that there is adequate supervision of the executive’s use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties. If the power is granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine its use. (394-5)

24. There should be a board within the executive branch to oversee adherence to the guidelines we recommend and the commitment the government makes to defend our civil liberties. (395)

25. Homeland security assistance should be based strictly on an assessment of risks and vulnerabilities. Now, in 2004, Washington,D.C.,and New York City are certainly at the top of any such list.We understand the contention that every state and city needs to have some minimum infrastructure for emergency response. But federal homeland security assistance should not remain a program for general revenue sharing. It should supplement state and local resources based on the risks or vulnerabilities that merit additional support. Congress should not use this money as a pork barrel. (396)

26. Emergency response agencies nationwide should adopt the Incident Command System (ICS).When multiple agencies or multiple jurisdictions are involved, they should adopt a unified command. (397)

27. Congress should support pending legislation which provides for the expedited and increased assignment of radio spectrum for public safety purposes. (397)

28. We endorse the American National Standards Institute’s recommended standard for private preparedness…. We also encourage the insurance and credit-rating industries to look closely at a company’s compliance with the ANSI standard in assessing its insurability and creditworthiness. We believe that compliance with the standard should define the standard of care owed by a company to its employees and the public for legal purposes. (398)

29. We recommend the establishment of a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), built on the foundation of the existing Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC). Breaking the older mold of national government organization, this NCTC should be a center for joint operational planning and joint intelligence, staffed by personnel from the various agencies. (403)

30. The current position of Director of Central Intelligence should be replaced by a National Intelligence Director with two main areas of responsibility: (1) to oversee national intelligence centers on specific subjects of interest across the U.S. government and (2) to manage the national intelligence program and oversee the agencies that contribute to it. (411)

31. The CIA Director should emphasize (a) rebuilding the CIA’s analytic capabilities; (b) transforming the clandestine service by building its human intelligence capabilities; (c) developing a stronger language program, with high standards and sufficient financial incentives; (d) renewing emphasis on recruiting diversity among operations officers so they can blend more easily in foreign cities;(e) ensuring a seamless relationship between human source collection and signals collection at the operational level; and (f) stressing a better balance between unilateral and liaison operations. (415)

32. Lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert, should shift to the Defense Department. There it should be consolidated with the capabilities for training, direction, and execution of such operations already being developed in the Special Operations Command. (415)

33. Overall amounts of money being appropriated for national intelligence and to its component agencies should no longer be kept secret. Congress should pass a separate appropriations act for intelligence, defending the broad allocation of how these tens of billions of dollars have been assigned among the varieties of intelligence work. (416)

34. Information procedures should provide incentives for sharing, to restore a better balance between security and shared knowledge. (417) 35. The president should lead the government-wide effort to bring the major national security institutions into the information revolution. (418)

36. Congress should address .We have considered various alternatives: A joint committee on the old model of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy is one. A single committee in each house of Congress. (420)

37. Congress should create a single, principal point of oversight and review for homeland security. Congressional leaders are best able to judge what committee should have jurisdiction over this department and its duties. But we believe that Congress does have the obligation to choose one in the House and one in the Senate, and that this committee should be a permanent standing committee with a nonpartisan staff. (421)

38. We should minimize as much as possible the disruption of national security policymaking during the change of administrations by accelerating the process for national security appointments. (422)

39. A specialized and integrated national security workforce should be established at the FBI consisting of agents, analysts, linguists, and surveillance specialists who are recruited, trained, rewarded, and retained to ensure the development of an institutional culture imbued with a deep expertise in intelligence and national security. (425-6)

40. The Department of Defense and its oversight committees should regularly assess the adequacy of Northern Command’s strategies and planning to defend the United States against military threats to the homeland. (428)

41. The Department of Homeland Security and its oversight committees should regularly assess the types of threats the country faces to determine (a) the adequacy of the government’s plans—and the progress against those plans—to protect America’s critical infrastructure and (b) the readiness of the government to respond to the threats that the United States might face. (428)

Work of commissioners after the Commission ceased its functions

Months after the 9/11 Commission had officially issued its report and ceased its functions, Chairman Kean and other commissioners toured the country to draw attention to the recommendations of the Commission for reducing the terror risk, claiming that some of their recommendations were being ignored. Co-chairs Kean and Hamilton wrote a book about the constraints they faced as commissioners titled Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission.

Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, by Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, is a book about the September 11, 2001 attacks and the 9/11 Commission that investigated them.

The book was released on August 15, 2006 and chronicles the work of Kean (Commission Chairman) and Hamilton (Commission Vice-Chairman) of the 9/11 Commission, which some consider one of the most important independent government commissions in American political history.

In the book, Kean and Hamilton write that the 9/11 Commission was so frustrated with repeated misstatements by officials from The Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration during the investigation that it considered a separate investigation into possible obstruction of justice by Pentagon and FAA officials.

The book is published by Alfred A. Knopf.

See also

References

  1. Jehl, Douglas (8 August 2005, corrected 9 August). "Four in 9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in '00". New York Times. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. Retrieved 2006-08-07. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. Cable News Network (13 December 2002). "Kissinger resigns as head of 9/11 commission". CNN Inside Politics. Time Warner. Retrieved 2006-08-07. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. Shovelan, John (23 July 2004). "9/11 Commission finds 'deep institutional failings'". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. Associated Press, Feb. 3, 2008, "Ties between White House, Sept 11 Chief", http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SEPT_11_COMMISSION?SITE=CAVEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT , archived at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/04/6826/
  5. Associated Press, Feb. 3, 2008, "Ties between White House, Sept 11 Chief", http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SEPT_11_COMMISSION?SITE=CAVEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT , archived at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/04/6826/
  6. Ex-9/11 Panel Chief Denies Secret White House Ties ABC News January 30, 2008
  7. Washington Post, Jan. 4, 2008, "The White House Mole" citing the Shenon book, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/02/04/BL2008020401554_2.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
  8. Associated Press, Feb. 3, 2008, "Ties between White House, Sept 11 Chief", http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SEPT_11_COMMISSION?SITE=CAVEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT , archived at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/04/6826/
  9. Memo from Jamie Gorelick to Mary Jo White, Louis Freeh, Richard Scrugge, and Jo Ann Harris. "Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations" (PDF). Retrieved 2007-02-02.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. "Bush Opposes 9/11 Query Panel". CBS Worldwide, Inc. 23 May 2002. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. "9-11 Relatives Grill Bush Administration". CBS Worldwide, Inc. 19 September 2002. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. "Bush Backs Independent 9-11 Probe". CBS Worldwide, Inc. 20 September 2002. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. "Bush: Documents sought by 9/11 commission 'very sensitive'". CNN. 28 October 2003. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. Waterman, Shaun (26 October 2003). "9/11 commission eyes subpoena of White House data". United Press International. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. Burger, Timothy (26 March 2003). "9-11 Commission Funding Woes". Time, Inc. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. Panel Study Finds That C.I.A. Withheld Tapes Mark Mazzetti New York Times December 21, 2007
  17. Eggen, Dan (2 August 2006). "9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon". Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. Eggen, Dan (2 August 2006). "9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon". Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  19. CBC News, August 21, 2006, http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/911hamilton.html
  20. Thomas, helen (10 November 2003). "Administration Drags Feet Cooperating With 9/11 Probes". KCRA. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  21. Thomas, Evan (27 February 2006). "The Shot Heard Round the World". Newsweek. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  22. Edmonds, Sibel and Weaver, Bill (5 September 2006). "The 9/11 Commission: A Play on Nothing in Three Acts". National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  23. Goodwin, Jacob (23 August 2005). "Inside Able Danger – The Secret Birth, Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death of a U.S. Military Intelligence Program". Government Security News. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  24. "Kean-Hamilton Statement on ABLE DANGER" (PDF). Public Discourse Project. 23 August 2005. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  25. {{cite news | title = This statement needs referenced, the originally cited website is no longer available
  26. {{cite news | title = This statement needs referenced, the originally cited website is no longer available
  27. Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2005, http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007559 last visited 2007/5/28.
  28. "Book: Sept. 11 Panel Doubted Officials". Associated Press. 4 August 2006. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

Critical essays, books and films

Further reading

Hawala: An Informal Payment System and Its Use to Finance Terrorism, by Sebastian R. Müller (Broschiert - Dec. 2006), ISBN: ISBN-10: 3865506569, ISBN-13: 978-3865506566

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