9/11 Commission – What About Congress’ Culpability?
Commentary by Steve Yuhas
April 1, 2004

Like many political junkies I watched the coverage of the public testimony portion of what everyone has come to know as the 9-11 Commission. Ten people sitting at the big table looking down upon sitting and former Secretaries of State and Defense and other high ranking government officials. Five Democratic and five Republican appointees whose partisan stripes became obvious during questioning charged with making recommendations to our government to make sure another attack the likes of September 11th never happens again.

Keeping in mind what happened during the hearings it is hard to believe that anything other than a divided partisan report will end up coming out of that group of people. Consider just a few of the people serving: Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor and defender of President Clinton during impeachment (imagine for a moment if President Bush’s lawyer were appointed to a commission to investigate whether or not there was a failure of the Bush administration – there would be partisan outcry to say the least) and Jamie Gorelick, the former deputy attorney general under President Clinton (same question).

More troubling than the obvious partisans on the committee is the presence of former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey and former Washington Senator Slade Gorton. Both of these men were in the Senate when enormous cuts were made to intelligence spending and, more importantly, when the walls that separated the FBI from the CIA were built. Nobody, not even Richard Clarke, argues with the premise that the CIA was eviscerated and the statutory scheme that disallowed the CIA from sharing information with the FBI and vice versa played at least some role in the government missing the preparations for 9-11 and missing out on catching terrorists in the United States.

To call sitting and former executive branch officials to testify on what happened before and after 9-11 and to ignore the role that Congress may have played in missing the intelligence or connecting the dots before the fact is folly. Congress passed the laws that direct the various agencies in their role in fighting terrorism, how is it that the Congress has received a pass on their piece of the culpability pie?

The media made the most exciting part of the public hearings the appearance of former bureaucrat Richard Clarke. Indeed, many of the commissioners used Richard Clarke’s book in order to question members of the administrations before them. It would have been comical if it were not so serious – here are the people charged with taking a look at the most important event of our time using a book published for profit in order to as questions of the highest ranking people in our government. It isn’t as if they don’t have a staff who could have written the questions down for them – nope, these people read directly from Clarke’s book as if it were fact.

Only one problem – Richard Clarke’s own words make the “facts” of his book disputable.

Richard Clarke asserts in his book that the Clinton administration made a few fumbles with respect to terrorism, but at least they tried, but the Bush administration didn’t take terrorism seriously until September 11th happened. Clarke excoriates members of the administration from the President to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice who he claims may have never heard of Al Qaeda until he told her about them (never let facts get in the way though since Rice made statements about Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden long before President Bush took office or she became National Security Advisor). The book makes for interesting fiction, but Clarke’s own words before the book was published, some of them under oath, contradict those claims.

The day Clarke was to appear before the 9-11 Commission the Fox News Channel released a tape recorded briefing that Clarke gave to selected reporters a year ago. During the briefing Clarke praised the Bush administration and the actions that it took with respect to terrorism. The briefing was released in full with no editorial remarks made and it was in stark contrast to the book that Clarke published. Unprepared for his own words, Clarke dismissed them as simply politics saying that as a member of the Bush administration he told reporters what the administration wanted it to tell them. Fine and dandy, but what about his statements under oath, surely they were not political right?

To that point the Congress is considering declassifying statements made by Clarke to various committees of the House and Senate. Clarke and his apologists say that this is just another attempt by Republicans to smear him, since he admitted that not only has he voted for a Democratic President over the last decade, but also gave to them financially, but Republicans say that in this search for the truth, it is vital that the American people get to see everything Clarke said about the administration (and previous ones). Efforts to declassify the remarks to Congress are making their way through the government.

The commission to investigate terrorism in the United States is somewhat important. We know what happened on September 11th and efforts to assign blame will get nowhere. We didn’t have commissions to assign blame over Pearl Harbor or other attacks on our nation so the prospect of grand standing September 11th is curious to me, but what is not curious is that these investigations do nothing to make America safer. If what comes out of the 9-11 Commission is partisan and divided placing blame on Clinton or Bush or both while ignoring Congress and other contributing aspects to the intelligence and the like – it will only make Presidents less likely to cooperate in the future and will only make the terrorists stronger.

One can only imagine Osama bin Laden sitting in front of his satellite television in a cave somewhere in Pakistan watching as the most powerful men and women in our government are publicly chastised by ten unelected people asking questions about what did they know and when did they know it. Somewhere in the world the next Osama is smiling thinking how wonderful it is that even when attacked and even after 3,000 citizens are killed that the United States of America is so divided that we put on a public spectacle where books are sold and public servants are rebuked. The Commission has a responsibility for a unanimous report and not a partisan document that one party or candidate can use to the detriment of the other.

That probably won’t happen and if it doesn’t the next attack may just fall on their shoulders.