Was The 9/11 Commission Non-Partisan?
Was The 9/11 Commission Non-Partisan?
An Excerpt from "9/11 Report: Omissions & Distortions"
(Gold9472: Transcribed by yours truly... Someone somewhere else said the Commission was "non-partisan", and I just HAD to make them look like an idiot. Thanks Dr. Griffin. :))
Dr. David Ray Griffin
Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton tell us that their Commission "sought to be independent, impartial, thorough, and nonpartisan". In this book, I will be asking whether these virtues are in fact embodied in the "9/11 Commission Report". Let us begin with the question of whether the Commission was "nonpartisan".
With this term, Kean and Hamilton allude to the fact that the Commission was composed of both Democrats and Republicans. This allusion suggest that the Commission would have succeeded in being nonpartisan if the Republicans did not blame everything on the Clinton Administration, and the Democrats did not behave in the opposite way. Those who watched the hearings on television know that there was considerable partisanship during the proceedings. In the end, however, the Commission came together sufficiently to produce a final report endorsed unanimously by all the Democrats and all the Republicans. Kean and Hamilton are obviously proud that the Commission did end up being nonpartisan in this sense, producing the report, as they say, "without dissent".
The Commission was also said to be nonpartisan in a purely factual sense, namely, that the Commission was comprised of an equal number of members from both parties - five Democrats and five Republicans.
One of the major problems with the Commission, however, was that it was not truly nonpartisan in a factual sense. There are two reasons why it was not. The first is that the chairman was a Republican. The vice chairman was, to be sure, a Democrat, but he was merely the vice chairman, not the co-chairman.
Even more important is the second reason why the Commission was not nonpartisan in a factual sense. The person who served as the Commission executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, is a Republican. This is important because as executive director, Zelikow was in charge of the Commission's staff, and it was these staff members - not the Commissioners we saw on television - who did most of the actual work of the Commission. The Commissioners would have carried out their own distinctive work - their discussions and interviews - on the basis of the material provided by the staff. Kean and Hamilton refer to this fact in their statement that the "professional staff, headed by Philip Zelikow,...conducted the exacting investigative work upon which the Commission was built".
The extent of Zelikow's influence on the Commission's processes has been commented on by Paul Sperry, who wrote, while the Commission was still working, that Zelikow:
"arguably has more sway than any member, including the chairman. Zelikow picks the areas of investigation, the briefing materials, the topics for hearings, the witnesses, and the lines of questioning for witnesses. In effect, he sets the agenda and runs the investigation."
This overwhelmingly important fact has been little commented on by the press. Kean and Hamilton have been the public face for the Commission. But the Commission's investigation was essentially run by Zelikow.
Later, Zelikow was in charge of overseeing the writing of the staff reports, many of which went virtually unchanged into the final report. And he was then in charge of editing the final report itself. Kean and Hamilton refer to this fact in their statement that the "professional staff, headed by Philip Zelikow, has contributed innumerable hours to the completion of this report". A Republican, therefore, oversaw both the investigative work and the writing of the final report.
