It’s been a week of heightened attention to links between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 hijackers, first with the news
that so-called “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui has testified that
members of the Saudi royal family were major patrons of al Qaeda, and
now with a front-page story from New York Times chief Washington
correspondent Carl Hulse that discusses the classified, 28-page finding
on foreign government links to the 9/11 hijackers found in the report of
a joint congressional intelligence inquiry. 9/11 Executive Director Philip ZelikowRead the piece here.
As for our thoughts on the story, we’d like to focus on one specific
aspect: The attempt by 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow
to position the commission as having throughly investigated and then
dismissed the Saudi Arabia leads uncovered by the congressional inquiry
that preceded it. Writes Hulse:
Others familiar with that section of the report say that
while it might implicate Saudi Arabia, the suspicions, investigatory
leads and other findings it contains did not withstand deeper scrutiny.
Philip D. Zelikow, the executive director of the national commission
that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks after the congressional panels,
said the commission followed up on the allegations, using some of the
same personnel who wrote them initially, but reached a different
conclusion.
Many close followers of the 28 pages story and the 9/11 Commission’s
work will take particular issue with this quote from Zelikow:
“Those involved in the preparation of the famous 28 pages
joined the staff of the 9/11 Commission and participated in the
follow-up investigation of all the leads that had been developed
earlier,” he said Wednesday. “In doing so, they were aided by a larger
team with more members, more powers and for the first time actually
conducted interviews of relevant people both in this country and in
Saudi Arabia.”
Chances are, Zelikow neglected to tell Hulse that he fired a member
of the 9/11 Commission staff, Dana Lesemann, for going around him to acquire a copy of those very 28 pages—pages she needed to perform her assigned task of investigating potential ties to Saudi Arabia.
According to The Commission,
Philip Shenon’s exhaustive account of the 9/11 investigation, Zelikow
had, for weeks, neglected Lesemann’s request for a copy of the 28 pages.
“Philip, how are we supposed to do our work if you won’t provide us
with basic research material?” reportedly asked an agitated Lesemann,
prompting Zelikow to storm off in silence. Fed up, she took matters into
her own hands. When Zelikow discovered it, he fired her.
That’s
not the only aspect of Lesemann’s experience that undercuts Zelikow’s
portrayal of the commission’s work as exceedingly thorough. Before the
firing over the 28 pages, Zelikow and Lesemann clashed over the breadth
of the investigation. Again according to Shenon, Lesemann had presented
Zelikow with a list of 20 government officials she wanted to interview
to pursue the Saudi links. She was furious when Zelikow, several days
later replied that she could interview only 10—a numerical limitation
that Lesemann felt “arbitrary”, “crazy” and damaging to the work of the
commission at its critical outset.
Beyond what Shenon portrays as a pervasive pattern of Zelikow
restricting investigators and excessively limiting access to and sharing
of information, there are other reasons to question Zelikow’s
assertions on this topic, starting with the fact that, to the extent the
28 pages put the commission’s final product in doubt, he may have an
interest in prolonging their censorship.
And then there are Zelikow’s conflicts of interest in his role, including:
His previous friendship with Bush’s National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, with whom he’d even authored a book.
His position on the Bush administration’s transition team.
His frequent contacts with Bush political advisor Karl Rove—while
the investigation was underway—which lend credence to characterizations
that he failed to be an impartial and, when necessary, adversarial
investigator.
That last point is critical, given widespread reports that the Bush
White House routinely impeded the commission’s investigation of possible
Saudi ties to 9/11. The Commission describes 9/11 Commission
member and former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman’s frustration with
the Bush administration’s relentless shielding of Saudi Arabia:
Lehman was struck by the determination of the Bush White
House to try to hide any evidence of the relationship between the Saudis
and al Qaeda. “They were refusing to declassify anything having to do
with Saudi Arabia,” Lehman said. “Anything having to do with the Saudis,
for some reason, it had this very special sensitivity.” He raised the
Saudi issue repeatedly with Andy Card. “I used to go over over to see
Andy, and I met with Rumsfeld three or four times, mainly to say, ‘What
are you guys doing? This stonewalling is so counterproductive.”
Zelikow portrays the commission’s work on the Saudi threads as more
thorough than that of the joint congressional intelligence inquiry
behind the 28 pages, but—even if that’s in some ways true—the question
remains: Was it thorough enough?
9/11 Commission chairman Tom Keane doesn’t seem to think so. Said Keane,
“(Vice chairman Lee Hamilton and I) think the commission was in many
ways set up to fail because we had not enough money…we didn’t have
enough time.” Indeed, charged with unraveling and studying the vast and
extraordinarily complex tapestry that is 9/11, the commission was
initially given a budget of just $3 million—later increased to a
still-paltry $15 million—and issued its final report just over 18 months
after the very first organizational meeting.
Keane and Hamilton aren’t the only ones who, unlike Zelikow,
acknowledge that the 9/11 Commission report is far from the last word on
potential Saudi government complicity in 9/11. Commission member and
former Senator Bob Kerrey, in a sworn statement recently submitted in
litigation by 9/11 family members and victims against Saudi Arabia, said
the commission report does not exonerate the kingdom. Wrote Kerrey:
“To the contrary, significant questions remain unanswered
concerning the possible involvement of Saudi government institutions
and actors in the financing and sponsorship of al Qaeda, and evidence
relating to the plausible involvement of possible Saudi government
agents in the September 11th attacks has never been fully pursued.“
