Buddies Investigating Buddies

Sam points below [1] to the astonishing conservative cronyism that burrows even into the heart of our national security.

Well, it gets even, uh, astonishing-er.

Eric Alterman has provided a very useful book report for us [2] on Philip Shenon's The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation [3]:

President George W. Bush used his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last week to, once again, attempt to define his presidency as a long struggle against the dark forces responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. “Six and a half years ago, our country faced the worst attack in our history,” Bush said. “I understood immediately that we would have to act boldly to protect the American people. So we’ve gone on the offense against these extremists. We’re staying on the offense, and we will not relent until we bring them to justice.”

The Bush administration has continually used—and abused—this popular frame over the past seven years. As Philip Shenon writes in his new book-length expose, The Commission, Karl Rove began planning an electoral strategy based on strength against terrorism on Sept. 12th. Donald Rumsfeld, as we know, began planning an invasion of Iraq only hours after the towers came down. In so many ways, the Bush administration’s most disastrous policies—the invasion of Iraq, torture, wiretapping, Guantanamo, the unitary executive, and so on—were all enabled by the administration’s assertion that it had the unique ability to fight the good fight and prevent another terrorist attack.

But what if it was revealed that in the months leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, the administration had ample evidence that the attack was imminent, and was negligent in its response? What would become of the 9/11 presidency? The White House faced this very real problem in 2003 when public and congressional pressure forced Bush to sign a law creating a commission to examine the events surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks.
Philip Shenon, the New York Times reporter covering the 9/11 Commission, has since discovered the great lengths that the administration went to in order to neuter the findings of the Commission. Among his discoveries:

• Vice-President Cheney consistently tried to kill the Commission, calling Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle early on and discouraging him from opening probes, saying they would be “a very dangerous and time-consuming diversion.” Many commissioners later suspected that he was the one directing then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez in stonewalling the Commission.

• Philip Zelikow, who was hired as “executive director” of the Commission, meaning he would run the day-to-day operations, was a close friend and former colleague of Condoleezza Rice’s who spoke with her many times during the investigation despite his pledges not to do so. Shenon writes that it was clear to some investigators “that they could not have an open discussion in front of Zelikow about Condoleezza Rice and her performance as national security advisor.” Rice, you will recall, was the primary person responsible for briefing Bush about the dangers of a potential attack that were laid out in memos like the one he received in August 2001 in her presence entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.”

• All investigators and staffers on the Commission were originally forbidden to talk to the press or even to the commissioners themselves. Only Zelikow was so empowered, thereby allowing him to control all access to it.
Zelikow also received multiple phone calls from Karl Rove over the course of the investigation. When commissioners discovered this fact, Zelikow ordered his secretary to stop keeping a log of his phone calls. Records from the Government Accountability Office show continued, frequent calls from Zelikow to the White House. (He claims the conversations were strictly non-political and involved matters relating to the University of Virginia, where he is a professor.)

• Zelikow did not disclose to the Commission that he was the secret author of a white paper outlining a defense for pre-emptive war, which many credit as one of the key intellectual justifications for the Bush administration’s misbegotten invasion of Iraq. Zelikow later tried to add wording to the Commission’s report linking Iraq to Al Qaeda, despite a continued lack of evidence that this was the case.

• Zelikow also apparently failed to disclose to the Commission the full extent of his work on President Bush’s 2000 transition team.

It would be a neater story if the White House had actually placed Zelikow on the team in order to have its own mole there, given its concern about the likely outcome of the report. Yet Commission chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton apparently came to Zelikow on their own and hired him, apparently unconcerned with the myriad conflicts of interest his appointment could raise. According to Shenon, even then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was surprised to hear Zelikow’s name mentioned as a candidate and was concerned there would be too much blowback to Zelikow’s hiring, given his administration ties. But Kean and Hamilton prevailed.

Alterman points out based on his excellent research on the Cuban Missile Crisis that Zelikow is a fine scholar and I agree; his introduction to this crucial book [4] deeply influenced how I understand the Cold War. But it has to be said that his response [1], which Alterman posts in the interests of fairness, is pretty anemic.