Posted on 12/18/2003 4:39:17 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Sept. 11 Panel: Bush, Clinton Not to Blame Sept. 11 Commission Chairman Says There's No Evidence to Blame Clinton or Bush Administrations
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON Dec. 18 — The chairman of a federal commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks said Thursday that mistakes over many years left the United States vulnerable to such an attack, but he resisted pinning blame on either of the last two presidential teams. "We have no evidence that anybody high in the Clinton administration or the Bush administration did anything wrong," chairman Thomas Kean said in an interview with ABC's "Nightline" taped for airing Thursday night.
Kean said the 10-member National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States has not decided whether to ask former President Clinton or President Bush to testify. He also said that any conclusions about the performance of high-level officials "will be reached when we are finished with our job, not now."
Kean sought to clarify remarks attributed to him in a CBS News report that aired Wednesday.
In the CBS interview, Kean said the commission's report, due May 27, will detail "what wasn't done and what should have be done" to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
He added, "There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed."
CBS reported that Kean's comments constituted "pointing fingers inside the (Bush) administration and laying blame."
On Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark labeled Kean's statements "disturbing" and said they showed the Bush administration could have done more to protect America from a terrorist attack.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said Kean's comments meant "that Bush administration officials had valuable information that could have prevented the terrorist attacks."
But Kean said in Thursday's interview that he did not mean to suggest that certain federal officials should have been fired after Sept. 11. He said he was commenting on obvious mistakes that were made, such as letting terrorists into the country and letting dangerous items onto planes.
"There are a number of steps along the way, that if they had occurred differently, this event wouldn't have occurred," he said.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said he reviewed the CBS report and did not believe Kean leveled accusations against the Bush administration.
"There is nothing that we have seen that leads us to believe that Sept. 11 could have been prevented," McClellan said.
Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, was appointed by Bush to lead the bipartisan commission.
I just saw the second airing of that .. it's obvious that regardless of the information ... this widow had her mind made up of who she was pointing the blame at.
No, they did not.
But that lie was put out there by the dems.
Excerpt:
Mr. Wilson has said that his mission came about following a request from Vice President Cheney. But it appears that if Mr. Cheney made the request at all, he made it of the CIA and did not know Mr. Wilson and certainly did not specify that he wanted Mr. Wilson put on the case.
Signing off but wanted to back up what I said.
I'm just watching the 2nd airing of that now about Clark and Gary Hart's comments
First .. Bush was not in office 9 months when 9/11 happened
Second .. Neither of them addressed the fact that Clinton was in office 8 years prior to Bush taking office
Which just proved my point they are playing such political games with this report and this investigation to the point that hardly anyone will be able to take it seriously
Can we guess who is behind this left wing conspiracy??????
Be assured that MSNBC is never a destination point.
That said, I caught about two minutes of Joe Scarborough and am wondering if the man is deranged or so desperate to keep his job that he has lost all semblance of reason.
Perhaps it was that week in hollyweird that got him turned.
The media will try to resurrect these ludicrous comments and Kean will continue to deny them, making the entire process a farce.
They were never informed of his findings (well, I'm sure after Wilson penned his poison op-ed they were, but not before, so it did not enter into their calculations). Here is what Tenet said about Joe Wilson's trip (It is quite dismissive):
Text of CIA Director George Tenet's statement
EXCERPT:
Because this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad, it was given a normal and wide distribution, but we did not brief it to the President, Vice-President or other senior Administration officials. We also had to consider that the former Nigerien officials knew that what they were saying would reach the U.S. government and that this might have influenced what they said.
END EXCERPT
Please read the whole of Tenet's statement and see that even Joe Wilson had at some point thought Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. A little factoid he ommitted when he decided to wreak all of this havoc. The administration has never said the uranium seeking was untrue. Just that they had not gathered enough verifiable evidence on their own to state it as categorically documented truth.
I agree the administration fumbled their initial response to the outrageous Wilson accusations, which were orchestrated to hit the media when the president had just arrived in Africa. I hope they now realize that many in the media will disregard facts in favor of DNC spin.
So, yeah, blame should be placed squarely on both the Clinton and Bush Administrations. What is the president for for chrissakes if not to prevent this sort of thing?
If you wanted to argue that the Clinton Administration merits more blame given their longer time on the job and the specific failures with respect to Bin Laden, I won't argue. But I don't take any satisfaction from that fact. And I don't think the Bush Administration's efforts toward what we now call homeland security was exemplary prior to 9-11 either.
I have seen that on some of the lefty site
Exactly. A little deft wordsmithing with statements taken out of context and CBS comes up with another hit piece tailored for Dem talking points.
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