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.
That may be true but I do not think that will stop them. Think about it..what do they have to lose? I think they will try it.
My guess was that they got their head handed to them for the gross misrepresentation.
Once again, the media in their rush to attack the President, went too far.
The woman was beyond dense. Suggested that we should have known immediately it was a terror attack so everyone could have been evacuated from the second tower. That Rumsfeld would have not sat in the Pentagon for another 25 minutes after the towers were hit, and the president wouldn't have been sitting in a classroom in Florida for half an hour. That we all should have been TOLD.........
This woman is so dumb that it makes my hair hurt. No logic to her spiel at all.
I was there and saw a lot. If any agency of the US governement should get the blame it is the Headquarters clowns at FBI. The terrorists operated, planned, and trained right under the FBI's noses. Headquarters ignored and even punished the agents who were trying to report the terrorism problem.
Slick willie promised Kean he would be the secretary of education.
Of course, slick willie lied, but he did give Kean some other no show job in his administration.
No doubt Clinton FUBARed our intelligence services. But stretching that into blaming Clinton for 9/11 is ridiculous, even when the party of idiots is blaming Bush for it. They do have a trump card in that phony game - 9/11 happened on Bush's watch.
By the line of logic used here, Reagan is more to blame than anyone. He let terrorists run the Marines out of Beirut, traded arms for hostages with Iran, dropped bombs up Khadafi's camel's butt, etc. Or what about Carter? Sulking in the Rose Garden rather than pummeling Tehran. Bush is exactly on the right track in the War on Terror. But, had 9/11 not happened, would he be any different than his predecessors? From a pragmatic point, it doesn't matter. We are now on the right track.
You are right about what is important. What is important is that intelligence must learn from its mistakes, agencies must communicate better, and the Executive Branch must execute effertive policy. If we want to start blaming Presidents rather than terrorists, there's plenty of false "blame" to go around.
It did politically, in that we lost seats in Congress afterward. Republicans were certainly not rewarded for the impeachment.
If anything, it turned us against ourselves blaming certain other Republicans for not doing a good enough job. Never mind that the Democrats would have prevented Clinton's removal no matter what we did.
I agree that we scored a moral victory, but the only ones clapping were Republicans, and not even all of them.
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