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Groups call for the resignation of Sept. 11 commission director
GovExec.Com ^ | March 22, 2004 | Chris Strohm

Posted on 03/23/2004 5:53:48 AM PST by Alissa

Public interest groups are demanding the immediate resignation of the director of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, just as the commission prepares to hold high-profile hearings this week with senior officials from the Bush and Clinton administrations.

The 9-11 Family Steering Committee and 9-11 Citizens Watch, two separate groups, are demanding the resignation of Philip Zelikow, executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, after information surfaced over the weekend that he participated in Bush administration briefings prior to Sept. 11 on the threat al Qaeda posed to the country.

"We believe that the very integrity of the commission is at stake here, and that he should resign immediately," Kyle Hence, co-founder of Citizens Watch, said Monday.

On Saturday, the Family Steering Committee wrote a letter to the commission arguing that Zelikow has a conflict of interest because he could potentially be held culpable for failing to heed warnings about al Qaeda prior to Sept. 11.

"It is clear that [Zelikow] should never have been permitted to be a member of the commission, since it is the mandate of the commission to identify the source of failures," the committee wrote. "It is now apparent why there has been so little effort to assign individual culpability. We now can see that trail would lead directly to the staff director himself."

Zelikow was a member of the team that helped with the Bush administration transition to office. When he became executive director of the commission, he recused himself from participating in any part of the investigation that dealt with the time he served on the Bush transition team.

Critics have previously called for Zelikow to resign because they believed he had at least an appearance of a conflict of interest. He co-wrote a book in 1995 with Condoleezza Rice, who is now Bush's national security adviser. Additionally, only Zelikow and commission member Jamie Gorelick are permitted to read classified intelligence reports known as the presidential daily briefs in their entirety.

Information that Zelikow participated in intelligence briefings on al Qaeda before Sept. 11 surfaced over the weekend in interviews with the government's former counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who resigned last summer after 30 years of public service. Clarke served in four administrations as part of the National Security Council. He was the counterterrorism czar for former President Clinton, served on the transition team when Bush came into office and remained as a senior counterterrorism official under the Bush administration.

On Saturday, Clarke told the New York Times that he gave briefings on the threat posed by al Qaeda to Rice; Stephen Hadley, now Rice's deputy; and Zelikow when he was part of the transition team from December 2000 to January 2001.

Clarke told CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday that the Bush administration failed to heed his warnings in the months leading up to Sept. 11, and then eagerly tried to blame Iraq for the attacks in the aftermath when no connection existed.

On Monday, Clarke's new book, Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror--What Really Happened, was released. In it he forcefully criticizes the Bush administration's efforts to defend the country from terrorist attacks.

Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the 9-11 commission, said Monday that no new charges have been leveled that would cause the commission to ask Zelikow to resign. Felzenberg reiterated that Zelikow recused himself from parts of the investigation that deal with the time he served on the transition team.

"The commission finds the director's recusal sufficient," Felzenberg said. "I don't see a single charge that has been made that would cause the commission to change its view."

Felzenberg said Zelikow was not responsible for making policy decisions or implementing recommendations during his time on the transition team. He added that the commission has a policy regarding conflicts of interest and a process in which complaints should be vetted.

The commission is planning two days of public hearings starting Tuesday. The hearings will consist of testimony from high-level officials from the Bush and Clinton administrations, with a focus on counterterrorism.

Scheduled to testify on Tuesday are Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, as well as their counterparts in the Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright and William Cohen. Scheduled to testify on Wednesday are CIA Director George Tenet; Samuel Berger, former assistant to Clinton for national security affairs; and Clarke. The commission announced Monday that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage also will testify Wednesday to beef up the administration's position on counterterrorism.

The Family Steering Committee and Citizens Watch want Bush and Clinton, Vice President Dick Cheney and former Vice President Al Gore, and Rice to testify publicly under oath. Rice testified in February before a closed session of the commission.

Citizens Watch and family members of Sept. 11 victims held a press conference Monday to demand the commission provide transparency, accountability and sworn public testimony from the highest government officials.

Hence said the commission has so far experienced "a pattern of stonewalling and slow walking" by the White House and federal agencies, such as the Federal Aviation Administration and North American Aerospace Defense Command.

"To date, no one in government--not a single government official--has been held directly accountable for the apparent and as yet unexplained simultaneous, massive, across-the-board failure of every single defensive and intelligence measure this country had established," Hence said.

Citizens Watch also launched an advertising campaign Monday demanding that Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Gore and Rice testify publicly under oath before the commission. The group is running billboard advertisements in the Washington metro rail system for four weeks, as well as quarter-page ads in The Washington Post.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 911commission; philipzelikow; zelikow
This is the first of 2 articles I'm posting on this 9-11 Family group. How do these people have all this clout?
1 posted on 03/23/2004 5:53:48 AM PST by Alissa
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To: Alissa
"Citizens Watch"--is that Nader ?
2 posted on 03/23/2004 5:55:38 AM PST by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: Alissa
Clarke lied when he said there were no links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

January 23, 1991 he was quoted in the Washington Post on page A02 as saying that intelligence does link bin Laden to Iraq when he said the following:

While U.S. intelligence officials disclosed shortly after the missile attack that they had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa site that contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, Clarke said that the U.S. government is "sure" that Iraqi nerve gas experts actually produced a powdered VX-like substance at the plant that, when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas.

Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa (Iraq) or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.


3 posted on 03/23/2004 6:00:47 AM PST by Peach
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To: Alissa
I suspect someone would like to divert attention from the grilling Clarke is goin to get.
4 posted on 03/23/2004 6:05:34 AM PST by js1138
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To: Peach
"Clarke lied when he said there were no links between Iraq and Al Qaeda."


Must be that disease called liberalism.
5 posted on 03/23/2004 6:06:24 AM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: Peach
Right. And what about the airline hijack training camp?
6 posted on 03/23/2004 6:07:19 AM PST by plain talk
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To: plain talk
Salmon Pak. Definitely.

There are so many links to Iraq supporting not just terrorism in general, but Al Qaeda specifically.

Monsoor Ijaz said today that Clarke knew full well that Saddam and OBL were working hand in glove for years and challenged Clarke to appear on any television show to debate this matter. Practically called the guy a liar.

What Clarke would just as soon we forget:

Okay - here are just a FEW of the links between terrorism and AQ specifically and Iraq.

Read about what the press was saying in the 90's about the links between Iraq and AQ:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/946809/posts?page=1

Growing evidence of AQ/Iraq link:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/946997/posts

Saddam and Bin Laden vs. the World:http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,798270,00.html

Saddam link to bin Laden:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/866105/posts

The Al Qaeda connections:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/866105/posts

NYT - 1998 - OBL and Iraq agree to cooperate:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/985906/posts

Document links AQ and Iraq:http://tennessean.com/nation-world/archives/03/06/34908297.shtml?Element_ID=34908297

Iraq and terrorism:http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins091903.asp

WSJ - Iraq and AQ: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/987129/posts

Iraq and Iran contact AQ: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/981055/posts

Proof Saddam worked with AQ: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F04%2F27%2Fwalq27.xml

Saddam's AQ Connection:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/969032/posts

Terrorist killed in Iraq after refusing to train Al Qaeda terrorists:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/25/wnidal25.xml

Osama's Best Friend: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1007969/posts

Case Closed - OBL and Iraq agree to work together:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp

Terrorist behind 9/11 trained in Iraq:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1039898/posts?page=154

The Clinton view of Iraq/AQ ties: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/527uwabl.asp

Saddam's ties to terror: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1005579/posts

7 posted on 03/23/2004 6:09:25 AM PST by Peach
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To: Alissa
These "Family" groups are starting to wear on me, and are begining to take on the form of a 'political' special interest group with an "agenda", but all under the cover of "rightousness"! This is really starting to 'cross the line' on objectivity and sincerity in what they are trying to do.
8 posted on 03/23/2004 6:24:25 AM PST by LibFreeUSA
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To: Alissa
Heavens to Betsy, how could they have possibly allowed this guy on the commission in the first place? He obviously has real information on the subject and will probably be prone to get the commission all tangled up in actual facts instead of partisan shots at the President. Somebody really screwed up here...
9 posted on 03/23/2004 6:29:06 AM PST by trebb (Ain't God good . . .)
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To: LibFreeUSA
Exactly so. They are being promoted by the Hillary/Soros/Moveon wing of the DNC.

We must always remember - not only do the hard left have no sense of shame, they use the principle of shame to quash preemptively any complaint that their opponents might raise with their use of such 'victims' to forward their agenda.
10 posted on 03/23/2004 6:41:13 AM PST by maica (World Peace starts with W)
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To: LibFreeUSA
That is because many of the participants are a political special interest group. If they haven't figured out by now that the people who flew planes into the buildings were the real killers, nothing in this so-called hearing is going to get them to understand anything, other than what they want to believe.
11 posted on 03/23/2004 6:42:47 AM PST by kcvl
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To: kcvl
I do wonder if these groups have the same ties to Tides. These people have worn out their welcome with me. and the commission is already politicized to the point that it is useless. WSJ wrote about this,,it started when Kissinger got hounded off. They wanted a hatchet job on Bush. Pitiful really.
12 posted on 03/23/2004 6:54:20 AM PST by cajungirl (swing by, sweet limousine, coming for to kerry me home!)
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To: maica
We must always remember - not only do the hard left have no sense of shame, they use the principle of shame to quash preemptively any complaint that their opponents might raise with their use of such 'victims' to forward their agenda.

911 Citizens Watch, a dubious organization, is exploiting the grief of the 911 families by promoting conspiracy theories and a clearly anti-Bush agenda. Someone should dig deeper into who is behind this group.

13 posted on 03/23/2004 7:41:14 AM PST by Spotsy (Bush-Cheney '04)
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