The 9-11 Commission saw every document they asked for."
Now, how did they know what to ask for?
And let's not forget something else: Ashcroft could NOT have been clearer that Janet Reno did NOT show him the 2000 Millennium after-report.
I also like his Tuesday night statement that he's cooperated with the investigation "fully and completely"--except for the missing documents he stole.
Why in the world was the Commission asking this now private citizen to get them records from the National Archives. Surely they could request them from the Archives directly if they knew enough to specifically ask for those documents.
No he couldn't. I'm sure when Ashcroft says "NOT" he means "NOT".
From an earlier thread ("Whitewashgate"):
Drafts of the sensitive NSC "Millennium After Action Review" on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are reported to be among the documents still missing from classified materials Berger removed from a secure reading room.
Ashcroft said the review – which he was not shown prior to 9-11 – recommends, 17 months before the attacks, "disrupting the al-Qaida network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions and tougher visa and border controls."
Ashcroft told the commission, "It is clear from the review that actions taken in the Millennium Period should not be the operating model for the U.S. government."
The March 2000 review, Ashcroft told the panel, warns the Clinton administration "of a substantial al-Qaida network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here."
Ashcroft said the "highly-classified" review "was not among the 30 items upon which my predecessor [Janet Reno] briefed me during the transition. It was not advocated as a disruption strategy to me during the [2001] summer threat period by the NSC staff which wrote the review more than a year earlier."