NY Post discredits 911 Victims

NY Post -July 11, 2003

July 11, 2003 -- Last fall, we welcomed President Bush's creation of an independent commis sion to investigate the intelligence and policy failures that led to the 9/11 attacks.

But when families of the terrorist attack's victims used their political clout to force the resignations of the panel's two top officials — former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell — we started feeling some misgivings.

And those concerns have been borne out by the latest behavior of the commission — now headed by former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean.

Indeed, it's becoming increasingly apparent that what began as a broad-based independent probe has morphed into an increasingly partisan investigation — with President Bush as its primary target.

Because the panel has not gotten the immediate response it wants to its demand for millions of pages of documents, Kean all but accused the administration of stonewalling the panel — even while insisting that he was making no such charge.

But, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday, it's difficult not to suspect that the Kean panel, awash in partisan political figures — like onetime Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste and former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who still openly blames the White House for his defeat last November — will fail utterly to meet its mandate.

That's especially sad, because an independent investigation of bungling by the CIA and the FBI was truly necessary.

The intelligence and policy failures that culminated in the destruction of the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon long predate the months leading up to 9/11.

They include the foreign-policy failures of the Clinton era in Somalia and its inadequate response to al Qaeda threats; the U.S. flight from Beirut after the Marine barracks bombing of 1983; and the Iran hostage fiasco of 1979-81.

In short, they stretch back a quarter-century and encompass administrations of both political parties.

Kissinger and Mitchell were uniquely qualified to head such an inquiry by virtue of their strong foreign-policy backgrounds — in sharp contrast to Kean, whose biggest concerns as governor were urban sprawl and property taxes.

But both men were forced to quit when the victims' families — seeing some dark conflict-of-interest conspiracy at work — demanded that they publicly disclose their business client list.

But then, that's been part of the problem all along — the perception that family members are trying to set the agenda.

According to published reports, the families have said they will "not stand for some broad, sweeping historic account" from the commission.

In short, they want a scapegoat. And it looks like the commission may comply — or at least seek to delay its report so that it can become an issue during the 2004 presidential campaign. Frankly, there is no reason to believe that the White House isn't doing everything in its power to prevent a 9/11-scale terror attack on America. Just as there is no reason to jeopardize national security with a too-hasty document dump of the sort being sought by the commission. The question of how 9/11 could have occurred is too vital a question — for all Americans, not just the families — to allow it to degenerate into a mindless witch hunt. Or a partisan political free-for-all.

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