Thursday, January 31, 2008

Fwd: [UQ-Wire] UQ Wire: Commission Confidential - Rove & Zelikow

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From: Scoop Outgoing News <outgoing-news@scoop.co.nz>
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 10:12:44 +1300 (NZDT)
Subject: [UQ-Wire] UQ Wire: Commission Confidential - Rove & Zelikow

Posting to Headlines Wire of Scoop
Opinion: www.UnansweredQuestions.org
Date: Friday, 1 February 2008
Time: 10:12 am NZT

UQ Wire: Commission Confidential - Rove & Zelikow

Distribution via the Unanswered Questions Wire
http://www.unansweredquestions.org/ .

UQ Wire: Commission Confidential - Rove & Zelikow
New book links Karl Rove to 9/11 Commission coverup
Report From Max Holland - Washington DeCoded

INTRODUCTION & MEDIA ADVISORY
Dear members of the media
From Kyle F. Hence
9/11 Citizenswatch
http://www.911pressfortruth.com

There need to be hearings now about this deeply compromised commission.
Rove and Zelikow must be issued subpoenas, as should the telecom
companies to get their cell phone records of all communications
between Zelikow and senior officials at the White House. Accountability
and transparency are hallmarks of a healthy government beholden
to the people it serves. With this Commission we got neither
and as a result the entire Commission Report must be called
into question. A new investigation is now required to do what
the Zelikow Commission did not do, fulfill its mandate to provide
a "full accounting of the facts and circumstances" surrounding
the September 11th attacks.

9/11 CitizensWatch, which I served as Co-Director, was the first
to formally call for the resignation of Zelikow, closely followed
by the Jersey widows of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee.
We were far more right and justified than we even knew at the
time. And now that we know this about Zelikow and we know that
the Commission failed to answer 70% of the questions posed by
the Family Steering Committee the case is now clear the U.S.
Government must convene a new investigation, this time, co-chaired
by a member of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee and a formally
appointed public advocate who sits with the Commissioners. But
first hearings are in order and should be conducted immediately
by the House Oversight Committee and Senate Government Affairs
Committee. It's time to do right by the victims, their families
and the nation and re-open this 9/11 investigation. Chairman
Kean and Vice-Chair Hamilton should be called upon to fully
support this new investigation in light of their betrayal of
their promise to conduct a full and fair independent investigation.

9/11 CitizensWatch will soon issue an open letter to the Congress
on this issue. And one to the former Commissions and staff.
Look for it ahead of the release of Shenon's book on the 5th.

Regards,

Kyle F. Hence
9/11 Citizenswatch
http://www.911pressfortruth.com

Also, check out:
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Book_Director_of_911_commission_secretly_0131.html
*********

Washington DeCoded - http://www.washingtondecoded.com
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful .
. .
and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell, 1946
Commission Confidential
EXTRA By Max Holland
http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2008/01/commission-conf.html

In a revelation bound to cast a pall over the 9/11 Commission,
Philip Shenon will report in a forthcoming book that the panel's
executive director, Philip Zelikow, engaged in “surreptitious”
communications with presidential adviser Karl Rove and other
Bush administration officials during the commission's 20-month
investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

Shenon, who led The New York Times' coverage of the 9/11 panel,
reveals the Zelikow-Rove connection in a new book entitled The
Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation,
to be published next month by Twelve Books. The Commission is
under an embargo until its February 5 publication, but Washington
DeCoded managed to purchase a copy of the abridged audio version
from a New York bookstore.

In what's termed an "investigation of the investigation," Shenon
purports to tell the story of the commission from start to finish.
The book's critical revelations, however, revolve almost entirely
around the figure of Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia
professor and director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs
prior to his service as the commission's executive director.
Shenon delivers a blistering account of Zelikow's role and leadership,
and an implicit criticism of the commissioners for appointing
Zelikow in the first place, and then allowing him to stay on
after his myriad conflicts-of-interest were revealed under oath.

Shenon’s narrative is built from extensive interviews with
staff members and several, if not all, the commissioners. He
depicts Zelikow as exploiting his central position to negate
or neutralize criticism of the Bush administration so that the
White House would not bear, in November 2004, the political
burden of failing to prevent the attacks.

The Commission includes these specific revelations:

--Kean and Hamilton appreciated that Zelikow was a friend and
former colleague of then-national security adviser Condoleeza
Rice, one of the principal officials whose conduct would be
scrutinized. Zelikow had served with her on the National Security
Council (NSC) during the presidency of Bush's father, and they
had written a book together about German reunification. The
commission co-chairmen also knew of Zelikow's October 2001 appointment
to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. According
to Shenon, however, Zelikow failed to disclose several additional
and egregious conflicts-of-interest, among them, the fact that
he had been a member of Rice's NSC transition team in 2000-01.
In that capacity, Zelikow had been the "architect" responsible
for demoting Richard Clarke and his counter-terrorism team within
the NSC. As Shenon puts it, Zelikow "had laid the groundwork
for much of went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months
before September 11. Would he want people to know that?"

--Karen Heitkotter, the commission's executive secretary, was
taken aback on June 23, 2003 when she answered the telephone
for Zelikow at 4:40 PM and heard a voice intone, “This is
Karl Rove. I’m looking for Philip.” Heitkotter knew that
Zelikow had promised the commissioners he would cut off all
contact with senior officials in the Bush administration. Nonetheless,
she gave Zelikow’s cell phone number to Rove. The next day
there was another call from Rove at 11:35 AM. Subsequently,
Zelikow would claim that these calls pertained to his “old
job” at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

--The full extent of Zelikow's involvement with the incumbent
administration only became evident within the commission on
October 8, 2003, almost halfway into the panel’s term. Determined
to blunt the Jersey Girls’ call for his resignation or recusal,
Zelikow proposed that he be questioned under oath about his activities.
General counsel Daniel Marcus, who conducted the sworn interview,
brought a copy of the résumé Zelikow had provided to Kean
and Hamilton. None of the activities Zelikow now detailed, his
role on Rice's transition team, his instrumental role in Clarke's
demotion, his authorship of a post-9/11 pre-emptive attack Doctrine,
were mentioned in the résumé. Zelikow blandly asserted to
Marcus that he did not see “any of this as a major conflict
of interest.” Marcus’s conclusion was that Zelikow “should
never have been hired” as executive director. But the only
upshot from these shocking disclosures was that Zelikow was
involuntarily recused from that part of the investigation which
involved the presidential transition, and barred from participating
in subsequent interviews of senior Bush administration officials.

--Some two months later, as Bob Kerrey replaced disgruntled ex-Senator
Max Cleland on the panel, the former Nebraska senator became
astounded once he understood Zelikow’s obvious conflicts-of-interest
and his very limited recusal. Kerrey could not understand how
Kean and Hamilton had ever agreed to put Zelikow in charge.
“Look Tom,” Kerrey told Kean, “either he goes or I go.”
But Kean persuaded Kerrey to drop his ultimatum.

--In late 2003, around the time his involuntary recusal was imposed,
Zelikow called executive secretary Karen Heitkotter into his
office and ordered her to stop creating records of his incoming
telephone calls. Concerned that the order was improper, a nervous
Heitkotter soon told general counsel Marcus. He advised her
to ignore Zelikow’s order and continue to keep a log of his
telephone calls, insofar as she knew about them.

--Although Shenon could not obtain from the GAO an unredacted
record of Zelikow’s cell phone use--and Zelikow used his cell
phone for most of his outgoing calls--the Times reporter was
able to establish that Zelikow made numerous calls to “456”
numbers in the 202 area code, which is the exclusive prefix of
the White House.

--Even after his recusal, Zelikow continued to insert himself
into the work of "Team 3," the task force responsible for the
most politically-sensitive part of the investigation, counter-terrorism
policy. This brief encompassed the White House, which meant
investigating the conduct of Condoleeza Rice and Richard Clarke
during the months prior to 9/11. Team 3 staffers would come
to believe that Zelikow prevented them from submitting a report
that would have depicted Rice's performance as "amount[ing] to
incompetence, or something not far from it."

--In Without Precedent, Kean and Hamilton's 2006 account of the
9/11 panel, the two co-chairmen wrote that Zelikow was a controversial
choice

. . [but] we had full confidence in Zelikow's independence and
ability--and frankly, we wanted somebody who was unafraid to
roil the waters from time to time. He recused himself from anything
involving his work on the NSC transition. He made clear his determination
to conduct an aggressive investigation. And he was above all
a historian dedicated to a full airing of the facts. It was
clear from people who knew and worked with him that Zelikow
would not lead a staff inquiry that did anything less than uncover
the most detailed and accurate history of 9/11.

Shenon's radically different account of the commission's inner
workings promises to achieve what none of the crackpot conspiracy
theorists have managed to do so far: put the 9/11 Commission
in disrepute.

http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2008/01/commission-conf.html

********************

STANDARD DISCLAIMER FROM UQ.ORG: UnansweredQuestions.org does
not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the above article.
We present this in the interests of research -for the relevant
information we believe it contains. We hope that the reader finds
in it inspiration to work with us further, in helping to build
bridges between our various investigative communities, towards
a greater, common understanding of the unanswered questions which
now lie before us.

----------------------------------------------------------

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