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9/11 See other 9/11 Articles Title: Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (book review) Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation Philip Shenon BuzzFlash.com's Review (excerpt) Just released: Breaking stories about it here, and here. Michael Isikoff writes in Newsweek: "In the summer of 2003, Warren Bass, an investigator for the 9/11 Commission, was digging through highly classified National Security Council documents when he came across a trove of material that startled him. Buried in the files of former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, the documents seemed to confirm charges that the Bush White House had ignored repeated warnings about the threat posed by Osama bin Laden. Clarke, it turned out, had bombarded national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice in the summer of 2001 with impassioned e-mails and memos warning of an Al Qaeda attack--and urging a more forceful U.S. government response. One e-mail jumped out: it pleaded with officials to imagine how they would feel after a tragedy where 'hundreds of Americans lay dead in several countries, including the U.S.,' adding that 'that future day could happen at any time.' The memo was written on Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2001 -- just one week before the attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "But when Bass tried to impress the significance of what he had discovered upon the panel, he ran into what he thought was a roadblock -- his boss. Philip Zelikow, a respected University of Virginia historian hired to be the 9/11 Commission's executive director, had long been friendly with Rice. The two had coauthored a book. Rice had later placed him on a Bush transition team that reorganized the NSC (and ended up diminishing Clarke's role). At Rice's request, Zelikow had also anonymously drafted a new Bush national-security paper in September 2002 that laid out the case for preventive war. "In commission staff meetings, Zelikow disparaged Clarke as an egomaniac and braggart who was unjustly slandering his friend Rice, according to [Shenon's] new book. . . . "Rove himself, according to Shenon, always feared that a report which laid the blame for 9/11 at the president's doorstep was the one development that could most jeopardize Bush's 2004 re-election. That's one reason why White House lawyers tried to stonewall the commission from the outset. When Clarke finally did testify about his warnings to Rice, Shenon reports, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and his aides feverishly drafted tough questions and phoned them in to GOP commissioners to undermine Clarke's credibility. Later, when Attorney General John Ashcroft unveiled a memo that seemed to cast the antiterror record of the Clinton Justice Department in an unflattering light, Gonzales and his aides high-fived each other." By a New York Times reporter who covered the 9/11 Commission, the book reveals how pivotal the role of the controversial Condoleezza Rice aide, Philip Zelikow, was in the "findings" of the Commission -- and particularly how he may have directed the outcome -- no surprise -- to look favorably on Rice, himself and the Bush Administration. The book includes information confirming that Zelikow talked regularly to Karl Rove during the course of the Commission, which he was prohibited from doing. Zelikow claims that they were not talking about the Commission's work (and we have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.) Based on advance information about allegations and facts in the book, BuzzFlash awarded Zelikow its BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the week on February 1. We suspect that this book will be a credible insight into the behind-the-scences machinations to make sure that the so-called 9/11 Commission basically would become a bi-partisan absolution of both political parties. Zelikow, although he denies it, appears to have been the agent of the Bush Administration in ensuring that the White House -- particularly Bush and Rice who were warned in advance about potential hijackings -- did not bear any serious blame for its gross negligence, of which Zelikow himself was culpable. About the author: Philip Shenon is an investigative reporter with The New York Times, where he has worked since 1981. He was the lead reporter on the investigation of the September 11 commission and has held several of the most important assignments of the Washington Bureau, including chief Defense Department correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, Congressional correspondent and Justice Department Correspondent. He was one of two Times reporters embedded with American grounds troops during the invasion of Iraq and worked in pre-war Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran for Times foreign staff. This is his first book.
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