9/11 Commissioners Expose Obstructions

Book: Pentagon And FAA Were Not Completely Honest, Giuliani Questions Too Soft

(AP)  "It proved difficult, if not impossible, to raise hard questions about 9/11 in New York without it being perceived as criticism of the individual police and firefighters or of Mayor Giuliani," Kean and Hamilton said.

Congress established the commission in 2002 to investigate government missteps leading to the Sept. 11 attacks. Its 567-page unanimous report, which was released in July 2004 and became a national best seller, does not blame Bush or former President Bill Clinton but does say they failed to make anti-terrorism a high priority before the attacks.

The panel of five Republicans and five Democrats also concluded that the Sept. 11 attacks would not be the nation's last, noting that al Qaeda had tried for at least 10 years to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

In their book, which goes on sale Aug. 15, Kean and Hamilton recap obstacles they say the panel faced in putting out a credible report in a presidential election year, including fights for access to government documents and an effort to reach unanimity.

Among the issues:

Iraq. The commission threatened to splinter over the question of investigating the administration's use of 9/11 as a reason for going to war. The strongest proponent was original member Max Cleland, a Democratic former senator who later stepped down for separate reasons.

If Cleland had not resigned, the commission probably would not have reached unanimity, according to the book. Ultimately, commissioners decided to touch briefly on the Iraq war by concluding there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda; the administration had asserted there were substantial contacts between the two.

Israel. The commission disagreed as to how to characterize al Qaeda's motives for attacking the U.S., with Hamilton arguing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the presence of U.S. forces in the Middle East were major contributors.

Unidentified members believed that "listing U.S. support for Israel as a root cause of al Qaeda's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy," which those commission members did not want.

Ultimately, the panel made a brief statement noting that U.S. policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq are "dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world."

Access to detainees. The panel pushed for direct access to detainees, at one point proposing to be at least physically present or to listen by telephone during interrogations so they could gauge credibility and get unvarnished accounts.

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