Corrupting Conflicts and Connections
An elephant is sitting in the 9/11 Commission hearing room.
That elephant is the truth.
The Warren Commission looking into the assassination of President John Kennedy had its lone gunman/single bullet explanation and manufactured evidence.
The 9/11 Commission has its 19 box cutter wielding, Arab hijackers and some constructed evidence.
A truly independent investigation would examine WHO carried out the attacks. That means probing all those capable of executing such precise mass murder, including elements within the U.S. government.
Cleverly and cruelly, however, the politicians have turned the Commission into a tool to perpetuate their agenda of global power.
The Commission�s report due July 28 will render rationales to expand the security state at home and abroad and promulgate huge spending for the �war on terrorism.�
The largess will fill the coffers of the very individuals and corporations complicit in 9/11 enabling their belligerent schemes to continue.
Foxes Guarding the Chicken Coup
Commission chair Thomas Kean, a Republican, and vice chair Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, promised in a Washington Journal interview on C-Span more than a year ago that the Commission would answer every question and leave no stone unturned.
At a press conference six months later, Hamilton sang a different tune. When a reporter asked about a causal relationship between the CIA and al Qaeda -- the anointed 9/11 terrorists -- Hamilton, incensed, cut him off. �I don�t accept the premise of your question,� he huffed.
Herein lies the problem. The 9/11 Commission is the Cover-up Commission.
The foxes are guarding the chicken coop, keeping America safe from the truth.
The Bush Administration went to war against Afghanistan without any proof.
Remember, Bush could not trust his �fellow Americans� with a shred of evidence before he rushed to destroy Afghanistan. No air traffic control tapes. No boarding surveillance tapes. No black box recordings. Nothing but an alleged hijacker�s passport which miraculously survived the rubble of the World Trade Center.
The Commissioners
The Commissioners have ties with the very parties they are investigating including the CIA, banking and financial interests, and Bush administration officials.
The 9/11 Commission is officially called the NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE U.S.
The Bush administration has written the plot line and these 10 �independent� Commissioners are merely reading the script.
It looks like Karl Rove called central casting and found Washington insiders with so many conflicts of interest, with so much to lose in their high-powered jobs, with so much to tell about each other that they are guaranteed to play their roles and keep the truth under wraps.
The Commission�s report will echo the �who would have ever thought� and bungling federal intelligence agencies that we independent journalists and researchers dispelled long ago.
The Commissioners and administration witnesses have demonstrated arrogance, disdain, and contempt for the 9/11 families and for all of us.
The back room deals with the White House, softball questioning, focus on the irrelevant, and spotlight on the ridiculous insult us.
Stalling
The Bush administration opposed forming the Commission. The persistence of a band of 9/11 widows brought the Commission into existence. After stalling, Bush signed the law creating the Commission in November 2002 -- and then stacked the Commission and stalled again.
The law establishing what the families hoped would be an independent Commission gave Bush the power to appointment the chair. The law gave Congressional leaders the prerogative to chose their respective members. The chair appointed the executive director.
The law establishing the Commission required that the members are �prominent U.S. citizens,� knowledgeable in intelligence gathering, law enforcement, and foreign affairs.�
The Commission adopted the administration�s story that foreign terrorists used planes as weapons surprising the bungling $40 billion year intelligence agencies.
The trap was set.
The conflicts of interest and connections of the Commissioners and staff with the executive branch and with the agencies and individuals they are mandated to investigate create a maze with oil at its core.