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9/11 Panel Members Werent Told of Meeting
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: November 11th, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/washington/01cnd-book.html...
Members of the Sept. 11 commission said today that they were alarmed that they were told nothing about a White House meeting in July 2001 at which George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, is reported to have warned Condoleezza Rice...about an imminent Al Qaeda attack and failed to persuade her to take action. Details of the previously undisclosed meeting on July 10, 2001, two months before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, were first reported last week in a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward. The final report from the Sept. 11 commission made no mention of the meeting nor did it suggest there had been such an encounter between Mr. Tenet and Ms. Rice. Although passages of the book suggest that Mr. Tenet was a major source for Mr. Woodward, the former intelligence director has refused to comment on the book. The disclosures took members of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission by surprise. Some questioned whether information about the July 10 meeting was intentionally withheld from the panel. [A] Democratic commissioner, former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, said that the staff of the Sept. 11 commission was polled in recent days on the disclosures in Mr. Woodwards book and agreed that the meeting was never mentioned to us. Philip D. Zelikow, the executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and now a top aide to Ms. Rice at the State Department, agreed that no witness before the commission had drawn attention to a July 10 meeting at the White House, nor described the sort of encounter portrayed in Mr. Woodwards book.
Note: Isn't it interested that the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Mr. Zelikow, co-authored a book with Condaleeza Rice prior to 9/11 and is now a top aide of hers. As executive director, Mr. Zelikow had more say than anyone else over who was interviewed and what went into the final report. Do you think he might have had some bias? Is it possible he's not telling the truth here?