The charade continues: 9/11 Commission heads outraged at CIA videotape stonewall

well, ain't this interestin'... the 9/11 commission stonewalled the american public and now the commission's two heads are outraged and dumbfounded that the cia stonewalled THEM... all i've got to say, mr. hamilton and mr. kean, is how about going back and going through the whole ugly affair again, and maybe THIS TIME we could all find out what REALLY happened...? huh...? huh...? whaddaya say...?

Stonewalled by the C.I.A.

By THOMAS H. KEAN and LEE H. HAMILTON
Published: January 2, 2008

MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.

[...]

[G]overnment officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.

Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton served as chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the 9/11 commission.

seems like there's a lotta this obstructin' business goin' 'round... just as a for instance, gentlemen, i'd be curious as to why the twin towers debris was shipped out of the country immediately following the clean-up* instead of being retained as forensic evidence... maybe you could push the CIA to release their 9/11 report...** oh, but hey... don't get me wrong... i understand your little charade... huff and puff and write nyt op-eds about how the integrity of your commission's work has been compromised so everybody will think that everything you did the FIRST time around was, to the best of your abilities, blemish-free... just remember... us peasants aren't quite as dumb as advertised...

* A shipment of scrap steel from New York's collapsed World Trade Center will arrive in Shanghai tomorrow [25 January 2002], according to media reports. The steel was bought by Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp. and several other domestic mills, which are always eager to buy scrap metal.

Baosteel Group, the nation's largest steel firm, has purchased 50,000 tons of the scrap steel from "Ground Zero," the ruins of the September 11 terrorist attack, at no more than US$120 each ton, according to yesterday's Beijing Youth Daily.

msnbc story from may 2007...

** A bipartisan group of senators is pushing legislation that would force the CIA to release an inspector general’s report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The CIA has spent more than 20 months weighing requests under the Freedom of Information Act for its internal investigation of the attacks but has yet to release any portion of it.

The agency is the only federal office involved in counterterrorism operations that has not made at least a version of its internal 9/11 investigation public.

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