"Part of 9/11 Report Remains Unreleased; An Inquiry Is Begun"

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Part of 9/11 Report Remains Unreleased; An Inquiry Is Begun
By JIM DWYER
The New York (NY) Times


One last chapter of the investigation by the Sept. 11 commission, a
supplement completed more than two months ago, has not yet been made public
by the Justice Department, and officials say it is unlikely to be released
before the presidential election, even though that had been a major goal of
deadlines set for the panel. 

Drawing from this unpublished part of the inquiry, the commission quietly
asked the inspectors general at the Departments of Defense and
Transportation to review what it had determined were broadly inaccurate
accounts provided by several civil and military officials about efforts to
track and chase the hijacked aircraft on Sept. 11. 

David Barnes, a spokesman with the Department of Transportation, said
yesterday that if the reviews found wrongdoing, the inspector general could
recommend administrative penalties or ask federal prosecutors to begin a
criminal investigation.

"The investigation is ongoing,'' Mr. Barnes said, "and we don't know when it
will be done." 

In testimony before the commission, officials had described a quick response
to the hijackings that narrowly missed intercepting some of the planes, but
the commission's investigators later determined from documentary evidence
that none of the military planes were anywhere near the four airliners. 

In addition, officials at the Federal Aviation Administration testified that
they had notified the military within a few minutes of each hijacking, but
the investigation found that tape recordings contradicted that assertion.

The commission, in its final report, said that the true picture "did not
reflect discredit" on individuals, but that unreliable testimony about the
events had made it harder to understand the problems.

Besides the pursuit of the hijacked planes, the supplement, a monograph 60
to 70 pages long, revisits other subjects in the commission's final report
of July - telephone calls made from the hijacked airplanes, airline security
and orders issued that morning by President Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney - and provides additional detail or context, former commission
members said. 

The monograph also finds shortcomings in the Transportation Security
Administration, the agency formed to buttress airline security after the
hijackings, said Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska and
a commission member.

Mr. Kerrey suggested that presidential politics were behind the delay in the
report's release, but a spokesman for the Justice Department, Mark Corallo,
said that an ordinary review of the material for national security clearance
was complicated when the commission shut down in August. 

"It's unlikely in the next few weeks," Mr. Corallo said of when the
supplement would be released. "It was a real legal quandary." 

The monograph was submitted to the Justice Department just as the
commission's term expired on Aug. 21, a date selected by Congress after long
negotiations to avoid bringing out the commission's report at the height of
the presidential campaign.It arrived not only as the commission became
legally defunct, but also as many commission members and the staff lost
their security clearances, Mr. Corallo said. That meant no one from the
commission could discuss with the Justice Department lawyers how to edit
material that needed to be changed for security reasons, he said. 

"Had the commission gotten it to them two or three days before the deadline,
they could have resolved any issue in minutes, as they usually do," Mr.
Corallo said. 

As a result of these complications, the supplement is the first of the
commission's documents to be completely controlled by the Bush
administration. While the commission was still in business, it was able to
exert pressure on the White House when all 10 members, 5 Democrats and 5
Republicans, simply issued a public request for cooperation. 

"I am surprised that the process has dragged on this long, and I think it's
inappropriate," Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democrat on the commission, said. "It
is longer than any other review of written material."

Discussions on the monograph's fate are being held between the Office of
Legal Counsel at the Justice Department and Daniel Marcus, the commission's
former general counsel.

"I think I've convinced them that even though we don't exist anymore, it
ought to be viewed as a public document," Mr. Marcus said. 

The monograph has two sections, he said. One concerns airline security,
discussing the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation
Security Administration. The other section, he said, provides a detailed
timeline of the movements of the hijacked planes the morning of Sept. 11 and
the response by the civil and military aviation officials. On July 29, Mr.
Marcus wrote to the inspectors general of the Transportation and Defense
Departments requesting reviews of the testimony of those officials. He would
not comment this week on the request or the letters, but representatives for
both departments confirmed that investigations were under way.


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