All language subtitles for a9c8e3

You are listening to the Corbit report.

It took President Bush an extraordinary
441 days after nine 11 to establish

a commission to investigate the
events of September 11th, 2001.

And it was not just the case
that Bush was slow in acting.

He actively resisted any
investigation for as long as he could.

Taking the extraordinary and unprecedented
step of personally asking Senate

Majority leader Tom Dashel to limit
Congress' investigation into those.

In the end, the commission was severely
underfunded, severely rushed, and as

commission chairman Thomas Kane later
admitted, we think the commission

in many ways was set up to fail.

But the most unmistakable sign
that Bush was only interested in

appointing a coverup commission to
investigate the largest attack on

US soil in modern history was his
initial choice for commission Chairman.

Today I'm pleased to announce my
choice for commission Chairman.

Dr.

Henry Kissinger.

Dr.

Kissinger, do you have any concerns
about once commission begins its work?

If fingers point to valuable allies,
say Saudi Arabia, for example?

Um, the implications of policy
implications this could have to

the United States, particularly
at this delicate time.

Uh, I have been given every assurance,
uh, by the president that we should, uh,

that we should go where the facts leaders.

Not even the New York Times could
believe that Henry Kissinger, the

consummate Washington Insider, could
pretend to conduct an independent fact

finding investigation into nine 11.

It is tempting to wonder
if the choice of Mr.

Kissinger is not a clever maneuver by the
White House to contain an investigation

at long opposed the time editorialized.

After the announcement, Kissinger
may have been prepared for such

polite disagreement with his appoint.

But he was not prepared to meet
the nine 11 widows whose tireless

efforts had forced the creation of
the commission in the first place.

Several family members approached
Kissinger and requested a meeting

at his office in New York.

Prior to the meeting, Kristin
Bright Weiser conducted a thorough

investigation of Kissinger's
potential conflicts of interest.

Probably much to the chagrin of
some of the people in the room.

Lori asked some very pointed questions.

Would you have any Saudi American clients
that you would like to tell us about?

And he was very uncomfortable kind
of twisting and turning on the couch.

And then she asked whether he had
any clients by the name of Bin Laden

and he just about fell off his couch.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
stepped down from the position Friday.

We thought the meeting went well.

Kissinger was dethroned, and the
commission went ahead under Chairman

Thomas Cain and Vice Chair Lee Hamilton.

But while Kissinger's appointment
and resignation received all the

attention, the White House was
busy slipping another agent into

the commission through the back.

In January of 2003, just weeks
after Kissinger stepped down, it was

quietly announced that Phillip d Zeka
would take on the role of executive

director as executive director.

Zeka picked the areas of investigation,
the briefing materials, the topics

for hearings, the witnesses, and the
lines of questioning for witnesses.

In effect, this was the man in charge
of running the investigation itself.

So who was Phillip Zel?

The commission's press release announcing
his position described him as a man

of high stature, who has distinguished
himself as an academician lawyer,

author, and public servant, although
they noted his position at the University

of Virginia and his previous role as
executive director for the National

Commission on Federal Electoral Reform.

Curiously missing from this brief bio
are the multiple conflicts of interest

that show how the Bush administration
essentially put one of its own in

charge of investigating how the Bush
administration failed on nine 11.

In 1995, Zeik how co-authored a
book with Bush's National Security

advisor, condo Aliza Rice.

He was part of the transition team that
helped the Bush administration take over

the White House from the Clinton Adminis.

. He was even a member of Bush's post
nine 11 Foreign Intelligence Advisory

Board, but perhaps most incredibly
Zelikow actually authored the Bush

Administration's 2002 national security
strategy that outlined the preemptive war

doctrine that would be used against Iraq.

This, however, is something that
not even nine 11 Commissioners

Kane or Hamilton themselves knew
at the time the commission was.

Zel was the author of a very important
document issued by the White House

in September, 2002 that really turned
military doctrine on its head and said

that the United States could become
involved in preemptive war preemptive

defense, that we could attack a
nation that didn't pose an immediate

military threat to this country.

And obviously in September, 2002, it
sure appeared that that document was

being written with one target in mind.

Iraq.

Um, Now, as I say, the, the altar of
the document at the time was anonymous.

We didn't know that Phillip
Zco had written this thing.

Uh, and that becomes known, I think,
widely on the staff, only in the

final months of the nine 11 commission
investigation, and it appeared to pose

yet another conflict of interest for Zco.

Uh, just to be clear, the, the
preemptive, uh, doctrine memo

comes out in September of 2002.

The commission is created
formally in, uh, December, 2002.

Duque and Hamilton, when they hire
Zel Laco, are they aware of his, uh,

are they aware of his role as the
author of the preemptive doctrine?

I don't believe so.

These conflicts of interest
were not merely theoretical.

After the victim's family members
discovered Zel Cow's links to

the Bush administration, he was
forced to recuse himself from the

proceedings of the commission,
which he himself was directing.

That had to do with the Bush White House
transition or the national security.

Hearing of Ze Cow's appointment.

Former counterterrorism are
Richard Clark, who Zeka helped to

demote during the Bush transition.

Remarked that the fixes in
wondering allowed, could anyone

have a more obvious conflict of
interest than Zeca key staffers?

And even one of the commissioners
threatened to quit the

commission altogether when
learning of Zel cow's history.

When the nine 11 victims' family
members discovered Zel Cow's

links, they protested his appoint.

But unlike with Kissinger this time,
their concerns were dismissed and Zeca

plowed ahead as even Zeka himself admits
his ties to the very figures he was

supposedly investigating are a legitimate
concern, and any real investigation of

the nine 11 coverup would begin with him.

There is a, a whole welter of conspiracy
theories about nine 11 floating around

the internet in video cassettes.

And there's a whole cottage industry
in this, um, which if you haven't read

much about it and you're a fortunate
person, um, I, I get a lot of this.

I'm actually, I actually
figure very largely.

And a number of the key
conspiracy theories.

No.

Cause no, but be fair, I
worked with Condi Rice, right?

I worked with her in, in the
administration of Bush 41.

Uh, so, you know, I could be, uh,
I could be read as the plausible

henchman executing the coverup.

Uh, no.

About, uh, and it's a, it's, it's a,
it's a legitimate concern, especially

if I hadn't had 81 other staffers
keeping their eagle eye on me.

Conveniently left out a ze cow's
story about the 81 staffers.

Keeping their eye on his decisions is
that they were staffers who were hired

by him and under his complete control.

In fact, Zelikow took over the hiring
of the commission staff and even stopped

staffers from communicating directly
with the commissioners themselves.

In the first few months, the nine 11
commissioners themselves rarely even

visited the commission because Zeca
denied them their own offices or the

ability to hire their own staffers.

The most remarkable example of ze cow's
dictatorial control came in March,

2003, just three months after the
commission's 16 month investigation began.

It was at that time before the
commission had even convened a single

hearing that zeka, along with longtime
associate and commission consultant,

Ernest, Co-wrote a complete outline
of the final report before the, before

the staff even had its first meeting.

The Laka had written along with his
former professor, Ernest May, a detailed

outline of the commission's report He.

complete as Shean put it with
chapter headings, subheadings,

and sub subheadings.

When Kaan Hamilton were later shown
this outline, they worried that it would

be seen as evidence that the report's
outcome had been predetermined . So

the three of them decided to keep it
a secret from the rest of the staff.

When the staff did finally learn about
this outline, a year later, they were.

Some of them circulated, a parody
entitled the Warren Commission

Report, preemptive outline.

, one of his chapter headings.

Read Single bullet.

We haven't seen the evidence
yet, but really we're sure.

The implication was that the
crucial chapter in the Zeka may

outline could have been headed.

Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

We haven't seen the evidence
yet, but really we're sure.

So what exactly did Zeka
do as executive director?

He allowed information in the
commission's final report derived

from illegal CIA a torture sessions,
despite not having access to the

evidence of those sessions themselves,
which were later illegally destroyed.

This included the testimony of alleged
in nine 11 Mastermind Khalid Sheik

Mohammed, who was water boarded
183 times in a single month, whose

children were kidnapped by the cia,
who was told that his children were

going to be tortured with insect.

And who eventually confessed to a
whole series of plots, including

bombing a bank that didn't exist
at the time he was arrested.

More than one quarter of the footnotes
in the final commission report sourced

from this torture testimony and a
zeka himself admitted quite a bit.

If not most of the commission's
information on the nine 11

plot itself came from this t.

Zko denied interviews and documents
to staffers investigating the

Saudi connection to the attacks,
eventually firing one of them

and removing the text of their
investigation from the final report.

He personally rewrote a commission staff
statement to suggest a systematic link

between Al-Qaeda and Iraq before nine 11
Outraging, the authors of the original.

He worked behind his own staffer's back
to stop them from serving the Pentagon.

A subpoena to answer about information
NORAD was withholding from the commission.

He sat on a proposal to open a criminal
investigation into F a a and military

officials who lied to the commission
for months and then forwarded that

proposal not to the Justice Department
who could have brought criminal charges,

but to the Inspector General who could.

And he covered up information on
Able Danger, a military intelligence

team that had identified several
of the alleged nine 11 hijackers

in the country before nine 11.

After the initial disclosure, Dr.

Zeka came to me at the end of the meeting,
gave me his card and said, what you

said today is is critically important.

Very important.

Please come see me when we
return to Washington dc.

I returned to Washington
DC January of 2004.

Call in.

They say, we want to see you standby.

Nothing happens.

A week goes by, I call again, they.

We don't need you to come in.

We, we have all the information
on Able danger we need.

Thank you.

Anyway, and that was the, where it ended.

All right.

So the information that you told Dr.

Zeka in Afghanistan about the CIA
interfering with your ability to

provide actionable intelligence to the
United States government intelligence

that might have helped them find
out who caused uh, nine 11, you

were not permitted to testify about.

That's correct.

From the initial outline to the final
report, Zeik how carefully guided the

process hiring and firing the staff,
directing their research efforts, deciding

on witnesses, scrubbing information, and
shielding his former colleagues in the

White House from criticism, but perhaps
more remarkable than the fact that the

fix was in from the moment he took over
the commission and began working on

the predictive outline of the final.

Is that he had in fact written about nine
11 and its eventual aftermath in 19 98, 3

years before September 11th in an article
entitled Catastrophic Terrorism Tackling

The New Danger Written for the Council
on Foreign Relations Foreign Affairs in

November, 1998, Ze Cowen co-authors Ashton
Carter and John Deutch ask readers to

imagine a catastrophic act of terrorism,
like the destruction of the world trade.

like Pearl Harbor.

The event would divide our past and future
into a before and after the United States

might respond with draconian measures.

Scaling back civil liberties, allowing
wider surveillance of citizens, detention

of suspects, and use of deadly force.

More violence could follow either future
terrorist attacks or US counter attacks.

Belatedly Americans would
judge their leaders negligent

for not addressing terrorism.

More urgent.

How's amazing prediction becomes somewhat
less remarkable when we learned his

own self-described expertise in the
creation and management of public myth.

In a separate 1998 article on Public
Myths, Zeik, how identifies generational

myths that are formed by those pivotal
events that become etched in the minds of

those who have lived through them before.

Noting that the current set of
public myths formed during the

New Deal in 1933 are currently fa.

Convenient for Zika then that the Pearl
Harbor event that would define the next

generational myth known as the War on
Terror, would arrive just three years

later and that he would be in charge of
the commission tasked with creating and

managing the public perception of that
myth indeed given his central role in

the coverup of nine 11 and deflecting
concern away from legitimate nine 11.

Any true investigation into the events
of September 11th would involve a

thorough interrogation of Phillip Dzik?

No.

Cause no, but be fair, I
worked with Condi Rice, right?

I worked with her in, in the
administration of Bush 41.

Uh, so, you know, I could be, uh,
I could be read as the plausible

henchman executing the coverup.

Uh, no.

But, uh, and it's a, it's, it's
a, it's a legitimate concern.

Everything we're getting back
from the sampling that we're

doing is below background levels.

I can tell you that there was no
credible intelligence at that time.