"We call that obstruction"

9/11 Commission: Our Investigation Was ‘Obstructed’

 

by Glenn Greenwald
2 Jan 2008

Salon.com

The bi-partisan co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, jointly
published an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times which contains some extremely emphatic and
serious accusations against the CIA and the White House. The essence:

     [T]he 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.

More strikingly still, they explicitly include the White House at the top of their list of
guilty parties:

     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.

To underscore the seriousness of their accusations, Keane and Hamilton end with this:

     What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully
constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the (sic)
greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction. ...

 

~ Read more... ~