The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.

The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.

The law requires the president to make sure the intelligence committees “are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.” But the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done “to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.”

In addition, for covert action programs, a particularly secret category in which the role of the United States is hidden, the law says that briefings can be limited to the so-called Gang of Eight, consisting of the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees.

The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.

An intelligence agency spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, declined on Saturday to comment on the report of Mr. Cheney’s role.

“It’s not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “When a C.I.A. unit brought this matter to Director Panetta’s attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect.”

Members of Congress have differed on the significance of the program, whose details remained secret and which even some Democrats have said was properly classified. Most of those interviewed, however, have said that it was an important activity that should have been disclosed to the intelligence committees.

Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.

In the tense months after Sept. 11, when Bush administration officials believed new Qaeda attacks could occur at any moment, intelligence officials brainstormed about radical countermeasures. It was in that atmosphere that the unidentified program was devised and deliberately concealed from Congress, officials said.

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said last week that he believed Congress would have approved of the program only in the angry and panicky days after 9/11, on 9/12, he said, but not later, after fears and tempers had begun to cool.

One intelligence official, who would speak about the classified program only on condition of anonymity, said there was no resistance inside the C.I.A. to Mr. Panetta’s decision to end the program last month.

“Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,” the official said. “That’s worth remembering amid all the drama.”

Bill Harlow, a spokesman for George J. Tenet, who was the C.I.A. director when the unidentified program began, declined to comment on Saturday, noting that the program remained classified.

In the eight years of his vice presidency, Mr. Cheney was the Bush administration’s most vehement defender of the secrecy of government activities, particularly in the intelligence arena. He went to the Supreme Court to keep secret the advisers to his task force on energy, and won.

A report released on Friday by the inspectors general of five agencies about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program makes clear that Mr. Cheney’s legal adviser, David S. Addington, had to approve personally every government official who was told about the program. The report said “the exceptionally compartmented nature of the program” frustrated F.B.I. agents who were assigned to follow up on tips it had turned up.

Mr. Addington could not be reached for comment on Saturday.

Questions over the adequacy and the truthfulness of the C.I.A.’s briefings for Congress date to the creation of the intelligence oversight committees in the 1970s after disclosures of agency assassination and mind-control programs and other abuses. But complaints increased in the Bush years, when the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies took the major role in pursuing Al Qaeda.

The use of harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, for instance, was first described to a handful of lawmakers for the first time in September 2002. Ms. Pelosi and the C.I.A. have disagreed about what she was told, but in any case, the briefing occurred only after a terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, had been waterboarded 83 times.

Democrats in Congress, who contend that the Bush administration improperly limited Congressional briefings on intelligence, are seeking to change the National Security Act to permit the full intelligence committees to be briefed on more matters. President Obama, however, has threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill if the changes go too far, and the proposal is now being negotiated by the White House and the intelligence committees.

Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat of Illinois on the House committee, wrote on Friday to the chairman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat of Texas, to demand an investigation of the unidentified program and why Congress was not told of it. Aides said Mr. Reyes was reviewing the matter.

“There’s been a history of difficulty in getting the C.I.A. to tell us what they should,” said Representative Adam Smith, a Democrat of Washington. “We will absolutely be held accountable for anything the agency does.”

Mr. Hoekstra, the intelligence committee’s ranking Republican, said he would not judge the agency harshly in the case of the unidentified program, because it was not fully operational. But he said that in general, the agency had not been as forthcoming as the law required.

“We have to pull the information out of them to get what we need,” Mr. Hoekstra said.

Former NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem reports that the vice president’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner who was suspected of knowing about a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam.

Robert Windrem, who covered terrorism for NBC, reports exclusively in The Daily Beast that:

*Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection.

*The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible.

*Much of the information in the report of the 9/11 Commission was provided through more than 30 sessions of torture of detainees.

At the end of April 2003, not long after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi who Bush White House officials suspected might provide information of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi was the head of the M-14 section of Mukhabarat, one of Saddam’s secret police organizations. His responsibilities included chemical weapons and contacts with terrorist groups.

Two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard an Iraqi prisoner came from the Office of Vice President Cheney.

“To those who wanted or suspected a relationship, he would have been a guy who would know, so [White House officials] had particular interest,” Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraqi Survey Group and the man in charge of interrogations of Iraqi officials, told me. So much so that the officials, according to Duelfer, inquired how the interrogation was proceeding.

In his new book, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq, and in an interview with The Daily Beast, Duelfer says he heard from “some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA),” who thought Khudayr’s interrogation had been “too gentle” and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. “They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used,” Duelfer writes. “The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature.”

Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: “The language I can use is what has been cleared.” In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney. Cheney, of course, has vehemently defended waterboarding and other harsh techniques, insisting they elicited valuable intelligence and saved lives. He has also asked that several memoranda be declassified to prove his case. (The Daily Beast placed a call to Cheney’s office and will post a response if we get one.)

Without admitting where the suggestion came from, Duelfer revealed that he considered it reprehensible and understood the rationale as political—and ultimately counterproductive to the overall mission of the Iraq Survey Group, which was assigned the mission of finding Saddam Hussein’s WMD after the invasion.

“Everyone knew there would be more smiles in Washington if WMD stocks were found,” Duelfer said in the interview. “My only obligation was to find the truth. It would be interesting if there was WMD in May 2003, but what was more interesting to me was looking at the entire regime through the slice of WMD.”

But, Duelfer says, Khudayr in fact repeatedly denied knowing the location of WMD or links between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda and was not subjected to any enhanced interrogation. Duelfer says the idea that he would have known of such links was “ludicrous".

This proposed use of enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture, in Iraq was not the only time these methods were actually used to derive information for a purpose other than the stated one—to derive intelligence about imminent threats to the United States following the 9/11 attacks.

An extensive analysis I conducted as a reporter for NBC News of the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report and its monograph on terrorist travel showed that much of what was reported about the planning and execution of the terror attacks on New York and Washington was based on the CIA's interrogations of high-ranking al Qaeda operatives who had been subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques."

More than one-quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al Qaeda operatives subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.

The NBC analysis also showed—and agency and commission staffers concur—there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, specifically conducted to answer new questions from the 9/11 Commission after its lawyers had been left unsatisfied by the agency’s internal interrogation reports.

Human-rights advocates, including Karen Greenberg of New York University Law School’s Center for Law and Security and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, have said that, at the least, the 9/11 Commission should have been more suspect of the information derived under such pressure.

Commission executive director Philip Zelikow (later counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) admitted, "We were not aware, but we guessed, that things like that were going on. We were wary…we tried to find different sources to enhance our credibility." (Zelikow testified before the Senate on Wednesday, May 13, that he had argued in a 2005 memo that some of the tactics used on suspected terrorists violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.)

A former senior U.S. intelligence official told me the Commission never expressed any concerns about techniques and even pushed for a second round of interrogations in early 2004, as the Commission was finishing up its work. The second round of interrogations sought by the Commission involved more than 30 separate interrogation sessions.

"Remember," the intelligence official said, "the Commission had access to the intelligence reports that came out of the interrogation. This didn't satisfy them. They demanded direct personal access to the detainees and the administration told them to go pound sand.”

"As a compromise, they were allowed to let us know what questions they would have liked to ask the detainees. At appropriate times in the interrogation cycle, agency questioners would go back and re-interview the detainees. Many of [those] questions were variants or follow-ups to stuff previously asked."

At least four operatives whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators critical information as a way to stop being "tortured." Those claims came during their hearings in the spring of 2007 at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

For Duelfer, an experienced interrogator, the details now being laid out in CIA and White House memoranda and in congressional hearings cannot be justified. While admitting that the interrogators faced enormous pressure in 2002 and 2003, he said he had problems with the overall strategy.

“Interrogation is about two humans who are face to face, sweat to sweat. Is your hand going to hit them?” he notes. “That’s a relationship that becomes very deep. If you are going to reach someone at an intellectual or emotive level, it’s hard to see how you can do that and still be the person who accosts that person. I don’t know how to do that.”

Robert Windrem is a Senior Reserach Fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security. For three decades, he worked as a producer for NBC News. During that time, he focused on issues of international security, strategic policy, intelligence and terrorism. He is the winner of more than 40 national journalism awards for his work in print, television, and online journalism, including a Columbia-duPont Award, mostly for his work on international security issues.

Is Osama Bin Laden schuldig?

Op 3 maart 2009 is de commissie aan haar werkzaamheden begonnen. Deze onafhankelijke commissie doet onderzoek naar de voorbereiding en besluitvorming over de politieke steun van Nederland aan de inval in Irak in de periode zomer 2002 tot zomer 2003. Het onderzoek wordt verricht op verzoek van de minister-president, minister van Algemene Zaken en de ministers van Buitenlandse Zaken, Defensie, Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties.
Samenstelling commissie

De voorzitter is mr. W.J.M. Davids, oud-president van de Hoge Raad. Verder hebben zitting: prof. dr. M.G.W. (Monica) den Boer, prof. dr. C. (Cees) Fasseur, mr. T. (Tim) Koopmans, prof. dr. N.J. (Nico) Schrijver, prof. dr. M.J. (Marjan) Schwegman en mr. A.P. (Peter) van Walsum. Secretaris van de commissie is dr. J.J.G. (Koos) van der Bruggen.

Onderzoeksopdracht

In het algemeen richt het onderzoek zich op de voorbereiding en besluitvorming over de politieke steun van Nederland aan de inval in Irak.
Meer specifiek onderzoekt de commissie aspecten van volkenrechtelijke aard, aspecten van de inlichtingen- en informatievoorziening en aspecten van vermeende militaire betrokkenheid.

Werkzaamheden

De commissie zal eerst in detail de werkzaamheden en aanpak bepalen van het onderzoek. Tijdens het onderzoek krijgt de commissie toegang tot alle benodigde informatie. Het is de bedoeling het onderzoek omstreeks 1 november 2009 af te ronden en te presenteren aan de Regering en Staten-Generaal.

Aanpak en werkwijze

De commissie gaat zich eerst inlezen in alle stukken en informatie omtrent de politieke steun van Nederland aan de inval in Irak in de periode zomer 2002 tot zomer 2003. Vervolgens stelt de commissie een lijst samen van wie en waarover zij inlichtingen verlangt. Deze inlichtingen worden schriftelijk en/of door middel van gesprekken verkregen. De gesprekken zullen niet in openbaarheid plaatsvinden. De commissie werkt de gesprekken uit en verwerkt de verkregen inlichtingen. Na deze analyse bepaalt de commissie welke eventuele vervolgstappen nodig zijn om het onderzoek te kunnen afronden en omstreeks 1 november te kunnen presenteren.

In het memorandum wordt ingegaan op de twee belangrijkste punten bij het plegen van geweldshandelingen: het mag uit zelfverdediging (art. 51 VN handvest) en indien er toestemming is voor het plegen van geweld (hoofdstuk VII VN-handvest, zie voor beide http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/chapter7.shtml).

In de discussie om Irak gaat het erom of er toestemming is gegeven voor het plegen van geweld door de VN. Nederland volgde het standpunt van Amerika en het Verenigd Koninkrijk dat dit laatste het geval was.

De argumentatie daarover verloopt via twee resoluties van de VN, resolutie 678, die ten tijde van de oorlog tussen Irak en Koeweit was aangenomen, en resolutie 687.

Die eerste resolutie had betrekking op de bevrijding van Koeweit. Daarover is geen discussie mogelijk. Die tweede resolutie bekrachtigde de eerste en gaf de voorwaarden voor een staakt het vuren tussen de Veiligheidsraad en Irak.

In het geval Irak heeft Amerika beslist dat het staakt-het-vuren met Irak was opgeheven omdat Irak niet aan de voorwaarden voldeed. Maar Amerika was in die afspraak geen partij. Enkel de Veiligheidsraad had die beslissing kunnen nemen.

De juristen van BuZa concluderen dat het niet zo kan zijn dat individuele lidstaten al vrij interpreterend hun eigen weg zoeken in deze zaken.

Evenwel sluiten ze af door aan te geven dat het relevante volkenrecht in het licht van gewijzgde internationale omstandigheden wellicht up-to-date moet worden gebracht.

"Het zou passen binnen de volkenrechtelijke traditie van ons land indien Nederland - op het moment dat het stof is neergedaald over het militaire ingrijpen van VS/VK in Irak - zou voorstellen hierover een internationaal debat te entameren."

Buitenlandse Zaken hield kritisch Irak-advies achter

Gepubliceerd: 17 januari 2009 09:08 | Gewijzigd: 17 januari 2009 09:11

Door onze redacteur Joost Oranje

Den Haag, 17 JAN. De ambtelijke top van het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken heeft in 2003 een kritisch juridisch advies over de politieke steun aan de Irak-oorlog weggehouden bij de minister.

In een geheim memorandum van 29 april 2003 stelt de Directie Juridische Zaken (DJZ) van het departement dat de juridische onderbouwing van het standpunt van het toenmalige kabinet-Balkenende „zowel materieel als procedureel tekort” schiet. De juristen schatten zelfs in „dat Nederland een eventuele procedure voor het Internationaal Gerechtshof hierover zou verliezen”.

De toenmalige secretaris-generaal (SG) van het departement, Frank Majoor (tegenwoordig permanent vertegenwoordiger bij de Verenigde Naties), besloot de notitie niet door te sturen aan minister De Hoop Scheffer (CDA), aan wie deze gericht was. „Goed opbergen in de archieven voor het nageslacht, de discussie is hiermee voor dit moment gesloten!”, werd op het memo geschreven.

De juristen reageerden met de opmerking: „Het audite et alteram partem (hoor en wederhoor, red.) geldt hier kennelijk niet.” Het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken (BZ) wil niet ingaan op de vraag waarom de SG het memo niet doorstuurde en of De Hoop Scheffer destijds wellicht mondeling kennis heeft genomen van de inhoud van het memorandum.

Juridische basis

Eerder werd al bekend dat ambtenaren, voor het uitbreken van de oorlog, waarschuwende notities hadden gemaakt over de rechtmatigheid van de invasie. Nu blijkt dat er op het departement van BZ ook na de inval een ambtelijke strijd heeft gewoed over de juridische basis voor de politieke steun die Nederland aan de Amerikaans-Britse operatie had gegeven. Het kabinet, maar ook een deel van de ambtelijke top op BZ, vond dat de invasie kon worden gesteund zonder een specifieke resolutie van de VN Veiligheidsraad die geweld legitimeerde. Volgens Nederland was zo’n resolutie weliswaar „politiek wenselijk, maar niet noodzakelijk”. DJZ bestreed dat.

Uit gesprekken met betrokken bronnen en vertrouwelijke ambtelijke documenten blijkt dat de juristen vonden dat hun kritische mening over de rechtmatigheid van de politieke steun een te ondergeschoven rol speelde. Bovendien vond DJZ het bezwaarlijk dat zij moest zorgen voor voor „een zo goed mogelijke juridische onderbouwing van het Nederlandse standpunt” en dat haar niet een „objectieve volkenrechtelijke inschatting” werd gevraagd.

Onderbouwing was „vooral politiek getint”

Daarom nam DJZ daartoe zelf het initiatief, omdat de minister anders „onvoldoende geïnformeerd” zou zijn, zo blijkt uit het bewuste memorandum. De juristen vonden dat de toenmalige directeur-generaal politieke zaken zijn mening ten faveure van het kabinetsstandpunt niet met volkenrechtelijke argumenten staafde, maar dat zijn onderbouwing „vooral politiek getint” was.

Buitenlandse Zaken wil niet inhoudelijk op de zaak ingaan: „Doorgaans gaan aan de vaststelling door ministers van substantiële teksten een of meer ambtelijke (deel-)suggesties, adviezen en tekstvoorstellen vooraf. Wat telt, is de door ministers uiteindelijk gekozen tekst”, aldus het departement.

Komende weken wordt duidelijk of de Eerste Kamer een onderzoek start naar de besluitvorming rond de Irak-oorlog. Het kabinet beantwoordde onlangs tientallen vragen uit de senaat, maar een meerderheid beoordeelde het resultaat als onbevredigend.

Door een onzer redacteuren

Den Haag, 6 dec. De PvdA heeft tijdens de formatie de eis voor een onderzoek naar de besluitvorming rond de Irak-oorlog al heel snel laten vallen. Dat zegt PvdA-senator Klaas de Vries vandaag in een uitzending van het VPRO-radioprogramma Argos. De Vries zegt navraag gedaan te hebben „bij mensen die zeer goed ingelicht waren over de formatie in Beetsterzwaag”. Die hebben hem verteld dat premier Balkenende geen onderzoek wilde, waarna dat „gewoon als een gegeven is aangenomen” en er „geen debat over is geweest”. Tweede Kamerlid Jacques Tichelaar, destijds een van de onderhandelaars, wil de uitlatingen van De Vries niet bevestigen: „Die gesprekken voerde ik op basis van vertrouwen.”Volgens de woordvoerder van partijleider Wouter Bos was de zaak juist „een van de belangrijke strijdpunten” tijdens de formatie.

De positie van de PvdA is precair omdat de partij voordat ze in de regering kwam een uitgesproken voorstander van onderzoek was. Toenmalig Kamerlid Bert Koenders, nu minister, pleitte er vele malen voor. Bij de formatie gaf de PvdA het punt op. Maar in de Eerste Kamer is de vraag waarom Nederland in 2003 de oorlog in Irak politiek steunde nog steeds actueel. Nog voor de Kerst beantwoordt het kabinet tientallen vragen die verschillende fracties, waaronder die van de PvdA, hebben gesteld. De Vries is daarbij een van de initiatiefnemers. Hij noemt het een kwestie van „democratische hygiëne” dat de regering zich verantwoordt, en hoopt op bevredigende antwoorden: „Ik vind dit zo ontzettend belangrijk dat ik, voorzover de tijd mij gegeven is, ik die ook zal besteden om hier opheldering over te krijgen.”

De VVD-fractievoorzitter in de senaat, Uri Rosenthal, die altijd tegen een onderzoek was, vindt wel dat de vragen goed beantwoord moeten worden: „Als wij worden afgescheept, laten we dat natuurlijk niet over onze kant gaan. Dan maakt het niet uit wat het onderwerp is.”

Voor premier Balkenende zijn de woorden van de Amerikaanse president Bush, die deze week in een televisie-interview zei de verkeerde informatie over de aanwezigheid van massavernietigingswapens te betreuren, in elk geval geen aanleiding zijn mening te herzien. Op zijn wekelijkse persconferentie na afloop van de ministerraad herhaalde hij gisteren zijn standpunt dat de toenmalige Iraakse leider Saddam Hussein de resoluties van de VN niet is nagekomen en dat dit de reden was om het land binnen te vallen. „De woorden van de Amerikaanse president doen daar niets aan af”, aldus Balkenende. Hij vond daarom een nader onderzoek naar de overwegingen voor de oorlog niet nodig .

Lees een reconstructie van de Irak-zaak op nrc.nl

Therefore, the action by the UK, US and the Netherlands was "a serious violation of international law," Lord Bingham added.

Lord Goldsmith said he stood by his advice to the then prime minister.

The Liberal Democrats say that Lord Bingham's comments made a full public inquiry "unavoidable" into the decision to invade Iraq. Some are expecting an official statement from dutch prime minister Balkenende.

Responding to Lord Bingham's criticism, Lord Goldsmith insisted the invasion of Iraq was legal.

"I would not have given that advice if it were not genuinely my view," he said.

'No weapons'

Lord Bingham, a former Lord Chief Justice, made his comments in a speech on the rule of law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in London.

He referred to a written parliamentary statement made by Lord Goldsmith on 17 March 2003 in which he confirmed that war on Iraq would be legal on the grounds of existing UN resolutions.

Lord Bingham said: "This statement was flawed in two fundamental respects.

"It was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had.

"Hans Blix and his team of weapons inspectors had found no weapons of mass destruction, were making progress and expected to complete their task in a matter of months."

Lord Bingham also criticised Lord Goldsmith for failing to make clear that only the UN Security Council could judge whether there had been compliance and, if appropriate, authorise further action.

"If I am right that the invasion of Iraq by the US, the UK and some other states was unauthorised by the Security Council there was, of course, a serious violation of international law and of the rule of law," he said.

Lord Goldsmith said his critic was "entitled to his own legal perspective".

"But at the time and since then many nations other than ours took part in the action and did so believing that they were acting lawfully," he said. He denied allegations that his kind of reasoning is only popular amongst war criminals.

He also said the UN resolution that Iraq was deemed to have defied - 1441 - did not need further determination by the Security Council.

Jack Straw backed Lord Goldsmith, arguing that his advice "was shared by many member states across the world".

"I do not accept Lord Bingham's conclusions, which do not, I am afraid, take proper account of the text of Security Council Resolution 1441 nor its negotiating history," Mr Straw said.

But Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said Lord Bingham's claims made a full public inquiry into the government's decision to go to war "unavoidable".

"Lord Bingham's stature means that his devastating criticism cannot just be brushed under the carpet," Mr Clegg said.

"This is a damning condemnation of what was an unjustified invasion which we now know to have flouted international law."

Former lord chief justice Lord Bingham retired from the bench in July. Lord Goldsmith stepped down from his post as attorney general last year.

Crossposted on Foreign Policy Journal

Foreign Policy Journal has learned that senior executives of a major U.S. international corporation may have been warned to leave New York on September 11, 2001.

According to an inside source, one of the senior executives of the corporation told him beforehand that “something big” was going to occur and so other corporate executives would be travelling out of New York.

The source, who spoke to the Journal on the condition of anonymity, worked at a European branch of the media giant Warner Bros. He served as the number two under the managing director of that office, a man with whom he had developed a close personal friendship. His boss was also friends with one of the senior executives at the head office in Los Angeles. According to the source, he had been told by his director that the executive in L.A. had formerly worked for the CIA and still kept in touch with the agency.

It is not an uncommon practice for the CIA to recruit business executives, particularly individuals who do a lot of international travelling and might be able to use their business contacts to gather information.

The CIA is also known to have recruited journalists and media executives. According to Carl Bernstein, the former Washington Post reporter who worked with Bob Woodward breaking open the Watergate story during the Nixon administration, executives who lent their cooperation to the CIA included Henry Luce of Time Inc., founder of Time and Life magazines. C.D. Jackson, a Time Inc. vice-president and publisher of Life magazine until his death in 1964, approved arrangements to provide the CIA with cover under Time-Life, according to an article Bernstein wrote for Rolling Stone magazine in 1977.

When the managing director of the overseas Warner Bros. office passed away, the individual who spoke with the Journal was contacted by the senior executive from L.A. about the plans for the memorial service. Senior executives from the company would attend, including from the Warner Bros. parent corporation, Time Warner, headquartered in New York.

When he answered that one of the potential dates for the service was September 11, he was told that would be no good because “something big is happening that day” and the top executives from the New York office would all be travelling out of the city.

When asked further about this big event, the executive replied that it was a confidential matter and disclosed no further details, except to say that it was “not corporate”.

The source told the Journal, “I had no reason to think that the ‘event’ could be anything more than perhaps a junket, an out of town think tank exercise or whatever – I remember that these possibilities ran through my mind.”

But after 9/11, thinking back upon the conversation, he grew more curious and tried to ascertain where the board members had been that day. They had indeed been out of New York, he says, travelling not to one location, but each to their own destination. Destinations included overseas locations such as Paris, London, and Amsterdam.

Foreign Policy Journal has not been able to verify the location of individuals on 9/11 or other aspects of the story concerning any potential warning received or given by any Time Warner executives, but did confirm the source’s position at the foreign branch office, the name and position of that office’s managing director, and the name and position of the senior executive from the Los Angeles office.

There have been numerous other indications that individuals within the U.S. had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

One such indication was the evidence of insider trading in the days just prior. Short selling and trading in put options, which are essentially bets that stock will drop, skyrocketed over a period of days before 9/11 only in companies that were directly affected.

For instance, purchases were made on 4,744 put options for United Airlines between September 6 and 7. On September 10, purchases were placed on 4,516 put options for American Airlines. United and American were the two airlines that had planes hijacked and destroyed in the attacks. There was no similarly unusual trading in other airlines.

Other companies directly affected also experienced a spike in the purchase of put options, such as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Merril Lynch, both of which had offices in the World Trade Center.

Numerous countries around the world, including the U.S., Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Spain, opened investigations into what had apparently been insider trading based on foreknowledge of the attacks.

Together, these purchases were worth millions. Yet with the reports of insider trading and foreknowledge circulating in the media, whoever was responsible chose not to collect the money.

One of the banks involved in the purchases was Alex Brown, the U.S. branch of the German Deutsche Bank, which was headed until 1998 by A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard. He afterwards joined the CIA, and was Executive Director of the agency at the time of the attacks.

Trading is monitored through special software in real time by the CIA, so the agency would have been aware of the suspicious activity in the days just prior to the attacks.

Despite all this, the FBI announced that its own investigation had turned up no evidence that anyone had tried to profit from inside knowledge that the attacks would occur.

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, which echoed the conclusion of the FBI, 95 percent of the purchases on United and American Airlines shares on September 6 and 10, respectively, were made by a single U.S. based institutional investor.

Robert Baer is a former CIA case officer and author of “Sleeping with the Devil” and “See No Evil”, which served as the basis for the film “Syriana” starring George Clooney. Baer told Stewart Howe and Jeremy Rothe-Kushel of the L.A. branch of the organization We Are Change, “I know the guy that went into his broker in San Diego and said ‘cash me out, it’s going down tomorrow.’” Baer added that “his brother worked at the White House.”

Baer also indicated that the 9/11 Commission Report had been a cover-up of what really happened and questioned why certain other oddities about 9/11 had not been investigated, such as “the famous white van”, which he said was “an intriguing story” that “deserves a book”.

He was referring to the case of the five Israelis who were witnessed on 9/11 celebrating beside their white van at the sight of the smoking towers from a parking lot in New Jersey. They were later arrested and detained. Upon arrest, the driver of the van told the arresting officers, “We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.”

The van was registered to an Israeli-owned company called Urban Moving Systems, whose owner immediately closed shop and fled to Israel. At least two of the five Israelis witnessed videotaping and celebrating the attacks were learned to be operatives of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.

In other reporting that may or may not have been related to the five Israelis with the white van, it became known publicly that an enormous Israeli spy ring had been uncovered operating within the United States.

Reports of investigations into Israeli spying within the U.S. had emerged early in 2001. After 9/11, Fox News reported that according to investigators the Israeli intelligence operatives of a large spy ring may have gathered information in advance about the attacks of 9/11, but that the evidence for this was classified.

As part of the operation, Israelis posed as art students. Under the guise of selling art, they targeted government officials at their offices or homes, including members of the military, the DEA, the FBI, and other law enforcement and intelligence personnel.

One group of the Israeli “art students” lived at 4220 Sheridan St. in Hollywood, Florida, just down the street from the 3389 address where Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hijackers lived.

In addition, almost all the call records and billing for U.S. phone companies is handled by an Israeli-based private communications company called Amdocs Ltd. The NSA had warned other U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies about the potential security breaches that this situation might make possible.

There was some evidence that wiretaps were indeed being compromised. Law enforcement officials observed that suspects under surveillance suspiciously changed their behavior after wiretaps began, according to officials who spoke to Fox News.

It’s known that the DEA had also been investigating Israeli organized crime involved the multi-billion dollar ecstasy trade.

The FBI had also been investigating Amdocs and there were fears that even the telephone lines in the White House, which were installed by Bell Atlantic and Amdocs in 1997, might have been compromised.

According to a leaked DEA report from that agency’s investigation into the Israeli spy ring, one of the “art students” who was arrested was held on a $10,000 bond that was placed by an Israeli man named Ophir Baer who was in the U.S. under employment by Amdocs.

Another Israeli company, Comverse Infosys, was responsible for providing wiretapping for U.S. law enforcement. But, again, there was a fear among U.S. agencies that the wiretaps themselves could be intercepted by unauthorized parties through a back door in the Comverse system. Adding to these fears was the fact that Comverse was reimbursed for up to half of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Comverse was partnered with an Israeli messaging service company called Odigo. The Israeli paper Haaretz reported that workers at Odigo, which had offices near the World Trade Center, had received warnings on the morning of September 11 of an impending attack. The Washington Post confirmed that two employees of Odigo had “received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks.”

There is no direct evidence that the Israeli government or any Israeli nationals were involved in 9/11. In fact, Mossad had reportedly warned the U.S. intelligence community of an impending attack, including the potential that it might come in the form of hijackings. The possibility remains that Israeli intelligence came across the information leading to its warnings to the U.S. during the course of the extensive operation that was broken up in 2001.

There have also been several other incidents possibly related to the apparent insider trading before 9/11. In one case, a German firm, Convar, was hired to attempt to retrieve data from the hard drives of computers destroyed as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center. In doing so, it was discovered that there had been transactions of unusually large sums of money through some systems in the WTC, leading to the suspicion that someone with insider knowledge had illegally transferred as much as $100 million through the system as the attacks unfolded.

In May 2002, the FBI raided the home of Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, who was held on charges of racketeering, extortion, and obstruction of justice. He was later convicted. According to the indictment, Elgindy had led a ring of traders that included two FBI agents, Jeffrey A. Royer and Lynn Wingate, who used their access to confidential databases to give Elgindy inside information about publicly traded companies. The prosecutor in his case said there were indications he might have had foreknowledge of the attacks, since he had predicted a huge drop in the market and ordered the sale of $300,000 worth of stock in his children’s trust fund on September 10.

The compelling evidence of insider foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks has been largely dismissed. This is perhaps most evident by the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission report itself, which also stated that there was no evidence of any involvement by any foreign government or government official and that the question of who financed the attacks is “of little practical significance”, despite reports that Mahmud Ahmed, the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency, or ISI, had been responsible for authorizing the transfer of $100,000 to hijacker Mohammed Atta. This information was received by the Commission.

Bob Graham, who co-chaired the 9/11 Joint Inquiry with Porter Goss, has also said there is evidence of the involvement of a foreign government. The 9/11 Commission made no attempt to explain or reconcile the disparity between its conclusions and those of Graham or the reports of the ISI chief’s involvement.

In another strange twist, Graham and Goss were having breakfast in Washington with General Ahmed on the morning of September 11 as the planes struck the towers. Ahmed was in Washington visiting his counterpart at the CIA, George Tenet, as well as a number of other high-level officials. Both Graham and Goss had also travelled to Pakistan where they met with the ISI chief just a couple weeks before Ahmed’s reciprocal visit.

Goss was later appointed Director of Central Intelligence.

GAITHERSBURG, Md.—The fall of the 47-story World Trade Center building 7 (WTC 7) in New York City late in the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, was primarily due to fires, the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced today following an extensive, three-year scientific and technical building and fire safety investigation. This was the first known instance of fire causing the total collapse of a tall building, the agency stated as it released for public comment its WTC investigation report and 13 recommendations for improving building and fire safety.

“Our study found that the fires in WTC 7, which were uncontrolled but otherwise similar to fires experienced in other tall buildings, caused an extraordinary event,” said NIST WTC Lead Investigator Shyam Sunder. “Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down.”

“Video and photographic evidence combined with detailed computer simulations show that neither explosives nor fuel oil fires played a role in the collapse of WTC 7,” Sunder said. The NIST investigation team also determined that other elements of the building’s construction—namely trusses, girders and cantilever overhangs that were used to transfer loads from the building superstructure to the columns of the electric substation (over which WTC 7 was constructed) and foundation below—did not play a significant role in the collapse.

According to the report, a key factor leading to the eventual collapse of WTC 7 was thermal expansion of long-span floor systems at temperatures “hundreds of degrees below those typically considered in current practice for fire resistance ratings." WTC 7 used a structural system design in widespread use.

Citing its one new recommendation (the other 12 are reiterated from the previously completed investigation of the World Trade Center towers, WTC 1 and 2), the NIST investigation team said that “while the partial or total collapse of a tall building due to fires is a rare event, we strongly urge building owners, operators and designers to evaluate buildings to ensure the adequate fire performance of the structural system. Of particular concern are the effects of thermal expansion in buildings with one or more of the following features: long-span floor systems, connections not designed for thermal effects, asymmetric floor framing and/or composite floor systems.” Engineers, the team said, should be able to design cost-effective fixes to address any areas of concern identified by such evaluations.

The investigators also reported that if the city water main had not been cut by the collapse of World Trade Center towers 1 and 2 (WTC 1 and WTC 2), operating sprinklers in WTC 7 would likely have prevented its collapse. “Nevertheless,” Sunder said, “we recommend that building standards and codes be strengthened beyond their current intent to achieve life safety by preventing structural collapse even during severe fires like this one, when sprinklers do not function, do not exist or are overwhelmed by fire.”

Sunder identified several existing, emerging or even anticipated capabilities that could have helped prevent WTC 7’s collapse. He cautioned that the degree to which these capabilities improve performance remains to be evaluated. Possible options for developing cost-effective fixes include:

• More robust connections and framing systems to better resist effects of thermal expansion on the structural system.
• Structural systems expressly designed to prevent progressive collapse, which is the spread of local damage from a single initiating event, from element to element, eventually resulting in the collapse of an entire structure or a disproportionately large part of it. Current model building codes do not require that buildings be designed to resist progressive collapse.
• Better thermal insulation (i.e., reduced conductivity and/or increased thickness) to limit heating of structural steel and to minimize both thermal expansion and weakening effects. Insulation has been used to protect steel strength, but it could be used to maintain a lower temperature in the steel framing to limit thermal expansion.


• Improved compartmentation in tenant areas to limit the spread of fires.


• Thermally resistant window assemblies to limit breakage, reduce air supply and retard fire growth.

The 12 recommendations reiterated from the WTC towers investigation address several areas, including specific improvements to building standards, codes and practices; changes to, or the establishment of, evacuation and emergency response procedures; and research and other appropriate actions needed to help prevent future building failures.

Determining the probable collapse sequence for WTC 7, NIST found that the impact of debris from the collapse of WTC 1 ignited fires on at least 10 floors of WTC 7, and the fires burned out of control on six lower floors. The heat from these uncontrolled fires caused thermal expansion of the steel beams on the lower floors of the east side of WTC 7, damaging the floor framing on multiple floors. Eventually, a girder on Floor 13 lost its connection to a critical interior column that provided support for the long floor spans on the east side of the building. The displaced girder and other local fire-induced damage caused Floor 13 to collapse, beginning a cascade of floor failures down to the fifth floor. Many of these floors had already been at least partially weakened by the fires in the vicinity of the critical column. This collapse of floors left the critical column unsupported over nine stories.

“When this critical column buckled due to lack of floor supports, it was the first domino in the chain,” Sunder explained. “What followed in rapid succession was a progression of structural failures. Failure first occurred all the way to the roof line—involving all three interior columns on the most eastern side of the building. Then, progressing from east to west across WTC 7, all of the columns in the core of the building failed. Finally, the entire façade collapsed.”

The investigation team considered the possibility of other factors playing a role in the collapse of WTC 7, including the possible use of explosives, fires fed by the fuel supply tanks in and under the building, and damage from the falling debris of WTC 1.

The team said that the smallest blast event capable of crippling the critical column would have produced a “sound level of 130 to 140 decibels at a distance of half a mile,” yet no noise this loud was reported by witnesses or recorded on videos.

As for fuel fires, the team found that they could not have been sustained long enough, could not have generated sufficient heat to fail a critical column, and/or would have produced “large amounts of visible smoke” from Floors 5 and 6, which was not observed.

Finally, the report notes that “while debris impact from the collapse of WTC 1 initiated fires in WTC 7, the resulting structural damage had little effect in causing the collapse of WTC 7.”

The investigation team found that the design of WTC 7 was generally consistent with the New York City building code in effect at the time. The estimated 4,000 occupants of WTC 7 on the morning of Sept. 11 were evacuated without any fatalities or serious injuries.

To reach the conclusions in its report, NIST complemented its in-house expertise with private-sector technical experts; accumulated an extensive collection of documents, photographs and videos related to the WTC events of 9/11; conducted first-person interviews of WTC 7 occupants and emergency responders; analyzed the evacuation and emergency response operations in and around WTC 7; and performed the most complex computer simulations ever conducted to model a building’s response behavior and determine its collapse sequence due to a combination of debris impact damage, fires and a progression of structural failures from local fire-induced damage to collapse initiation, and, ultimately, to global collapse.

Meer informatie

• Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation
• Opening Statement Press Briefing, August 21, 2008, Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7
• NIST Response to the World Trade Center Investigation Disaster Presentation, Dr. S. Shyam Sunder, Director and Lead Investigator, Building and Fire Research Laboratory, NIST
• NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7


• NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7
  
  
  
  • Volume 1: Chapters 1 through 8
  
  
  • Volume 2: Chapters 9 through 14 and Appendixes A through E
  
  
  
  


• NIST NCSTAR 1-9A, Global Structural Analysis of the Response of World Trade Center Building 7 to Fires and Debris Impact Damage
• Video: The Collapse of World Trade
  Center 7: Why the Building Fell


• Process for Submitting Comments on the WTC 7 Draft Reports


• Download High-Res Graphics: Typical WTC 7 Floor Diagram (2 MB) and Thermal Expansion Illustration (29 MB)


• Link to WTC 7 Report Webcast, Thursday, Aug. 21, 11 a.m. EDT

De lijst is nog langer, via het zoekvenster is dat te vinden. Maar waar het hier en nu om gaat is niet de aanklacht tegen Balkenende, maar de aanklacht die is ingediend tegen Tony Blair. Dat klopt, in het Verenigd Koninkrijk is er een officieel onderzoek gestart naar de rol van Tony Blair en de oorlogshandelingen tegen Irak.

Het Iraanse Press TV (jaja, ik weet het) geeft beelden van de persconferentie (zie onder). Een deel van de documenten die onderdeel zijn van de aanklacht is via de volgende links te vinden.

1. The laws prohibiting War - The essential facts about the laws governing warfare and armed conflict
2. The laws of War - over de wetten die het voeren van oorlog verbieden
3. The illegality of War - Legal advice on the illegality of war

Commission Confidential

By Max Holland

    In a revelation bound to cast a pall over the 9/11 Commission, Philip Shenon will report in a forthcoming book that the panel’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, engaged in “surreptitious” communications with presidential adviser Karl Rove and other Bush administration officials during the commission’s 20-month investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

     Shenon, who led The New York Times’ coverage of the 9/11 panel, reveals the Zelikow-Rove connection in a new book entitled The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, to be published next month by TWELVE books. The Commission is under an embargo until its February 5 publication, but Washington DeCoded managed to purchase a copy of the abridged audio version from a New York bookstore.

    In what’s termed an “investigation of the investigation,” Shenon purports to tell the story of the commission from start to finish. The book’s critical revelations, however, revolve almost entirely around the figure of Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor and director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs prior to his service as the commission’s executive director. Shenon delivers a blistering account of Zelikow’s role and leadership, and an implicit criticism of the commissioners for appointing Zelikow in the first place—and then allowing him to stay on after his myriad conflicts-of-interest were revealed under oath.

     Shenon’s narrative is built from extensive interviews with staff members and several, if not all, the commissioners. He depicts Zelikow as exploiting his central position to negate or neutralize criticism of the Bush administration so that the White House would not bear, in November 2004, the political burden of failing to prevent the attacks.    

    The Commission includes these specific revelations:

• Kean and Hamilton appreciated that Zelikow was a friend and former colleague of then-national security adviser Condoleeza Rice, one of the principal officials whose conduct would be scrutinized. Zelikow had served with her on the National Security Council (NSC) during the presidency of Bush’s father, and they had written a book together about German reunification. The commission co-chairmen also knew of Zelikow’s October 2001 appointment to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. According to Shenon, however, Zelikow failed to disclose several additional and egregious conflicts-of-interest, among them, the fact that he had been a member of Rice’s NSC transition team in 2000-01. In that capacity, Zelikow had been the “architect” responsible for demoting Richard Clarke and his counter-terrorism team within the NSC. As Shenon puts it, Zelikow “had laid the groundwork for much of went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months before September 11. Would he want people to know that?”

• Karen Heitkotter, the commission’s executive secretary, was taken aback on June 23, 2003 when she answered the telephone for Zelikow at 4:40 PM and heard a voice intone, “This is Karl Rove. I’m looking for Philip.” Heitkotter knew that Zelikow had promised the commissioners he would cut off all contact with senior officials in the Bush administration. Nonetheless, she gave Zelikow’s cell phone number to Rove. The next day there was another call from Rove at 11:35 AM. Subsequently, Zelikow would claim that these calls pertained to his “old job” at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

• The full extent of Zelikow’s involvement with the incumbent administration only became evident within the commission on October 8, 2003, almost halfway into the panel’s term. Determined to blunt the Jersey Girls’ call for his resignation or recusal, Zelikow proposed that he be questioned under oath about his activities. General counsel Daniel Marcus, who conducted the sworn interview, brought a copy of the résumé Zelikow had provided to Kean and Hamilton. None of the activities Zelikow now detailed—his role on Rice’s transition team, his instrumental role in Clarke’s demotion, his authorship of a post-9/11 pre-emptive attack doctrine—were mentioned in the résumé. Zelikow blandly asserted to Marcus that he did not see “any of this as a major conflict of interest.” Marcus’s conclusion was that Zelikow “should never have been hired” as executive director. But the only upshot from these shocking disclosures was that Zelikow was involuntarily recused from that part of the investigation which involved the presidential transition, and barred from participating in  subsequent interviews of senior Bush administration officials.

• Some two months later, as Bob Kerrey replaced disgruntled ex-Senator Max Cleland on the panel, the former Nebraska senator became astounded once he understood Zelikow’s obvious conflicts-of-interest and his very limited recusal. Kerrey could not understand how Kean and Hamilton had ever agreed to put Zelikow in charge. “Look Tom,” Kerrey told Kean, “either he goes or I go.” But Kean persuaded Kerrey to drop his ultimatum.

• In late 2003, around the time his involuntary recusal was imposed, Zelikow called executive secretary Karen Heitkotter into his office and ordered her to stop creating records of his incoming telephone calls. Concerned that the order was improper, a nervous Heitkotter soon told general counsel Marcus. He advised her to ignore Zelikow’s order and continue to keep a log of his telephone calls, insofar as she knew about them.

• Although Shenon could not obtain from the GAO an unredacted record of Zelikow’s cell phone use—and Zelikow used his cell phone for most of his outgoing calls—the Times reporter was able to establish that Zelikow made numerous calls to “456” numbers in the 202 area code, which is the exclusive prefix of the White House.

• Even after his recusal, Zelikow continued to insert himself into the work of “Team 3,” the task force responsible for the most politically-sensitive part of the investigation, counter-terrorism policy. This brief encompassed the White House, which meant investigating the conduct of Condoleeza Rice and Richard Clarke during the months prior to 9/11. Team 3 staffers would come to believe that Zelikow prevented them from submitting a report that would have depicted Rice’s performance as “amount[ing] to incompetence, or something not far from it.”

     In Without Precedent, Kean and Hamilton’s 2006 account of the 9/11 panel,  the two  co-chairmen wrote that Zelikow was a controversial choice

. . . [but] we had full confidence in Zelikow’s independence and ability—and frankly, we wanted somebody who was unafraid to roil the waters from time to time. He recused himself from anything involving his work on the NSC transition. He made clear his determination to conduct an aggressive investigation. And he was above all a historian dedicated to a full airing of the facts. It was clear from people who knew and worked with him that Zelikow would not lead a staff inquiry that did anything less than uncover the most detailed and accurate history of 9/11.

    Shenon’s radically different account of the commission’s inner workings promises to achieve what none of the crackpot conspiracy theorists have managed to do so far: put the 9/11 Commission in disrepute.

     The Commission will be reviewed in the February issue of Washington DeCoded.