DC Insiders, Lawyers and Major Players

The law that created the "911 Commission" demands that the Commission "not have personal (or other) ties to senior Bush officials or senior officers in key government agencies, which are being investigated by the Commission" Yet half of the members have worked directly for the Bush and Clinton White Houses. In mid-January, two Commissioners testified about their own past involvement in creating terrorism policy. "Members of the Commission" are not supposed to have "links of any kind, business or otherwise, to the alleged perpetrators or ‘financiers’ of 9/11, including the bin Laden family." But six Commission members are D.C. lawyers, and the firms they represent aren’t exactly pro-bono public defenders.

Let’s Meet the 9/11 Commission Members:

 

Philip Zelikow, Executive Director of the Commission

Zelikow has a startling proximity to the White House, and its intelligence failures. In mid-January, Zelikow called himself as a witness at his own hearings. While at the National Security Council, he became chummy with National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, with whom, in 1997, he co-wrote a book on Germany re-unification. Judging from this Washington Post quote, sparks fly between Zelikow and Rice, "She can walk into a gathering of almost any kind and instantly find a poised way of handling herself, whether in a one-on-one meeting with a Russian marshal or a church group in Palo Alto or a corporate group." Zelikow has also co-written with ex CIA Director John Deutch.

 

Thomas Kean, Chair

Kean has a laudable record in philanthropy, since leaving politics in 1990. As Governor of New Jersey, he was beloved by labor groups and progressive causes. But as a director for the petroleum giant Amerada Hess, Kean is on the board of a company in the middle of a "Hess-Delta" joint venture, with Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia, which is owned by the Khalid bin Mahfouz, Osama’s brother-in-law. Kean is also on the Board at the National Endowment on Democracy (NED), an institution that doles out millions of dollars to counter confrontational labor activism and fund the campaigns of pro-big business candidates abroad. NED figures in Iran/Contra as well, the White House once claimed that NED "ran Project Democracy," Oliver North’s operation in Nicauragua.

 

Lee Hamilton, Vice-Chair

Lee Hamilton was chairman of the House Select Committee on Iran/Contra. In the late 80’s, he told PBS’s Frontline that he didn’t indict Reagan or Bush because he didn’t think it would be "good for the country." But a wealth of evidence showed that Reagan and Bush authorized arms shipments to Iran in 1985. Chairman Hamilton, a Democrat, was influenced by heavy political pressure from a hawkish, fellow-congressman from Wyoming by the name of Dick Cheney.

 

John Lehman has also worked for the National Security Council, in this case, under Henry Kissinger. As former Secretary of the Navy, Lehman has some spin-doctoring in his past. According to Wayne Masden, a former Navy operations officer-turned-columnist for Intelligence Online, Lehman lead the media blackout and cover-up efforts around a US Navy child pedophilia ring in Coos Bay, Oregon in 1982. Madsen would know, he was there.

 

Bob Kerrey

After the vocal Max Cleland departed the Commission, he was replaced by this former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But ghosts from Vietnam haunt Kerrey: three years ago reports emerged that as a Lieutenant, Kerrey led a mission that slaughtered 13 civilians in Vietnam. Although a progressive Democrat, Kerry was also a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an effort of the Project for a New American Century, the neo-conservative advisory group that urges pre-emptive strikes on oil-rich countries.

 

Richard Ben-Veniste

Richard Ben-Veniste came to prominence in Washington as chief of the Watergate Task Force, and was later President Clinton’s Senate-appointed lawyer in the Whitewater investigation. But Ben-Veniste also defended murky underworld figures with Clinton ties: Barry Seal and Truman Arnold. The later is especially significant, it links Ben-Veniste to Wally Hilliard, the owner of Venice Florida’s Huffmann Aviation school were three of four 9/11 pilots trained.

 

Truman Arnold was the major Clinton fundraiser busted for renting out the Lincoln bedroom in 1995. According to FAA records, Arnold sold a $2 million airplane to Venice’s Wally Hilliard for just one dollar, in 2002, shortly after the heat was on Hilliard because 45 pounds of heroin had turned up in one of his own planes.

 

Jamie Gorelick

The only female member of the panel is the closest to the CIA, as a member of the CIA's National Security Advisory Panel. Gorelick was a Pentagon lawyer and then deputy attorney general of the U.S. in 1993. She shares the dubious honor with Philip Zelikow of being the other 911 Commissioner called as a witness before her own Commission.

Shortly after she joined the 911 Commission, she joined the Washington firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in May 2003. But one month earlier, this firm had announced it would defend Saudi Prince Mohammed al Faisal, the third in command in the Saudi government, and a plaintiff in the victims’ families billion-dollar lawsuits. Perhaps hiring a 9/11 Commissioner was good courtroom strategy, but it resulted in what may be the most egregious conflict-of-interest yet.

 

Slade Gorton

A former Republican Senator from Washington State, Gorton served on the Presidential Consumer Advisory Board under Ford and Carter from 1975-’77. He is now a Lawyer in the Seattle firm of Preston, Gates and Ellis. Among their clients are Delta Air Lines, and Boeing Employees' Credit Union.

Timothy J. Roemer

From 1991-2003, Roemer was a Democratic House member from Indiana where he served on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and passed legislation on welfare reform and progressive issues. Roemer is perhaps the cleanest of the bunch, and the only Commissioner who actually helped create the 911 Commission. He served on the bipartisan Joint Inquiry into 9/11, which was critical of U.S. intelligence failures, but kept its harshest criticisms of the White House in a classified section of their report.

 

James R. Thompson

Illinois' longest-serving governor (1977-1991), is chairman of the law firm of Winston & Strawn, headquartered in Chicago. Winston & Strawn have defended tobacco giant Philip Morris against plaintiffs in class action lawsuits as well as the food genetics-modifier, Monsanto.

 

Fred F. Fielding

As White House Counsel to Nixon and Reagan, Fred Fielding was right there during the Watergate cover-up when his boss John Dean confided that he was considering destroying evidence. During the Reagan assassination attempt, it was Fielding who reined in a rabid Al Haig from declaring he was now, by law, "in charge." Fielding claims no knowledge of Iran/Contra since he "had left the administration by that time" Not exactly an airtight excuse, since Fielding left in 1996 and evidence suggests Reagan and Bush authorized arms shipments to Iran in 1995. Fielding worked for the current Bush White House as "clearance counsel" during the Presidential Transition. But any regrets about Watergate, Mr. Fielding? Yes, he told the DC Bar Association, "That I did not learn more about what was happening very early."