The 9/11 Files: The Cover-up Commission | Ep 2

0:01Kristen Breitweiser:In January 2000, as the CIA was tracking two future hijackers as they journeyed to Los Angeles, George W. Bush was seven months into his presidential campaign. What we're going to do is we're going to do something no other presidential candidate has been able to do. The near impossible, remember what it was? The near impossible turn like that. One of the most exhilarating moments of my political career in years two. His campaign was working to take down his opponent at the time, Arizona Senator John McCain, by spreading rumors he'd fathered a black bastard child with a prostitute. You should be ashamed.

0:34Kristen Breitweiser:You should be ashamed. The following December, two other hijackers, Muhammad Adda, the ringleader of the plot, and Marwan Al-Sheyhi, were finishing their pilot training in Venice, Florida, on the West Coast. In Washington, the Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush had won the 2000 election. John McCain wanted to get political revenge. When he got his chance 10 months later, it would have historic consequences. The official story of what happened on 9-11 comes from a single report, the 9-11 final report of the National Commission. In the two decades since it was released, it has become the basis for all media coverage of terror attacks that day.

1:12Kristen Breitweiser:What the media never mention is that the commission itself was a farce. It was intentionally underfunded. It was poorly structured. it was from top to bottom corrupt. Two years after the report was released, the commission's own chairman admitted it was set up to fail. Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking who attacked our country. Beginning in the first hours after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Bush administration began leveraging the tragedy to launch their next project, a so-called global war on terror. The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al-Qaeda.

1:57Kristen Breitweiser:In a normal country, its leaders would insist on an answer to the simple question. How did a terror network closely monitored by the United States intelligence agencies, including a unit dedicated to following them at CIA headquarters in Langley, how did a group like that manage to pull off the 9-11 attacks in broad daylight? That's the question. But this is not a normal country, and it was never answered. In fact, the Bush administration ferociously opposed any attempt to look carefully at what happened that day. And that presents a bigger question. Why? What did they have to hide? My name is Kristen Breitweiser.

2:36My husband, Ron, was killed on September 11th.

2:39Kristen Breitweiser:Breitweiser is one of four 9-11 widows who became famous at the time as the, quote, Jersey Girls. They were some of the only people in public life in the United States who wouldn't let it go. They didn't believe the official 9-11 story, and they often said so. They were all over the media for several years, determined to identify government officials who may have been complicit in the tragedy. In the end, they were ignored. We were looking at a Bush administration that really was not interested in looking backwards. There was a push to immediately go to war. There was an invasion into Afghanistan, and then there was the queue up for the war in Iraq.

3:17I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

3:33Kristen Breitweiser:Rather than get to the bottom of what actually happened, the Bush administration immediately exploited the crisis to push for what it really wanted, which was an invasion of Iraq. In his book, Against All Enemies, George W. Bush's counterterrorism's R. Richard Clark said that when he went back to the White House immediately after 9-11, he, quote, expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks would be, what our vulnerabilities were. Instead, he realized with what he called almost sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to take advantage of the tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.

4:10Kristen Breitweiser:And that's exactly what they did. On the afternoon of September 11th, Rumsfeld said his instinct was to hit Saddam Hussein at the same time, not only bin Laden. The day after the attack, Bush asked Clark to see if Saddam did this, see if he's involved in any way. And while meeting with the president on September 15th at Camp David, Wolfowitz argued that Iraq was ultimately the source of the terrorist problem and should therefore be attacked. We learned quite quickly that we were not going to get the answers that we really wanted with regard to the murder, the homicide of our 3 ,000 loved ones.

4:48My husband Ron was 39 when he was killed. He was a really good man. He was smart and a good dad. And he had called me on the morning of September 11th. I was rushing out the door to take my daughter to speech therapy and I had no idea what was going on I didn't have the television on and he was like sweets it's me I'm okay and I had I had no idea I'm like okay I'm glad you're okay and he was like no no he's like put the television on and he's like it's not my building I knew you would be worried it's not my building and I put the television on and I was still on the phone with him and I was like oh my god like what what is that and he was like you know there's an explosion in the building next to me but it's not my building I'm safe.

5:27I'm fine. And I was like, it's really bad. You know, it looks bad. And he was like, that's why I called. Don't worry. It's not my building. And he's like, and then his voice cracked and he was like, sweets. He's like, people are falling out the windows. I'm like, just, you know, what do you, what are you, what are you going to do? And he's like, well, I'm going to go down to the trading floor and see if I can find a television to see what's going on. We don't know anything. He's like, but I didn't want you to worry. I love you. He's like, I'll call you back. And, you know, that was the last I spoke to him.

5:56And like three minutes after we got off the phone, I still had the TV on and I saw his building explode right where he was. And I just, I wish I told him to run. I wish I told him to get out. I wish I told him, you know, it's not safe. Something's wrong. Get out. But I just, I didn't. I think, you know, feeling that way, feeling like, Like, why didn't I know? Why didn't I have a woman's instinct to be like, get out? Made me want to fight for the commission and for everything else because I felt like the American public deserves to know.

6:34Kristen Breitweiser:The Bush administration, which at the time was enjoying a historic 90 percent approval rating, was pushing a very clear storyline. They told the country that Osama bin Laden had simply caught American authorities off guard. There was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9-11 attacks. That was a lie. And by May of 2002, more than two-thirds of Americans understood that it was a lie. They wanted an investigation into the so-called intelligence failures that led to the attack. The initial effort to investigate 9-11 was a joint congressional commission led by Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat of Florida, and Congressman Porter Goss, a former CIA officer who would later become the agency's director, appointed by Bush.

7:17These public hearings are part of our search for truth. Cheney did not want anyone looking into his failures that day, the administration's failures, and more than anything, I think he and the political strategist Karl Rove were very focused on the president's reputation, on ensuring that he would get reelected.

7:36Kristen Breitweiser:The lengths that the Bush administration went to kill the investigation into 9-11 are shocking. In the winter of 2002, Dick Cheney called the then-Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and made a threat. The Veep told Daschle the leaders of the war on terror would be too busy to get bogged down in preparing for and testifying in front of the committees. The strong implication of this, if you insist, will say you're interfering with the war effort. The committee moved forward anyway. On June 19, 2002, they discovered that the NSA had intercepted messages from al-Qaeda operatives from the day before the attacks, saying, quote, The match begins tomorrow, and tomorrow is zero day.

8:20Kristen Breitweiser:It couldn't have been clearer. Someone on the committee leaked those messages to the news media. CNN broadcast them. And in retaliation for this, for telling the truth, the Bush administration sicked the FBI, then run by Robert Mueller, on the committee. The FBI, you know, really came down hard on the joint inquiry. They polygraphed, they interviewed, they made all kinds of threats. And so, you know, when the FBI comes after you, it's kind of scary because you're looking at not only, you know, potentially losing your position in Congress, but also imprisonment. It was pure intimidation. And so it had a very chilling effect, in my opinion, on the progress of the inquiry and their investigation.

9:08Kristen Breitweiser:In the end, Congress did make some interesting discoveries, most of which were redacted in the final report. The Jersey girls continued to push for the truth. They were furious. They demanded an independent commission. George W. Bush's political enemies agreed. John McCain's revenge was an independent commission that would explore the truth about what happened on 9-11. I think it's legislation that calls for a blue ribbon commission to examine the facts surrounding September 11th. On November 27th, 2002, President Bush, fearing major political blowback if he vetoed the commission, signed the bill into law.

9:44Kristen Breitweiser:But he managed to neuter the commission in the process. His allies in Congress gave the commission weak subpoena power and limited them to a strict 18-month timeline. They appropriated for the entire investigation just$3 million. By Washington standards, it was nothing. By comparison, Congress gave 13 times more funding to investigate the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It appropriated 11 times more funding for Robert Mueller's investigation into Russiagate. The administration and the Congress simply didn't want the public to know what happened on 9-11. But that wasn't the only thing they did to subvert the truth.

10:19The White House, one of the ways that they controlled the commission was they were going to choose the chairman.

10:25Kristen Breitweiser:Their first choice was Henry Kissinger. Today, I'm pleased to announce my choice for commission chairman, Dr. Henry Kissinger. At the time, I was like 30 years old, so I had known Kissinger, but I didn't really, you know, as a stay-at-home suburban housewife, it's not like I, you know, had dived into all of Henry Kissinger's horrible acts and his status as a war criminal. Dr. Kissinger is one of our nation's most accomplished and respected public servants. Kissinger had served as national security advisor and then secretary of state under Richard Nixon. He pushed a massive expansion of the Vietnam War, including secret bombings in Cambodia and Laos.

11:05There are questions about his role in Vietnam, his role in the coup in Chile. When we first met him, he gave us this long talk about how honored it was. And it was like the, you know, opportunity, not the opportunity, but like a responsibility of a lifetime. It is a great honor to be appointed by the president to be chairman of the nonpartisan independent commission.

11:30Kristen Breitweiser:In 2002, he was running a lucrative consulting business called Kissinger Associates. I really spent a bit of time researching him, predominantly his clients. and we had grave concerns that he was chosen by the vice president and the president and Karl Rove because he was really good at what he does and so we were also concerned about his clients and that he had a huge conflict of interest and so we were invited to meet with him at his offices on Park Avenue. We were put into his office. It was kind of close quarters. It was really, really hot. He had the heat turned up to like 100 degrees. And, you know, it was the winter.

12:11So we had like turtlenecks on and sweaters and stuff. So we're like sitting there like sweating and he's just sitting there calmly.

12:17Kristen Breitweiser:Cranking up the thermostat is a well-known manipulation strategy. If you make a room uncomfortably hot, the discomfort puts pressure on the other negotiating party to make concessions more quickly. So at one point after we got through the niceties, one of the widows had asked him whose clients were, do you represent any Saudi royals? Do you represent anyone in the bin Laden family? And, you know, at the time, it wasn't that much of an outrageous question because there were members of the bin Laden family who had relationships with, you know, the Bush family and others. And so it wasn't like it was an outrageous question.

12:56And he immediately got flustered and, you know, went to pick up a cup of a cup of tea or coffee and spilled it on the table. He feigned that it was his fake eye, which didn't know that he had a fake eye. And we immediately went to like clean it up like moms, you know, like, oh, it's OK. And then he just never answered the question. And then the very next day he resigned. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stepped down from the position Friday.

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14:34Kristen Breitweiser:Refer to shop in person. In October, Masa is going to be available at your local Sprouts Supermarket. So stop by and pick up a bag before we eat them all. And we eat a lot. Scrambling to find a new chairman, Bush's top political advisor, Karl Rove, called former New Jersey Governor Tom Cain and offered him the job. Why was George W. Bush's political bag man making this phone call? No one's ever explained. Tom is the nicest guy on the planet. He's very much a gentleman. He does not go for the jugular. After he accepted the job, Cain was dragged to the White House where the president's top advisors told him, we want you to stand up.

15:09Kristen Breitweiser:You've got to stand up. You've got to have courage. We don't want a runaway commission. In other words, do what we say. The White House's fingerprints were certainly all over the commission. Chairman Cain ultimately admitted the commission was, quote, set up to fail. And that's absolutely true. But in addition to a meaningless budget, the tight timeline, and weak subpoena power, there was another problem. The man Cain selected to run it. On January 27, 2003, the commission issued a press release announcing they'd selected an academic called Philip Zelico to be the commission's executive director.

15:46He was sold to us as a historian. I was responsible for the research for Zellico to make sure that he didn't have any conflicts of interest. He had a lot of conflicts of interest.

15:58Kristen Breitweiser:The release describes Zellico as, quote, a man of high stature who had distinguished himself as an academician, a lawyer, author, and public servant. The release did not note that Zellico was an active Bush administration official. He served on a White House intelligence advisory panel. It also failed to note his extensive ties to Condoleezza Rice. He'd served on her transition team. He'd co-authored a book with Rice in 1995. In 2002, at Rice's behest, Zellicoe authored a policy paper championing preemptive invasions. And this cemented his role as a key architect of the disastrous invasion of Iraq.

16:37Kristen Breitweiser:Zellicoe was the perfect person to keep the commission from finding the truth. I believe he was placed there to, again, play the gatekeeper, to ensure that the commission would not unearth the truth, and more than anything, to protect the Bush administration and also lay the groundwork for the war on Iraq in addition to other things. Zellicoe's first move was to pre-write the entire report before the facts were in. In March of 2003, before the investigation had even begun, Zellico had already prepared a detailed outline complete with chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings. He kept all of this a secret from the rest of the staff.

17:17As it turned out, his outline is nearly verbatim to what the final book looks like. And so what I believe is that he just basically had the outline, knew that it was a quote-unquote safe outline. It was probably approved by the Bush administration.

17:31Kristen Breitweiser:His second move was to consolidate his power. Zellico gave himself total control over the hiring process. He at first tried to block the staffers from communicating with the commissioners. In a now public memo, Zellico cut off his staff's access to the commissioners. Quote, if you are contacted by a commissioner with questions, please contact Deputy Director Chris Kojum or me. Zellico restricted access to documents. He divided the staff into separate teams. He siloed them from each other, and he closely supervised Team 3. That was the group that dealt with classified information from the White House and the CIA.

18:07Kristen Breitweiser:One of Zelikow's first moves was a secret agreement with the Justice Department to block access to the files of the congressional inquiry until the White House had had a chance to review them first. Zelikow was sort of limiting access to documents. When people were requesting specific things, Zelikow would block it. Notably, the final report contains a full 61 references to finding no evidence of certain claims about 9-11. The cute way of explaining why Zellico uses that phrase is that if you don't look for the evidence, you don't find the evidence. And so you're not lying when you say we found no evidence.

18:45Kristen Breitweiser:At one point, a staffer overheard Zellico pressuring a CIA employee to accept Condoleezza Rice's recollection of intel briefings before the 9-11 attacks. Most damning of all, phone logs kept by Zellicoe's assistant show that he was regularly taking calls from both Condoleezza Rice and Karl Rove, George W. Bush's top political advisor in the White House. We reached out to Karl Rove for an explanation of this, and he denied having been in regular contact with Zellicoe. But that is untrue. Even Zellicoe himself acknowledges he received multiple calls from Karl Rove, but he claims they did not discuss the commission.

19:24Kristen Breitweiser:He doesn't say what they did discuss. None of it is plausible. It wasn't even like he was on the National Security Council. He didn't really have any information that would be helpful to the commission. Why is the commission's staff director having communications with the White House's political strategist? From the outset, the commission started to advance the interests of Bush's neocon foreign policy agenda. When Team 3, the counterterrorism group, submitted their draft to Zellico, he inserted sentences that tried to link al-Qaeda to Iraq to suggest the terrorist network had repeatedly communicated with the government of Saddam Hussein in the years before 9-11 and that bin Laden had seriously weighed moving to Iraq.

20:05Kristen Breitweiser:In the end, those sentences were removed after staffers alerted the commissioners. But the commissioners did not prevent Zelikov from stacking public hearings with discredited neocons who towed the White House line about Iraq's connections to al-Qaeda, none of which were real. The first outside expert to testify to the commission was the Hoover Institute's Abraham Sofar. His written remarks to the commission include eight references to Iraq and five references to Saddam Hussein. Keep in mind, this was a hearing on 9-11, which had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein or Iraq. Sofar spent most of his time at the public hearing talking about the need for preemptive invasions.

20:43Kristen Breitweiser:The need for preemptive actions stems ultimately from the conditions of modern life. At the third hearing, Zellicoe produced a florid and widely discredited neocon called Lori Milroy from the American Enterprise Institute. She appeared as a witness. There is substantial reason to believe that these masterminds are Iraqi intelligence agents. By April of 2004, former Senator Bob Terry of Nebraska, a Democrat, confronted Rice about Zellicoe's ties to the administration. Let me just ask you directly, and you can just keep it relatively short, but I wanted to get it on the record. Since he was an expert on terrorism, did you ask Philip Zalikow any questions about terrorism during transition?

21:23Kristen Breitweiser:Since he was a second person carded in the National Security Office and had considerable expertise. Philip and I had numerous conversations about the issues that we were facing. Philip was, in fact, as you know, had worked in the campaign and helped with the transition plan. So, yes. Yes, you did talk to him about terrorism? We talked, Philip and I, over a period of, you know, we worked closely together as academics. Just in the transition, did you instruct him to do anything on terrorism? Oh, to do anything on terrorism? To help us think about the structure of the terrorism, Dick Clark's operations, yes.