Reply #19: Friday's Washington Post picks up the story

[Newsjock]

no link yet

White House Rejects Claim That 9/11 Attacks Could Have Been Thwarted

By Dana Milbank
c) 2003, The Washington Post


WASHINGTON — The chairman of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks said he believes the strikes could have been prevented, a claim President Bush's spokesman rejected Thursday.

In an interview with CBS News broadcast Wednesday night, Tom Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, chosen by Bush to head the panel, said the attacks could have been avoided. ``I do not believe it had to happen,'' he said in the interview.

... Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the commission headed by Kean, noted, as others have previously, that some terrorists had expired visas, that all eluded aviation security and that miscommunication between intelligence agencies may have kept authorities from following clues to the attacks. ``If any of these things hadn't happened, it might have been a different story,'' he said.

But Felzenberg said Kean ``did not intend to make news'' with his remarks, which were made two weeks ago at the end of a long interview that focused on Kean's role as a university president. Felzenberg also pointed out that Kean said at the commission's opening hearing in March that the system had failed.

more to come