"Why didn't Phil Zelikow make reviewing vital NSA documents a Commission priority?"

[seemslikeadream]

http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=9156

The widows whose political activism was largely responsible for the establishment of a commission to investigate the September 11 attacks say a new book revealing the backstory of the 9/11 Commission proves that their initial concerns about its executive director were correct and demonstrate the need for another investigation.

.....

"General Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA at the time, was eager to cooperate and share what his organization had with the 9/11 Commission, but Executive Director Zelikow was not interested," 9/11 widows Patty Casazza, Monica Gabriellle, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie Van Auken said in a statement reacting to the book.

"Why didnt Phil Zelikow make reviewing these vital NSA documents a Commission priority?" they ask. "It seems clear that not every fact and lead was followed in this investigation compromising the validity of the Commission's final report and its findings."

The 9/11 widows called for Zelikow to resign or be fired from the Commission back in 2004, when his ties with Rice and Rove were first revealed. Shenon's book, they say, proves their concerns were right all along.

"It is abundantly clear that Philip Zelikow should have immediately been replaced when the first rumblings of his impropriety and conflicts of interest surfaced," they said. "When all of this information became clear, the Commissioners and the press should have called for Zelikows resignation. We did. Shamefully, most were silent."

[tetedur]

1. Shenon, in his NPR interview, talks about Al Qaeda links with Iran found at the NSA

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18660248

The Commission staffers went for a weekend to the NSA and found "explosive material", evidence that the "government of Iran and Hezbollah" assisted Al Qaeda 1-1/2 years before 9/11/01.

He says no one has gone in to review this material since. The Commission staff think someone should look at it. When asked why didn't the staff go to the NSA in the beginning, (the NSA invited investigations of the raw data), Shenon says, "The CIA was the sexier agency to investigate....The CIA is like Hollywood and the NSA is like ."

This Iran-Al Qaeda information has been around since July 16, 2004. Time reported it.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,664967,00.html
Philip Shenon at the NY Times reported it July 18, 2004.

My question: Why didn't the authorities jump on this information and use it to go after Iran?

Could it be that Zelikow had marching orders to find links to Iraq, that weren't found? "To his credit" he did sign off on no-evidence-of-links-to-Iraq but he did help create the it's-okay-to-have-preemptive-war document.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. Zelikow's sole objective on the 9-11 Commission was...

...simply to make sure they didn't get anywhere near the truth -- he is/was acting on behalf of those who are responsible for 9-11.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. correct

how did you know that?

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. His background and actions on the 9-11 were the biggest clues. nt.