(Moderators, this is my handmade transcript from a Congressional Briefing. Since this testimony was given publicly, and was not a closed session, I don't think there will be any copyright issues. Posting in full. -r.)Unofficial transcript of Mel Goodman’s morning statement at the July 22nd Congressional Briefing:
The 9/11 Commission Report One Year Later: A Citizens’ Response – Did They Get It Right?...I want to talk about the Commission itself, about the flawed process of the Commission and finally about the conflict of interest within the Commission that is extremely important to understand...
...Remember there have only been 3 historic opportunities when we've had a chance to look at the intelligence community in this country. One was after Pearl Harbor, that led to a series of investigations that not only provided very trenchant analysis of what went wrong, but provided an outline for the National Security Act of 1947, which really was the most far-reaching important national security reform we've ever had in this country, because what the National Security Act of 1947 did was to set up the national community as we understand it today.
The second opportunity was after a period of important CIA domestic abuses, and that was the Church Committee and the Pike Committee. The Church Committee and the Pike Committee came up with excellent reforms that unfortunately were observed in the breach, and if we had followed the wisdom, particularly of Senator Frank Church, (the late Frank Church), we may have prevented the terrible tragedies that have taken place in the last 5 years in terms not only of 9/11, but using false intelligence to send Americans into war where they did not belong, in Iraq.
The third opportunity unfortunately, was the 9/11 tragedy, which gave us this important opportunity to at least try to get the intelligence community which spends over 40 billion dollars a year, try to get this institution correct, and to understand it and to see what reforms need to take place.
And of course with the 9/11 Commission, this wasn't done at all. The 9/11 Commission had the broadest mandate of any commission in the history of the United States. With the exception of the Pearl Harbor Commission there has probably been no more important national security commission, but in terms of broad mandate, the 9/11 Commission could have looked at any aspect of this tragedy, and it's regrettable that they didn't do that.
Let me briefly look at the Commission itself... what this country needed was an independent, non-partisan commission. The Commission wasn't non-partisan, it was presented to us as bi-partisan; but when you appoint a group of people, 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans, that is certainly not non-partisan, and I would argue that it's not even bi-partisan, it's balanced partisanship. And you look at the Commission's report, time and time again, to see where the Democrats on the Commission checked the views of the Republicans checked the views of the Democrats, so forget this notion that this was some sort of bi-partisan commission, it wasn't, it was balanced partisanship, and it did a great deal of harm to the final product.
Also if you look at the makeup of the Commission here you have an insufficiency in the kinds of people who were picked to be on the Commission, and I'm not going to look at the Commission members one by one, but the fact of the matter is this is a group of people without any intelligence experience at all. This is not a group of people-- not one individual on this Commission had ever received a President's Daily Briefing report, had never been involved as a consumer of intelligence, had very little understanding, and that was particularly true of one of the chairmen, the Governor from New Jersey, who admitted he had no understanding of the intelligence community whatsoever.
So there was insufficient stature, insufficient experience, insufficient knowledge of intelligence, and this was totally relevant to what needed to be done. It would have been very easy to get a Blue Ribbon commission. Where were people such as Sam Nunn, William Perry, George Schultz, General Brent Scowcroft, Bill Bradley, David Boren, Gary Hart, even Warren Rudman. People who had served on the intelligence committees, who had studied the problem of intelligence and policy very closely and may have had a contribution to make on the importance of change on the intelligence community.
Now let me look briefly at the process itself. The lack of stature may have contributed directly to the lack of rigor and the lack of tenacity within the Commission. Previous speakers spoke eloquently about the subpoena power that was unused, virtually unused, maybe totally unused. This was a commission that deferred at every step of the way to executive privilege. They had a mandate where they did not have to defer to executive privilege. Take the point of view about the President's Daily Briefs, the entire Commission was not allowed to examine the President's Daily Brief, only 4 commissioners got a look at some of the Presidents Daily Briefs, so no commission member came away with an idea of what did the CIA actually inform the White House about the problems of terrorism in the spring and summer of 2001.
The Commission also had the very good idea, and correct idea, that they should do their own debriefings of detainees. And we didn't know then, but we certainly know now, how the CIA and the military used torture to gain testimony from these captives. But George Tenet told the Chairman of the 9/11 Commission that they could not have the permission to debrief the detainees on their own, and the Commissioners just faded away, they didn't pursue this matter, they didn't 'go to the mat' with George Tenet on this one.
And also the matter of allowing the President and the Vice President to debrief together, this is obviously no way to run a commission.
Now in addition to the weakness in terms of rigor and tenacity, I think it's very important that the Commission didn't avail itself of the products that were out there, some completed, some nearing completion, some in the important stages of the drafting process, that would have been a very useful to their own work. And the obvious document that they needed to have, that they made no attempt to make full use of, was the CIA Accountability Report.
Now, not a lot is known about the CIA Accountability Report on 9/11, but this is the only report out there that actually gets into naming names, into dealing with those people who performed miserably in the period prior to 9/11. Remember, accountability is what really is one of the key issues at stake here. Find out who was involved find out if these people were rewarded for their work instead of punished, and see what accountability issues could allow you to make systemic changes within the intelligence community.
Now the irony of all of this, is that the CIA Accountability Report was requested by a joint Senate/House inquiry in 2002 which was signed by Porter Goss.
Well, who is now sitting on the CIA Accountability Report which was completed exactly a year ago? Actually in June of 2004... none other than the Director of Central Intelligence who is now Porter Goss.
But in addition to not looking at the CIA Accountability Report, they didn't take advantage of the excellent work being done by the Rob Silverman Commission on weapons of mass destruction, to show that there were no weapons of mass destruction, even though you had one of the co-chairmen, Governor Kean, who believed the Bush Administration rationale for why we had to into Iraq because of the so-called links between Iraq and Al Qaeda and so-called large stocks of weapons of mass destruction.
They didn't avail themselves of the important work done by particularly the Democrats in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the work done on the Office of Special Plans that was preparing false intelligence for the Bush Administration, that could have refuted the so-called evidence that wasn't there about links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
And finally the important work that was done on intelligence reform that was done by General Brent Scowcroft, that was completed before the 9/11 Commission even began its work, and this work wasn't used.
And finally since I'm almost out of time, let me just say one thing about conflict of interest. There were too many cases within the Commission members and staff members, particularly the Staff Director, Philip Zelikow, where people had to recuse themselves because of their own conflicts. I'm not in a position to get into all of the conflicts, but the fact of the matter is these conflicts were known even before these people were appointed. And this should have been grounds, just like Henry Kissinger had to resign as the Chariman of the 9/11 Commission because of his own conflicts of interest, shouldn't have gone ahead to name these people who couldn't even take part in the serious work of trying to understand what happened on 9/11 and trying to reform the intelligence community.
But the most important individual to me other than a commissioner, was the Staff Director, Philip Zelikow. And his conflicts of interest were so great that you do have to wonder why this individual was appointed to head this important staff of over 80 people. He had very strong ties to the George Herbert Walker Bush Administration, very strong personal and political policy ties to Condoleeza Rice. But more importantly, Philip Zelikow was running the case study program at Harvard which took millions of dollars from the CIA over a 10 year period to write case studies on the CIA, to establish a record that was essentially untrue with the facts about the work of the CIA, and of course the classic case study that Philip Zelikow chaired along with Ernest May at the Harvard-Kennedy School was the case on the Soviet Union, how the CIA got it right, you know, the politics of getting it right.
And of course as we all know, one of the greatest disasters of the politicization of intelligence that occurred even before the Iraq war, was over the politicization of intelligence on the Soviet Union. And who did Philip Zelikow bring in to the staff structure as the team leader on his staff but Douglas McKaken, who was serving a tour up at the Harvard-Kennedy School.
And who was Douglas McKaken?
Douglas McKaken was the head of the Soviet analysis shop during the 1980s who was responsible for most of the politicization of intelligence. So here you have Philip Zelikow from Harvard and the case study program and Douglas McKaken as a team leader on Zelikow's staff making serious decisions about the need for change within the intelligence community.
And the last word is, is what this study is all about, and what this process is all about, is how do you regain integrity in the intelligence community and how do you regain integrity in the investigative process such as the 9/11 Commssion?
And ultimately, that's not about changing structure, that's not about changing systems, it's not about changing organizations, it's about appointing people to important positions who have the nerve and the courage to tell truth to power, and that's what's missing from our government at this particular juncture.
Also;
Cynthia McKinney - July 22nd, 2005
http://www.nowpublic.com/node/16470Lorie Van Auken - July 22nd, 2005
http://www.nowpublic.com/node/16472Anne Norton - July 22nd, 2005
http://www.nowpublic.com/node/16484Peter Dale Scott - July 22nd, 2005
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=SCO20050729&articleId=759
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