9/11 Report In Line With Bush, Says Director

The executive director of the 9/11 Commission said yesterday that contrary to press accounts, the commission’s best-selling report did not contradict statements by the Bush Administration on links between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Speaking at the Institute of Politics’ JFK Jr. Forum, Philip D. Zelikow fielded questions about the strategies involved in producing the report and selecting commission members from Warren Professor of American History Ernest R. May, who was a senior adviser to the commission.

Zelikow said that it was important that the commission’s staff was nonpartisan and that the final report was published as a book that would be easily accessible to the general public.

“This is not to say it should be dumbed down,” Zelikow said. Instead, he said, the report should be “kept to a high standard but written so people can understand it.”

The 10-member 9/11 Commission, officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was created by congressional legislation in late 2002. After receiving one extension, the commission released the report in July 2004. The report has spent 11 weeks at the top of The New York Times’ paperback nonfiction bestsellers’ list.

The report criticized the Clinton and Bush administrations for paying too little attention to terrorism and said that intelligence agencies did not adapt quickly enough to new security concerns.

Ben D. Zimmer ’07, who said he has read the complete report, said he came out of the forum with a better knowledge of details about the commission and the report.

“It increased my understanding of how [the report] was made but not of 9/11, but I don’t know if that was the point,” Zimmer said. “I felt I knew a lot about the subject, but it was interesting to hear about the book’s logistics.”

Zelikow discussed some of the controversies that surrounded the report such as its commentary on al Qaeda’s relationship to Iraq.

He said the commission found there was no “collaborative operational relationship” between the two but did find some ties. He said that was in line with statements by the Bush administration.

He said after the media initially reported that the commission had found no links between Iraq and al Qaeda, Vice President Dick Cheney exacerbated the situation by offering a defense of the administration that was flawed.

“The Republicans acted as though they were badly stung, so the public thought they were,” Zelikow said.

Zelikow said the public hearings that took place while the commission was working had both positive and negative ramifications. He said that although the hearings familiarized the public with issues and gave credibility to the staff, they were extremely time consuming.

“We almost couldn’t advance the investigation,” Zelikow said. “We’re fortunate that we were able to pull things out the way we did under the circumstances.”

May, the moderator, said that because of the commission staff’s commitment to objectivity and widespread public support, the 9/11 Commission proved that commissions can be successful.

May and Zelikow previously worked together on The Kennedy Tapes, a book about the Cuban missile crisis published in 1997.

—Staff writer Monica M. Clark can be reached at mclark@fas.harvard.edu.