Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda:

"We Haven't Seen the Evidence Yet. But Really. We're Sure"

By David Ray Griffin

The People's Forum, December 20, 2008

The Bush Doctrine & The 9/11 Commission Report: Both Authored by
Philip Zelikow

Thanks to the interview of Sarah Palin by Charles Gibson of ABC News
on September 11, the "Bush Doctrine" has become part of American
political discourse much more fully than it was before. Thanks to
that interview and the commentary that followed, Governor Palin and
millions of other Americans learned of the existence and meaning of
this fateful doctrine---fateful because, as New York Times reporter
Philip Shenon has pointed out, it was used to "justify a preemptive
strike on Iraq."1

Thus far, however, the commentary following that interview has not
brought out the fact that the document in which the Bush Doctrine was
first fully articulated---the 2002 version of The National Security
Strategy of the United States of America (NSS 2002) [pdf]---was
written by the same person who was primarily responsible for the 9/11
Commission's report: its executive director, Philip Zelikow.

This fact constituted an enormous conflict of interest that should,
at the very least, keep Americans from referring to the 9/11
Commission as a model to be emulated---as did John McCain this
September 15 in suggesting that "a 9/11-type commission" should be
set up to study the causes of the recent financial crisis. As Shenon
shows in his 2008 book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the
9/11 Investigation, Zelikow's authorship of NSS 2002, in conjunction
with his close relationship to the Bush White House that this
authorship illustrated, means that when the 9/11 Commission was
formed in 2003, he should never have been chosen to be its executive
director.

In the first part of this essay, I discuss the Bush Doctrine as
articulated in NSS 2002. In the second part, I discuss Zelikow's
authorship of this document. In the third part, I discuss how he, in
spite of this authorship, became the Commission's executive director,
and why this was problematic for the credibility of The 9/11
Commission Report.

The Bush Doctrine

According to international law as reflected in the charter of the
United Nations, a preemptive war is legal in only one situation: if a
country has certain knowledge that an attack by another country is
imminent---too imminent for the matter to be taken to the UN Security
Council.

Preemptive war, thus defined, is to be distinguished from "preventive
war," in which a country, fearing that another country may some time
in the future become strong enough to attack it, attacks that country
in order to prevent that possibility. Such wars are illegal under
international law. Preventive wars, in fact, belong under the
category of unprovoked wars, which were declared at the Nuremburg
trials to constitute the "supreme international crime."2

This traditional distinction between "preventive" and "preemptive"
war creates a terminological problem, because preventive war, being
illegal, is worse than preemptive war, and yet to most
ears "preemption" sounds worse than "prevention." As a result, many
people speak of "preemptive war" when they really mean preventive
war. To avoid any confusion, I employ the term "preemptive-preventive
war" for what has traditionally been known as preventive war.3

People known as neoconservatives (or simply neocons), the most
powerful member of whom has been Dick Cheney, did not like the idea
that America's use of military power could be constrained by the
prohibition against preemptive-preventive war. In 1992, Cheney, in
his last year as secretary of defense, had Paul Wolfowitz (the
undersecretary of defense for policy) and Lewis ("Scooter") Libby
write the Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, which said that the
United States should use force to "preempt" and "preclude threats."4
In 1997, William Kristol founded a neocon think tank called the
Project for the New American Century (PNAC).5 In 1998, a letter
signed by 18 members of PNAC---including Kristol, Wolfowitz, John
Bolton, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and James Woolsey---urged
President Clinton to "undertake military action" to eliminate "the
possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons
of mass destruction."6

Only after 9/11, however, were the neocons able to turn their wish to
leave international law behind into official US policy. As Stephen
Sniegoski wrote, "it was only the traumatic effects of the 9/11
terrorism that enabled the agenda of the neocons to become the policy
of the United States of America."7 Andrew Bacevich likewise
wrote: "The events of 9/11 provided the tailor-made opportunity to
break free of the fetters restricting the exercise of American
power."8

The idea of preemptive-preventive war, which came to be known as
the "Bush doctrine," was first clearly expressed in the president's
address at West Point in June 2002, when the administration began
preparing the American people for the attack on Iraq. Having stated
that, in relation to "new threats," deterrence "means nothing" and
containment is "not possible," Bush dismissed preemption as
traditionally understood, saying: "If we wait for threats to fully
materialize, we will have waited too long." Then, using the language
of preemption while meaning preemptive-prevention, he said that
America's security "will require all Americans . . . to be ready for
preemptive action."9

Having been sketched in June 2002, the Bush Doctrine was first fully
laid out that September in NSS 2002. This document's covering letter,
speaking of "our enemies' efforts to acquire dangerous technologies,"
declares that America will, in self-defense, "act against such
emerging threats before they are fully formed."10 Then the document
itself, saying that "our best defense is a good offense," states:

"Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the United States
can no longer rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The
inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today's
threats, and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by
our adversaries' choice of weapons, do not permit that option. We
cannot let our enemies strike first."11

In justifying this change of doctrine, NSS 2002 argues that the
United States must "adapt" the traditional doctrine of preemption,
long recognized as a right, to the new situation, thereby turning it
into a right of anticipatory (preventive) preemption:

"For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not
suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend
themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of
attack. . . . We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the
capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries. . . . The United
States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to
counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the
threat, . . . the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory
action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the
time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such
hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if
necessary, act preemptively."12

With this argument, NSS 2002 tried to suggest that, since this
doctrine of preventive preemption simply involved adapting a
traditionally recognized right to a new situation, it brought about
no great change. But it did. According to the traditional doctrine,
one needed certain evidence that an attack from the other country was
imminent. According to the Bush Doctrine, by contrast, the United
States can attack another country "even if uncertainty remains" and
even if the United States knows that the threat from the other
country is not yet "fully formed."

The novelty here, to be sure, involves doctrine more than practice.
The United States has in fact attacked several countries that
presented no imminent military threat. But it always portrayed these
attacks in such a way that they could appear to comport with
international law---for example, by claiming, before attacking North
Vietnam, that it had attacked a US ship in the Tonkin Gulf. "Never
before," however---point out Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, who
call themselves Reagan conservatives---"had any president set out a
formal national strategy doctrine that included [preventive]
preemption."13

This unprecedented doctrine was, as we have seen, one that neocons
had long desired. Indeed, neocon Max Boot described NSS 2002 as
a "quintessentially neo-conservative document."14 And, as we have
also seen, the adoption of this doctrine was first made possible by
the 9/11 attacks. Halper and Clarke themselves say, in fact, that
9/11 allowed the "preexisting ideological agenda" of the
neoconservatives to be "taken off the shelf . . . and relabeled as
the response to terror."15

Zelikow and NSS 2002 The 9/11 attacks, we have seen, allowed the Bush-
Cheney administration to adopt the doctrine of preemptive-preventive
war, which the neocons in the administration---most prominently
Cheney himself---had long desired. One would assume, therefore, that
the 9/11 Commission would not have been run by someone who helped
formulate this doctrine, because the Commission should have
investigated, among other things, whether the Bush-Cheney
administration might have had anything to gain from 9/11 attacks---
whether they, in other words, might have had a motive for
orchestrating or at least deliberately allowing the attacks. Amazing
as it may seem, however, Philip Zelikow, who directed the 9/11
Commission and was the primary author of its final report, had also
been the primary author of NSS 2002.

Lying behind Zelikow's authorship of NSS 2002 was the fact that he
was close, both personally and ideologically, to Condoleezza Rice,
who as National Security Advisor to President Bush had the task of
creating this document. Zelikow had worked with Rice in the National
Security Council during the Bush I presidency. Then, when the
Republicans were out of power during the Clinton years, Zelikow and
Rice co-authored a book together. Finally, when she was appointed
National Security Advisor to Bush II, she brought on Zelikow to help
with the transition to the new National Security Council. Given that
long relationship, Zelikow evidently came to mind when Rice found the
first draft of NSS unsatisfactory.

According to James Mann in Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's
War Cabinet, this first draft had been produced by Richard Haass, who
was the director of policy planning under Colin Powell in the State
Department.16 Although this draft by Haass is evidently not publicly
available, an insight into what it contained might be provided by an
address Haass had given in 2000 entitled "Imperial America."

While Haass called on Americans to "re-conceive their global role
from one of a traditional nation-state to an imperial power," his
foreign policy suggestions were very different from those of the
neocons. Saying that "primacy is not to be confused with hegemony"
and that "[a]n effort to assert U.S. hegemony is . . . bound to
fail," he called for acceptance of the fact that the world in coming
decades "will be a world more multipolar than the present one." Also,
insisting that "[a]n imperial foreign policy is not to be confused
with imperialism," which involves exploitation, he stated
that "imperial America is not to be confused with either hegemonic
America or unilateral America." In the new world order that he
envisaged, "The United States would need to relinquish some freedom
of action," which would mean that it "would be more difficult to
carry out preventive or preemptive strikes on suspect military
facilities." He suggested, moreover, that "[c]oercion and the use of
force would normally be a last resort." The United States would
instead rely primarily on "persuasion," "consultation," and "global
institutions," especially the UN Security Council.17

In any case, whatever the exact nature of the draft for NSS 2002 that
Haass produced, Rice, after seeing it, wanted "something bolder,"
Mann reports. Deciding that the document should be "completely
rewritten," she "turned the writing over to her old colleague . . .
Philip Zelikow."18

Given the hawkish tone of the resulting NSS 2002, we might assume
that Zelikow was simply taking dictation from Cheney, Rumsfeld, or
Wolfowitz. According to Mann, however, "the hawks in the Pentagon and
in Vice President Cheney's office hadn't been closely involved, even
though the document incorporated many of their key ideas. They had
left the details and the drafting in the hands of Rice and Zelikow,
along with Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley."19

It would seem, therefore, that we can take this "quintessentially neo-
conservative document," which used 9/11 to justify exempting the
United States from international law, as reflecting Zelikow's own
thinking. This means that, besides being aligned with the Bush-Cheney
White House personally (by virtue primarily of his friendship with
Rice) and structurally (by virtue of helping her set up the new NSC),
he was also closely aligned ideologically with Cheney and other
neocons in the administration.

Such a person obviously should not have been put in charge of the
9/11 Commission, given the fact that one of the main questions it
should have investigated was whether the Bush-Cheney administration
had any responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, whether through
incompetence or complicity. Pursuing the possibility of complicity in
particular would have required the Commission to ask whether the
administration would have had motives for wanting the attacks. Given
the fact that Zelikow had authored the document that provided the
doctrine of preemptive-preventive warfare desired by leading members
of this administration, he would have been one of the worst possible
choices to lead such an investigation.

The story of how Zelikow was, nevertheless, chosen to be the
executive director has been told by Philip Shenon in The Commission.

Zelikow and the 9/11 Commission

In their preface to The 9/11 Commission Report, Thomas Kean and Lee
Hamilton, the Commission's chair and vice chair, respectively, said
that the Commission "sought to be independent, impartial, thorough,
and nonpartisan." In light of the fact that the 9/11 attacks had
occurred during the watch of the Bush-Cheney administration,
being "independent" and "impartial" would have meant, above all,
being fully independent of this administration.

With Zelikow as its executive director, the 9/11 Commission could
have been independent of the Bush-Cheney administration only if the
executive director's role was merely that of a facilitator, meaning a
person who did not influence either the Commission's research or the
content of its final report. Some people, in hearing Zelikow
described as the 9/11 Commission's "executive director," may assume
that he had that kind of role. As Shenon has shown, however, nothing
could be further from the truth. Zelikow ran the Commission and took
charge of the writing of its final report.

With regard to the work of the Commission, Zelikow sought, and
largely achieved, total control. He achieved this control through
several means.

First, the work of the Commission was done not by Kean, Hamilton, and
the other commissioners who, by virtue of appearing on television
during the Commission's open hearings, became the public face of the
Commission. The work, instead, was done by the 80-some staff members.

Second, Shenon points out, these staff members worked directly under
Zelikow: "Zelikow had insisted that there be a single, nonpartisan
staff." This meant that none of the commissioners would "have a staff
member of their own, typical on these sorts of independent
commissions." Zelikow thereby prevented "any of the commissioners
from striking out on their own in the investigation."20

Third, none of the commissioners, including Kean and Hamilton, were
given offices in the K Street office building used by the
Commission's staff. As a result, "most of the commissioners rarely
visited K Street. Zelikow was in charge."21

Fourth, even though the Commission would not have existed had it not
been for the efforts of the families of the 9/11 victims, "the
families were not allowed into the commission's offices because they
did not have security clearances."22

Fifth, Zelikow made it clear to the staff members that they worked
for him, not for the commissioners. He even prevented direct contact
between the staff and the commissioners as much as possible. "If
information gathered by the staff was to be passed to the
commissioners, it would have to go through Zelikow."23 Although the
commissioners forced Zelikow to rescind his most extreme order of
this nature---that the staff members were not even to return phone
calls from the commissioners without his permission24---he largely,
Shenon reports, achieved his goal: "Zelikow's micromanagement meant
that the staff had little, if any, contact with the ten
commissioners; all information was funneled through Zelikow, and he
decided how it would be shared elsewhere."25 Indeed, Shenon says,
Zelikow insisted "that every scrap of secret evidence gathered by the
staff be shared with him before anyone else; he then controlled how
and if the evidence was shared elsewhere."26

Although the fact that the 9/11 Commission was controlled by someone
who was essentially a member of the Bush-Cheney White House was bad
enough, even more contrary to the Commission's alleged independence
was the fact that Zelikow had determined its central conclusions in
advance. In their 2006 book, Without Precedent, which is subtitled
The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, Kean and Hamilton claimed
that, unlike conspiracy theorists, they started with the relevant
facts, not with a conclusion: they "were not setting out to advocate
one theory or interpretation of 9/11 versus another."27 They
admitted, however, that after Zelikow divided the staff into various
teams and told them what to investigate, he told team 1A to "tell the
story of al Qaeda's most successful operation---the 9/11 attacks."28
So, the question that most Americans probably assume to have been one
of the 9/11 Commission's main questions---"Who was responsible for
the 9/11 attacks?"---was not asked. The Bush-Cheney administration's
theory was simply presupposed from the outset.

The fact that the Commission's conclusion had been predetermined was
made even clearer by Kean and Hamilton's admission that an outline of
the final report was prepared in advance by Zelikow and his former
professor Ernest May (with whom he had previously coauthored a
book).29

Shenon revealed more about this startling fact. Pointing out that
Zelikow and May had prepared this outline secretly, Shenon wrote: "By
March 2003, with the commission's staff barely in place, the two men
had already prepared a detailed outline, complete with `chapter
headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings.'" When Zelikow shared
this document with Kean and Hamilton, they realized that the staff,
if they learned about it, would know that they were doing research
for a predetermined conclusion.30 And so the four men agreed upon a
conspiracy of silence. In Shenon's words:

"It should be kept secret from the rest of the staff, they all
decided. May said that he and Zelikow agreed that the outline should
be `treated as if it were the most classified document the commission
possessed.' Zelikow . . . labeled it `Commission Sensitive,' putting
those words at the top and bottom of each page."31

The work of the 9/11 Commission began, accordingly, with Kean and
Hamilton conspiring with Zelikow and May to conceal from the
Commission's staff members the fact that their investigative work
would largely be limited to filling in the details of conclusions
that had been reached before any investigations had begun.

When the staff did finally learn about this outline a year later (in
April 2004), some of them began circulating a two-page parody
entitled "The Warren Commission Report--Preemptive Outline." One of
its chapter headings was: "Single Bullet: We Haven't Seen the
Evidence Yet. But Really. We're Sure."32 The point, of course, was
that the crucial chapter of Zelikow and May's outline could have been
headed: "Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda: We Haven't Seen the Evidence
yet. But Really. We're Sure."

Besides controlling the Commission's work and predetermining its
conclusions, Zelikow also, Shenon says, largely "controlled what the
final report would say."33 He could exert this control because, as
Ernest May reported, although the first draft of each chapter was
written by one of the investigative teams, Zelikow headed up a team
in the front office that revised these drafts.34 Indeed, Shenon
adds, "Zelikow rewrote virtually everything that was handed to him---
usually top to bottom."35

Given the control exerted by Zelikow over the investigative work of
the 9/11 Commission and its final product, it is not inaccurate to
think of the report of the 9/11 Commission as the Zelikow Report.

In light of the foreseeable fact that the executive director of the
9/11 Commission would be able to exert such control over its work and
final product, how could Kean and Hamilton, knowing that the
Commission needed to be---or at least appear to be---independent of
the Bush administration, have chosen Zelikow for this position? Did
they not fear that his personal, structural, and ideological
closeness to the Bush-Cheney administration could easily lead him to
be more interested in protecting it from blame than in discovering
and publishing the truth about how the 9/11 attacks were able to
succeed? That this would not have been an unreasonable fear is shown
by the fact that many members of the

Commission's staff, Shenon reports, said that Zelikow's conflicts of
interest resulted in a "pattern of partisan moves intended to protect
the White House."36

At least part of the answer as to how Zelikow became the executive
director, Shenon reveals, is that Zelikow, in applying for the
position, concealed some of his conflicts of interest from Kean and
Hamilton.

The résumé he gave them mentioned the book he had co-authored with
Rice and his appointment to the White House intelligence advisory
board---two conflicts of interest that Kean and Hamilton deemed "not
insurmountable."37

But Zelikow's résumé failed to mention some other problems---most
crucially his authorship of NSS 2002. Given the fact that this
document had been used to "justify a preemptive strike on Iraq," as
Shenon says, it would have been in Zelikow's interest "to use the
commission to try to bolster the administration's argument for war---
a war that he had helped make possible."38 And in fact, Shenon points
out, Zelikow did try to use it for just this purpose, even trying to
insert statements into the final report connecting al-Qaeda to Iraq
(this being one of few times that Zelikow did not get his way).39

Zelikow was also dishonest with the Commission in another way, Shenon
reports. Although "Zelikow had promised the commissioners he would
cut off all unnecessary contact with senior Bush administration
officials to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest," he had
continuing contacts with both Karl Rove and Condoleezza Rice. "More
than once, [the Commission's executive secretary] had been asked to
arrange a gate pass so Zelikow could enter the White House to visit
the national security adviser in her offices in the West Wing."40 The
secretary's logs also revealed that Rove---who was the White
House's "quarterback for dealing with the Commission" (according to
Republican member of the 9/11 Commission John Lehman)--- called the
office "looking for Philip" four times in 2003, after which, she
said, Zelikow ordered her to quit keeping logs of his contacts with
the White House.41

Implications for The 9/11 Commission Report

Shenon's revelations of Zelikow's close and ongoing relationship with
the White House, his authorship of NSS 2002, and his duplicity should
make people, at the very least, suspect that The 9/11 Commission
Report is less of a truth-seeking than a political document, designed
to protect the Bush-Cheney administration.

However, as helpful as Shenon's book is, it fails to mention an even
more serious conflict of interest created by Zelikow's authorship of
NSS 2002: If the Bush-Cheney White House enabled the 9/11 attacks in
order to reap foreseeable benefits---such as the Bush Doctrine and
carte blanche to attack Iraq and Afghanistan---it would have been in
Zelikow's interest to cover up this fact.

In my 2005 book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and
Distortions, I have provided abundant evidence that this is indeed
what he did. In my most recent book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited:
9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé, I have pointed out---in what must
be one of the longest footnotes of all time42---that Shenon, while
revealing many problematic facts about Zelikow's behavior, failed to
mention any of the ways in which the Zelikow Report used dishonesty
to support the Bush-Cheney administration's implausible
interpretation of 9/11, according to which the attacks were
orchestrated and carried out solely by Osama bin Laden and al-
Qaeda.43

David Ray Griffin is Professor Emeritus at Claremont School of
Theology and Claremont Graduate University in California. He has
published 34 books, including seven about 9/11, most recently The New
Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé
(Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), from which the present essay has
been drawn.

1 Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11
Investigation (New York: Twelve, 2008), 170.

2 See Steven R. Ratner, "Crimes against Peace"
(www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/crimes-against-peace.html).

3 I previously used the term "preemptive-preventive war" in "Neocon
Imperialism, 9/11, and the Attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq,"
Information Clearing House, February 27, 2007
(www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17194.htm).

4 Barton Gellman, "Keeping the U.S. First: Pentagon Would Preclude a
Rival Superpower," Washington Post, March 11, 1992
(www.yale.edu/strattech/92dpg.html); cited in Stefan Halper and
Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global
Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 141.

5 See Halper and Clark, America Alone, 26, and "Project for the New
American Century," Right Web, updated June 20, 2008 (rightweb.irc-
online.org/profile/1535.html).

6 PNAC, Letter to President Clinton on Iraq, May 29, 1998
(www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm).

7 Stephen J. Sniegoski, "Neoconservatives, Israel, and 9/11: The
Origins of the U.S. War on Iraq." In D. L. O'Huallachain and J.
Forrest Sharpe, eds., Neoconned Again: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and
the Rape of Iraq (Vienna, Va.: IHS Press, 2005), 81-109, at 81-82.

8 Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are
Seduced by War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 91.

9 "President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point," June 1,
2002 (www.whitehouse.gov/news/r.../2002/06/20020601-3.html).

10 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,
September 2002 (www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2002/nss.pdf), cover
letter; this document henceforth referred to as NSS 2002.

11 NSS 2002, 6, 15.

12 Ibid., 15.

13 Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 142.

14 Max Boot, "Think Again: Neocons," Foreign Policy, January/February
2004 (www.cfr.org/publication/7592/think_again.html), 18.

15 Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 4.

16 James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet
(New York: Viking, 2004), 316.

17 Richard N. Haass, "Imperial America," delivered November 11, 2000,
Brookings Institution
(www.brookings.edu/article...9/09diplomacy_haass.aspx).

18 Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 316.

19 Ibid., 331.

20 Shenon, The Commission, 69, 83.

21 Ibid., 69-70, 86.

22 Ibid., 167.

23 Ibid., 83.

24 Ibid., 84-85.

25 Ibid., 317.

26 Ibid., 277.

27 Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton (with Benjamin Rhodes), Without
Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2006), 269-70.

28 Ibid., 116.

29 Ibid., 270.

30 Shenon, The Commission, 388-89.

31 Ibid., 389.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., 390.

34 Ernest May, "When Government Writes History: A Memoir of the 9/11
Commission," New Republic, May 23, 2005; cited in Bryan
Sacks, "Making History: The Compromised 9-11 Commission," in Paul
Zarembka, ed., The Hidden History of 9-11 (New York: Seven Stories,
2008), 223-60, at 258n10.

35 Shenon, The Commission, 321.

36 Ibid., 319.

37 Ibid., 59.

38 Ibid., 170.

39 Ibid., 104, 130-33, 181, 321.

40 Ibid., 106-07.

41 Ibid., 175-76, 106-07. In their 2006 book giving "the inside story
of the 9/11 Commission," Kean and Hamilton said, after reporting that
the 9/11 families had protested Zelikow's appointment as executive
director because of his conflicts of interest: "But we had full
confidence in Zelikow's independence" (Without Precedent, 28-29). In
light of Shenon's revelations, we must conclude that Zelikow was not
the only one who shaded the truth.

42 David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-
Up, and the Exposé (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), 333-38n70.

43 To read statements by architects, engineers, firefighters, pilots,
political leaders, scholars, scientists, former CIA officials,
retired military officers, and others who find the official theory of
9/11 implausible, see the Patriots Question 9/11 website
(www.patriotsquestion911.com).

----------------------------------------------------------

Comment:
In the November-December 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs, Phillip D
Zelikow co- authored an article with Ashton B. Carter, and John M.
Deutch entitled "Catastrophic Terrorism" describing a "Pearl Harbor"
type of event that might occur in the United States that would result
in the suspension of civil liberties and the increased surveillance
of citizens. It seemed to describe exactly what has come to pass
under the Bush Administration. They speculated that if the 1993
bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded, "the resulting
horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such
an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in
American history. It could involve loss of life and property
unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America's fundamental sense
of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl
Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and
after. The United States might respond with draconian measures
scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of
citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More
violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or U.S.
counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders
negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently."

Phillip D Zelikow's comments on the preemptive invasion of Iraq as a
war for Israel:

Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his
tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which reports
directly to the president.

He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.

"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us?
I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been
since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd
at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel
of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future
of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.

"And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the
Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you
frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on
it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell," said Zelikow.

Phillip D. Zelikow's doctoral thesis was "Myth Making and the JFK
Assassination".

Of course he was indispensible heading up the 9/11 commission.

http://the-peoples-forum.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=5450&Disp=1#C1