Zelikow’s 9/11 report was a whitewash. As the Executive Director, he strangely failed to keep phone logs for the commission. It’s impossible to know if anyone, Karl Rove for example, had improper contacts and influence.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/7/the_9_11_commission_torture_how

PZ keeps pointing to Democratic Party-vetted people to bolster his argument with “bipartisanship,” even though Lee Hamilton still has the stench of our Central American massacres. We’re expected to have forgotten that like Zelikow seems to have.

Isn’t this an estoppel argument? The Mysterious Dr.Z: What do you mean, my farts stink? I have reports from CIA that say they don’t, and now CIA is under criminal investigation, so even if I do stink, which of course I suspected, why didn’t CIA tell me?

DEMOCRACY NOW!: Did you ask them?

Philip Zelikow: “Um, I did not, but that wasn’t uh, I wasn’t the person who was pushing the issue directly with Tenet. That was more the job of my bosses on the commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton and other commissioners. Um, it was….”

He’s XO of the BushCo damage control team, so what’s he do about being stonewalled by CIA? He complains vociferously in writing, but not a peep in person?

No, he says, that was the duty of his bosses, Kean&Hamilton, the two-headed bipartisan hydra. Look, he asked CIA lots of questions. In writing. The Bush Justice Department was supposedly investigating CIA, presumably for being such poor correspondents. And besides, they told him not to look, what could he do?

Zelikow himself said, one “can only assume that they had something they wished to UH something they didn’t want the commission to know.”

How could poor Zelikow know that his shit stinks? You don’t seriously expect him to trust his own senses, do you? That would be madness!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AMY GOODMAN: Did you know that these questions were obtained under duress, under torture?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: We did not know that. We could see that they were extremely reluctant to tell us about the circumstances, and therefore we could only assume that they felt they had something that they wished—they didn’t want the Commission to know about.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you ask if they were obtained through torture?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: We asked how they were obtained.

AMY GOODMAN: And what were you told?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: It was—we were told we can’t go in—we can’t tell you that. And we asked those questions—that’s why when the disclosure came out about the CIA tape recordings, people immediately said, “Well, did the Commission asked for information of this kind?” And we immediately prepared a report, which I did, actually, for Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, which has been leaked to the New York Times and is available on the internet, that details exactly how thoroughly we questioned CIA about the information surrounding these interrogations. And CIA’s alleged withholding of information from us is currently one of the subjects of the federal criminal investigation that’s now underway.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zelikow later repeats that bit about the leak, as if citing a reference. Is that how they do things at UVirginia, where he’s supposedly a professor of history?

And here’s his fig leaf for torture: the infamous text box of page 146, in which he tried to bury his report’s reliance on evidence manufactured to order by torture:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Detainee Interrogation Reports

Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. A number of these “detainees” have firsthand knowledge of the 9/11 plot.

Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses–sworn enemies of the United States–is challenging. Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place. We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.

We have nonetheless decided to include information from captured 9/11 conspirators and al Qaeda members in our report. We have evaluated their statements carefully and have attempted to corroborate them with documents statements of others. In this report, we indicate where such statements provide the foundation for our narrative. We have been authorized to identify by name only ten detainees whose custody has been confirmed officially by the U.S. government.*

____________

*Those detainees are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Riduan Isamuddin (also known as Hambali), Abd Rahim al Nashiri, Tawfiq bin Attash (also known as Khallad), Ramzi Binalshibh, Mohamed al Kahtani, Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani, Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqasi (also known as Abu Bakr al Azdi), and Hassan Ghul.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s now known that we waterboarded KSM and AZ. SO, all of a sudden, PZ favors finding out what he covered up before? BS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
See also http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/13/report-much-of-911-commissions-findings-cite-intelligence-garnered-by-torture/
“Much of the material cited in the 9/11 Commission’s findings was derived from terror war detainees during brutal CIA interrogations authorized by the Bush administration, according to a Wednesday report.

“More than one-quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al Qaeda operatives subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques,” writes former NBC producer Robert Windrem in The Daily Beast. “In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.”

“… [Information] derived from the interrogations is central to the Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks,” reported NBC. “The analysis also shows – and agency and commission staffers concur – there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, done specifically to answer new questions from the Commission….”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other words, Zelikow used evidence manufactured to order by torture.

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2009/04/13/daily16.html

at least cheney is not bailing out.

he is standing his ground.

he knows the demos the very best.

they are too spineless to do anything about it

give him credit for that

he knows the demos he had his way with them the entire time he ran this country.

even hillary fell to her knees for him and it lost her the primary.

Burson-Marsteller represented Blackwater USA following a September 16 incident in which the company killed 17 Iraqi civilians.

Burson-Marsteller (B-M) is one of the largest public relations (PR) agencies in the world and also the most reviled due to its mercenary attitude in choosing clients and contracts, and its frequent run ins with activists for environmental and other progressive causes. When helping its industry clients to escape environmental legislation or sprucing up the image of some of the most repressive governments on Earth, B-M brings to bear state of the art techniques in manipulating the mass media, legislators and public opinion.

In addition, after she supposedly left the formal employ of the White House, she was a member of the Iraq Study Group, which was the marketing arm of the White House. It was set up on AUGUST of 2002, specifically to sell the 2003 Iraq invasion.

The truth is, Hughes never really did leave the White House, though her more formal role ended for a short period of time.

Ambassador Karen Hughes is currently Global Vice Chair of Burson-Marsteller. As a Senior Strategist she helps business leaders strengthen their corporate/CEO reputations, achieve business goals through effective communications and shape positive public and stakeholder perceptions. Since joining Burson-Marsteller in 2008, she has brought to the business world her unique expertise honed over more than 30 years of public policy, communications and political experience, from helping lead winning presidential and gubernatorial campaigns to serving at the highest levels of federal and state government.

Hughes was opposed to torture, but not because it is morally wrong and illegal, but because it would make us look bad. Her reasoning is faulty at best, but she says she objected, and that means she was privy to those discussions: who, when, where etc. She needs to go under oath.
We need a truth commission, yes, but we also need a special prosecutor.

I suggest she go under oath in front of a special prosecutor.

http://www.harrywalker.com/speaker/Karen-Hughes.cfm?Spea_ID=606

She’s one of the people who got us into Iraq.

HANNITY: How hard is it on him to have the daily non-stop barrage of criticism, which has been particularly harsh of late?

And I was there during much of this time. I left in the summer of 2002, but I was still involved in the lead-up to the Iraq decision, and no one there misled anybody. The president made the decision based on the best information, the best intelligence that he had at the time.

Didn’t you see the little teeny Bluetooth in her ear and the little teeny receiver in Dubya’s ear? Since Georgie isn’t so good with the written word, she wasn’t taking any chances.

.

That seems late in the whole Bush/Cheney torture machine timeline.

Here is an interesting take from some in the White House press corps.

“If she does, I don’t think she cares.

Pol Pot, Stalin, Saddam, Bush/Cheney…
… They all had enablers, too.

.