Criticism of The 9/11 Commission - Resistance To Investigation

Resistance To Investigation

Commission chairmen Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean accused the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of making a conscious decision to impede the commission’s inquiry after the agency received a memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow, the panel's former executive director. Zelikow prepared this memorandum after former commission members reviewed thousands of classified documents following the disclosure that the CIA in November 2005 destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives. The review concluded that the commission made repeated and detailed requests to the agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of al Qaeda and that the commission was told by a top CIA official that the agency had "produced or made available for review" everything that had been requested. The memorandum concluded that "further investigation is needed" to determine whether the CIA's withholding of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.

John E. McLaughlin, the former deputy director of central intelligence, said that the CIA insisted that agency officials had always been candid with the commission and that information from the CIA proved central to their work. "We weren't playing games with them, and we weren't holding anything back" he added. A CIA spokesman also said that the agency had been prepared to give the commission the interrogation videotapes but that commission staff members never specifically asked for interrogation videos.