The Commission of Inquiry on 9/11 Relies on Third-Hand Evidence

[excerpted from David Ray Griffin’s “Debunking 9/11 Debunking”, pp. 130-132]

We are looking at ways in which the 9/11 Commission’s conspiracy theory draws on suspect evidence. The first example was the Commission’s use of dubious ? probably planted ? evidence to support its claim that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. I turn now to a type of evidence that is so obviously dubious that [Commissioners] Kean and Hamilton even admit it.

The greatest difficulty they had in getting access to people and information they needed, they report, was “obtaining access to star witnesses in custody…,most notably Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the attacks, and [Ramzi] Binalshibh, who helped coordinate the attacks from Europea.” [WP p. 118]. Kean and Hamilton explain why getting such access was essential:

“These and other detainees were the only possible source for inside information about the plot. If the commission was mandated to provide an authoritative account of the 9/11 attacks, it followed that our mandate afforded us the right to learn what these detainees had to say about 9/11? [WP 118-119]

This was a right, however, that they were not given and that they in the end did not even demand. After CIA director Tenet turned down their initial request for access to the “more than one hundred detainees,” they narrowed their request to “only seven key detainees,” but this request was also denied. They then offered a compromise:

?[The Commission’s] interrogators could be blindfolded on their way to the interrogation point so that they would not know where they were…[They would not] interrogate the detainees themselves [but would instead] observe the interrogation through one-way glass [so that they] could at least observe the detainee’s demeanor and evaluate his credibility. Or our staff could listen to an interrogation telephonically, and offer questions or follow-up questions to the CIA interrogator through an earpiece.” [WP 121-122]

But this compromise was also rejected.

Accordingly, believing strongly that they needed at least this much access because otherwise they “could not evaluate the credibility of the detainees? accounts,” they considered going public with their demand. However, ?[t]he Bush administration pleaded with us not to take the issue public.” And so, evidently assuming that the Bush administration made this plea not because it had anything to hide but only, as it claimed, because it “did not want to risk interrupting the interrogation of these detainees [by the CIA], which was important to US efforts to obtain intelligence to thwart attacks, capture terrorists, and save American lives,” the Commission “decided not to take the issue public.” [WP 120-123]

It instead accepted Tenet’s best offer: