9/11 commission chairman Tom Kean has suggested if you issue subpoenas on the White House and they fight it, it's going to go to the courts and take months and months of legal wrangling.

Well, that's up to the president, he's made this decision. I say that decision compromised the mission of the 9/11 commission, pure and simple. Far from the commissioners being able to fulfill their obligation to the Congress and the American people, and far from getting access to all the documents we need, the president of the United States is cherry-picking what information is shown to what minority of commissioners. Now this is ridiculous. That's not full and open access.

If you trust one commissioner you should trust them all. I don't understand it. You can say, 'I'm not going to show anything to anybody, and take me to court.' At least that's consistent. But it's not consistent at all to say we're going to parse out this information and we determine how many members of the commission get to see it.

Let me read you something from AP regarding Philip Zelikow, who's executive director of the 9/11 commission. Quote, "He said the bipartisan panel asked specifically for pieces of the daily briefings that dealt with subjects such as terrorism, Al Qaeda and Usama bin Laden, the Saudi-born fugitive leader of the terror network. Other sections, such as those dealing with intelligence on topics and countries not related to terror threats, intentionally were left out of the request, Zelikow said."

That's correct, and that's fair.

"'We asked for everything we wanted, and the White House has discovered hundreds of responsive PDB articles, and we are seeing all of them,' Zelikow said. 'None of those articles are being edited. We're seeing everything we asked to see. And our request was never the subject of negotiation.'"

Well, the request was put forward, but the president's decision and response to the request was negotiated time and time again by Tom Kean and [vice chairman] Lee Hamilton, going over to the White House with hat in hand several times, meeting with the lawyers first, and then with [chief of staff] Andy Card.

Secondly, you determine up front there are 22 PDB's in one stack and over 300 in a second stack. And then the White House says if you come in, and play nice and say nice things to us, then you'll be able to report back to the commission. And then maybe we'll take under consideration with our lawyer whether some elements of the PDB's in the second stack can go into the first stack. I mean come on!

It's Nixonian in the approach. The approach ought to be, "Yes, the 9/11 commission gets access to the documents, all the commissioners get access. Whatever items you request we'll be forthcoming in giving you."

Why, in the end, do you think a majority of the commissioners agreed to the deal with the White House?

You'll have to ask each member of the commission. A couple of weeks ago I voted to subpoena the White House and I'll continue to vote to subpoena the documents.

Doesn't the White House have a point though, in terms of these PDB's, which I don't think have ever been released before? And that if analysts writing them are concerned they could be made public one day, than they won't be as forthright with the president?

Let me walk you through this thing here. First of all, we're not talking about a prescription drug plan under Medicare here. We're talking about the most serious assault on the homeland of the United States since the British invaded during the war of 1812. This is the deal. The joint inquiry made up of Democrats and Republican members of Congress, they issued a report [this summer], but they couldn't get at the PDB's. They kicked the can down the street so that the 9/11 commission could get at the full story. That's the reason for this independent commission, with the time and energy and staff to get at all of this. Had the Joint Intelligence Committee been able to do its job, there wouldn't have even been a 9/11 commission.

We're coming down to the final [months] of the commission and we're still messing around with access issues. This is a key item. I don't think any independent commission can let an agency or the White House dictate to it how many commissioners see what. So this "deal," we shouldn't be dealing. If somebody wants to deal, we issue subpoenas. That's the deal. That was the deal with the FAA, that was the deal with Norad.

And the reason is principle. Clinton has agreed to cooperate with the commission and is eager to come before it. So why doesn't this White House, which was on the bridge when the ship got attacked, why doesn't this White House want to know everything that happened on their watch so that it can't happen again? Why they want to play games with this commission, to make deals, I don't know. It's information control. It's not transparency.

I don't know if they're hiding something. But the public will never know and the 9/11 commission will never know because under the current deal, a minority of commissioners will see a small number of documents and then brief the White House on what they're going to tell the other commissioners. Wait a minute! That doesn't make any sense at all.

Can the commission finish its work by May?

I think it's going to be increasingly difficult. I think the White House has made it darn near impossible to get full access to the documents by May, much less get a full report out analyzing those docs by May. This is a three- or four-year project, it really is. And to delay and deny at this point is to compromise the work of the commission from here on out. I can't say, as a commissioner, to the Congress and the American people, that I had full access to all the documents pertaining to 9/11 and here's the conclusion. I can't say that.

You've heard the claim, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and others have made it, that you are still upset about your 2002 reelection loss and that's why you are so critical of the White House.

This doesn't have anything to do with the 2002 election. It has everything to do with 9/11.

So it's not some sort of payback?

No. It's all about 9/11. This is not a political witch hunt. This is the most serious independent investigation since the Warren Commission. And after watching History Channel shows on the Warren Commission last night, the Warren Commission blew it. I'm not going to be part of that. I'm not going to be part of looking at information only partially. I'm not going to be part of just coming to quick conclusions. I'm not going to be part of political pressure to do this or not do that. I'm not going to be part of that. This is serious.

You say you think it should be a national scandal ...

It is a national scandal. Here's the deal. The administration made a connection on Sept. 11, and you can read Bob Woodward's book ["Bush at War"]. He's a private citizen. He got access to documents we don't have yet! Just think about that. He's a great reporter and a good guy. Bless his heart. But he got documents over two years ago, handwritten notes from Rumsfeld tying the terrorism attack into Iraq. This administration had a point of view the day that happened. If you look at 9/11 separately you realize it had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. Except [vice president Dick] Cheney and [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz put a plan together in '92 to try to convince [president] Bush One to invade Iraq, but here's what Bush One said about it, in his book "A World Transformed," which I think is devastating:

"I firmly believed that we should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a secretly entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war."

Now, this administration bought the Cheney-Wolfowitz plan from '92 hook line and sinker. It was all about using 9/11 as an excuse to go into Baghdad, not as a reason.

What's the significance?

Let's chase this rabbit into the ground here. They had a plan to go to war and when 9/11 happened that's what they did; they went to war. They pulled off their task force in Afghanistan, their Predator assets, and shifted them over to the war in Iraq. They took their eye off the 9/11 ball and transferred it to the Iraq ball. And that's a very strategic question that ultimately has got to be answered. I'm focused on 9/11 and the administration is not focused on it. They don't want to share information, and they didn't agree with the commission in the first place.

For the commission's final report, will the White House have final say over what gets released publicly?

For national security reasons, yes, it will be vetted by the CIA and the national security apparatus. Please don't misunderstand here. We're not talking about releasing or even seeing full presidential daily briefings. I don't care about what the president was briefed on about China. Nobody on the commission is going to spill national secrets, nobody's going to give away methods of recruiting agents. As a matter of fact, it was administration officials who ratted out one of their own CIA agents in order to keep guys like Joseph Wilson quiet.

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