Book Alert / The Commission

The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation by Philip Shenon, Twelve '08, $27, 457 pages, ISBN #0446580759. Index, bibliography, source notes, unillustrated.

When the Commission headed by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren announced in the 1960s that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy, America breathed a sigh of relief. We weren't privy to the handling of the inquiry or whether it left stones unturned; mainly, we wanted closure.

Similarly, when the 9/11 Commission released its unanimous report on the World Trade Center towers disaster, its contents received broad acclaim. But now longtime New York Times writer Philip Shenon reveals what he calls "stunning shortcomings in the Commission's work -- a series of oversights, omissions, and distortions that raise fundamental questions about 9/11 and the government's failure to prevent it."

In a brief interview, Shenon discussed the writing of his book:

Q. What does this book reveal about the 9/11 commission that the public didn't know?

A. Many, many things. I suspect some readers will be most alarmed by the book's disclosures about the relationship between Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director, and officials in the Bush White House -- especially Zelikow's secret communications with Karl Rove, President Bush's political guru, and with Condoleezza Rice. I think many people in Washington are, to this day, unaware of Zelikow's involvement on President Bush's 2001 transition team and of his role as the principal author of the 2002 White House strategy memo that was used a year later to justify the invasion of Iraq. Other readers will be most alarmed about the book's disclosures about what evidence was missed by the commission, especially the commission's failure to conduct an exhaustive search of the terrorism archives or the National Security Agency, the government's super-secret eavesdropping agency. Others will be alarmed by the commission's failure to support the findings (of) its investigators about Saudi government connections to the 9/11 hijackers and about the need to overhaul the clearly dysfunctional FBI.

Q. What questions about 9/ll and about the commission are still unanswered?

A. Many. At the top of my list of unanswered questions: What else is in the NSA archives on terrorism that went unseen by the commission? What else is in the government's files about the network of Saudis and other Arab expatriates in southern California who stepped forward to help two 9/11 hijackers during the year they lived in San Diego? What exactly did Philip Zelikow discuss with Karl Rove during this telephone conversations with him in 2003? Why did Zelikow ask his secretary to stop listing his phone calls with the White House in the commission's telephone logs?