“Absolutely,” Card said when asked later if there had been political fears about the commission. “Significant, significant concerns.”
As chairman, Kean was the only member of the commission named directly by the White House. Under the law creating the panel, the other four Republican commissioners were chosen by the party’s congressional leaders, and Card was not comforted by the rest of the GOP lineup.
Two of the Republicans, former senator Slade Gorton of Washington and former navy secretary John Lehman, were anything but Bush loyalists. Gorton’s appointment to the commission was a final act by Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi in his role as Republican minority leader. Lott, one of Gorton’s best friends, was never a White House favorite; he was seen as too independent. He was stripped of the leader’s job after Bush joined in criticizing Lott over a racially insensitive speech he had given at a one hundredth birthday celebration for Senator Strom Thurmond. (Lott suggested, apparently sincerely, that the nation would have been better off had Thurmond won his campaign for White House in 1948, when the South Carolina Dixiecrat was the nation’s best-known segregationist.)
Apparently because he was close to Lott, Gorton had been offered no job in the Bush administration after his defeat for reelection in 2000—no cabinet job, no ambassadorship, nothing. That was grating to Gorton, especially since another Republican senator defeated that year, John Ashcroft of Missouri, had joined Bush’s cabinet as attorney general, a move seen as a concession to the far-right wing of the Republican Party. Among Senate Republicans, Ashcroft was considered an intellectual lightweight, especially compared with a lawmaker like Gorton, one of the finest legislative tacticians in Congress.
If Gorton was uncertain in his loyalties, the White House had reason to suspect that Lehman might actually be in the enemy camp. In the thinking of the Bush White House, Lehman had committed the ultimate unforgivable act of disloyalty to the new president: He had supported Senator John McCain over Bush in the race for the GOP nomination in 2000. (Kean was impressed when Lehman came up to him early in the investigation and said that he had been given instructions by McCain: “If it comes down to a party line vote and I think the Republicans are wrong, McCain has told me that I should vote with the Democrats.” Kean replied, “In that case, I probably would, too.”)
The names of the other two Republican commissioners were only slightly reassuring to the White House. Former Illinois governor Jim Thompson was put on the commission by his old friend House Speaker Dennis Hastert, but Thompson had been out of politics for a dozen years and had no special tie to Bush. The other Republican, Fred Fielding, Reagan’s White House counsel, had been loyal to the Bush family over the years and had helped out on the transition in 2001. But Fielding appeared timid on the public stage. (And there were still the persistent rumors, dating from Fielding’s work in the White House counsel’s office in the Nixon administration, that he was the government’s most famous leaker—“Deep Throat” of Watergate fame. The rumors would only be disproved in 2005 with the acknowledgment by a former FBI official, Mark Felt, that he was Deep Throat.)
Card looked over the list of Republican commissioners and “didn’t see anybody on the Republican side I would have called willing participants in partisanship”—no one who seemed eager to step in a political fight to defend Bush. That left only one option. Was it possible, Card wondered, that his old friend Kean might fill the role? Could Kean be convinced to take on the job of defending the White House if the Democrats tried to hijack the commission? In offering Kean the job on the 9/11 commission, Card had invited him down to Washington in December to meet with Bush’s other senior aides. It would be a chance for Card to gauge Kean’s loyalty to the White House, to find out whether he would help protect the president.
5
OFFICE OF THE MAJORITY LEADER
The Capitol
NOVEMBER 2002
Senate majority leader Tom Daschle was in his office in the Capitol a few days before Thanksgiving, looking over the list of Democratic candidates for the 9/11 commission one last time. It had been such a long, tortured fight to get the commission created that Daschle was determined to get the Democratic membership right. The panel’s five Democrats appeared to represent their party’s last hope of getting to the bottom of the mysteries of 9/11. Daschle figured it might be the public’s last hope, too.
The choice of the commissioners would be among Daschle’s last duties as majority leader. The soft-spoken South Dakotan had reason to be angry—and heartbroken—about the November 2002 elections. The Democrats had lost control of the Senate, in part because of what Daschle saw as a craven effort by the White House to portray Democrats during the campaign as weak on terrorism. The White House had gone on the attack even though the Democrats had given George Bush virtually every tool and every dollar he had requested in the so-called war on terror after 9/11, including authority to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. An invasion of Iraq appeared imminent, even though the evidence of an Iraqi link to al-Qaeda was still in question. The criticism of Daschle from within the party was that he had been too weak-kneed in dealing with Bush after 9/11.
The most tragic victim of the GOP campaign that fall was Daschle’s friend Senator Max Cleland of Georgia. Cleland had lost three limbs as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Yet the wheelchair-bound senator found himself portrayed in a Republican television attack ad as unpatriotic because he had questioned labor provisions of a bill to create a new Homeland Security Department. The ad was considered an instant classic in the black arts of negative campaigning. It juxtaposed images of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein—and Cleland. Cleland’s victorious opponent, Saxby Chambliss, a little-known House Republican, managed to avoid service in the Vietnam War thanks to at least four student deferments. Chambliss would later claim the ads were not meant to question Cleland’s patriotism.
Daschle would be out of his job as majority leader in January, when the new Republicans would be sworn in. The GOP already controlled the House. Daschle figured that with Republicans in full control on Capitol Hill, Congress would be out of the business of oversight, especially when it came to September 11 and the performance of the Bush White House in dealing with the threat of al-Qaeda before and after the attacks.
It had become clearer and clearer to Daschle and other Democrats—and to the Washington press corps and even some Republicans—that the White House was hiding something, perhaps many things, about what Bush knew about al-Qaeda threats before 9/11.
To Daschle, that explained why Bush and Cheney had taken such a personal role in the campaign to try to block any outside review of September 11, especially the creation of the commission. Daschle had heard through Trent Lott, his Republican counterpart, that Karl Rove and the White House political office had orchestrated the behind-the-scenes effort to block legislation to create the commission. “It’s all Rove,” Lott told Daschle.
In January 2002, before Congress had scheduled its first public hearings on pre-9/11 intelligence failures, Cheney called Daschle personally to complain about any public airing of the issues. Cheney’s tone with Daschle was polite but threatening. Daschle, who was being interviewed by a Newsweek reporter when the vice president’s call came through, was smart enough to allow the reporter to remain in the office to listen to Daschle’s end of the conversation. Daschle wanted a witness.
The vice president urged Daschle to shut down any additional public hearings on 9/11, warning him that a public discussion of intelligence errors before the attacks would do damage to the struggle to capture bin Laden and destroy al-Qaeda—and would do political damage to the Democrats as well.
“Mr. Majority Leader, this would be a very dangerous and time-consuming diversion for those of us who are on the front lines of our response today,” Cheney said. “We just can’t be tied down with the problems that this would present for us. We’ve got our hands full.” Daschle remembered the tone as vintage Cheney: “muffled, kind of under the breath, quiet, measured, very delib
erate.”
If the Democrats went forward anyway, Cheney said, the White House would portray the Democrats—by daring to investigate what went wrong on 9/11—as undermining the war against terror. That was a potent political threat at a time, four months after the attacks, when Bush was riding as high in opinion polls as he ever would and Democrats were facing a difficult midterm election in November 2002 as a result.
“I respectfully disagree with your position, Mr. Vice President,” Daschle replied. “It is imperative that we try to find out what happened on September 11 and why.”
To Daschle, it was preposterous for the White House to argue that 9/11 should go uninvestigated. He knew that modern American history offered plenty of support for an independent investigation. From Pearl Harbor to the Kennedy assassination to the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster, “there’s been a review of what happened after every tragedy this nation has experienced,” Daschle said.
Historical precedent was one thing; political muscle was another. And the Democrats’ most powerful ally in establishing the 9/11 commission was Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican. His colleagues said the worst-kept secret in the Senate in 2001 and 2002, if it was a secret at all, was that McCain despised George Bush and the people who worked for him, especially Rove. McCain blamed “dirty tricks” by Rove’s political operation for costing him the GOP presidential nomination in 2000. Rove denied any involvement, but the tricks were vintage Rove, and they could not have been dirtier, including a well-organized whisper campaign during the critical South Carolina primary that McCain was the father of an illegitimate “black baby” who now lived with his family. The “black baby” was a Bangladeshi orphan girl who had been adopted by McCain and his wife, Cindy.
With Bush’s election, McCain told Daschle in early 2001 that he was still so angry about the presidential campaign that he was considering bolting from the Republican Party, and the two men talked over several weeks about the possibility. Daschle said the talks were so far along that they had discussed the logistics of the news conference at which McCain would make the announcement. “We came very close,” Daschle would say later. McCain backed away from the idea in the summer of 2001, after another Republican, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, abandoned the GOP and declared himself an independent; that gave Democrats a de facto one-vote majority in the Senate. McCain told Daschle, “Look, somebody else has given you the majority—you don’t need me anymore.”
McCain found other ways to take his revenge on Bush. After 9/11, McCain had been among the first in Congress, Democrat or Republican, to insist that the government set up an independent commission to investigate the attacks. The more bitterly the Bush administration opposed the idea, the more impassioned McCain became in advocating for it. His Senate office became a meeting place for the 9/11 families to plot strategy to demand the commission’s creation. Bush’s closest aides seethed about McCain, but the White House could not ignore him; McCain enjoyed too much credibility within the party as a result of the 2000 campaign. He was beloved by too many independent-minded Republicans, as well as by Washington reporters enamored of his eagerness to confront Bush.
McCain’s demand for creation of a 9/11 commission had given cover to other Republicans. Daschle began to hear privately from other GOP senators that they would buck the White House and support the commission if it came to a vote. Daschle could see that Republicans were as uneasy as he was about news reports that spring that Bush had received—and apparently ignored—an explicit warning in August 2001 from the CIA. According to the reports, the agency had told Bush that al-Qaeda was considering terrorist attacks, including hijackings, within American borders.
On November 27, 2002, thanks mostly to pressure on the White House from the 9/11 families and McCain, Bush reluctantly signed the bill creating the 9/11 commission. The bill was not what Daschle, McCain, and the families had wanted. It provided the commission with an insultingly small budget—$3 million over eighteen months, compared with more than $40 million for the federal commission that investigated the Challenger disaster. “The budget was a joke,” Daschle said. And the bill imposed strict limits on the commission’s powers to subpoena documents and witnesses.
Daschle was besieged by Democrats eager for appointment to the commission. Daschle and the House Democratic leader, Dick Gephardt of Missouri, agreed to choose the five Democratic commissioners jointly.
Some of the choices were easy, including the decision of who should serve as the panel’s ranking Democrat and would hold the title of vice chairman. Daschle thought instantly of his predecessor as Senate majority leader, George Mitchell of Maine. There was little doubt among other Democrats that he was an ideal choice. The ideal choice.
Mitchell had credentials as a statesman—after leaving the Senate, he had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize after helping hammer out a peace settlement in Northern Ireland as Clinton’s emissary. Mitchell had been a federal prosecutor in Maine; he knew all about subpoenas and document searches. And he was, without question, a strong-willed, sharply partisan Democrat.
Daschle knew the Democrats had made the right decision with Mitchell when he learned that the White House had selected Kissinger as the commission’s chairman. Daschle figured that among Democrats, Mitchell would be seen as Kissinger’s equal; Mitchell would not allow himself to be seen as anything less. It would be the Kissinger-Mitchell Commission, not the Kissinger Commission. “Kissinger was going to have his hands full,” Daschle believed. “It would have been the perfect balance.”
There were obvious candidates for the other Democratic slots, including Lee Hamilton, a former congressman from Indiana. It was hard to find anyone in Washington who had a bad word for Hamilton, who retired in 1999 after thirty-four years in the House. Like Mitchell, Hamilton was considered one of the wise men of the Democratic Party, especially on foreign policy. He had been chairman of both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Intelligence Committee. Steady, solid, as consistent as the unfashionable flattop haircut that Hamilton had worn since his first days in Congress.
There had been discussion of naming Hamilton instead of Mitchell to the job of vice chairman. But Daschle and his colleagues knew that Hamilton lacked a taste for partisan fights. In the best tradition of his native rural Indiana, there was little that was cynical about Hamilton. He seemed always to assume the best about people, Republicans included. That explained why his circle of friends from his days in the House included former congressmen Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Cheney and Hamilton formed a close bond when Hamilton led the House investigation of Iran-Contra after the arms-for-hostages affair was exposed. Cheney was the ranking Republican. Hamilton had known Rumsfeld even longer. Rumsfeld served in the House from neighboring Illinois from 1962 to 1969. While he might disagree with Cheney and Rumsfeld on policy, Hamilton trusted both men always to tell the truth. They were still close friends when Cheney and Rumsfeld returned to power in Washington in 2001. To Hamilton, they were “Dick” and “Don.” Hamilton also had a good relationship with Cheney’s powerful White House counsel, David Addington, who had worked for Cheney in Congress.
There was another downside to Hamilton: He was not considered much of an investigator in Congress, at least when it came to ferreting out evidence of a scandal. “I don’t go for the jugular,” he acknowledged. He was embarrassed in the mid-1980s when, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he did not aggressively follow up on news reports suggesting that the Reagan administration was illegally funneling weapons and money to the anti-Communist Nicaraguan Contras. He took Reagan and his White House aides at their word that there was nothing to the allegations. When the reports about the Iran-Contra affair proved true, Hamilton acknowledged he had been gullible.
Daschle wanted Max Cleland on the commission. After his defeat in November, his friends could see that Cleland had fallen into a serious depression and was in need of a job that would keep him in Washington and might provide him with a staff. Cleland had pr
ided himself on having no income other than his congressional salary, and when he lost the Senate race, there were no savings to fall back on. The commission was ideal for Cleland, since it would keep him in the public eye on military and intelligence issues, always his focus in the Senate. It would give him new purpose, Daschle hoped. Daschle and Gephardt agreed on appointing another Hill Democrat to the commission: Representative Timothy Roemer of Indiana, who was retiring from the House, possibly in hopes of a Senate bid; he had been an author of the bill that created the commission and was close to many of the 9/11 victims’ families.
Daschle wanted other commissioners who, like Mitchell, had backgrounds as investigators and prosecutors. He found candidates in Richard Ben-Veniste, the hard-nosed former Watergate prosecutor, and Jamie Gorelick, who had been deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. Kean and Hamilton were told later that Gorelick, now a partner at one of Washington’s most prestigious law firms, won herself a place on the commission over former New York governor Mario Cuomo by arguing that the panel needed at least one woman member. (Gorelick said later she had no reason to believe that she and Cuomo were in competition for the slot.)
Mitchell had joined the commission reluctantly and with the understanding that the work would be part-time, allowing him to continue his law practice. But within days of his appointment, he could see that this was no part-time job. He found himself in the same ethical swirl as Kissinger, with demands from the 9/11 families that he reveal the names of his clients, maybe even cut his ties to his firm. Mitchell told Daschle that he simply could not afford to go without his regular income. “Because I must work to support my family, I cannot comply,” Mitchell said in his resignation letter on December 11.
Daschle was in a bind. It had been difficult to convince Mitchell to take the assignment in the first place; his sudden departure had probably poisoned the well in finding a replacement of equal stature. His best choice, he figured, was Hamilton, who had already accepted a position on the commission, had the background in national security, and appeared eager for the work. Daschle knew he was taking a chance, and he worried. When the time came for the commission to confront the Bush White House to get at the truth about 9/11, would Hamilton be willing to put aside his reputation “for being very bipartisan and very cautious” and fight? As he picked up the phone to offer Hamilton the job as the commission’s top Democrat, Daschle wished he knew the answer.
The Commission Page 4