We already knew that
the
9/11 Commissioners had conflicts of interest.
And we already knew that Philip Zelikow had huge
conflicts
of interest, which the new book
The
Commission explores.
But did you know that a 9/11 Commissioner recently said that
all
of the 9/11 Commission staff had a conflict of interest?
Specifically, 9/11 Commissioner and former Secretary of the Navy
John Lehman just said on NBC Nightly news:
“We
purposely put together
a staff that had – in a way - conflicts of interest" (3:48
into video)
He went on to say:
"All
of the staff had, to a certain extent, some conflict of interest"
(4:09 into video)
This is important because many people have assumed that --
even if Zelikow and the Commissioners had conflicts of interest
-- the staff would at least do a thorough and unbiased job in
investigating what happened on 9/11. We now know this is not
true.
(Article continues below)
Indeed, Lehman strongly implies that the Commission was purposely
set up so that every
single person involved would have a conflict of interest
which would prevent them from conducting an honest investigation.
Lehman himself is a textbook
example of conflict of interest.
In 1998, 9/11 Commission executive director Zelikow published
an article in Foreign Affairs, the journal of
the Council on Foreign Relations, entitled Catastrophic Terrorism:
Imagining the Transformative Event. Some two years later, PNAC
picked up the Zelikow language, saying that the
campaign to convince the public to allow expanded use of U.S.
military force around
the world "is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic
and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor". Lehman
was a member of PNAC, and a signatory to PNAC's plea for "a
new Pearl Harbor". See this
video and this
essay.
When taken with other
facts undermining the
Commission's credibility (and see this),
Lehman's revelation should completely destroy the idea that
there has been any real investigation into 9/11.