8/14/2019 Letter from 9/11 Commission Bob Kerrey Complaining
about Deal on PDB Access
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A s a . member of the Commission,, I trusted that the Com
mission Review Team -which did w ork long hours and did superb w o
r k - would be given "wide latitude"in reporting back to the f u l
l Commission, N ot only w ere they not given "widelatitude" as the
W hite House promised, but also they w ere given v ery
restrictiveinstructions on what their report could contain, As a
consequence, the report isconfusing an d incomplete, and does not
give all ten of us what we need to m a k einformed decisions.This
is ail the m ore important because even in its intentionally
confusing state, thereport of PDB s brought back L o the Com
mission discloses k ey facts that Iconsider to be enormously
important in several ways. These f a c t s will a f f e c t w howe
invite as witnesses as well as the details of the questions we will
ask them, hifact it must be clear to most C omm issioners from our
brief reading of thesummary that w e will need to recall some w ho
have previously testified.To be clear I am not interested in jus t
those PDB s that were delivered to PresidentBush. The period of
time which is of greatest interest to m e is from February1998.
when Osama bin Laden issued a Fatwa against the United States,
throughSeptember 11,2001. For much of this period I was
vice-chairman of the Senate'sSelect Committee on Intelligence an d
have an active mem ory of what T was toldan d knew at the time. For
rne it is all the mo re reason that I feel I mu st be giventhe o
pportunity to read tbe PDBs myself,That is w hy I voted to subpoena
these documents. That is w hy I believe theWhite House's
unwillingness to allow our review team "wide latitude" inpreparing
their report has com promised my ability to get a full an d
completeaccounting. A nd that is w hy I will continue to argue that
we m ust be given thisaccess In order to do our work according to
the letter and spirit of the law.I respect you and your efforts to
produce consensus on this Commission, Ifanyone can do it, it is you
, Re gretfully, in this case i t was not and is not possible.There
is one more item in your joint press release to which I object.
While it istrue that die team "reviewed all... (o f the) , . . PDBs
responsive to th eCommission's document requests," and that "this
access to PDBg isunprecedented," the statement is misleading. T l
misleads because observers of ourwork will mistakenly conclude that
the review w e were given w as adequate fo rour work. Those who
voted against the subpoena presumably believe it wa s;those o f us
w ho voted in the affirmative do not.It also misleads because the
"unprecedented" access signals a heroic effort on thepart of the
White House, a presumption that I do not accept. This is
aaunprecedented com mission investigating an unprecedented
incident, liven thePresident uses this ra tionale to ask Americans
to do tilings to which they areUnaccustomed. Further, by allowing
Com missioners some access, they have
8/14/2019 Letter from 9/11 Commission Bob Kerrey Complaining
about Deal on PDB Access
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already broken the veil of executive privilege., ma kin g Their
legal and politicalcase against further access quite weak.A much
more accurate statement would have been that this was the best we
weregoing to get and that we feared that litigation for access
would take so long wemight not be able to finish on time. Indeed
these were rhe arguments 1heard onFebruary 10 in support of a
negative vole 011 the question of using our subpoenapowers to get
this access.Finally, while you "are confident that the Commission
lias obtained an account ofall PDBs that relate to the al Qaeda
threat and the events of September 11," and"are confident that we
can prepare a strong and credible report," 1 hold no
suchconfidence, I fear the opposite: that our lack of access to the
PDBs willcompromise ou r ability to prepare a strong and credible
report.I hope that at the end of mis process I will be able to look
back on this incidentand sa y that you were right and I was wrong.
If that happens, it won't be my firstsuch apology. I also hope that
you do not concludeThat my confidence in andrespect for you has
been shaken. Both have survived this disagreement.
Respectfully yours,
Kerrey
