NYT: Pentagon , Justice Dept. evade 9/11 probe. In what they acknowledged was an effort to bring public pressure on the White House to meet the panel’s demands for classified information, the commission’s Republican chairman and Democratic vice chairman released a statement saying they had received only a small portion of the millions of sensitive documents they have requested from the executive branch.
I’m listening to a retired admiral describe how vital it is in modern warfare to have reliable and timely information, plus the context to understand it. This is precisely what American law-enforcement and national-security people either lacked or ignored before the Sept. 11 attacks.
And it’s what the Bush administration refuses to supply to the bipartisan panel trying to learn the hard lessons of that awful day. Why? Cover-ups and stonewalling tend to stem from fear — of how Congress and the American people might react if they knew the truth.
This is another scandal. If the Democrats ever recover their spines, it’s also a campaign issue.