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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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Without
Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Processes The co-chairs
of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton,
have co-authored a book titled, Without
Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission. Thanks to their added
time in putting this book together, citizens can examine what took place
outside the open meetings, and what had to happen for the work of the commission
to move forward. Conspiracy theorists may never be satisfied, but most
readers will come away from this book with confidence that the commission
worked effectively, and had access to the best and most complete information
available. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 2, “A Start-Up,”
pp. 34-40: SETTING UP ON A SHOESTRING I am one of the handful
of lucky ones. Just blocks away from here lay the unrecovered
remains of many friends and colleagues, some dear friends. They can no longer
speak for themselves and I am left with the unchosen,
unhappy task of trying to speak for them. — Harry Waizer, Cantor Fitzgerald employee and 9/11 survivor,
testifying at the 9/11 Commission’s first public hearing, March 31, 2003 There is no road map for how to set up a commission. We
spent the first few months of 2003 jumping over logistical and administrative
hurdles so we could get to work. Meanwhile, pressure to get going increased.
Families of victims who had waited more than a year for answers did not
understand why they had to wait longer. Members of Congress who had
supported our creation asked what we were doing. Commissioners and staff
were frustrated. To understand our dilemma, it is helpful to think of the
commission as a start-up business. We had to hire and organize a staff, which
grew to nearly eighty people; plan how to organize our inquiry; locate and
equip office space; and like any start-up, we had to form a budget and seek
financing. Add to this, though, the fact that this start-up was being created
within the The initial task was to hire a staff.
Our agreement was that as chair and vice-chair, we had to concur on every
person hired. After Philip Zelikow came on board as
executive director, he began recruiting and interviewing candidates. Finding
applicants was no chore—each commissioner had received hundreds of résumés;
the chore was choosing people for the top jobs. Zelikow was selected with
little consultation with the rest of the commission, but several commissioners
had concerns about the kind of inquiry he would lead. Since he was an
academic, they worried that he would conduct a professorial study of The choice of a general counsel had strong political
undertones. Because Zelikow had credentials as a
Republican—indeed, one who had collaborated with Condoleezza Rice and aided
the Bush transition— Democratic commissioners pressed for a powerful general
counsel who could assure them and the American people that the commission
wasn’t soft-pedaling aspects of the investigation that might embarrass the
Bush administration. Zelikow had recused himself from dealing with issues that involved
Rice and the National Security Council transition of 2000—2001. But many
people inside and outside of the commission still felt strongly that since
the executive director was a Republican, other top staff positions had to be
reserved for Democrats. This understandable concern was somewhat assuaged when we
hired Chris Kojm as deputy director. Chris was
Lee’s call. He had worked for Lee for fifteen years on the House
International Relations Committee, including assisting with the Iran-Contra
investigation, and had spent 1999-2002 serving as deputy assistant secretary
of state at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Chris is an unflappable professional, and an extraordinary
organizer and editor skills that would be invaluable in setting up public
hearings and Preparing the final report. With a patient manner, a sympathetic
ear, and an understated style, Chris was a perfect complement to Zelikow—if Philip could roil the waters a bit, Chris could
smooth them over. As deputy director, Chris took on much of the day-to-day
management of the Commission’s staff, and helped recruit new talent when the
commission Was in need of different expertise. For commissioners and
congressional staff, Chris was often the go-to guy when you needed to get
something done. But the fact that Kojm
was a Democrat did not smooth the waters within the commission. He was not a
lawyer, and thus did not have attributes that Democratic commissioners were
looking for to balance Zelikow. So, for a few
weeks, as the rest of the staff filled out, the controversy over the general
counsel position persisted. Throughout this process, general counsel
candidates were introduced by individual commissioners and vetted by the
full commission. On a few occasions, a very able lawyer supported by one side
of the commission was deemed unacceptable by others—usually because the
lawyer in question had done high-profile work for the Democratic Party or for
Democratic political campaigns, or had worked on the Watergate Task Force.
This provoked accusations on both sides—that the White House was vetoing
Democrats through the Republican commissioners, or that the Democrats were
putting forward highly partisan lawyers. At one point,
Republicans within and around the commission suggested that a partisan
Democratic general counsel would necessitate the hiring of a Republican
general counsel, and even provided us a list of candidates that could be
considered for this position. This would have caused precisely the kind of
division within the commission and the staff that we were determined to
avoid. Two lawyers looking out for the interests of their respective
political parties would have guaranteed a divided commission. This stalemate began
to prompt whispers around Uncertainty lasted
well into March as candidates came and went. Above all, we became focused on
temperament—finding a lawyer who would be tough and persistent, but not
overly confrontational or partisan. Matters were complicated when Zelikow met with Judge Alberto Gonzales, President Bush’s
White House counsel, to discuss the kind of access he envisioned for the
commission. The meeting did not go particularly well, as Gonzales found Zelikow aggressive and overly expansive in laying out his
expectations for access, and from that point on Gonzales refused to meet with
Zelikow. So the very executive director whose ties
to the White House some on the commission were looking to balance with a
general counsel had already strained his own relations at the counsel’s
office—our primary point of contact with the White House. In mid-March, we found the right man for general counsel.
Daniel Marcus was well recommended by several people we trusted, particularly
Lloyd Cutler, the former White House counsel for Presidents Carter and
Clinton. Dan had spent many years at a prominent Dan’s personal manner is very lawyerly. His inclination is
to talk and work things out. But his agreeable nature is buttressed by
toughness: he was not afraid to take people on, including some commissioners
who were experienced lawyers. Off the bat, it helped that the one commissioner
whom Dan did know was Jamie Gorelick, who was able
to assure the other Democratic commissioners that Dan was a good choice. Dan recruited an extraordinarily able deputy, Steve Dunne,
an experienced prosecutor at the Justice Department. Later on, Dan and Steve
would continue trying to work things out with executive agencies even after
we had served them with subpoenas. The divisions that emerged over the hiring of the counsel
did not go away. Instead, they reappeared in questions about how to negotiate
with the White House and whether to use the power of subpoena to get access
to documents and people. Always there was tension between those in the
commission who wanted to push harder—often backed by the 9/11 families—and
those who thought we were pushing too hard; this division was often split
down partisan lines. Ultimately, though, this tension served us well. To
succeed, we had to be both conciliatory and confrontational at times, and
these two approaches helped us steer an effective middle course that got us
the access we needed without drawn-out legal battles or partisan
fights—though there were some close calls. Several commissioners also disagreed
with our decision not to hire an individual aide on the staff for each
commissioner. Most commissioners assumed that the commission would follow
the model of congressional committees, in which each member tends to have an
aide who reports to him or her. Several commissioners came to us and said,
“This is who I want to work for me on the commission staff.” We had to explain
that this was not how the Commission was going to do business. It helped, in
those early days, that we were so underfunded. A tight budget made a good excuse for
disabusing Commissioners of the idea that they were going to have personal
assistants. We did not want any staff organization
that would create competing centers of power: we wanted one nonpartisan staff
working for the whole commission. Our basic organizational structure
comprised a front-office triumvirate: Zelikow drove
and organized the staff’s work; Kojm worked closely
with Zelikow, while handling much of the hands-on
daily management of the staff; and Marcus, working closely with Dunne,
pursued the documents and interviews we needed, weighing in often on policy
questions. Working with this front office were a special assistant, a deputy
for administration, and a deputy for communications. The rest of the staff
hiring was less political~ though no less important. Underneath the front
office were nine staff teams organized around the
areas specified in our congressional mandate. We started with teams looking
at al Qaeda; intelligence; counterterrorism policy; terrorist financing;
border security; law enforcement; aviation and transportation security;
national response on 9/11; and the emergency response in To staff these teams,
we looked for the best experts in the We ended up with an
extraordinary breadth of expertise: John Farmer, a former attorney general of
New Jersey; Dietrich Snell, a sitting deputy attorney general of New York;
Douglas MacEachin, a former deputy director for
intelligence at the CIA; Mike Hurley, a CIA officer who had run major
operations in the war in Afghanistan; John Roth, a former chief of the Asset
Forfeiture and Money Laundering division at the justice Department; Sam
Brinkley, a former air marshal; Ernest May, a professor at Harvard
University; and a long list of specialists with experience in the areas under
our mandate. We also had a close connection to 9/11 on the staff: Kevin
Shaeffer. On the morning of September 11, Kevin was
working as a lieutenant in the Weeks of excruciating pain ensued. On October 4, 2001,
Kevin suffered two heart attacks, and his doctors were not certain he would
make it through the night. His wife, Blanca, signed his military retirement
papers to increase the benefits that would go to his family. Kevin did
survive but endured months of rehabilitation and many skin grafts, while
relearning basic skills such as how to tie his shoes and button his shirts.
Over the summer of 2002, he recovered at home, where he closely tracked the
news about the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the 9/11
Commission. The idea of looking back and learning lessons through something
of an after-action report suited Kevin’s military disposition. That fall, he
attended the ceremony marking the signing of the legislation creating the
Department of Homeland Security. In mid-December, soon after the commission was appointed,
Lee and several other commissioners received e-mails from Kevin, in which he
recounted his personal story and to which he attached news articles that had
been written about him. Max Cleland, who knew firsthand about overcoming
traumatic injuries, had met with Kevin for lunch, and he recommended him to
the commission highly. Lee had his own meeting with Kevin, at the But Kevin’s hiring did not come easy.
He had been in the navy since age nineteen, and had never had a job interview
until he met with Zelikow and Kojm
about working on the commission. He told his story, and Zelikow’s
response was that he wasn’t going to give him a free ride. He asked, “Why
should I hire you? The commission does not really have a role for you.” Kevin
answered persuasively: he was young, with military experience and a
particular determination to review the response to the attacks. His
references from the Pentagon were exceptional. After all the uncertainty Kevin was
finally hired to work with the commission on the review of the emergency
response in If you’ve read
the 9/11 commission report, and valued the plain language used there, you’re
likely to enjoy the straightforward manner in which the co-chairs and
co-authors reflect on what it was like to do the work of leading the
commission. Without
Precedent describes the processes the commission used to ensure that its
work would be the best possible. Readers who felt the commission didn’t point
fingers in its report at those accountable will find many villains on the
pages of Without
Precedent, especially those who stalled and blocked access to the
documents the commission needed. I especially recommend this book for those
readers who like to know what happens to get things done behind the scenes,
especially in Washington, as well as how to use public opinion as a weapon. Steve Hopkins,
October 25, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the November 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Without
Precedent.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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