ne last chapter of the investigation by the Sept. 11
commission, a supplement completed more than two months ago, has not yet
been made public by the Justice Department, and officials say it is
unlikely to be released before the presidential election, even though that
had been a major goal of deadlines set for the panel.
Drawing from this unpublished part of the inquiry, the commission
quietly asked the inspectors general at the Departments of Defense and
Transportation to review what it had determined were broadly inaccurate
accounts provided by several civil and military officials about efforts to
track and chase the hijacked aircraft on Sept. 11.
David Barnes, a spokesman with the Department of Transportation, said
yesterday that if the reviews found wrongdoing, the inspector general
could recommend administrative penalties or ask federal prosecutors to
begin a criminal investigation.
"The investigation is ongoing,'' Mr. Barnes said, "and we don't know
when it will be done."
In testimony before the commission, officials had described a quick
response to the hijackings that narrowly missed intercepting some of the
planes, but the commission's investigators later determined from
documentary evidence that none of the military planes were anywhere near
the four airliners.
In addition, officials at the Federal Aviation Administration testified
that they had notified the military within a few minutes of each
hijacking, but the investigation found that tape recordings contradicted
that assertion.
The commission, in its final report, said that the true picture "did
not reflect discredit" on individuals, but that unreliable testimony about
the events had made it harder to understand the problems.
Besides the pursuit of the hijacked planes, the supplement, a monograph
60 to 70 pages long, revisits other subjects in the commission's final
report of July - telephone calls made from the hijacked airplanes, airline
security and orders issued that morning by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -
and provides additional detail or context, former commission members said.
The monograph also finds shortcomings in the Transportation Security
Administration, the agency formed to buttress airline security after the
hijackings, said Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska
and a commission member.
Mr. Kerrey suggested that presidential politics were behind the delay
in the report's release, but a spokesman for the Justice Department, Mark
Corallo, said that an ordinary review of the material for national
security clearance was complicated when the commission shut down in
August.
"It's unlikely in the next few weeks," Mr. Corallo said of when the
supplement would be released. "It was a real legal quandary."
The monograph was submitted to the Justice Department just as the
commission's term expired on Aug. 21, a date selected by Congress after
long negotiations to avoid bringing out the commission's report at the
height of the presidential campaign.It arrived not only as the
commission became legally defunct, but also as many commission members and
the staff lost their security clearances, Mr. Corallo said. That
meant no one from the commission could discuss with the Justice
Department lawyers how to edit material that needed to be changed for
security reasons, he said.
"Had the commission gotten it to them two or three days before the
deadline, they could have resolved any issue in minutes, as they usually
do," Mr. Corallo said.
As a result of these complications, the
supplement is the first of the commission's documents to be completely
controlled by the Bush administration. While the
commission was still in business, it was able to exert pressure on the
White House when all 10 members, 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans, simply
issued a public request for cooperation.
"I am surprised that the process has dragged on this long, and I think
it's inappropriate," Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democrat on the commission,
said. "It is longer than any other review of written material."
Discussions on the monograph's fate are being held between the Office
of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department and Daniel Marcus, the
commission's former general counsel.
"I think I've convinced them that even though we don't exist anymore,
it ought to be viewed as a public document," Mr. Marcus said.
The monograph has two sections, he said. One concerns airline security,
discussing the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation
Security Administration. The other section, he said, provides a detailed
timeline of the movements of the hijacked planes the morning of Sept. 11
and the response by the civil and military aviation officials. On July 29,
Mr. Marcus wrote to the inspectors general of the Transportation and
Defense Departments requesting reviews of the testimony of those
officials. He would not comment this week on the request or the letters,
but representatives for both departments confirmed that investigations
were under way.
