WASHINGTON -- April 1, 2004 -- (TomFlocco.com) -- Like an efficient maitre ‘d at an upscale Capitol Hill eatery, Chairman Tom Kean was graciously shepherding witnesses and fellow commissioners from one table of question topics to another. The affable ex-New Jersey governor--now college president and multiple corporate board member--punctuated time gaps between last week’s September 11 hearing deponents with inventive soft-ball queries such as “Can you tell us what we could have done to prevent 9-11 and how can we make sure it never happens again?”
Kean may yet have to explain why his oil company board of directors continued to maintain a corporate relationship with an oil company backed by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, who was reported to be a past financial benefactor of George W. Bush. According to the FBI, the terror-linked Saudi had been funding terrorism well before September 11, 2001. Moreover, he has been linked to a U.S. law firm with a partner who was a Bush 2000 fundraiser.
Kean’s oil group did not extricate itself from its ties to the publicly known financier of terrorism until 15 months after the attacks--but just 21 days before President Bush appointed him chairman of the Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States. This, as a fired whistleblower and FBI translator said her letter and follow-up calls to Kean, charging terrorism-related internal security and espionage breaches at the FBI, had gone unanswered by the chairman for a year.
The rest of the story... Is this whole commission dirty beyond belief?
whitestar
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