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American Morning

9/11 Commission Holds Public Hearing Today

Aired July 09, 2003 - 07:07   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: The commission established to find out what went wrong before 9/11 says right now it's making little progress thus far. The panel says that's due mostly to the government's failure to provide classified intelligence documents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS H. KEAN, CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: We need boxes and boxes and boxes of information on everything from immigration, how these people got into the country, to money laundering, to all of the tale of what happened to the FBI and the CIA, a huge amount of information. What's happening now is that we are starting to get much of that information. People are cooperating. Now there are some agencies better than others.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: The commission will hold a public hearing today in Washington, the third such hearing for that group.

Former Indiana Representative Tim Roemer serves on that commission. He's with us live today from Capitol Hill in Washington. And Stephen Push, who lost his wife back on 9/11, is in our Washington bureau as well.

Gentlemen, good morning to both of you today.

TIM ROEMER, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: Good morning, Bill.

STEPHEN PUSH, HUSBAND OF 9/11 VICTIM: Good morning, Bill.

HEMMER: Representative Roemer, some pretty strong comments from Mr. Kean yesterday, the former Republican governor in New Jersey, saying that in many ways the government is trying to intimidate certain people who conduct interviews with that commission. What's going on here between the government and the commission who wants answers?

ROEMER: Well, we need answers, we need accountability and we need an aggressive investigation, Bill. And it's not only for Steve Push, one of the family members and the wife he lost, Lisa Reins (ph), and the 3,024 other people who died in this terrorist attack upon our country, it's for accountability so that the American people know that they have a better intelligence system that is tracking the new threat, al Qaeda, and not the old threat of the Russians.

And it's also about reorganization. It's about trying to make sure that our intelligence, our FBI, our immigration do a much better job than what they did prior to 9/11 when they were concentrating on guards, guns and gates. Now, we need to be targeted on terrorists, on intents, and on terrorist tactics in the world, the laptop computers.

HEMMER: Let's change the argument a little bit here. If you were given full access to everyone you want, all of these reports that you're looking for on the intelligence side, what would you hope to find contained in there?

ROEMER: Well, we are looking, Bill, at a host of different agencies, and we're not getting the kind of cooperation that we should be. If this would be comparison -- in a comparison to a fire hose, we need a steady stream of information coming to us from such key agencies as the Defense Department, the intelligence agencies, the FBI and main justice. Instead, we're getting a trickle, we're getting a drop here or there.

We need the White House to really step forward and say that they're behind this a 100 percent. They know that we're not investigating the Bush administration or the Clinton administration. We want accountability. We want aggressive investigations to help us find out how the snakes crawled into the cracks on September 11, what kind of threat al Qaeda is turning into, and how we confront this threat in new ways and innovative ways with an FBI or an MI-5 (ph) and with an intelligence apparatus that can do the job in the future.

HEMMER: I want to get to Stephen Push right now. And, again, sir, we've spoken many times over the past 22 months, and I wish we could talk about other matters, but I'm curious to get your comments right now. Do you believe there is stonewalling happening here? Or do you believe that some secrets should be kept -- held, rather, secret in the interest of national security?

PUSH: I believe they is stonewalling going on here. I say that very reluctantly. I wanted to give the administration the benefit of the doubt, but there has been a pattern here. First, the administration tried to prevent the commission from ever being established in the first place. Then they appointed the first chairman, Henry Kissinger, who had series conflict of interest problems. Then they tried to withhold the money from the commission that they needed to do their job. And now, eight months after the commission was established, they still haven't provided the documents that are necessary. And it's beginning to look like some type of a cover-up.

I hope the president is not personally involved in this. I hope when he realizes what's going on, he'll change this and order the agencies to cooperate with the commission. But this is not a situation where we need to withhold information from the commission for security reasons. The commissioners and the staff have security clearances, they can be trusted with this information, and they need this information in order to do their jobs by the deadline of May, 2004.

HEMMER: You mentioned the deadline there. Do you think you'll make it or not? PUSH: I'm afraid that the commission is not going to make the deadline because of the withholding of information. If they get the information now, within the next few weeks, I think they can still do it.

HEMMER: Stephen Push in D.C., Representative Tom Roemer, thanks for talking with us, and we'll track your hearing later today in Washington as well. Thanks again.

ROEMER: Thank you, Bill.

PUSH: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.







Aired July 9, 2003 - 07:07   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: The commission established to find out what went wrong before 9/11 says right now it's making little progress thus far. The panel says that's due mostly to the government's failure to provide classified intelligence documents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS H. KEAN, CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: We need boxes and boxes and boxes of information on everything from immigration, how these people got into the country, to money laundering, to all of the tale of what happened to the FBI and the CIA, a huge amount of information. What's happening now is that we are starting to get much of that information. People are cooperating. Now there are some agencies better than others.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: The commission will hold a public hearing today in Washington, the third such hearing for that group.

Former Indiana Representative Tim Roemer serves on that commission. He's with us live today from Capitol Hill in Washington. And Stephen Push, who lost his wife back on 9/11, is in our Washington bureau as well.

Gentlemen, good morning to both of you today.

TIM ROEMER, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: Good morning, Bill.

STEPHEN PUSH, HUSBAND OF 9/11 VICTIM: Good morning, Bill.

HEMMER: Representative Roemer, some pretty strong comments from Mr. Kean yesterday, the former Republican governor in New Jersey, saying that in many ways the government is trying to intimidate certain people who conduct interviews with that commission. What's going on here between the government and the commission who wants answers?

ROEMER: Well, we need answers, we need accountability and we need an aggressive investigation, Bill. And it's not only for Steve Push, one of the family members and the wife he lost, Lisa Reins (ph), and the 3,024 other people who died in this terrorist attack upon our country, it's for accountability so that the American people know that they have a better intelligence system that is tracking the new threat, al Qaeda, and not the old threat of the Russians.

And it's also about reorganization. It's about trying to make sure that our intelligence, our FBI, our immigration do a much better job than what they did prior to 9/11 when they were concentrating on guards, guns and gates. Now, we need to be targeted on terrorists, on intents, and on terrorist tactics in the world, the laptop computers.

HEMMER: Let's change the argument a little bit here. If you were given full access to everyone you want, all of these reports that you're looking for on the intelligence side, what would you hope to find contained in there?

ROEMER: Well, we are looking, Bill, at a host of different agencies, and we're not getting the kind of cooperation that we should be. If this would be comparison -- in a comparison to a fire hose, we need a steady stream of information coming to us from such key agencies as the Defense Department, the intelligence agencies, the FBI and main justice. Instead, we're getting a trickle, we're getting a drop here or there.

We need the White House to really step forward and say that they're behind this a 100 percent. They know that we're not investigating the Bush administration or the Clinton administration. We want accountability. We want aggressive investigations to help us find out how the snakes crawled into the cracks on September 11, what kind of threat al Qaeda is turning into, and how we confront this threat in new ways and innovative ways with an FBI or an MI-5 (ph) and with an intelligence apparatus that can do the job in the future.

HEMMER: I want to get to Stephen Push right now. And, again, sir, we've spoken many times over the past 22 months, and I wish we could talk about other matters, but I'm curious to get your comments right now. Do you believe there is stonewalling happening here? Or do you believe that some secrets should be kept -- held, rather, secret in the interest of national security?

PUSH: I believe they is stonewalling going on here. I say that very reluctantly. I wanted to give the administration the benefit of the doubt, but there has been a pattern here. First, the administration tried to prevent the commission from ever being established in the first place. Then they appointed the first chairman, Henry Kissinger, who had series conflict of interest problems. Then they tried to withhold the money from the commission that they needed to do their job. And now, eight months after the commission was established, they still haven't provided the documents that are necessary. And it's beginning to look like some type of a cover-up.

I hope the president is not personally involved in this. I hope when he realizes what's going on, he'll change this and order the agencies to cooperate with the commission. But this is not a situation where we need to withhold information from the commission for security reasons. The commissioners and the staff have security clearances, they can be trusted with this information, and they need this information in order to do their jobs by the deadline of May, 2004.

HEMMER: You mentioned the deadline there. Do you think you'll make it or not? PUSH: I'm afraid that the commission is not going to make the deadline because of the withholding of information. If they get the information now, within the next few weeks, I think they can still do it.

HEMMER: Stephen Push in D.C., Representative Tom Roemer, thanks for talking with us, and we'll track your hearing later today in Washington as well. Thanks again.

ROEMER: Thank you, Bill.

PUSH: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.