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Conclusions of Sept. 11 inquiry provoke debate

"All of us understand that when you begin to use words like `relationship' and `ties' and `connections' and `contacts,' everybody has a little different definition with regard to those statements."

Thomas Kean, chairman of the Sept. 11 commission

Thomas Kean, chairman of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, reiterated Sunday that the inquiry had turned up no evidence that Iraq or its former president, Saddam Hussein, had taken part "in any way in attacks on the United States."

But Kean said that conclusion, made public last week, did not put the commission at odds with contentions by the administration of US President George W. Bush that links existed between the terrorist group al-Qaeda and Iraq.

In an interview on the ABC News program This Week, Kean said: "All of us understand that when you begin to use words like `relationship' and `ties' and `connections' and `contacts,' everybody has a little different definition with regard to those statements."

At the same time, Kean said: "We believe ... that there were a lot more active contacts, frankly, with Iran and with Pakistan than there were with Iraq.

"Al-Qaeda didn't like to get involved with states, unless they were living there. They got involved with Sudan, they got involved ... where they lived, but otherwise no,'' Kean told ABC television.

US Vice President Dick Cheney said in an interview on Friday that "the evidence is overwhelming" of a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Asked if he had information that the commission did not have, he replied, "Probably."

Kean said Sunday that if such information exists, "we need it -- and we need it pretty fast."

The panel concluded its public hearings last week and will now turn to writing its final report, due late next month. Kean added that the administration had been cooperative in providing material that the commission had requested during its 18-month investigation.

Cheney's statements, and the broader question of whether the commission and the administration were at odds, came up repeatedly as commission members and others made the rounds of the Sunday morning talk shows.

"I find it, frankly, shocking that the exaggerations of the administration before the war relative to that connection continue to this day," Senator Carl Levin said on the CNN program Late Edition.

Senator John McCain, appearing on the CBS News program Face the Nation, said he had "no doubt that there was communications, meetings, connections" between terrorist groups including al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government, though not necessarily in connection with Sept. 11. Asked if the administration should turn over the additional information that the vice president talked about, he said he saw "no reason why not."

Meanwhile, another member of the Sept. 11 commission predicted the panel would support centralization of the nation's intelligence agencies as the only way to prevent future terrorist attacks.

"You're going to see unanimous recommendations on the intelligence community ... They couldn't distinguish between a bicycle crash and a train wreck," commissioner John Lehman said Sunday in previewing a final report due for completion next month.

Centralization will enable information to get to people "in a position to make a difference," the former secretary of the Navy said.

Change must be fundamental, Lehman said, "not just tweaking and moving the deck chairs or the organization boxes around," and the FBI should undergo a transformation as well.

He said FBI Director Robert Mueller is on the right track, but "we probably will go further in our recommendations to institutionalize changes" at the bureau.

Along with differences over ties between Saddam's government and al-Qaeda, a new question arose over whether Bush or Cheney gave the order on Sept. 11, 2001, to shoot down the fourth of the hijacked airliners.

The two told the commission that Bush gave his approval after a discussion with Cheney, who was in the White House command center.

Newsweek magazine reports in this week's issue that an early draft of the commission staff report reflected skepticism by staffers about the account of Cheney getting Bush's approval for the shoot-down order. After objections by the White House, the panel removed the wording from the draft, it said.
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