William Safire is, true to form, out of control. He tries to portray the 9/11 commission's conclusion that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda did not indeed engage in meaningful cooperation as the marginalized opinion of the commission's [Republican] staff director, Philip Zelikow, and says the commission's co-chairmen have walked back from that conclusion.

The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.

"Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?" Kean asked himself. "Yes . . . no question." Hamilton joined in: "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don't disagree with that" — just "no credible evidence" of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack.

The Zelikow report was seized upon by John Kerry because it fuzzed up the distinction between evidence of decade-long dealings between agents of Saddam and bin Laden (which panel members know to be true) and evidence of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attacks (which, as Hamilton said yesterday, modifying his earlier "no credible evidence" judgment, was "not proven one way or the other.")

Excuse me. Safire is here saying not only that there is evidence of meaningful cooperation between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and not only that the 9/11 commissioners buy into that conclusion [contrary to everything they have been reported to have said on the matter, with the exception of commissioner John Lehman, whose brother Chris worked in the Office of Special Plans]. Safire is out there with the Laurie Mylroie die-hards saying that there is evidence of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attacks. What's more, he's saying the 9/11 commissioners haven't ruled that out.

That more than contradicts what the commissioners themselves are reported saying, to say the least. From the Times Monday:

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

But Mr. Kean said that conclusion, made public last week, did not put the commission at odds with the Bush administration's contention that links existed between the terrorist group Al Qaeda and Iraq.

In an interview on the ABC News program "This Week," Mr. 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."

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."

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

Any normal person who would read this would conclude, the 9/11 commission's chairman Thomas Kean is challenging Cheney and the Bush White House to hand over any 'evidence' they continue to cite that would support such out-there conclusions. That Kean does it in the diplomatic language that would allow the administration to save face while doing so is true to form. Kean has consistently, even while protesting the Bush White House's stonewalling of the commission, always been strategically polite in his public statements about the administration. What he could have said is "Cough it up, or shut up."

But Safire does something else insidious here, which is to portray the commission's conclusion to date as being the opinion of one person, the staff director, who Safire implies must be working for Bush 43's political opponents. What is Safire talking about? If Zelikow is not getting attacked by the left for his having served with Condoleezza Rice in the first Bush administration's National Security Council, he is getting attacked by the wing-nuts on the right like Safire for not endorsing their most conspiracy-minded fantasies. Safire the wordsmith needs to reacquaint himself with one word missing from his endless propagandizing on behalf of the Mylroie-conspiracy crowd, a five letter word beginning with "t."

Post Script: Another take on 'Cheney vs. the NYT.'

Posted by Laura at June 21, 2004 03:00 PM