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♪ >> It is beautiful outside.

Perfect September day with lots of sunshine.

I'm going outside today.

>> Other than that, it's kind of quiet around the country.

We like quiet.

It's quiet.

It's too quiet.

>> Some breaking news to report.

You're looking at a live picture of the World Trade Center, where we have just received word that a plane apparently has crashed into the tower.

>> Since my colleagues and I were appointed, many people have inquired about our work.

>> Right now, not only New York City on high alert, but Washington, D.C., as well.

The Pentagon has been hit by an aircraft.

>> First, they wanted to know what led to the terrorist attacks upon our country, September 11th, that took the lives of almost 3,000 Americans.

They also want to know how such a dastardly attack could occur and succeed in a nation as strong as ours.

>> Here we just saw live from Chopper 2 yet another explosion.

>> The top portion of the building has collapsed down to the streets below.

>> And finally, most importantly, they want to know what can be done to prevent future terrorist attacks of this scale.

>> Is this a live picture?

This is a live picture.

World Trade Center tower number one has just collapsed, ladies and gentlemen.

>> And how can we make this country safer?

This is what our commission intends to do.

>> For a person who did not live through those dark days, one might think that the 9/11 Commission was created right after the attacks.

In reality, it took 14 months of political argument and persistent pressure to bring it into existence.

What was the trajectory of events that led to the formation of the Commission?

>> Well, it was difficult for a number of reasons.

One was that Congress wanted to do the investigation themselves.

In fact, they did an investigation.

>> Calls the joint inquiry committee to order.

Okay.

This is the third public hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

>> Families and most serious people thought the investigation just wasn't adequate.

They didn't have the time.

They didn't have the money.

And they had some political thoughts, too.

And that was -- that was the other problem was, a year before a very important political election, the president, who had been elected and then subject to a court decision that confirmed the election.

I was running for re-election.

It was a very political time, and people were worried very much about what was -- what a commission might do.

So Congress, frankly, didn't want to establish it.

♪ >> I served on the joint inquiry, the first look by Congress at the 9/11 attacks.

This was the combination of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee bringing together witnesses and starting to gather the facts about how our country was brutally, viciously attacked on September the 11th.

>> And again for Congressman Hamilton, with respect to the need for a creation of an independent commission, how do you feel about that?

>> I favor it.

I think that I come from the point of view that we need more, not less, oversight of the intelligence community that is independent of the executive branch.

And I think this committee has performed a very important service in the last few months and weeks.

But I don't think you've finished the job.

There's a lot more to be done.

>> At the end of about six months, having served on that joint inquiry, I found there were more questions than answers, that we didn't have enough time to look at a whole of government approach.

>> There's a lot of stuff in here, but there's a lot of information that's not in here that should be, in my judgment.

>> And I believed, given the shortcomings of Congress's first look, that we had to have an independent commission.

>> The irony is this.

I can tell you right now that I don't know exactly how the plot was hatched on 9/11.

I don't know the where, the when, and the why, and the who in every instance.

I know a lot more than I did.

But we still can't fill in a lot of the blanks.

>> I got the legislation teed up in the House.

John was waiting for it to pass the House so that he could bring it up in the Senate.

>> We are coming out of a divisive election between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush.

That pushed us into more polarization and partisanship.

We had constituents that were angry at Congress and angry at government, pushing us further away.

And the Republicans -- many Republicans did not want to create a commission.

They did not want an independent body looking at the Bush White House and potentially saying that there was some blame.

♪ We created the commission, but we never would have created it without the 9/11 families.

>> The 9/11 families are not concerned about re-election and pleasing our constituents.

We are not worried about losing budgetary controls.

We are not misguided by inter-agency turf wars.

We have one singular purpose, and that purpose is to make our families, your families, and the nation safer than it is right now.

>> Their strength, resilience, tenacity, toughness, coming through some of the most brutal loss in their lives, they inspired us to fight for those votes.

And we created the commission that then had to do a lot of work to get to the bottom of what happened and why.

>> For 18 months, our family has been denied the truth that a thorough investigation would reveal.

As a family member, I am frustrated to have suffered the loss of a son and yet to be required to spend time away from my family and fight for the establishment of a commission that should have been in place on the day of the tragic event.

>> We saw this as an important goal right from the beginning.

We realized that the government was not owning up to the mistakes that were made right from the start.

And we felt that unless the government is willing to face the mistakes that it made, it's not going to be able to correct them and not be able to make people safe in the future.

>> We're going to continue what we've been doing in order to make sure that this commission not only finds the truth but that reforms are implemented.

We're in this for the long haul.

>> It's one of the great American stories, how these families transformed their grief into something very positive and decided, first of all, they were going to find out what happened.

They wanted all the action as to why -- why their families died and how this could occur in the United States of America.

And so they were there to get the commission formed.

When it stalled, they went after Congress.

They appeared on morning talk shows.

Some of them laid down across congressional offices.

So the congressman had to step over them in order to get to their offices.

They picketed the White House, and they kept on going.

And not only did the commission form, but once we were formed, they were there for two reasons.

One, to keep pressure on us.

They wanted to make sure that we did our job, and they wanted to make sure we were asking the right questions.

And secondly, when we needed anything, to keep pressure on the Congress so that when we needed more time or more money, the families were there.

And it's an incredible story of positive resilience and one that I think should be written and I think it should almost be required reading, how only in the United States of America could this story have happened.

>> The families where they had to remind us that all of that was just chatter.

And what we needed to do as Americans was to come together, to put country first, and to ask the hard questions of people in the highest positions of government and to get answers, not to just let the first response stand and to push to get the facts.

>> Good morning.

I lost my husband on 9/11.

We lobbied Congress for this condition and I met these gentlemen.

They're wonderful, and I'm really glad for their efforts.

We know from current events how badly this commission is needed with all the terrorist threats that we're facing right now.

Our questions as family members -- our first question is, "What happened on September 11th?"

The country was unprotected.

All of our defenses failed.

No protocols were followed.

And we're hoping to get answers.

>> This is a classic example of civic engagement.

I hope this is a story that is never forgotten as citizens.

These some of these citizens who didn't know Washington from Indianapolis, that didn't know the Senate from the -- from the House.

They knew very little about the workings of the federal government.

They dived into it, and within a year, they became sophisticated experts on the Congress.

And they used that power that they got to make us respond.

We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them.

What a marvelous story it is of the American experience and how our government, under pressure, can work.

>> This collective grief, that I think was really important to stay connected to all the way through this -- the Commission's work, and the families did that for us.

>> One of the family members, you'll remember well, Governor, from New Jersey came in to see me, and she sat down at my office and she said, "We're coming to you because you're championing the legislation in the House, and we want you to kick doors down.

We want you to get the facts and get the truth.

And I'll tell you why, Tim Roemer," and I'll never forget this, and it is still hard to talk about today.

She says to me, "I lost my husband.

I have a 6-year-old daughter.

My daughter will never have her father at the table to do her homework.

She will never have her father at a graduation.

Her father will never walk her down an aisle for a wedding."

That's the kind of loss that these people experienced.

♪ ♪ >> Public Law 107-306 established the Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

The law called upon the commission, "to investigate and report to the Congress and the president on its findings, conclusion, and recommendations for corrective measures that can be taken to prevent acts of terrorism."

♪ >> We've had several congressional commissions.

We had a limited joint congressional inquiry into 9/11.

This was a congressionally mandated commission.

It was supposed to be divided fairly between Democrats and Republicans.

And a lot of times, they're often referred to as a blue ribbon Commission, meaning that you're supposed to get the best and brightest.

>> How did the mandate from the Congress shape the way the commission went about its work?

>> Well, it's a controlling document.

Everything we did, we had to go back to the mandate.

The mandate becomes hugely important.

Again and again, Tom and I had to go back and say, "Is this authorized in the mandate?"

Now, the mandate was only a sentence or two.

Get the facts, and you make the recommendations.

But it's the controlling document.

It's like the Constitution.

It's like the Declaration.

I mean, you go back to the wording of the mandate.

We are specifically mandated to scrutinize intelligence, law enforcement, diplomacy, immigration and border controls, the financing of terrorism, commercial aviation, congressional oversight of counterterrorism efforts, and other areas that we, as a commission, deem relevant.

And if it felt okay, if it didn't fit, you're out of bounds and you had to drop it.

>> Were there pressures on you to broaden the mandate or to take up other topics?

>> I think, Chris, that there was pressure from many people who thought we should find accountability and, if you will, provide heads on a stick.

And that was out of bounds for us.

That was left to the relevant agencies, although on the other side of it, it impelled us to be very clear as to who had done what.

>> When I came on the commission, there was a fair amount of -- I wouldn't call it pressure, but people urging me to find somebody to blame and to find somebody in particular to blame who was a member of the Republican Party.

And I do think that, among the most important reasons that people listen to the report is we essentially said, "If you were a member of the Congress during the 20-year period up to 9/11 or in the executive branch during the 20-year period, and anything having to do with national security, and you're trying to find out who to blame?

Go look in the mirror," because we were all part of that process, and we missed it.

It shouldn't have happened.

So if you it it's always true.

When something bad happens, you're trying to find out who can I point the finger at?

And in this particular case, it was all of us time.

>> Tom and I recognized it very early on.

We knew that we -- if we played the Washington blame game, it was an endless effort, and it would absolutely bring us down.

So we decided early on, we're not going to blame anybody.

We're not trying to even scores up.

We're going to move ahead with what are the facts and what do you do to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

>> That's the official start of our first public hearing of what is going to be a extraordinarily difficult and important job, we believe, for the country.

>> After we concluded our work, Governor, you had this to say.

>> I didn't expect ever to be asked by the president to do the job I was asked to do.

But when the call came, it was not a call you could turn down, particularly one who had lost friends in the event.

But it was very difficult, and Lee and I write in our book that we think the commission, in many ways, was set up to fail because we had not enough money.

We didn't have enough time.

We'd been appointed by the most partisan people in Washington -- the leaders of the House and Senate.

We were appointed -- We were appointed in the most partisan year that the country may have ever had going into a presidential election.

>> If you tell 10 people of the backgrounds of the people on this commission that they're bound to fail and that that's the expectation -- You know, it got our backs up.

>> Yes.

>> And we said, "No, we're not going to fail."

And we went out of our way to be clear that we were working together.

The other thing we did was we actually listened to one another, and when we had disagreements, we went to ground, we went to the facts, and our fabulous staff helped us sort through those facts.

>> I think the leadership -- Tom and Lee -- set the example.

The 9/11 families were the wind under our wings.

We had great staff, superb nonpartisan staff.

We also had public hearings, and the public hearings connected to the American people.

>> Thank goodness we had the people appointed you see before you.

We sat Republicans next to Democrats.

When we went on television, we -- Lee tells the story of when Tim Russert of "Meet the Press" called me 'cause I was the new guy in Washington, so he wanted me to headline the show that week.

And Tim called me and said, "Would you come on?"

I said, "Yeah, I'd be honored to come on, Tim, but I'd like Lee Hamilton to come on with me."

And Tim said, "In Washington, guests don't invite guests."

>> [ Laughs ] >> And so I said, "Okay, Tim, maybe we can do it some other time," and hung up.

Five minutes later, he called me back -- "We'd be delighted to have you and Congressman Lee."

[ Laughter ] So, everything we did from then on, even more so as we got to know each other, was to work with people who may have an "R" next to their name if you were a "D," or vice versa.

And so that was number one.

Secondly, we had to hire the very best staff possible.

I would now like to recognize Dr. Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director, who will introduce the first staff statement.

>> Members of the commission, with your help, your staff has developed initial findings to present to the public on the diplomatic efforts.

>> We hired that staff without any reference to their politics.

>> Yes.

That was part of it.

>> You and I did not ask any applicant, "What party do you belong to?"

>> That's right, and if they had been -- >> We wanted expertise.

>> Absolutely.

If they had been active in a recent campaign, we turned them down, no matter how able they were, because we wanted -- We were all what Lee used to call "reformed politicians."

>> Yeah.

>> We were all people who had held office, but weren't necessarily ambitious for the next office.

So we were able to consider things in a nonpartisan manner.

And that was the first thing, I think, that was most important to me, was establishing our credibility as somebody who was going to get the facts, call it as we saw it, and not get tangled into the Democratic versus Republican politics that is so characteristic of Washington, D.C. And we had a long debates about the staff... >> Oh, my.

>> ...I mean, making sure that they were absolutely the right people in the right positions.

>> The right people in the right positions, and also that we had access to them.

And you can see in today's politics, the way you avoid blame or responsibility is by running the clock out.

And so we needed to proceed very quickly.

I think one of the ways that we overcame obstacles was that our staff primarily came from the agencies we were investigating.

They had the clearances.

They knew exactly where the bodies were buried.

They knew exactly what to ask for.

And to a great extent, they were trusted by the agencies We were looking at.

>> It's like everything else.

It all depends on the people.

>> Yeah.

>> I don't think these commissioners understand how carefully they were scrutinized, every one of you in very, very great detail.

>> How did Richard end up making it?

>> Yeah.

[ Laughter ] ♪ >> That first meeting that Lee organized at the Wilson Center was a dinner.

And we were seated, as you've just heard, Democrat next to Republican.

And I was seated next to our friend Slade, who has passed away.

And after about half an hour of talking, I said to him, "You know, my friends warned me about you.

They said you were a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, that you would give no quarter, that you were radical, and that I should be very wary of you."

And he said, "You know, my friends said somewhat the same thing about you."

And that was the first lesson in listening.

We did a lot of listening to one another.

>> I can remember sitting next to Jamie Gorelick, you know, the one woman on it, and I can remember thinking when she introduced herself, and I thought, "Now, there's a very partisan Democrat, but she wants to get this right."

And she told me later she thought, "There's our really partisan Republican, but he wants to get it right."

And the longer we went on, the more determined we were to come out unanimously, and in a sense, the easier it was to come out unanimously.

And it was not expected.

I would take far too long, so I will defer to Jamie.

>> Alright.

Well, thank you.

>> I couldn't even ask the question in the time... [ Laughter ] >> Well, we all want to hear that question at some point.

>> You will.

[ Laughter ] >> These initial moves were all made by Tom.

And it set the pattern for this commission and for a lot of others that have followed.

These initial moves that Tom has described sound so simple and looks so obvious now, but that was not the case.

And it's had a very positive effect on government, I think, in general.

The 9/11 Commission has been looked to as the model.

It's the standard.

It's the gold standard.

And it's all because of these initial moves.

♪ ♪ >> We would let the facts speak for themselves.

>> Yeah.

>> And if we did a vigorous, transparent investigation so that the public could see we were willing to ask hard questions of the highest-ranking people in government and demand answers and not accept slow walking or other obfuscations... >> Congressman Hamilton, what were your findings from the New York public hearings?

>> I think the New York public hearings were not in the nature of an investigation.

We wanted the first hearings to tell us the story of what happened.

Today, we seek guidance from individuals who can offer unique perspective and valuable wisdom.

We will hear from the survivors of the attacks, who can relate to us the awful experience of that day.

>> The story we told of 9/11 is so connected to the recommendations.

You take every one of the recommendations, you point at any recommendation, you can find pages in the report and say, "That was a fact.

That's why I made the recommendation."

So, it was so tied together that I think it made sense.

>> What have you learned from your work on the 9/11 Commission?

>> Well, we're just starting our work.

But basically what we've got to do now is -- Our job is to find out why it happened, how it happened, and hopefully to give lessons to the American people to make them safer.

>> It was to the benefit of the way the commission was able to conduct hearings because we were able to talk with the staff that was most expert on whatever the topic was.

And we had hearings that were, you know, substantive and much better than they would have been.

♪ >> Commissioner Gorelick, you were among the most active, certainly, in the investigative work of the commission.

And can you talk about the challenges the commission faced in gaining access to documents?

>> We had tremendous resistance from the administration, which was, of course, worried about being blamed.

And we had to overcome that.

>> The resistance in the first year to getting cooperation, getting access to documents, to people, the records -- that was one of the biggest obstacles or pressures that we had, a passive pressure that took a long time to overcome.

>> We had a debate at the very outset of the commission, in which I and some others said, "We should just routinely use subpoenas so that it's clear that we have demanded and that we have the right to get documents."

Lee, who can speak for himself, and others, said, "You know, let's use a subpoena or the threat of a subpoena to escalate if we need to.

But we shouldn't start off with subpoenas."

I think Richard and I thought that a subpoena was a normal way to proceed.

And Lee, having come off the Hill, thought it was more extraordinary.

And we did use the threat of a subpoena to get what we needed, particularly where the Air Force was not truthful with us.

>> The choice was between cooperation and confrontation.

We wanted a lot of information, and we wanted it quickly.

We understood that if we issued a subpoena, we were in for a long legal battle.

And even if we won that battle, it was going to be months because the courts act slowly, as they appropriately should, I think, in most cases.

So, that was a choice.

And we decided cooperation was the best way to get what we wanted.

And we got almost everything.

But we got enough so we got the story straight.

And that was what was the back of it all.

>> And you were right.

And you were right.

And we never imagined that the very threat of subpoena would be so powerful -- because each agency was concerned about what the other agency was doing.

And so I actually found someone I knew who was high up in the FBI.

Bob Mueller showed up.

>> Yeah.

>> And he gave us the keys to the kingdom.

He gave our staff access in real time to the FBI computers.

>> I think I speak for the whole commission that really nobody has been more cooperative, more available, or more helpful than Director Mueller.

And I just wanted to say that and publicly thank him before he starts his testimony.

Director Mueller?

>> Well, thank you.

>> The other agencies began to fall into line, with a few exceptions -- at the military in certain quarters, where we had to use subpoena to get evidence.

But you were exactly right that the threat of subpoenas in the way that we were able to use the family support and the press and making public statements -- because early on, Tom and Lee, you made a public statement about the fact that we didn't have enough money and we weren't getting information in a timely enough manner from the White House, which had pledged cooperation, but indeed were not following through.

And once that happened and the threat of it happening again was all it took to get the presses rolling, and then we were overwhelmed with information that we began to -- >> There's one other factor in the FBI's cooperation, which was there was a real threat that we would recommend the splitting in two of the FBI's functions.

And Bob Mueller was a constant presence, I would say, with the commission trying to persuade us that that step was not needed.

>> Yeah.

>> I'm sure the question will be asked today as to my views on the need to establish a separate domestic intelligence agency, so let me address that now.

I do believe that creating a separate agency to collect intelligence in the United States would be a grave mistake.

Splitting the law enforcement and the intelligence functions would leave both agencies fighting the war on terrorism with one hand tied behind their backs.

>> And step one in that campaign was exactly what you, Richard, were talking about, which is that he decided, "We are going to be fully cooperative."

>> And I'd say give him credit.

The president was very, very helpful in getting major documents because when we were being slow-walked, a call to the White House -- When the president says, "Get him the documents," things move.

>> I think it's important for those of us who have run for office, who have been involved with politics -- I do understand why the White House was reluctant.

You could take any mistake out of context, put it in a 30-second ad, and it's devastating.

That's what happened to Max Cleland.

So it's not difficult for me to acquire the sympathy necessary to say, "Yes --" I mean, I think it was great that Richard and Jamie put pressure on these guys to deliver more information to us, but I'm sympathetic as to why there was reluctance.

I'm sure during your time as Secretary of the Navy, the last thing you wanted to hear is you've been called up the Hill to explain something that was completely outside of your control that they intended to blame you for, so... >> Never happened.

[ Laughter ] ♪ >> But as Jamie said, with respect to the Air Force and NORAD, they flat out lied in their first hearing.

And our staff was able to develop the facts to call them back.

I mean, the Air Force had actually published a coffee table book called "Air War Over America," where they claimed they were prepared to shoot down Flight 93 before it entered Washington airspace.

And in fact, they didn't even know that plane had been hijacked until after it crashed in Pennsylvania.

>> Let's go to Secretary Lehman on this topic.

Did NORAD or the Air Force -- did they lie to the commission?

>> Yes, they did.

And I wish I could say it was unprecedented in my experience, but unfortunately, in large bureaucracies, particularly that have a strong hierarchical structure, it's not that rare.

But it was a flat-out set of lies.

General, did you have authority to shoot down 93 when it was heading towards Washington?

And where did you get it?

>> You know, a lot of discussion on our intent on United 93.

The simple answer is, to my knowledge, I did not have authority to shoot that aircraft down.

We were informed after that airplane was already -- had hit the ground.

That's the simple answer.

>> I'm sorry.

Could you say that again?

You were informed of what after it hit the ground?

>> We were informed of presidential authority some five minutes after that aircraft had hit the ground.

>> And it was unforgivable in the circumstance.

>> And it was in a public hearing.

>> In your timeline, why don't you put in there when you were notified?

♪ >> For which flight, sir?

>> Just getting the notification from the President of the United States that you have the authority to shoot a commercial aircraft down is a pretty significant event.

Why would that not be in your timeline?

>> I don't know when that happened.

♪ >> There was another reason it was very important.

The White House was worried about precedent.

>> That's true.

>> We were asking for things like the presidential daily briefings.

Those are the documents that the president sees every morning.

And nobody's ever seen them outside of the presidential circle before, no member of Congress, nobody.

And they thought -- They said they thought if they shared those documents with the commission, that would set a precedent so that Congress would then ask for the same documents.

And if Congress got them, then no White House adviser would ever feel free again to give the president unencumbered advice.

That was one thing.

Second thing was when we wanted to ask the president to testify.

That had never been done before.

No president ever testified on anything except a criminal matter, so that -- For instance, Lyndon Johnson was never called by the Kennedy assassination hearings.

They said, "If the president comes and is called, why wouldn't Congress call the president more often?"

You set that precedent.

So, they were sincerely worried about those precedents.

Lee and I wrote a book.

We called it "Without Precedent."

[ Laughter ] What we basically said to the White House was, "Look, this is a unique event in American history.

We have to get the facts.

The only way we can get the facts and satisfy the American people is to have the president testify, be able to see whatever the president read, the presidential daily briefings, and we need those in order to do our job."

But it was a legitimate argument back and forth, and we finally won, thanks to the families, thanks to the newspapers and the media who took our side.

We got what we needed, but it was a fight that took a while.

>> I look forward to giving the commissioners a chance to question both of us.

And it would be an ample -- be a good opportunity for these people to help write a report that hopefully will help future presidents deal with terrorist threats to the country.

♪ >> One of the most remarkable things that staff has uncovered -- and we heard it -- you heard a piece of it in the testimony, the staff statement -- was that Jamal al-Fadl comes into court in 2001 and describes what he said when he walked in, in 1996.

What he said was that Al-Qaeda was a significant military force.

What he said was that Osama bin Laden headed a terrorist organization of his own.

He said it was an organization that was far more than a mechanism to raise money for his terrorist financing role.

What he said was that this organization was intended to be the foundation for an Islamic army that had declared the United States as its main enemy.

>> The Commission decided that the staff teams should reach back several years in their investigative work.

They uncovered a picture of an enemy who was sophisticated, patient, and whose strategies were evolving.

Senator Kerrey, could you comment on the evolution of that threat and why we were so unprepared?

>> Well, there's three things you can do with a threat.

You can ignore it and underestimate it, you can overestimate it and do too much, or you can get it exactly right and do the right thing.

And I just think in this particular case, every single piece of evidence indicates we underestimated the threat.

>> we called it in the report a failure of imagination because this had simply never happened before.

Even in wars, we had never been attacked internally.

And we had a number of wars.

And so it was unbelievable, I think, to a number of people that this could possibly happen.

And I think nobody -- A couple of novelists, I think, had had imagination enough to have planes flying into buildings, but nobody outside of the novelists, and it wasn't -- >> Well, except they used suicide terrorism to blow up our barracks back in 1983, for gosh sakes, so it had gone well beyond that in the national security space.

>> When we took the testimony of the Secretary of Transportation and we asked him -- I think I asked him this -- "What would you have done had you heard that report?"

he said, "I would have raised the threat level for TSA."

And then we asked, "Well, what would that have meant?"

He said, "We would have looked in every piece of carry-on luggage."

"And what would you have found?"

"Well, box cutters, just for starters."

That didn't happen because the tree was not shaken.

People were not brought to the National Security Council table and then to go back to their agencies to get this done and addressed.

And I think, you know, most of us have served in the executive branch or an executive branch.

You know it doesn't happen on autopilot.

You have to be on it and address a threat with real urgency.

And that didn't happen.

>> Yeah, but I think that you put your finger on what is the most important reason why we were unprepared.

In 9/11, on that date, nearly 80% of the national security positions in the executive branch were vacant.

Vacant.

And there's a kind of a feeling that somehow the bureaucracy runs fine on its own, particularly the military and the intelligence agencies.

That is not true, as all of us that have served in the executive branch know.

If there is no pilot at the controls of each subdivision and division of the bureaucracy, then stasis is the only way that bureaucrats can survive.

Doesn't mean that there aren't individuals in the bureaucracy that are tearing their hair out, but nothing happens.

And 80% of the positions were vacant.

>> The commission found there was a profound lack of information sharing and coordination within the intelligence community and across the government.

And all of you, as commissioners -- We started to get your reaction, but how did you react when you learned about this profound failure to share information?

>> Look, I came from totally outside the federal government.

I had trouble believing it -- because the idea that our two top federal agencies in intelligence, the FBI and the CIA, don't talk to each other, don't share information, and somebody can come into this country who was on the watchlist for the CIA and get driver's licenses and get credit cards, act like a normal person, and the FBI never knew about it, and they lived in the country for a couple of years without any -- that, to me, was absolutely unbelievable.

I couldn't understand it.

And I still don't.

>> There's something built into the structure of government which emphasizes a bureaucratic tendency to say, "Trust me," and not share information."

And again and again, I have been impressed with how unwilling branches of government, departments, agencies, bureaus -- they want to keep it in their jurisdiction.

They don't want to share information.

It's very hard, Tom, to do what we tried, to say, "We have to share information across all kinds of boundaries."

We didn't do it, and we paid the price for it.

♪ >> Our next witness is Mr. Richard Clarke, who served as a former national coordinator for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

Do you swear or affirm to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

>> I do.

>> Thank you very much, sir.

Now, Mr. Clarke, your written remarks will be entered into the record in full.

>> I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11.

To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you.

Those entrusted with protecting you failed you.

And I failed you.

We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed.

And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness.

>> Alright.

So, Richard Clarke apologizes.

He accepts responsibility.

Then, in effect, he also blames the Bush administration.

Did his testimony threaten to rip the commission apart?

>> I don't think so.

It certainly didn't.

It was welcome.

It was extraordinary in its simplicity, with all the complexity that we were dealing with, for one person in a position of substantial authority to do the thing that had not been done in two and a half years since the attacks of 9/11.

And that is to apologize for the failure.

No one in government had done so.

And so I think it set it and us on the right course.

>> I agree with you, Richard.

I do think it was a powerful, unifying statement.

And I do think it helped, actually, the commission to do its work, but don't forget that the second half he attacked the Bush administration.

He may have said, "We did it," but he separated the Bush administration in a hurry.

And I had Democrats that came to me and said, "Richard Clarke's testimony is evidence that you should blame the Bush administration in your final report."

We didn't do that.

I wish Slade Gorton were alive for lots of reasons because I'd like to -- If my recollection serves, he objected to that at the time.

And I think it's a good example of a statement that did unify us, in part because we ignored the second half of his testimony.

>> After Richard Clarke testified, as you all well know, National Security Adviser Rice testified soon thereafter.

>> I want to ask you some questions about the August 6, 2001 PDB.

Did you tell the president at any time prior to August 6th of the existence of Al-Qaeda cells in the United States?

>> First, let me just make certain -- >> If you could just answer that question because I only have a very limited -- >> I understand, Commissioner, but it's important -- >> Did you tell the president?

>> It's important that I also address -- [ Applause ] It's also important, Commissioner, that I address the other issues that you have raised.

Dick Clarke had told me, I think in a memorandum -- I remember it as being only a line or two -- that there were Al-Qaeda cells in the United States.

Now, the question is, what did we need to do about that?

I really don't remember, Commissioner, whether I discussed this with the president.

>> Thank you.

>> I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States.

He talked to people about this.

But I don't remember the Al-Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.

>> Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country?

And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB.

>> I believe the title was "Bin Ladin Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

>> Well, Commissioner Ben-Veniste, why don't you tell us a little bit more about that exchange?

>> Well, we had fought very hard to get Condoleezza Rice's testimony in public, in a public hearing.

The White House resisted, resisted, resisted.

It became apparent afterwards that the whole reason for all of this was to avoid the title of that PDB.

Now, I wasn't allowed in my questioning -- because it was still classified as secret -- to mention what the title was.

So I gave Dr. Rice the opportunity to answer.

>> That's what you call it?

[ Laughter ] >> I gave her the opportunity.

She could have said, "No, I don't remember it, slipped my mind," or, "No, I'm not going to tell you what the title was because it's still classified."

And so extracting it in that way was probably the least favorable option for the White House at that point.

Tom and Lee then demanded that the White House declassify the document.

>> Well, she had, in effect, declassified it sitting there.

>> Right.

Formally declassify the entire document so everybody could look at it and then make a judgment.

So, that was a a dramatic moment in our quest.

And it showed the world that we were not just going to sit back and take whatever pablum was presented to us, as they tried to do, saying, "Oh, you don't need to see that, it's just a historical document, it didn't warn about anything," when in fact it talked about sleeper cells.

So, this was a transformative moment, I think, you know?

>> Indeed.

>> I think we got what we needed, which was a cadence of warnings and reporting into the most senior levels of government.

>> But in a way, this was all farcical because I read PDBs every day for four and a half, five years when I worked for Henry Kissinger in the White House.

He stopped reading them after the first year because he said, "There's nothing in here that I don't get from The Wall Street Journal."

[ Laughter ] >> Coming to Washington for the first time and seeing secret documents -- my experience -- And I'm from New Jersey.

We don't have many secret documents.

And so I was -- I remember the first time we came in, I hadn't had my security clearance yet.

And the FBI had prepared some book.

Remember that?

They had prepared a book which was supposed to be very secret, and we couldn't see it until we had our security clearance.

I was waiting week by week for my security clearance.

And finally I got it and I took the book into the room, in our SCIF, and I read it from one end to the other.

And the FBI agent was watching me and I finish it and I turned and looked at him and said, "There's nothing here I didn't know."

[ Laughter ] And he said, "Yes, but you didn't know it was true."

[ Laughter ] And that was my experience all through the commission.

The PDBs -- most of them were junk, frankly.

I mean, there were things that -- no reason the public couldn't see any or all of them.

The documents we read that was not top secret -- 70% of them, in my view, should have been made public.

And I think it's an open scandal, the secrecy in Washington... >> Oh, I agree.

>> ...and stamping this stuff classified so the public and the press never has a chance to see it.

And that's something that -- The Congress should take it on.

They really should.

They should declassify all that stuff that's not actually top secret.

A very small amount that is.

>> What John just said about the PDBs -- by themselves, they're one piece of information.

And while this was potentially explosive, what made it even more explosive to me was the fact that Richard Clarke had memos that he had written as a security adviser to the Bush administration, saying very vivid things, such as, "If a truck parks outside the White House and is parked there by Al-Qaeda, how much damage will that do?

How many Americans will that kill?"

And he also wrote a memo saying, "What will it take to get action from the administration?

Will we see Americans dead in the streets?"

So, when you add in the documentation with the PDB and its explosive dynamic evidence or accusation, I think that allowed us to put facts together and make the conclusion that this was really important stuff to get to.

♪ >> My second point today goes to the heart of this commission's duty to uncover the facts.

The single greatest structural cause for the September 11th problem was the wall that segregated or separated criminal investigators and intelligence agents.

The basic architecture for the wall in the 1995 guidelines was contained in a classified memorandum entitled "Instructions for Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations."

This memorandum laid the foundation for a wall separating the criminal and intelligence investigations, as a matter of fact, established the wall, following the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

Although you understand the debilitating impact of the wall, I cannot imagine that the Commission knew about this memorandum.

So I have had it declassified for you and the public to review.

Full disclosure compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the commission.

>> Okay, Commissioner Gorelick, your thoughts?

[ Laughter ] >> Well, in retrospect, you see the big lie.

He just made that up.

The memo he's talking about had no effect on the CIA, the NSA, any intelligence agency.

It was purely about the FBI's sharing of information with a prosecutor, who would then use a FISA to get at criminal information.

So, it was very narrow.

The commission both in its monograph by Barbara Grewe and in its report, which I had nothing to do with, debunked every aspect of what Ashcroft said here.

I would note that the problems that were created within the FBI, which backed away from having communications between its law enforcement and its intelligence functions, purely within the FBI, were not known when I was there.

They were known when he was there.

And he issued the very same memoranda when?

August of 2001.

So, you talk about hypocrisy.

The other point I would make is he was in for a world of hurt in that hearing.

>> [ Laughs ] >> He knew that Phil Zelikow was going to sit there and list all the ways in which he ignored terrorism, cutting the budget, refusing to do foreign intelligence surveillance, wiretaps, the whole panoply of failures of John Ashcroft.

And so this was an effort at misdirection.

>> But it's also, I mean -- You got to -- It was so heroic of Slade to step up the way he did.

Had he not, it might have been a different outcome.

And he was so impressive.

>> Well, so, Slade was -- Slade was sitting right next to me.

We often sat next to each other.

And I am steaming when I see this.

And I want to jump up and say basically what I just said.

And he said, "Let me do this."

And he did.

He basically made the point that Ashcroft had reissued the very same memorandum, that it had no effect on anything leading up to 9/11.

It had no effect on the intelligence agencies.

And he -- Slade -- led it off.

But I will say, my fellow commissioners and particularly our Republican colleagues, stepped up enormously and dispatched this.

>> Your second issue is a severe criticism of the 1995 guidelines that, as you say, imposed Draconian barriers to communications between law enforcement and the intelligence committees, the so-called wall.

I don't find that in the eight months before September 11, 2001, that you changed those guidelines.

In fact, I have here a memorandum dated August 6th from Larry Thompson, the fifth line of which reads, "The 1995 procedures remain in effect today."

If that wall was so disabling, why was it not destroyed during the course of those eight months?

>> We now had a good segment of our society thinking that I caused 9/11.

And I had death threats phoned into my house, and we did have to leave the house.

And I had two little kids and a husband who was frightened for us.

>> What he succeeded in doing is unifying the commission beyond anything that had previously existed, where the Republicans took the lead -- and Slade in particular -- in supporting Jamie in calling out Ashcroft in the big lie.

A man who is going to attack a woman with nine brothers better get his facts better coordinated.

[ Laughter ] >> Governor?

>> I worried, as I said earlier, from the beginning about whether there was going to be any partisanship on the commission.

When Jamie was unfairly attacked and the first people to jump up and defend her were Republicans... >> Mm-hmm.

>> ...I knew we were home free as far as partisanship went, that from then on, we were the band of brothers or sisters.

>> True.

>> We were going to be one for all and all for one.

It was just -- I called the White House right afterwards and yelled at them.

And they said -- and I believed them -- that the president knew nothing about this and, in fact, the president apologized... >> He did.

>> ...in the next press conference for the actions of his attorney general.

And -- >> And he apologized to me when we interviewed him.

>> Yeah.

>> He apologized in front of all of us... >> Yeah.

>> ...for Ashcroft's... >> Yeah.

>> ...activities.

♪ >> Well, let's go to this question of access to the president, President Bush.

And how did the commission ultimately succeed in achieving that?

>> Well, with a lot of help.

We didn't do the -- We said again and again that we cannot do our job unless we hear from the president and the vice president and a former president, President Clinton, and other important officials.

The answer that always came back was, "No president has ever testified before any commission unless it was criminal -- ever.

And we're not going to set that precedent."

And we were sort of at loggerheads for a long time.

And it was continued pressure, not just from the commission, but of course the families were with us 100% on the fact that we had to hear from the president and the vice president.

In addition to that, the media rallied for us.

We didn't have to worry about blogs and someone then.

We just had to worry about The New York Times and The Washington Post.

They all came rallying behind us all over the country.

Finally, the call came that, yes, the president would testify and -- in the Oval Office, and he was going to be joined by the vice president.

And that was a -- That was a big moment for it.

>> What was Fred Fielding's role in that?

I have a recollection of his being an intermediary with the White House Counsel's office on that.

>> Yeah, he was pushing.

He was on the side of the commission.

And Fred, who had been former White House... >> Counsel.

>> ...Counsel -- >> Well, as usual, as I recall, the White House resisted.

They resisted and resisted.

And finally they said, "Okay, we'll have a 15-minute meet and greet.

We will meet with the chairman and the co-chairman for 15 minutes at the White House.

And Tom and Lee came back.

They discussed that with us.

And we said, "No way.

That will not fly.

This needs to be substantive.

This is not a photo op."

And then they came back with, "Okay, we will meet for an hour with Tom and Lee, but nobody else on the commission."

And then Tom and Lee came back.

We discussed the fact that we had no way to legally compel an interview by the president or the vice president.

And then we responded, "No, we are 10 commissioners.

We've been together through all of this."

And Tom and Lee delivered the message, "It's all of us or none of us."

And then we also mentioned the fact that President Clinton had agreed to meet with us and there was no time limit put on President Clinton's -- >> But the staging of the visit with President Bush and Vice President Cheney was brilliant on their part -- because this did not look at all like the taking of testimony.

We sat in the Oval.

We had our notes on our laps.

We were in that august presence.

And, Tom, we were on our best behavior, I think.

So, I think it went -- From George Bush's point of view, it is not surprising that he let it go as long as he did because, in the end, all the air was sucked out of that issue.

And the statements that you all made as we were leaving were, I think, from his point of view, perfect.

>> The Vice President and I just finished a -- a good conversation with the 9/11 Commission.

It was wide-ranging.

It was important.

It was -- It was just a good discussion.

And I really appreciated the members.

I want to thank the chairman and vice chairman for bringing the commission here and giving us a chance to share views on different subjects.

>> It was, for me, one of the biggest moments of my life, let alone the commission.

I remember sitting there with you all in the Oval Office and looking out those windows from the Oval Office and thinking, "Well, history has been made," and all of that and listening to the president say, "I will answer any and all questions you have."

And I thought, "This is -- We're not elected officials."

>> Yeah.

>> "We're citizens.

Is there any other country in the world where this could happen, where unelected citizens would be sitting before the most powerful man in the world and he would be saying, 'I'll answer all your questions'"?

And we had been given a time limit.

When the time limit was up -- I don't know who was talking.

One of you.

Probably Richard.

[ Chuckles ] But the -- And the time was up.

So I said, "Mr. President, the time is up.

Thank you very much."

And the president said, "No, no, no."

>> "I'll answer more."

>> "I'll answer questions as long -- I'll stay here as long as you have questions."

And I thought that was really extraordinary.

And the president, by the way, was very well prepared.

♪ >> In spite of the partisan pressures that were building in the spring of 2004, the commission developed momentum and came together in unanimous agreement.

So, can you tell us how you emerged from the many difficulties the commission faced and how you came together in support of a unanimous report?

>> It's quite a case study in human interaction because many of us -- certainly, I -- had no intention or expectation that we would reach unanimity.

But the process and the discipline that the chair and vice chair established of rigorously concentrating on the facts brought everybody's focus to the hard ground truth on each issue.

And by concentrating on that, there was less and less room to disagree.

We have been remarkably unified and will be unanimous in our recommendations as far as we can see.

>> How do you know that?

>> Well, I don't know for sure, but we've spent a lot of time together, and I think we're all coming to agreement on what the real dysfunctions were.

We reached unanimity not because we forced it, but because that's where the facts took us.

>> We did, however, make an important decision for anybody that's going through a similar experience not to allow a minority dissenting views, which I think was a very sound decision, and I think it increased the power of the recommendations.

Had there been dissent, people could have lined up with that dissent.

So, I think it was a wise thing to do, and it increased the power of the recommendations to the Congress.

>> Unless we had a unified report, we would have been thwarted in our objective.

And we, each of us, pledged to put country above partisan intentions.

And we accomplished that goal.

>> I think Lee and I hoped almost from day one that there was a chance of a unanimous report.

But that's all I thought, personally, was that there was a chance.

And it was a distant chance.

The odds were very much against it.

And the gratification, as we saw the commissioners bond and coming together, as we had those discussions in our meetings and I saw the commission come together, it was one of the happiest moments I ever had, I think, because it you could see it.

You could feel it happening when it did happen.

It was not only good for us.

It was good for the country.

>> So, was there a particular moment when you realized that you would achieve unanimity?

>> There were substantive differences -- whether to have a director of national intelligence, whether to split up the FBI or recommend that.

How do we speak about the Muslim religion?

I mean, we had some big arguments that lasted a long time.

And I don't know about the rest of you, but I would answer Chris's question, "When did you know you were there?"

-- for me, the answer was at the very end.

>> The day when the question was raised.

>> Yes.

>> That's right.

>> But, you know, consensus comes at the end, not at the beginning.

The beginning is getting to know each other.

The beginning is come to respect each other.

The beginning is becoming friends with each other.

Once you've accomplished those three things, the disagreements become much less.

The agreements, if they're there, become respectful.

Disagreements become ones where you can build consensus.

>> This is the ultimate skill, to build consensus.

It's the toughest job in democracy.

And it is a skill most needed in almost every conflict.

>> Just to demonstrate how difficult it is sometimes to achieve consensus, I disagree with you... [ Laughter ] >> ...not because I don't think you're right on the point, but because I don't think it's a skill.

I think it's a virtue.

And the virtue begins with me saying that the views of Slade Gorton have as much merit as mine and I've got to listen to them.

I've got to make an effort to understand them.

I think it is a virtue.

And it's a -- it can feel like a soft thing to do, but it's not.

It's the only way you can get, in my experience, from a disagreement to consensus.

>> We surprised most people.

I mean, the people I've talked to never thought that five Republicans and five Democrats with very independent views in many cases could come together like we did.

And I think we gratified our friends and we just made our enemies when it happened.

>> It was constant pressure from the outside, on the political side, to be more partisan.

>> Yes.

>> And to the credit of the 10 people, to the absolute integrity of the process and the factual, transparent process, we resisted that.

And we put out a report that was the narrative -- factual narrative and recommendations that would be passed into law.

It is unprecedented in the history of the country.

>> Today we present this report and these recommendations to the President of the United States, to the United States Congress, and the American people.

>> This report represents the unanimous conclusion of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

>> Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton, your recollections of the day of the rollout?

>> I remember rewriting.

I was rewriting it until half an hour before we went out to the podium.

>> Congressman Hamilton.

>> I begin with the recommendations.

This commission, of course, does not have all of the answers, but we have thought about what to do, a global strategy, and how to do it, a different way of organizing our government.

Based on our thorough review of the government's performance and our examination of the enemy, we recommend the following elements for a counterterrorism strategy.

>> But, you know, we did something different -- and probably different than the other commission.

We turned in our report to the president and the Congress.

And then we didn't stop.

We didn't stop.

We agreed getting those recommendations through was going to take a lot more work.

>> Many people have said, "You know, why do you make recommendations that are so bold?

Why do you make recommendations that are going to be very difficult because somebody has to give up something, somebody has to break a cookie jar?

Why do you do that?

Why don't you do something that you know has a better percentage chance of passing?"

And the reason you see the recommendations we have is the question is, if not now, when?

>> We recommend significant changes in the organization of government.

We know that the quality of the people is more important than the quality of the wiring diagrams.

>> But we didn't go away.

And all of us went out talking around the country, explaining our recommendations, testifying before Congress, working with the families to make our recommendations come into reality.

>> We should create a national counterterrorism center to unify all counterterrorism intelligence and operations across the foreign and the domestic divide in one organization.

>> I don't if any other Washington commission ever did that.

I mean, one of the congressmen on the floor was not in favor of our recommendations or us.

I saw him when I was testifying before Congress about two months after the vote was issued.

And he said, "What are you doing here?

You're finished."

I said, "No, we're not."

He said, "You know, your commission's over."

I said, "Yes, but we're not over."

[ Laughter ] >> I think that was considered the height of hubris... >> Yeah.

>> ...that we didn't go away.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, living in Washington, I was told this over and over again -- "You were supposed to have gone away."

>> We recommend a national intelligence director.

We need unity of effort in the intelligence community.

We need a much stronger hand of the intelligence community and an intelligence community that organizes itself to do joint work in national mission centers.

>> The idea, you know, that we were able to get 40, I guess, of those 41 recommendations, at least partially... >> Amazing.

>> ...is really remarkable.

>> Well, the point was we may have stopped being commissioners, but we didn't stop being Americans.

>> That's right.

>> And what we did was creative because we had the leadership.

And most Americans who had paid attention to what we were doing -- they supported our integrity because our integrity was based on the facts that we were able to bring forward and show them that we were committed to it.

So, with our leadership, we redoubled that commitment to implement the recommendations that we made.

And once again, that was unprecedented.

>> Our reform recommendations are urgent.

We have come together with the families to agree on that.

If these reforms are not the best that can be done for the American people, then the Congress and the president need to tell us what's better.

They need to be enacted and enacted speedily because if something bad happens while these recommendations are sitting there, the American people will quickly fix political responsibility for failure, and that responsibility may last for generations.

>> Good morning.

In a few minutes, I will sign into law the most dramatic reform of our nation's intelligence capabilities since President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947.

I'm now pleased and honored to sign into law the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

[ Applause ] >> So, the one recommendation that most surely has not been implemented is reform in the Congress.

Can you explain the problem, why it's of concern, and where we go from here?

>> Look, I think it was a significant failure on the Congress's part.

I think oversight of intelligence is enormously important.

It's exceptionally difficult, and it's fraught with all kind of risk.

And they're doing a terrible job of it.

>> Well, I would just point out one of the greatest ironies in all of this -- 41 recommendations, 40 passed into law, the one recommendation that we don't pass is about Congress looking in the mirror, coming into the 21st century, reorganizing its jurisdictional oversight on homeland security and terrorism issues.

They won't do it.

No matter how many times we all go up to testify and prod them and cajole them and shame them, they won't do it.

>> This is why this is important.

>> [ Laughs ] >> The intelligence agencies have no other oversight than the United States Congress, really.

That's the oversight.

That's who's looking at them and saying, "Are you operating well or not well?"

Obviously, there were a lot of problems before 9/11 with the intelligence agencies.

Congress didn't do its job of oversight and correcting those problems.

One of the reasons is that a number of these agencies report not to one, not to two, not to three, not to four -- a dozen in some cases of congressional committees because they all want a piece of the action.

So, when you're reporting to 12 committees or 15 committees, there's no oversight whatsoever.

And that's how the intelligence agencies get along without oversight.

>> Well, let's move forward here to, really, the final question before us today.

Here we are almost two decades after the commission issued its report.

And the question for all of you is, are we safer today?

Governor Kean?

>> Okay.

Yes.

We're much safer, and we're safer because of our recommendations.

I mean, that reorganization of intelligence was very, very important.

But we can't let our guard down.

We can't pretend that everything's fine.

It's not.

>> Well, I think all of us would agree we've done many, many things to make ourselves safer, and we've been successful in many ways.

The great unanswerable question is, what is the capability of our adversary?

That's the key, it seems to me, in perfecting ourselves.

>> Well, I would agree with what both Lee and Tom have said as it applies to external adversaries.

But the hallmark of our democratic society has always been its stability and the peaceful transfer of power.

On January 6, 2021, a stark reminder of the fact that democracies do not self-execute and continue as democracies without the support of the people.

>> I think that the two big lessons of 9/11 and our process are applicable here.

One is imagination.

We talked about a failure of imagination causing the country's vulnerability on 9/11.

Ensuring that people can see the threat is really important.

And the second lesson, I think, of what we did is the importance of civic engagement.

Civic engagement by our young people, by our average citizens, not the citizens on the fringes -- average citizens to protect our democracy and to protect us generally is absolutely critical.

And those are the two lessons I come away from our great project with.

>> I would like to state categorically we are much safer against foreign terrorist threats.

From every measure, we are safer.

What worries me -- are we, the country, safer today?

-- is that in the choices we have been making over the last decades.

We have been steadily reducing our ability to deter disturbers of the peace.

>> There's still plenty of problems in the world, but our mission was to try to reduce the threat of non-nation-state actors using terrorism as a tactic, and Congress enacted most of what they needed to do to get that done.

And anybody that sees otherwise, I think, comes at it with sort of jaundiced glasses.

It was a phenomenal accomplishment, and Americans should feel good about it.

>> So, are we safer today than we were in 2001?

Yes.

So far.

Now we're at another inflection point 20 years later.

What's new?

What are the new threats out there?

>> The bottom line is Lincoln -- whether this nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

>> Yeah.

You said it yesterday.

It was beautifully said.

>> That's that.

That's it.

>> That's it.

>> It's not written in the stars that we're always gonna able to do it.

It depends on us.

♪ >> The sense of binding and of our goal to be achieved -- that brought together all 10 members of the commission itself, five Republicans, five Democrats, appointed as politicians, and yet able to work together toward a common end.

>> When we gathered in Washington for the first time, all of us insisted that, in this mission, the 9/11 Commission, that we would not act in a partisan manner.

And we didn't.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> To learn more about the work of the 9/11 Commission, check out the "Are We Safer Today?"

podcast on your favorite platform.

Listen in as top 9/11 Commission staff discuss what they uncovered during the most extensive investigation in U.S. history.

"Are We Safer Today?"

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