Criticism
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Main article: Criticism of the 9/11 Commission
The commission was criticized for alleged conflicts of interest on the part of commissioners and staff (e.g., Philip D. Zelikow, 9/11 Commission Executive Director/Chair in 1995 co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice[18]).[19] Further, the commission's report has been the subject of criticism by both commissioners themselves and by others.[20][21]
NORAD falsehoods
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John Farmer, Jr., senior counsel to the Commission stated that the Commission "discovered that...what government and military officials had told Congress, the Commission, the media, and the public about who knew what when — was almost entirely, and inexplicably, untrue." Farmer continues: "At some level of the government, at some point in time … there was a decision not to tell the truth about what happened...The [NORAD] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public."[22] Thomas Kean, the head of the 9/11 Commission, concurred: "We to this day don’t know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth."[23]
CIA withheld information about its knowledge of hijackers
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Director of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) George Tenet misled the Commission and was "obviously not forthcoming" in his testimony to the Commission, according to Commission Co-chair Thomas Kean. An FBI agent named Doug Miller had been working inside Alec Station, also known as Bin Laden Issue Station, a unit of the CIA dedicated to tracking the activities of Osama bin Laden and his associates. By Spring 2000, Alec Station learned that Khalid al-Mihdhar, a Saudi national who was known at that time to be an al-Qaeda member, and Nawaf Al Hazmi, another Saudi who at that time was a suspected al-Qaeda operative, had entered the U.S. and were living under their own names in Southern California. FBI agent Miller wanted to inform the FBI of their entry and presence in the U.S. but the CIA blocked Miller's efforts to do so. Miller's contemporaneous draft cable to the FBI reporting on this, which the CIA prevented Miller from sending at the time, was found much later. Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi were 9/11 hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77. The CIA then failed to reveal to the Commission that over a year before 9/11 it had been tracking the two hijackers' entry into and whereabouts inside the United States.[24][25] Co-chair Kean believes the CIA's failure to be forthcoming with this information to the Commission was deliberate, not a mistake, saying: "Oh, it wasn't careless oversight. It was purposeful. No question about that in my mind ... In the DNA of these organizations was secrecy."[24]