As a few of you know, we have a contributors' blog for the History Commons. Recently two of our guys, Kevin and Paxvector, have been doing yeoman work unearthing and going through reams of documents from the 9/11 commission. It's tedious, dreary work, but occasionally they unearth interesting bits. Kevin found a bit that shows Zelikow lied to NYT reporter and author Philip Shenon over an investigation of lies to NORAD and FAA officials. We were a bit surprised when Zelikow popped by to call us mistaken.
The blog posts contain far more information than I'll give here. Surf over and read them for yourselves. Basically, Zelikow posted a rejoinder that said Kevin had made a basic error in the timeframe, and from then:
Having confused this later phase of the issue with the earlier one, you then make the various mistaken assumptions, and assumptions on the assumptions, personal accusations, etc.
Kevin checked with Shenon, who confirmed that as far as he can tell, the post was indeed made by Zelikow and not some anonymous troll (he doesn't say this in the post, but he said it to me in an e-mail). Kevin then responded:
The comment says that I misinterpreted his statement to Shenon and that it was about events different to the ones I thought it was. Unsurprisingly, I don’t buy it. I gave Zelikow’s words their natural meaning in the context, interpreting them as a direct reply to the question Shenon had just asked. Zelikow, however, gets full marks for novelty of approach.
If Kevin and the documents tell the tale, Zelikow lied to both Shenon and then to Kevin about his actions on the commission.
This is important for several reasons. I'm the last to get into another endless 9/11 wrangle, but Zelikow has recently been lionized as a truth-teller in regard to the Bush torture policies. All kudos to him for stepping up on that issue, but we should remember that Zelikow played a big part in steering the commission's investigation away from the White House (and specifically away from Rice, his mentor and friend). There are many reasons why the 9/11 commission failed to give a true and accurate picture of that event, and Zelikow is a big one. I'm all for Zelikow ripping the lid off of the Bush torture lies, but we have to remember, he is a proven and established liar. He was before this little tempest in a teapot, and he is more so today.
The issue isn't settled. You're welcome to dive into the posts on the HC blog and weigh in here or there.