WASHINGTON, Dec 14: Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger stepped down on Friday as chairman of a blue ribbon commission investigating the United States’ failure to prevent the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, in a move which was welcomed by groups representing the families of those killed.
In a letter to President Bush, Kissinger, 79, said that he was concerned that combining his role as chairman with his ownership of an international consulting firm which advises foreign clients would embroil both bodies in controversy, even though he was prepared to disclose any potential conflicts of interest to the White House.
“To remove any questions about even the appearance of a conflict of interest, I was prepared ... to submit all relevant financial information to the White House, as well as to independent review and in the end to any procedure, consistent with submissions of other members of the Joint Commission,” he wrote.
“However, it is clear that, although specific potential conflicts can be resolved in this manner, the controversy would quickly move to the consulting firm I have built and own.” To break the firm up, the letter says, would delay the start of the commission’s work. Since Kissinger says he wants the panel to work “without delay or distraction,” he concludes, “I cannot accept the responsibility you propose.”
President Bush, in a statement on Friday, said his administration “will work quickly to select a new chairman whose mission will be to uncover every detail and learn every lesson of Sept 11, even as we act on what we have learned so far to better protect and defend America.”
Of Kissinger, Bush said in accepting his resignation, “his chairmanship would have provided the insights and analysis the government needs to understand the methods of our enemies and the nature of the threats we face”
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States was set up to discover how the United States failed to prevent the Sept 11 suicide hijackings, which killed nearly 3,000 Americans. The president signed the act of Congress bringing it into being on Nov 27.
But the commission has been beset by problems and controversy ever since. White House sources told United Press International on Thursday that — though expected to be up and running late this month or early next month — the panel is still in a state of flux, with no offices, no desks and not even a telephone number.
Kissinger is the second senior member to quit this week. The vice chairman, former Democratic Senate majority leader George Mitchell resigned on Wednesday, saying he had not realized how much work was involved and could not afford to leave his law practice.
Both men have repeatedly denied that they would have — or even appear to have — any conflict of interest in investigating the failures of the US intelligence community and the possible complicity in the attacks of foreign entities and governments.
Mitchell said in his resignation letter, “as to conflicts (of interest), I have already stated publicly that I have none and that I would immediately stop representing and have no further contact with any client of my firm who becomes involved in the inquiry.”
Nonetheless, both men quit after a report prepared for Senate Governmental Affairs Committee by the Congressional Research Service found that all the members of the commission would be bound by the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, and that — under the supervision of the Senate Ethics Committee — they would have to publicly disclose “detailed information about income, assets ... liabilities, positions held in private entities and organizations, agreements or understandings for future employment or re-employment,” and about any clients from whom they had earned more than $5,000 in the past two years.
Both men have lucrative private sector jobs with extensive client lists.
The White House believed that the commission’s chairman — because he is part-time, unpaid and appointed by the president — should only be subject to the much less detailed — and less public — disclosure requirements for executive branch officials.
“The White House had a different opinion (about disclosure requirements),” one Democratic official familiar with the issue told United Press International, “but I never saw anything from them that cited the law and legal precedent like (the CRS report) did.” No one form the White House had any comment on Friday evening.
A spokesman for a coalition of four groups representing the families of the victims of the attacks welcomed Kissinger’s decision. “This is a wonderful opportunity for the president to correct the mistake he made and appoint the right person for the job — Senator Warren Rudman,” Stephen Push of the “Families of Sept 11” group said.
“If Kissinger had remained chairman there would always have been questions about how thorough the inquiry was,” he said.
Push maintained that Rudman would do his best to get to the bottom of the issue, which he said made him a difficult choice for some. “Someone has been blocking Rudman’s appointment because he is a highly qualified candidate who would be a dogged investigator,” he said.
Push was of the opinion that Kissinger had stepped down because he was reluctant to make his client list public. “I spoke with him by telephone on Monday and met with him on Thursday (in his New York office) and he made it very clear to me on both occasions that he was not going to release his client list to the public ... . I cannot think of any other reason why he would have quit like that. He gave no hint of his intention to go when we met, in fact we discussed the date for our next meeting.”
Originally an academic, he was appointed national security adviser by President Richard Nixon and later became Secretary of State, a post he also held in the succeeding administration of President Gerald Ford.
Actions during his tenure led to his sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho for helping the United States withdraw from the Vietnam War. But they also earned him opprobrium from critics, who accused Kissinger of lying to Congress, needlessly extending the war and orchestrating the overthrow of Chile’s elected president, Salvador Allende.
Criticism had followed him to this latest posting, with some suggesting his appointment heralded a cover up of the circumstances that lead up to the attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people.
