On the day the 9/11 Commission Report was issued BBC-TV had scheduled me for comment on it, minutes after its release, at the BBC bureau in Washington. I drove home the amazing point that NO ONE, NO ONE, NOT ONE SOLITARY SOUL WAS BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE!
As I left the TV studio for the outer room, in walked 9/11 Commissioners Jamie Gorelick and former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Washington, to present their own commentary to BBC viewers. Gorelick went right into the studio; I took advantage of being one-on-one with Sen. Gorton.
“Sen. Gorton,” I asked, “I don’t quite understand all this talk alleging that ‘No one is in charge of the intelligence community.’ You are surely aware that, by act of Congress, there is such a person, and right now that happens to be Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet.”
The avuncular Gorton tiptoed up to me, put his right hand around my shoulder, and with a conspiratorial whisper said, “Yes, Ray, of course I know that. We all know that. But George would not take charge; he would not do what he was supposed to.”
True, this was hardly news to me, but coming from a 9/11 Commissioner? I was about to respond with something like, “So you need to create another layer, a superstructure over existing arrangements, to address that problem?”
