15 December 2002
Bush under pressure over terrorism inquiry
By Andrew Gumbel,
The Independent

The name consistently touted by the victims' families is Warren Rudman, a former Republican Senator and co-author of a report which warned months before 11 September of the risk of an attack on US soil. The White House has so far resisted his appointment, leading to suspicion that President Bush is not interested in an investigation that risks embarrassing his administration.

Mr Kissinger, the one-time supremo of US foreign policy, resigned on Friday, just two weeks after his controversial appointment. He said he was not willing to publicise the names of his international consulting firm's clients - something the Senate Ethics Committee had insisted on to avoid any possible conflict of interest.

His departure left the commission in disarray, not least because the former Democratic Senator George Mitchell, slated to serve as his deputy, withdrew two days before him, also citing conflicts with his private-sector career.

The administration has promised it will move quickly to replace Mr Kissinger, though probably not before today's nominal deadline for filling all 10 commission posts. In the meantime, it is facing criticism - for its reluctance to establish a commission at all, for its appointment of so polarising a figure as Mr Kissinger and for its apparent efforts to protect the confidentiality of Mr Kissinger's client list.

"The pressure put on the Ethics Committee by the White House was untoward," the Democratic Senate whip Harry Reid told the New York Times. "They were berating our staff, saying he didn't have to file because he worked for the executive. I mean, come on. What were they trying to hide?"

Stephen Push of Families of Sept. 11th said he found the back-to-back resignations of Mr Mitchell and Mr. Kissinger "disturbing". But he said the situation gave the president "a second chance to appoint someone who will be a thorough investigator".

12 September 2001
Destroy The Network
by Henry Kissinger
The Washington Post

An attack such as yesterday's requires systematic planning, a good organization, a lot of money and a base. You cannot improvise something like this, and you cannot plan it when you're constantly on the move. Heretofore our response to attacks, and understandably so, has been to carry out some retaliatory act that was supposed to even the scales while hunting down the actual people who did it.

This, however, is an attack on the territorial United States, which is a threat to our social way of life and to our existence as a free society. It therefore has to be dealt with in a different way -- with an attack on the system that produces it.

The immediate response, of course, has to be taking care of casualties and restoring some sort of normal life. We must get back to work almost immediately, to show that our life cannot be disrupted. And we should henceforth show more sympathy for people who are daily exposed to this kind of attack, whom we keep telling to be very measured in their individual responses.

But then the government should be charged with a systematic response that, one hopes, will end the way that the attack on Pearl Harbor ended -- with the destruction of the system that is responsible for it. That system is a network of terrorist organizations sheltered in capitals of certain countries. In many cases we do not penalize those countries for sheltering the organizations; in other cases, we maintain something close to normal relations with them.

It is hard to say at this point what should be done in detail. If a week ago I had been asked whether such a coordinated attack as yesterday's was possible, I, no more than most people, would have thought so, so nothing I say is meant as a criticism. But until now we have been trying to do this as a police matter, and now it has to be done in a different way.

Of course there should be some act of retaliation, and I would certainly support it, but it cannot be the end of the process and should not even be the principal part of it. The principal part has to be to get the terrorist system on the run, and by the terrorist system I mean those parts of it that are organized on a global basis and can operate by synchronized means.

We do not yet know whether Osama bin Laden did this, although it appears to have the earmarks of a bin Laden- type operation. But any government that shelters groups capable of this kind of attack, whether or not they can be shown to have been involved in this attack, must pay an exorbitant price.

The question is not so much what kind of blow we can deliver this week or next. And the response, since our own security was threatened, cannot be made dependent on consensus, though this is an issue on which we and our allies must find a cooperative means of resistance that is not simply the lowest common denominator.

It is something we should do calmly, carefully and inexorably.

The writer is a former secretary of state.