Zelikow is a student on the creation of public myths funnily enough. Very apt…
‘While at Harvard he worked with Ernest May and Richard Neustadt on the use, and misuse, of history in policymaking. They observed, as Zelikow noted in his own words, that "contemporary" history is "defined functionally by those critical people and events that go into forming the public's presumptions about its immediate past. The idea of 'public presumption'," he explained, "is akin to William McNeill's notion of 'public myth' but without the negative implication sometimes invoked by the word 'myth.' Such presumptions are beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community."
‘…In writing about the importance of beliefs about history, Zelikow has called attention to what he has called "'searing' or 'molding' events [that] take on 'transcendent' importance and, therefore, retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene. In the United States, beliefs about the formation of the nation and the Constitution remain powerful today, as do beliefs about slavery and the Civil War. World War II, Vietnam, and the civil rights struggle are more recent examples." He has noted that "a history’s narrative power is typically linked to how readers relate to the actions of individuals in the history; if readers cannot make a connection to their own lives, then a history may fail to engage them at all."[9]
Zelikow has also written about terrorism and national security, including a set of Harvard case studies on "Policing Northern Ireland." In the November-December 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs, he co-authored an article Catastrophic Terrorism, with Ashton B. Carter, and John M. Deutch, in which they speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded, "the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently."
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His cosyness to the administration is clear. As has been pointed out, Kissinger was the first choice, he had to resign because of his conflicts of interest. He was an adviser for Unocal.
Commision co-chairman, Thomas Keane, also is connected to the Saudi company Delta Oil, the main man behind which was one of the top sponsors of Al-Quaeda. Also, Delta Oil was Unocal’s partner in the proposed Afghan oil and gas pipelines.
Kyzer Soze. You say we do not know what was on the tapes. We do, because we know what Zubaydah revealed under interrogation. Ok, you will have to take Gerald Posner's word for it, he says CIA agents revealed this to him. He seems credible though. If you want to believe that they simply forgot to tape this particular interrogation, which they went through great trouble to set up, well thats up to you.
Other than that, we know that suspects have been protected, at the behest of foreign agents, by State Department officials (Edmonds). So there is complicity.
