Panel's Lack of Access to 9/11 Papers Is Decried

One member's attempt to review confidential transcripts exposed a rift yesterday within the independent commission examining the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Timothy J. Roemer, a member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, criticized the panel's leaders for not demanding immediate and total access to documents compiled during a congressional inquiry on the terrorist attacks.

The commission's executive director, Philip Zelikow, said the panel will ultimately get unfettered access.

Roemer, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, tried to review the transcripts of the joint hearings held last year by the House and Senate intelligence committees. He learned that he had no permission to see them, even though he had served on the joint committee hearings and had, therefore, read the material before.

Roemer called the experience outrageous. He noted that the commission, by law, must build upon the work of the congressional inquiry, which found that organizational problems and human failings had prevented U.S. intelligence agencies from unraveling the Sept. 11 plot.

"The basic foundational work of the commission is the joint inquiry's product", Roemer said. "To delay access to that, to hinder access to that, is out of bounds."

Zelikow said the commission has clear authority to view the documents but that, as a courtesy, it is giving congressional and White House officials several days to review the estimated 500,000 pages generated by the congressional inquiry.

He said the panel will fight any attempt by Congress or the White House to keep the documents secret. "If it becomes an issue of access, we will have a big issue, and I believe we will win on the merits", Zelikow said. "But that issue hasn't come up yet."

He said the commission has already received "an awful lot of other extremely sensitive material".