The Other Gonzales Letter to the 9/11 Commission
As is now well-known, White House Counsel Albert Gonzales sent a letter to the 9/11 Commission this week detailing the Administration’s generous accommodation of the Commission’s request to hear from both Vice-President Dick Cheney and President George Bush.
As Gonzales clarified in his original letter dated March 30, 2004 the President and Vice President were to appear before all 10 of the Commission members. However, there was to be no official transcript made of the proceedings; rather, one note-taker would simply be allowed to capture as much of the proceeding as possible. Additionally, the appearance would be in private, without any print or broadcast media allowed to witness the proceedings. Only the 10 Commissioners, Vice President Cheney and President Bush would be present. Finally, Bush and Cheney would appear jointly.
However, sources have now revealed the presence of a second letter from Gonzales to the Commission, which illuminates further “accommodations” provided by the White House to the Commission. It reads:
Dear Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton:
As we discussed this morning, my first letter to you was to establish the overall framework for the President and Vice President’s conditions for appearance before your Commission. While we hope that you will accept the generous offer of their time and testimony, it is important that you do so with a full understanding of the requirements for their testimony. For purposes of brevity, I was not able to include them in the initial letter.
The conditions are in addition to those conditions outlined in the initial letter, and are as follows:
The one assigned note-taker must limit all notations to words actually spoken by either Vice President Cheney or President Bush directly to the Commission in response to a question. NO notations can be made by any Commissioner, or by the assigned note-taker, of any sidebar conversations, should they happen to occur, between Vice President Cheney and President Bush. In fact, no writing materials, including pens, pencils, markers, crayons, etc., or paper, will be allowed to be possessed by the Commissioners during the testimony. As we all know, they are there to listen to the important testimony offered by Vice President Cheney and President Bush.
This is, of course, a critical matter of National Security. When a Vice President and a President confer about such sensitive matters, their deliberations should remain private insomuch as is possible. But of course, here we find ourselves in this Constitutional Crisis, and so these deliberations are being forced upon the 10 Commissioners. As such, any recitation, recollection or description of any conversations that may occur between Vice President Cheney and President Bush would be seen as a violation of national security, and could reasonably be construed as treason, punishable by death.
Just to ensure that everyone understands our requirement, let us draw this scenario:
The Commission asks President Bush a question, such as “Please state your immediate reaction upon hearing about the second plane hitting the World Trade Center”.
President Bush confers with Vice President Cheney before answering something like, “What do I say here, Dick? I think I said something about that being one stupid pilot or something. And then that Andy Card told me we was being attacked, and that got me mad, but I liked hearing that story them kids were talking about, so I tried not to think about it for a few minutes.”
Vice President Cheney might then respond, “No, Mr. President, don’t say that. Say that you were outraged, and that you immediately began planning for the defense of the country.”
These types of sidebar conferences, should any occur, are not to be recorded by the note-taker, nor even mentioned. Instead, the note-taker would enter into the record the following response from President Bush, directly in answer to the Commission: “I was outraged, and I immediately began planning for the defense of our great nation,” or something as close to that as possible.
Naturally, this is a difficult standard to achieve, and we fear that it may squelch the truth-seeking nature of this Commission if (nearly) everyone in the room has the black cloud of the death penalty hanging over their head. Despite that, we are willing to move forward with this alternative, should the Commission deem such a course of action advisable.
However, to eliminate this messy bugaboo, the White House would like to suggest the use of the Black Box for the testimony. We have been using the Black Box for years now, to great effect. In practice, the Black Box will work like this: The Commission will ask either Vice President Cheney or President Bush a question. Then, both Vice President Cheney and President Bush will enter the Black Box, which is as it sounds, a large soundproof Black Box made of Teflon and other classified materials. Inside this Black Box, they will do everything in their power to ensure that the Commission gets the most direct, accurate and honest answer to their questions, despite the fact that no oath has been taken.
Once a satisfactory answer has been developed, they will use the phone inside the Black Box to dial in to the Commission’s speakerphone, and the answer will be given. Then, once the answer is given, they will both emerge from the Black Box. Do not be alarmed by the fact that you will not recognize the voice of the respondent to each question; that is a National Security feature of the Black Box which unfortunately cannot be disabled at this time. You’ll just have to trust that if you asked President Bush the question, it will be President Bush who is answering. Same with questions posed to the Vice President. You’ll just have to trust that President Bush will not be fielding those questions himself.
Our last condition involves what happens after Vice President Cheney and President Bush testify. In short, since they are the highest officials in the land, we feel that they should rightly be the “headliners”, so to speak. In other words, after they are done testifying, there is to be no additional testimony. In fact, there is to be no investigative Commission activity whatsoever after the testimony, other than the submission of the final report, which we would require inside of 24 hours after the end of Vice President Cheney and President Bush’s testimony. No additional calls for witnesses, no evidentiary subpoenas, no calling George Tenet to contradict the Vice President, or David Kay, or Hans Blix, no press releases, nothing. (Not that you can find anyone to contradict what our Vice-President or President will say, of course.) To allow such testimony wouldn’t be fair to Vice President Cheney or President Bush and their elected status.
Oh, and one more thing: Please submit the list of questions to be asked at least one month in advance of testimony. No questions that deviate from this list will be addressed, due to National Security concerns. Also, for environmental reasons, please limit the questions to one 5 x 8 note card, with a font-size no smaller than 12, for eyesight considerations.
I look forward to continuing to work with the commission to help it obtain the information it needs to fulfill its statutory mandate.
Best,
Alberto Gonzales, White House Counsel
3:57:28 PM 
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