Richard Ben-Veniste
Richard Ben-Veniste
Richard Ben-Veniste, is an American lawyer. He first rose to prominence as a special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal. He has also been a member of the 9/11 Commission. He is known for his pointed questions and criticisms of members of both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionLawyer
Date of Birth3 January 1943
CountryUnited States of America
current deal including obliged period prior thank
Well, our concern has to do with the period prior to 9/11, up to and including the catastrophe that occurred. And thank goodness, we're not obliged to make assessments of what's going on now and deal with these current events.
No connection between Iraq and the 9/11 catastrophe.
commission fully information quite roberts turned utilize
And it turned out that the Roberts Commission did not fully utilize the information available and that it came to conclusions which were I think quite short sighted and, indeed, in some cases, scapegoated individuals.
believe cost ford margin pardon premature timing
While I do not believe Ford was wrong to pardon Nixon, the timing of the pardon was premature and may have cost Ford the margin of victory in the 1976 election.
intelligence knew prior qaeda talked ultimately united
Well, our position, and our chairman has talked about this extensively, is that we had a lot of intelligence prior to 9/11. We knew that two al Qaeda operatives who ultimately participated in the 9/11 disaster were in the United States. We didn't find them.
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At bottom, the decision to pardon Nixon was a political judgment properly within the bounds of Ford's constitutional authority. The specter of a former president in the criminal dock as our country moved into its bicentennial year was profoundly disturbing.
account bipartisan criticism daunting definitive fear happened last provide survive task
We've got a daunting enough task to provide a definitive account of what happened in 9/11, without fear or favor, something that will last and will survive criticism over time. And we think we can do that with integrity in a bipartisan report.
basically broad complete conduct provides scrutiny
Well, our statute provides us with authority to conduct a very broad inquiry basically to provide an investigation of 9/11 that's thorough, complete and will withstand the scrutiny of history.
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We've had public hearings. We've had interim reports, which our statute has encouraged us to provide to the public. We have brought the public along with us, trying to make as much available as possible over time.
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So we knew their intentions were to strike in the United States. We also knew from other sources of dozens of examples of where the notion of using planes as weapons was discussed.
easy questions
It was not easy to get all my questions answered, frankly.
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Only the last two planes, I think, had any shot of being intercepted and taken down on 9/11.
bin bombing knew strike struck united
The real question was, here we had this information, Bin Laden intends to strike in the United States. We knew they had struck before in 1993 at the World Trade Center in the first bombing of the trade center.
expects joint mandate permitted places
Our mandate expects that we will build on the Joint Inquiry's investigation and we will not be re-inventing the wheel. But we go to places which the Joint Inquiry was not permitted to explore.