9-11 Commission Hearings

I had listened to a bunch of the 9-11 Commission Hearings offered by Audible last October. Tried to stick with the interesting interviews. Some were extremely B-O-R-I-N-G, and especially some of the bonehead questions. Duh, everything is clear with 20-20 hindsight. Of course nobody in their wildest dreams imagined a scenario with jumbo jets flying into both buildings of the World Trade Center. Rudy Giuliani was excellent, especially his recounting of his own day. You can feel the rumbling, the dust, the panic and the leadership all in through his words.

The most scathing report came from Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism adviser. The interviewers were shocked that he would try to spin things so that the administration wouldn't look bad. He summed that up perfectly with, "I don't think it's a question of morality at all, it's a question of politics."

The interesting thing about these Audible broadcasts is that they are totally unedited. There were a few times that protesters (how did they get in?) would start shouting over the speakers. It is kind of hard to discern what they are saying but the outbursts are something like "They killed my son!" and "Our government has given 3 million dollars to fund Osama." It really disrupted the hearings and it took security a good 2 minutes before escorting them out. Cool to hear that stuff, it certainly is not included in the Commission Reports.