April 23, 2004, 11:47 a.m.
The H-Bomb
Bob Kerrey’s daily soundbite.

"I keep hearing the excuse we didn't have actionable intelligence. Well, what the hell does that say to al Qaeda?" — 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey to former secretary of state Madeleine Albright.

"We only swatted a fly once, on the 20th of August, 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he [Bush] be tired?" — 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey to National Security Advisor Condi Rice

"I mean, I heard in earlier panels they said, well, we just didn't realize these guys were this sophisticated. I mean, get the hell out of here...I didn't realize they could fly a plane. Get the hell out of here.... I mean, you've got to start by saying every single one of us made a huge miscalculation and it got us into a hell of a lot of trouble... We made a terrible mistake and we paid a hell of a price for it." — 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey to Adm. James Loy

"Mitch McConnell is the Republican whip of the Senate and he's accusing us of being too partisan? He can go to hell for all I'm concerned." — 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey to the New York Times, after McConnell complained the panel was growing partisan

Okay, senator. We get it. You're mad as hell, and you're not going to take it anymore. There's hell to pay. Your odds of getting a clear answer are that of a snowball's chance in hell, but you're trying anyway, even if you have to wait until it freezes over.

We know war is hell, and investigating the War on Terror sounds like hell, too. Sometimes it seems like the commission's work is going to that place in a hand-basket. Or, perhaps like Harry S. Truman, Kerrey sees himself as giving us the truth, and we think it's hell. He means well. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

But flaming eternal punishment aside, the regular utterance of H-E-double-hockey-sticks is starting to become a predictable method of telegraphing Kerrey's sound bite of the day. Against the backdrop of the bland Washingtonese of Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, and the theatrical Watergate flashbacks of Richard "What-did-the-president-know-and-when-did-he-know-it" Ben Veniste, Kerrey has staked his claim as the impatient, loose-cannon of the panel — the hell-raiser, if you will. He speaks a red-white-and-blue-streak, defining the term plain-spoken. Extremely plain-spoken.

Commission member Timothy Roemer also tried dropping the H-bomb, but his usage came across as imagery rather than exasperated punctuation.

"19 hijackers drove us into the jaws of hell, where we are today, trying to resolve some of these tough questions," Roemer said at an early hearing.

So far, CIA Director George Tenet has been the only member of either (or in his case, both) administration to fight hell-fire with hell-fire. Where Rice or Albright might have felt that colloquial expressions were beneath the occasion, Tenet has shown he's willing to follow Kerrey right into hell.

He's told the commission that "men and women here who have lost their families have to know that we have got to do a hell of a lot better." But, defending his agency, he's argued that in terms of "bang for the buck, the American people get a hell of a lot for what we give them." He told the commission that the fear of a Millennium bombing "was followed by the October 2000 Cole bombing, then threats during the Ramadan period at the end of 2000. "You're running like hell" during this entire period, he said. Until officials live through one of these periods, he added, they cannot understand what it is like.

But what began as a flash of anger for the television cameras, a bit of bar-stool sarcasm to rattle the pinstripe-suited, perfectly coiffed Cabinet members sitting under the klieg lights, is rapidly turning into a cliché. Who the hell, what the hell, where the hell, get the hell out of here, go to hell...

It's easy to forget "what the hell" the panel's mission was in the first place. Oh yes, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks, and to provide recommendations designed to guard against future attacks." But is that what we've gotten?

It feels like we've gotten more playing to the television cameras than the O .J. Simpson trial, with the commission members doing televised interviews and press conferences when they're not holding their televised hearings. Ben-Veniste's done, in the span of a week, interviews on Larry King, Paula Zahn, Jim Lehrer, Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Good Morning America, and Fox News Sunday. What, no American Idol? The guy's on television more often these days than Donald Trump.

"What the hell" were Republican commission members John Lehman and James Thompson thinking, each donating $2,000 to President Bush's reelection campaign? (Kean gave $2,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and $2,000 to the New Jersey State Republican Committee.) Of course, they look like cheapskates compared to Jamie Gorelick, who has donated $13,250 in the last 16 months to Democrats, including $2,000 last spring to Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign, $2,000 to Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt, and $1,000 to Gen. Wesley Clark.

For that matter, "what the hell" is going on with Gorelick not stepping down from Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, the Washington law firm representing Prince Mohammed al-Faisal al-Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family and director of a Saudi financial agency, against a lawsuit filed by a coalition of 600 September 11 families?

How many times, as a lawmaker, did GOP Senator Slade Gorton of Washington raise the threat of hijackings as chair of the Senate transportation panel's aviation subcommittee to his fellow lawmakers? How many times did Roemer raise the threat of al Qaeda to his colleagues as a member of the House Intelligence committee? Or Kerrey on the Senate counterpart? Shouldn't they testify to why they underestimated the threat from their positions of responsibility?

John Lehman was secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1987. Did he do enough at that time to convince the Reagan administration that withdrawing from Lebanon would encourage terrorists for years to come?

Just what expertise on any topic related to terrorism, hijackings, intelligence, military force, does Ben-Veniste bring to the table? Or was he picked because he knows how to ask questions in a dramatic manner?

And if all of these members didn't do enough to prevent 9/11 in their previous jobs around Washington, why are they considered appropriate judges of anybody in the Clinton or Bush administrations?

It's enough to make someone wonder what the — you-know-where — is going on.

— Jim Geraghty, a reporter with States News Service in Washington, is a frequent contributor to NRO and a commentator on London's ITN News.

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