September 15, 2003 or Shortly After: Some 9/11 Commission Staffers ‘Furious’ at Executive Director Zelikow’s Contacts with Karl Rove

A 9/11 Commission staffer notices a record of phone calls made to Philip Zelikow, the Commission’s executive director, on the desk of Zelikow’s secretary. Glancing at it, the staffer notices the name “Rove,” a reference to White House adviser Karl Rove, who recently called Zelikow (see September 4-15, 2003). Paging through the records, the staffer finds other references to calls made by Rove to Zelikow (see June 23-24, 2003), as well as calls from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to Zelikow. According to author Philip Shenon: “The next day, word of Zelikow’s contacts at the White House began to spread wildly through the Commission. For many of the staff, it was just what they had suspected: Zelikow was some kind of White House mole, feeding information back to the administration about the Commission’s findings. Now, they thought, they had proof of it.” Some of the staffers debate whether to make a formal protest to the Commission’s chairman and vice chairman, but decide against doing so, worrying about the scandal if the news ever leaked. Shenon will add: “They were furious with what Zelikow had done and how his conflicts had threatened the integrity of the investigation. But they knew how valuable this work was and how valuable their affiliation with the 9/11 Commission would be to their careers. They wanted its legacy to be untarnished.” Despite this, some of the 9/11 victims’ family members will learn of the contacts, as will a reporter (see September 16, 2003 or Shortly After). [Shenon, 2008, pp. 107, 172]