346 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
divisions,” according to Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, the chairman and
vice chairman.^5
Of the friendships forged by the commission, none were closer than
Gorton and Gorelick. Bob Kerrey was already an old friend from the
Senate—someone Slade respected enormously. Gorton relished the
moments—frequent—when Kerrey was deliciously blunt. Told that the Fed-
eral Aviation Administration’s point man for a teleconference on Septem-
ber 11 had zero experience with hijacking situations, Kerrey demanded,
“What the hell is going on that you would do such a thing?”^6
Lee Hamilton, a personable Indiana Democrat who had spent 34 years
in Congress, immediately recognized Gorton as a key player. Kean, a for-
mer two-term New Jersey governor, also got along well with the Demo-
crats on the commission. “Tom Kean is one of the world’s nicest people,”
Gorton says. “Nobody ever wanted to disappoint him.”
Early on, the commission set out to examine the performance of the
FAA and the North American Aerospace Defense Command. What secu-
rity measures were in place at airports? What happened after air traffic
controllers lost cockpit contact with the four hijacked jetliners on 9/11?
How quickly did NORAD scramble fighters? The commission’s request
for disclosure of tapes and transcripts met with foot-dragging at the
FAA, which Gorton already believed deserved “the shameful distinction
of being the most culpable for the attacks.” A frequent flyer for 25 years,
Gorton recoiled in horror as the commissioners inspected a folding
blade—nearly four inches of razor-sharp forged steel—that FAA regula-
tions allowed passengers to carry aboard a plane. He also found it unbe-
lievable that before 9/11 the agency’s security chief was unaware that the
State Department had a terrorist watch list. As a former Air Force colo-
nel, Gorton was also infuriated with NORAD, which had engaged in
butt-covering PR, even outright lies, over its indecisive response to the
hijackings. “[T]hey are responsible for a lot of the conspiracy theories that
we have to deal with to this day,” he said of the generals.^7
The FAA’s intransigence convinced several commissioners they ought
to subpoena every agency of the Executive Branch. Gorton counseled they
should save their hand grenades. They decided to subpoena the FAA and
issue a stern warning that everyone else could expect the same absent
“full compliance” with the commission’s requests for documents.^8
After months of haggling to gain access to the Presidential Daily Briefs
prepared by the CIA—a trove spanning the Clinton and Bush adminis-
trations—the commission had another tense meeting in the fall of 2003.
The White House was unwilling to let the entire commission review the