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. Richard Ben-Veniste Read Quote
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. Richard Ben-Veniste Read Quote
When Richard M. Nixon resigned and Ford became the 38th president of the United States, the Watergate Special Prosecutor’s Office, of which I was a member, was preparing for the criminal trials of Nixon’s top aides – H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell. Richard Ben-Veniste Read Quote
Gerald R. Ford was a decent and honorable man. Under his steady hand, the nation began the process of recovering from the terrible trauma of Watergate – the lies, distortions, cover-ups, misuses of federal agencies to exact political revenge, illegal wiretapping, burglaries. Richard Ben-Veniste Read Quote
In an age when many of our citizens casually reveal information about themselves in social media wildly beyond anything imaginable only a decade ago, it would seem to be a useful exercise in civics to re-educate the public about the value and purpose of protecting against unwarranted government intrusion. Richard Ben-Veniste Read Quote
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. Richard Ben-Veniste Read Quote
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. Richard Ben-Veniste Read Quote
Well, changes have been made. The question is whether we’ve done enough by way of change. Richard Ben-Veniste Read Quote
