Yesterday three American experts who participated in an independent inquiry into the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States arrived in Yerevan to help launch a similar probe of the post-election violence in Armenia and participate in the sessions of the RA committee on investigation of March 1 events.
Two of them, Christopher Kojm and Michael Hurley yesterday participated in the session of the ad hoc commission. During the session they emphasized that they never followed the goal of finding the culprits of the 9/11 crime. Despite that fact they found out that the Al Qaeda was guilty of the plane crush. They also stated that they will not conduct an assessment or report about the efforts underway in Armenia. The sole purpose of this visit is to convey information and insights about the lessons learned from the U.S. experience with the 9/11 Commission. Their colleague John Farmer will join them today. According to Christopher Kojm, the Deputy Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, in the US such an ad hoc commission was established because people wanted so and the attention of the administration was focused on the fight against terrorists and didn’t want to look back. According to him the relatives of the victims wished to find out the reason of the death of their counterparts. The statement of the experts was quite noteworthy, according to which the trust of the people to the ad hoc is very imprint. It’s not hard to guess that they were hinting at the lack of trust of our society to the ad hoc of Armenia. “Many Americans were thinking that the 9/11 occurred because of the incompetent and irrelevant work of the US state bodies and that they were not able to prevent the 9/11 attack. The American society demanded that the state established an ad hoc commission, which would examine and investigate the tragic events of 9/11. The 9/11 commission included 10 people – 5 democrats and 5 republicans, who previously were high-rank officially and occupied various state posts,” said the members of the 9/11 commission and added that these citizens at that time were non-partisan and retired citizens.
However these are not the only differences between the American and Armenian committees. “All our employees were hired on the basis of the principle of nonpartisanship. We have hired all of them due to their good knowledge as experts,” said Michael Hurley, lawyer and coordinator of the anti-terrorism investigation committee of September 11 terror. Yesterday he was trying to convince the members of the committee on the events of March1-2 that first of all they tried to find out what the failures of the American security bodies were and what they were doing when the terror happened. He says that president Bush instructed all the divisions and departments to cooperate with them and provide them with all documents they need. If any body refuses to give any documents they can apply to court and get that document. “But we have not applied to court, we threatened that we would, and the public pressure was so much on them that they agreed to provide us with anything we need,” he said and noted that they had examined over two million pages of documents, interviewed over 1200 people, high rank officials inclusively. “Our goal was to show to the society what decisions the administration of Bush made at that time. We have all that information, we have recorded the interviews as well. We have left the conclusion for the people to make based on the interviews and facts in the report. Our administration was responsible and had to give answers to the questions of people. We understand that we don’t represent ourselves in the committees, we represent the American people. We were acting in the name of people and asking questions in the name of people. It is very important whether the committee enjoys the trust of people or no. At least one day someone will open the report, historians will open those documents and it is very important to show how well we worked and behaved,” he said to the commission members and added that they had reviewed confidential documents as well. As the American experts are here with the mission of changing with experience, they don’t suggest or advice anything to our committee members.
The head of the committee Samvel Nikoyan asked the experts what they had done if they need to invite not only incumbent officials, but also former officials. Answering to this question one of the guests said, “The former ones always cooperated with us, they told us their understanding of the story and they did not refuse to work with us. We have never been faced with a situation when we had to bring them to give testimony at the court”. Nikoyan said that in case of September 11 terror the nation was united for the purpose of finding the reasons of the terror, but now they are investigating a political case, in which the society is divided in two parts and is polarized. “We are still under the influence of those events, due to which there is big influence on the commission by the society and political environment,” he said and noted that the only similarity between these two commissions is openness and transparency.
Artsvik Minasyan, member of ARF, asked how the committee chose Al-Qaeda as target. “People were killed by terror organized by some powers. You directly chose Al-Qaeda as your target. Why?” asked Minasyan. “Any investigation, both your and our works, may be faced with some realities. FBI people were working with us too. From the beginning the commission started working based on the administrative investigation, the information provided by the Congress. The Congress presented the report in 2003, and in the report Al-Qaeda was chosen as target,” he said.
The head of the National Consent party Aram Harutyunyan said that the terror of September 11 had been planned by the CIA and then asked whether they had been able to change the suspicions about it in the society. Kojm said that such versions never “die” and added that they had investigated all the versions and presented their findings to the society. A. Harutyunyan also asked which state institutions were guilty in it and whether they had been punished. “The only one that was guilty of September 11 terror is Al-Qaeda, but we were working also to find out whether the administration worked well and whether they carried out their security duties well. Some people blamed us of not saying who was guilty. They say that if we did it in our report, it would be better, but the Congress has not requested us to do so,” said Hurley.
Member of LS party Hovhannes Margaryan asked whether there had been any disagreements within their commission or no. Kojm said that there had been not only disagreements, but also conflicts, but the most important thing is that eventually all the members signed under the report. “The disagreements mainly concerned the point which of the administrations of Bush and Clinton was guilty more. For that purpose we concentrated on facts more, even we read their words. At that time there were no different opinions. The report was strong due to that consent and unity. If one or two committee members agreed, the report might be criticized by different powers. In a word, it is very important to agree jointly. When everyone signed the report I was in that room too, and I felt like a fly on the wall because it was very important for those people to accept that report,” he said and added that the report contained many provisions, where they wrote about the mistakes of the administration and state policy. He also said that they included almost all the documents presented by the administration in the report, but they included the documents not as the truth but as a base.
The most surprising thing during this meeting was NU members Sargis Muradkhanyan’s petition, which was evidently surprising to them as well. The latter asked the Americans to choose their words carefully when talking to people and journalists in Armenia because, as he says, their words may be subject to critics by the Armenian people consecutively. The American experts one more time informed S.Muradkhanyan, who repeated the word “please” for six times, that they had come to Armenia only for the purpose of changing with experience.