The staffers also worried about minders taking “verbatim notes of witnesses’ statements,” as they thought this “conveys to witnesses that their superiors will review their statements and may engage in retribution.” They believed that “the net effect of minders’ conduct, whether intentionally or not, is to intimidate witnesses and to interfere with witnesses providing full and candid responses.”
Another problem with the verbatim notetaking was that it “facilitates agencies in alerting future witnesses to the Commission’s lines of inquiry and permits agencies to prepare future witnesses either explicitly or implicitly.”
Proposals
In response to this, the three staffers proposed not that minders be banned from interviews, but a set of rules governing minders’ conduct. For example, minders were to keep a “low profile,” sit out of witnesses’ sight, not take verbatim notes and not answer any questions directed at the witnesses.
Perhaps the most remarkable proposal is that the number of minders be limited to one per witness. The memo indicates that where an interviewee had served in multiple agencies, more than one minder would accompany the witness. The memo therefore requests, “Only one minder may attend an interview even if the witness served in multiple agencies,” meaning a witness would at least not be outnumbered by his minders.
As the Family Steering Committee (made up of 9/11 victims' family members) wrote in 2003:
The FSC [Family Steering Committee] is shocked with the use of “minders” in the interrogatory process. And, despite the Commissioner's similar objection to “minders”, as stated at the last press conference, “minders” continue to be present during witness examination and questioning. The FSC does not want “minders” present during any witness examination and questioning; it is a form of intimidation and it does not yield the unfettered truth.Indeed, even 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton admitted that "it is very difficult to tell when a witness is being intimidated by a minder."
Not only did the Bush administration adopt Communist torture techniques geared towards extracting false confessions, it also appears to have adopted Communist intimidation tactics.
*Note: If the memo looks fuzzy online, download it to your computer, and it will stop appearing fuzzy. It is simply the online reader which makes it appear fuzzy.
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