Philip Zelikow

Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission who controlled the investigation into the September 11 attacks despite extensive conflicts of interest, including close personal and professional ties to the Bush administration and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Field	Details
Full Name	Philip David Zelikow
Role	Academic / Government Official / Commission Executive Director
Platform	9/11 Commission, University of Virginia, U.S. State Department
Notable Works	The 9/11 Commission Report (2004), "Catastrophic Terrorism" (Foreign Affairs, 1998), Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (co-authored with Condoleezza Rice, 1995), To Build a Better World (co-authored with Rice, 2019)
Evidence Rating	STRONG EVIDENCE (of conflicts of interest and investigation limitations)

Background and Career

Philip Zelikow holds a BA in history and political science from the University of Redlands, a JD from the University of Houston Law Center, and a PhD in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He began his career as a trial and appellate lawyer in Texas before entering government service through the Foreign Service examination process.

In 1989, during the George H.W. Bush administration, Zelikow was detailed to the National Security Council, where he worked on diplomacy surrounding German reunification. It was during this period that he formed a close working relationship with Condoleezza Rice, then a Soviet affairs specialist on the NSC. The two would go on to co-author Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995), a collaboration that cemented a professional partnership lasting decades.

Zelikow served at Harvard's Kennedy School from 1991 to 1998, then moved to the University of Virginia, where he became the White Burkett Miller Professor of History and directed the Miller Center of Public Affairs, the nation's largest center on the American presidency. His final full-time government position was as Counselor of the Department of State (2005-2007), serving as a deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The 1998 "Catastrophic Terrorism" Article

In November 1998, Zelikow co-authored "Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger" for Foreign Affairs magazine with former Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and former CIA Director John Deutch. The article warned that terrorists might gain access to weapons of mass destruction and carry out attacks that would fundamentally transform American society.

Zelikow wrote that such an event, "Like Pearl Harbor... would divide our past and future into a before and after." The article described how such an attack could lead to restrictions on civil liberties, increased surveillance, and detention of suspects on lesser charges. Critics have noted the article reads as an eerily precise prediction of both the 9/11 attacks and the government response that followed, including the PATRIOT Act, mass surveillance, and indefinite detention.

Expert in "Public Myths"

At a 1998 conference, Zelikow discussed his academic specialty: the "creation and maintenance of public myths," which he defined as "beliefs thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty) and shared in common within the relevant political community." He noted that particularly "searing" or "molding" events take on "transcendent" importance and retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene.

Critics have pointed to this expertise as deeply relevant to his later role shaping the official 9/11 narrative — the man who literally studied how public beliefs about transformative events are constructed was then placed in charge of constructing the official account of the most transformative event of the 21st century.

Conflicts of Interest

The Bush Transition Team

When George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, Rice tasked Zelikow with joining the NSC transition team. According to journalist Philip Shenon, Zelikow was specifically responsible for reviewing counterterrorism operations at the White House. In this capacity, he was reportedly the architect responsible for demoting Richard Clarke and his counter-terrorism team within the NSC — the very team that had been sounding alarms about al-Qaeda.

This meant that Zelikow bore potential responsibility for the weakening of counterterrorism capabilities in the months before 9/11, and was then appointed to lead the investigation into those very failures.

The Condoleezza Rice Relationship

Zelikow and Rice were not merely acquaintances. They co-authored a book together, served on the NSC together under Bush 41, and maintained a close personal and professional relationship. Rice recommended him for the transition team, and he later served as her deputy at the State Department. The 9/11 Family Steering Committee argued this relationship constituted a direct conflict of interest, as Rice was one of the senior officials whose pre-9/11 performance the Commission was supposed to evaluate.

The Pre-Emptive War Doctrine

According to Shenon's reporting, Zelikow had secretly authored — at Rice's request — the Bush administration's September 2002 National Security Strategy, the doctrine that justified unilateral and pre-emptive war. This was not disclosed on his resume when he was appointed to the Commission. He was simultaneously shaping the administration's post-9/11 foreign policy while supposedly conducting an independent investigation of the administration's pre-9/11 failures.

Controlling the Investigation

Pre-Written Report Outline

According to Philip Shenon's The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (2008), Zelikow and his associate Ernest May drafted a detailed outline of the final Commission Report — complete with chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings — in March 2003, before the investigation had meaningfully begun. Commission Chair Tom Kean and Vice Chair Lee Hamilton approved the outline but agreed it should be kept secret from the Commission staff to prevent the appearance that the investigation's conclusions were predetermined.

When staff members eventually discovered the outline existed, it deepened suspicions that the report's narrative had been decided in advance.

Blocking Witnesses and Documents

Zelikow had exclusive control over who the Commission interviewed and on what topics. Commission investigator Dana Lesemann, who had been researching a possible link between 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi and elements of the Saudi government, was fired by Zelikow after she obtained a copy of the classified 28 pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry through an unauthorized channel — pages Zelikow had repeatedly delayed providing to her.

Lesemann later told representatives of the Office of Military Commissions that Zelikow consistently sought "to blunt" inquiries "into Saudi involvement with the hijackers," including blocking her requests to interview individuals of interest and obtain relevant documents.

The "White House Mole" Allegation

Multiple Commission staff members viewed Zelikow as a White House operative. Shenon reported that Zelikow had private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove despite a ban on such communication, and later ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls. In staff meetings, Zelikow reportedly disparaged Richard Clarke — the former counterterrorism chief whose testimony was damaging to the Bush administration — to the point where one staff member threatened to resign over what he saw as Zelikow's bullying.

Commissioner Bob Kerrey threatened to leave the Commission when he discovered the full extent of Zelikow's ties to the administration.

Max Cleland's Resignation

Commissioner Max Cleland, a former U.S. Senator and triple-amputee Vietnam veteran, resigned from the 9/11 Commission in December 2003, calling it a "national scandal." Before resigning, Cleland stated:

"I... cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full access. This investigation is now compromised." — Max Cleland, November 2003

Cleland attacked the Commission after other members accepted a deal for highly limited access to CIA reports that may have indicated advance knowledge of the attacks on the part of the Bush administration. He accused the White House of "playing cover-up" and said the investigation was "on the verge of a whitewash."

Key Quotes

"Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after." — Philip Zelikow, "Catastrophic Terrorism," Foreign Affairs, November/December 1998

"The White House has played cover-up." — Max Cleland, former 9/11 Commissioner, Democracy Now, March 2004

"Zelikow consistently sought to blunt inquiries into Saudi involvement with the hijackers." — Dana Lesemann, 9/11 Commission investigator, as reported to the Office of Military Commissions

"Some staff members and more than a few people in the Washington press corps viewed Zelikow as a White House mole, intent on sanitizing the Bush administration's record." — Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (2008)

Key Arguments and Evidence Critics Cite

Zelikow had direct conflicts of interest through his relationship with Rice, his role on the Bush transition team, and his authorship of the pre-emptive war doctrine — none fully disclosed
The Commission Report outline was pre-written before the investigation began, suggesting predetermined conclusions
The investigator pursuing the Saudi connection was fired; the 28 pages remained classified until 2016
Zelikow's academic expertise was literally in the construction of public narratives around transformative events
His 1998 article predicted a Pearl Harbor-like catastrophic terrorism event with remarkable specificity
Commission access to Bush administration witnesses and documents was severely restricted
Phone logs to Karl Rove were destroyed on Zelikow's orders
Richard Clarke, whose testimony most damaged the Bush administration, was disparaged by Zelikow in staff meetings
The Commission never received "full access" to intelligence briefings and CIA documents, per Cleland

The Counterargument

Former 9/11 Commissioners — both Democrats and Republicans — publicly defended Zelikow after Shenon's book was published, stating there was "no basis for the allegations of bias." Zelikow himself appeared on Democracy Now in 2008 to rebut the charges, arguing that the Commission's bipartisan nature and the quality of the final report spoke for themselves.

Defenders note that the Commission's report was unanimously approved by all ten commissioners (after Cleland's departure), that Zelikow recused himself from matters related to the NSC transition he had managed, and that the report did contain significant criticisms of both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

However, the recusal was narrow — limited to the transition itself — while Zelikow's conflicts extended across multiple dimensions of the investigation. The unanimity of the final report, in the view of critics like the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, reflected not the absence of problems but the degree to which the investigation had been managed from the start.

Bob Graham — Co-chair of the Joint Congressional Inquiry whose investigation preceded the Commission; fought for years to declassify the 28 pages on Saudi involvement that Zelikow helped keep buried
Coleen Rowley — FBI whistleblower who exposed the Bureau's pre-9/11 intelligence failures; her testimony revealed institutional breakdowns the Commission was supposed to investigate
Sibel Edmonds — FBI translator turned whistleblower whose testimony about pre-9/11 intelligence was classified and whose access to the Commission was restricted

Sources

This information was compiled by Claude AI research.

Background and Career​

The 1998 "Catastrophic Terrorism" Article​

Expert in "Public Myths"​

Conflicts of Interest​

The Bush Transition Team​

The Condoleezza Rice Relationship​

The Pre-Emptive War Doctrine​

Controlling the Investigation​

Pre-Written Report Outline​

Blocking Witnesses and Documents​

The "White House Mole" Allegation​

Max Cleland's Resignation​

Key Quotes​

Key Arguments and Evidence Critics Cite​

The Counterargument​

Related Perspectives​

Other Coverage Worth Reading​

Sources​