by Bob Braun — Monday, April 25, 2005
WASHINGTON –Speaking truth to power can be fearful, futile and frustrating. Power has a way of winning, even over truth. That’s why it’s called power.
Yet there are moments — bright, shiny, and, sadly, often illusory moments — when truth, or those who try to speak it, seem to enjoy a little glory. It happened to Kristen Breitweiser of Middletown at a ceremony here the other day.
She won an award, a “truth-telling” award, for her work in lobbying for the creation of the 9/11 commission.
“The entire world needs to know,” said U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), who introduced her at the awards luncheon at the National Press Club, “that there is not a more courageous and fearless lady than Kristen Breitweiser.”
Breitweiser, whose husband, Ron, was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, is probably the best known of the so-called “Jersey Widows” or “Jersey Girls.” The others are Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie Van Auken of East Brunswick, and Patty Casazza, who recently moved to New York from Colts Neck.
There would not have been a 9/11 commission without the work of these widows and others who joined them. And, disappointing as the panel’s work was, it would have been even less informative without the pressure they applied to its members.
“I simply wanted to know the truth of why my husband died,” said Breitweiser, who has a 5-year-old daughter.
It’s difficult now, after two years of revelations and the publication of the commission report, to appreciate how much was learned of that day because of the widows’ work. The warnings, the bungling, the failed intelligence, the lapses in airport security, the inept defense, the confused emergency response, the firefighters’ nonworking radios.
And it’s difficult to accept much is still unknown, a point made by Breitweiser, who noted, while Congress held hearings on steroids in baseball, it would not on why the Federal Aviation Administration failed to heed more than 50 warnings about terrorist hijackings — a detail of extraordinary import omitted by the 9/11 commission.
There was something about the awards ceremony that was both inspirational and discouraging. Breitweiser was in extraordinary company. Honored, too, was Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker journalist who broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam 36 years ago — and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq just last year.
In the audience were Daniel Ellsberg, a past winner of the same award, whose leak of the Pentagon papers may have changed the course of American history — and certainly changed constitutional law. There, too, was another award recipient — Joseph Wilson, the former diplomat whose fact-finding trip to Africa for the Central Intelligence Agency revealed that, despite the assertions of our government, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did not buy nuclear materials from Niger.
What they all have in common is not only their willingness to reveal truth, but also demonization by the political right. As if the revelations about My Lai, Abu Ghraib, the origins of the Vietnam war, and the failure of intelligence about Iraq — the revelations, not the reality — were, at worst, unpatriotic, or, at best, partisan acts.
The attacks on Breitweiser began midway in the work of the 9/11 commission when conservative columnists and radio commentators denounced her and other widows for their criticism of President Bush’s initial refusal to cooperate with the panel.
Now inured to such attacks, Breitweiser was worried when it began. The young woman, who said she voted for Bush in 2000, left her home for a while, fearful she and her daughter might become targets.
“I don’t understand,” she said back then. Repeatedly.
Breitweiser, 33, is a much different woman now. Savvier, less fearful, more cynical — and more political. The self-described “stay-at-home mom” — she’s also a lawyer but never practiced — joined the Kerry campaign, along with other 9/11 widows.
The award itself came from the Fertel Foundation and the Nation Institute, affiliated with The Nation magazine, a journal of the left. Calvin Trillin, the essayist who writes satirical poetry for The Nation, whimsically described it at the lunch as “pinko” — a characterization that would be seconded by the publication’s critics on the right.
So the truth of 9/11 — like the truth of My Lai and Abu Ghraib and so many other events of contemporary history — has been transformed into the stuff of political debate.
That’s a loss for all of us. Avoiding another disaster like 9/11 requires a steely objectivity, a rigorous analysis, independent action. Partisanship is an opaque lens, an unreliable vehicle for action, a confused guide.
But don’t blame Breitweiser or the other widows, most of whom were, like her, suburban Republicans before their husbands were killed. What might have trumped the almost inevitable partisanship, what might have stanched the debate, was the publication of a strong and courageous report from the 9/11 commission.
A report that itself spoke a powerful truth to power.
It didn’t happen.
Bob Braun’s columns appear Monday and Thursday. He can be reached at rjbraun@webspan.net or (973) 392-4281.
© 2005 The Star Ledger
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