Thomas Kean, 9/11 Commission Chairman, Distorts History on the Daily Show And, I'm sorry to say, Jon let it slide. In his August 17th Daily Show interview, Kean painted a pretty picture of the committee's 2004 interview with the president: "I'll tell you why I've got a lot of hope...When we finally got our agreement to interview the president, we had five republicans and five democrats in the oval office, l looked out at the Washington Monument out the window, and the president said 'I'll answer anything you have to ask, and stay as long as you want'." Such candor! He was willing to answer any question they had to ask! Talk about true transparency in government! But wait, Governor Kean, didn't you just say that the Bush Administration fought against the creation of the commission in the first place? Didn't your commission accept the following restrictions on that interview? * The president couldn't be interviewed without Dick Cheney present. * There was to be no recording made of the interview. * There was to be no stenographer in the room. * There was to be no transcript of the session. * Neither the vice president or president would be interviewed under oath. ...And he's full of hope? This is the same incompetent that faults himself for not asking hard enough questions to Rudy Guiliani and the Pentagon... "In (his) book, Kean and co-chair Lee Hamilton say they considered asking the Justice Department to investigate statements made by the Department of Defense, statements about when they knew about the hijackings on 9/11 and what their response had been - statements that proved patently false. 'There's no question they were lying. The question was whether they were doing intentionally or whether they just had the wrong information," said Kean. "We had generals and we had officials from the FAA and they just didn't tell the truth. And they didn't tell us they didn't tell the truth. We had to go and find it out for our own staff. We had to go and review tapes ourselves. We had to go and interview witnesses, and finally we pulled the story out.' " Read It Thanks a lot, Tom, I hope the truth you're belatedly telling on page A12 sets us all free. The Initial CNN Piece About the Interview Here