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All Richard Ben-Veniste Quotes
No connection between Iraq and the 9/11 catastrophe.
Richard Ben-Veniste
81% of people like this quote
Our mandate expects that we will build on the Joint Inquiry's investigation and we will not be re-inventing the wheel. But we go to places which the Joint Inquiry was not permitted to explore.
Richard Ben-Veniste
75% of people like this quote
Were there contacts over time between Iraq and al-Qaeda? Yes, there were efforts made to communicate. We found no evidence of collaboration in any effort to mount any kind of operation against the United States' interests.
Richard Ben-Veniste
70% of people like this quote
We've got a daunting enough task to provide a definitive account of what happened in 9/11, without fear or favor, something that will last and will survive criticism over time. And we think we can do that with integrity in a bipartisan report.
Richard Ben-Veniste
57% of people like this quote
Well, our statute provides us with authority to conduct a very broad inquiry basically to provide an investigation of 9/11 that's thorough, complete and will withstand the scrutiny of history.
Richard Ben-Veniste
56% of people like this quote
Only the last two planes, I think, had any shot of being intercepted and taken down on 9/11.
Richard Ben-Veniste
56% of people like this quote
We've had public hearings. We've had interim reports, which our statute has encouraged us to provide to the public. We have brought the public along with us, trying to make as much available as possible over time.
Richard Ben-Veniste
55% of people like this quote
Well, our concern has to do with the period prior to 9/11, up to and including the catastrophe that occurred. And thank goodness, we're not obliged to make assessments of what's going on now and deal with these current events.
Richard Ben-Veniste
52% of people like this quote
So we knew their intentions were to strike in the United States. We also knew from other sources of dozens of examples of where the notion of using planes as weapons was discussed.
Richard Ben-Veniste
52% of people like this quote
Well, our position, and our chairman has talked about this extensively, is that we had a lot of intelligence prior to 9/11. We knew that two al Qaeda operatives who ultimately participated in the 9/11 disaster were in the United States. We didn't find them.
Richard Ben-Veniste
50% of people like this quote
It was not easy to get all my questions answered, frankly.
Richard Ben-Veniste
48% of people like this quote
Well, changes have been made. The question is whether we've done enough by way of change.
Richard Ben-Veniste
45% of people like this quote
And it turned out that the Roberts Commission did not fully utilize the information available and that it came to conclusions which were I think quite short sighted and, indeed, in some cases, scapegoated individuals.
Richard Ben-Veniste
45% of people like this quote
With respect to the FBI, they had problems communicating in a vertical way, within the FBI itself, so that information of importance could get pushed up to those who were decision-makers.
Richard Ben-Veniste
44% of people like this quote
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