It occurred to Kean that this might be the commission’s most frightening discovery of all: The emperors of espionage had no clothes. Perhaps the reason the White House had fought so hard to block the commission’s access to the PDBs was that they revealed how ignorant the government was of the threats it faced before 9/11.
—Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, (New York: Twelve, 2008), 221.
This is consistent with Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes.
