http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4616154/Keeping faith: The families of 9/11 victims are a mighty force. Ask the White House, the commission—or anyone else in their way.
For two long days last week, Lorie Van Auken sat in a stiff, armless chair in the 9/11 commission hearing room, right behind the witness table, listening as one government official after another tried to explain how things had gone so wrong. As the hours wore on, Auken, whose husband, Kenneth, was killed in the World Trade Center, was becoming irritated. "We had been sitting here listening to all these people tell us what a great job they had done," she says. Then, on Wednesday afternoon, Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief, pulled up to the microphone. Turning around to face the family members of those who had died, Clarke issued a blunt apology. "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you," he said. "And I failed you." Clarke asked their forgiveness. Van Auken, like many of the family members in the gallery, began to cry. "I cried hysterically, and I couldn't stop. Here was somebody, at last, telling the truth."
For many families of the dead, Clarke's apology was important not only for what he said, but where he said it. A little more than a year ago, President George W. Bush had seemingly shut down any possibility of an independent investigation of the tragedy. The families were told there would be no commission. No hearings. And certainly no testimony from top officials. As it turned out, the White House underestimated the determination of Van Auken and thousands of other family members.
They are, the president discovered, a hard group to say no to. In the two and a half years since the attacks, the various groups formed by surviving relatives of 9/11 victims have become a vocal, powerful—and politically diverse—lobbying force. The families have near-iconic status, not least because Bush himself has emotionally invoked their loss in speeches. They have shrewdly used that clout on television and on Capitol Hill to push for the investigation, and force the president's hand. "There's no question that the momentum for the creation of the commission came from the family groups," says commission spokesman Al Felzenberg. "That's beyond dispute." Even so, the families aren't ready to recede quietly just yet. Many are unhappy both with the partisan sniping that marred last week's hearings and the continued lack of cooperation from a reluctant White House. Until the commission's final report is on the streets this summer, Van Auken says, "We will keep poking and prodding."
By now, they are used to pounding the table to get what they want. Family members started asking for a 9/11 commission just weeks after the attacks, and immediately ran into trouble. "Our biggest opposition was the White House," says Stephen Push, who belongs to one of the largest groups—the 2,000-member Families of September 11. "They were opposed to any investigation whatsoever." Push—whose wife, Lisa Raines, was on the plane that hit the Pentagon—says family members spent more than a year "slogging through Congress," haggling with politicians about the need for an independent panel. "We were told we were dead in the water, and that we should forget about it." Instead, the families went on TV, where interviewers gave them sympathetic treatment. "We were vocal in the news media when it was necessary," Push says, "to embarrass the administration into doing the right thing. And it clearly worked." After the Senate voted 90-8 in favor of the commission, the White House started to negotiate.
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