Bonds of Steel
http://www.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
By Pat Wingert
Newsweek
April 5 issue - 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."
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