Thomas Keen is one of those rare Republicans. That means I respect him. He’s the former Governor of New Jersey, now president at Drew University, and chair of the bi-partisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States. The commission was established by Congress to investigate the 9/11 attacks. The Commission’s work should be finished by spring. But there’s a problem. From The New York Times:

The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks says that the White House is continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he is prepared to subpoena the documents if they are not turned over within weeks. "I will not stand for it," Mr. Kean said in the interview in his offices here at Drew University, where he has been president since 1990.

What’s the problem?

"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here," he (former Democratic Senator Max Cleland) said in an interview in Washington. "It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents it's disgusting."

He said that the White House and President Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted."

Slade Gorton, a Republican member of the panel who served in the Senate from Washington from 1982 to 2000, said that he was startled by the "indifference" of some executive branch agencies in making material available to the commission. "This lack of cooperation, if it extends anywhere else, is going to make it very difficult" for the commission to finish its work by next May, he said.

Will we ever know all the facts about 9/11? Only the White House can answer and right now they’re not talking.