Hopefully, I'll be finished with my report regarding the 9/11 Commission's hearings by the end of tonight. I really want to get a couple points out. All in all, the 9/11 Commission succeeded in some respects and dramatically failed in others.

The part they succeeded in was to show the failure of the agencies to be completely integrated and in not being integrated, having communication breakdowns which hindered the rescue efforts of September 11th.

The parts they dramatically failed in was to offer any insight as to what public officials knew or didn't know about certain aspects of September 11th. Family members wanted answers to questions about failed radios and other more researched topics, such as which companies received the contracts for the radios, and they didn't get those answers. Plus, in my opinion, I think that any time the Commission expressed their opinions for the jobs done by public officials during September 11th, they jeopardized the volatile serenity that already existed in that auditorium.

I actually have a different opinion and I want to clear something up that was being reported and spun on different media channels. It's being reported that former Mayor Giuliani's testimony was "ended abruptly as relatives of the dead stood and shouted..." Mayor Giuliani's testimony was over at the point of major audience interruption, or at least, that was my understanding. It appeared to me that members of the crowd were getting antsy from all of the easy line of questioning that Mayor Giuliani was being given; the questions asked did not seem to match up with some of the more hard questions that were outlined on the Family Steering Committee’s web site. The panel didn’t seem too interested to press Giuliani for whatever reason, but that didn’t seem to me to be what completely angered the audience the most. What seemed to be the event that triggered their anger was when the Vice Chair was given the floor and said that he was not going to ask any questions in the interest of time, but rather give praise for Giuliani’s leadership and efforts. For whatever reason, he felt it more important to praise Giuliani, even though several members of the panel had already done so, rather than ask important questions regarding what he knew about September 11th. It seems to me to be counterproductive to allow the Commission to express their praise for the panels, when fact finding is the most important aspect of their agenda.

Personally, when I hear how the Commission states they wish to be fair to the panel (when I think that Lehman's use of the word "scandalous" was anything BUT fair to the FDNY/OEM/NYPD panel knowing the audience would applaud), I think they should be. This, by no means, should be a public grilling. But in cases like, for example, the mysterious disappearance of World Trade Center 7, when you have two conflicting facts out there (Silverstein testimony vs. the FEMA report), you want to question those people who might have known something that will give us a clear understanding of what happened. Why hasn't Larry Silverstein been subpoenaed during this trip to New York?

They decided not to ask some of the questions outlined by the FSC, which begs the question: why?

The truth is that this Commission is forward-looking, and not concerned with hindsight. It would be a lot easier for the public to understand that if the Commission kept copious amounts of praise for these already widely-revered public figures out of the session.