iNOA/i

Thomas H. Kean
CHAIR
August 19, 2003

Lee H. Hamilton
VICE CHAIR
The Honorable Colin L. Powell
Richard Ben-Veniste Secretary of State
Max Cleland
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520-0001
Frederick F. Fielding
Dear Secretary Powell:
Jamie S. Gorelick

Slade Gorton Public Law 107-306 directs the Commission to investigate the facts and
circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including
John F. Lehman
the nation's preparedness for and immediate response to those attacks. We are
Timothy J. Roemer also mandated to identify and evaluate lessons learned and make
James R. Thompson
recommendations for the future. The statute authorizes the Commission to
secure needed information directly from any agency. The Commission has
thus made numerous requests for documents and discussions with officials
Philip D. Zelikow
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
from your department. Given the extraordinary character of the 9/11 events
and our mandate, the scope and sensitivity of our requests have few, if any,
precedents.

We are therefore all the more grateful for the efforts you and your colleagues
have made so far to deal with our many, necessary requests. With so many
other issues confronting you and your staff, we do understand how hard this
can be. We try to make appropriate allowances when we know people are
doing their best. In July the Commission issued an interim report on our
progress so far. In that report we said the coming weeks would be critical.
We promised another report in September that would appraise whether the
level of voluntary cooperation is sufficient so that we will be able tdtlo the job
we are charged to do under the statute.

That time is now approaching. You are entitled to some advance notice of
what we need. To make such a decisive appraisal and properly evaluate your
department's cooperation, we will assess:

1. Your policy choices—one way or another—on every access issue posed by

our pending requests.

2. Whether we actually receive the most important categories of documents

that are already overdue. We will follow up to be sure our points of
contact know which overdue documents we regard as litmus tests for
effective cooperation.
301 7th Street SW, Room 5125
Washington, DC 20407
T 202.331.4060 f 202.296.5545
www.9-1 lcommission.gov
The Honorable Colin L. Powell
August 19, 2003
Page 2

We understand that you and your staff may need a few more weeks to finalize
policy choices and push through delivery of key documents. Therefore we
think it is reasonable to wait and assess the situation based on positions
communicated with us and documents that have actually been delivered or
otherwise made available to us by COB on Friday, September 5, 2003.

As the second anniversary of the devastating attacks on our country

approaches, we thank you for working with us to meet the challenge of
understanding how and why America suffered such a devastating attack, and
how to prevent another.

Sincerely,

Thomas H. Kean Lee H. Hamilton

Chair Vice Chair

cc: Karl W. Hofmann

 S\ON ON

August 26, 2003

Thomas H Kean MEMORANDUM

CHAIR

Lee H Hamilton
VICE CHAIR To: Karl Hofinann, Department of State
Richard Bert-Veniste
From: Daniel Marcus, General Counsel
MaxQeknd

Fred F. Fielding Subj: Most Important Overdue Documents

Jamie S. Gorelick

Skde Gorton As a follow-up to the letter to Secretary Powell dated August 19,2003,
here are the most important categories of documents requested by the
John Lehman
Commission that are overdue:
Timothy J. Roemer
DOS Document Request No. 1 - Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9
James R Thompson

DOS Document Request No. 2 — Item 11

Philip D. ZeUkow
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
DOS Document Request No. 3 - Items 1, 2, 3, and 4

DOS Document Request No. 4 - Items 2,4, 6, 11 and 13

We look forward to the Department's prompt production of these

overdue items, as well as positions on access to all of the documents
responsive to all of our outstanding requests, as set forth in the August 19
letter. If you have any questions, please give me a call.

cc: Dan Levin, DOJ

TEL (202) 331-4060

FAX (202) 296-5545
www.9-1 lcorjamission.gov
 United States Department of State

Washington, D.C 20520

UNCLASSIFIED ' September 5, 2003

MEMORANDUM FOR DANIEL MARCUS

GENERAL COUNSEL
NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES

SUBJECT: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the

United States Document Requests: Responses to the Most
Important Categories of Documents

This is in response to your August 26, 2003 memorandum

outlining the most important categories of documents identified
by the Commission. Let me state at the outset that the
Department has provided approximately 32,000 pages in response to
the Commission's requests thus far, and we are continuing our
search and retrieval efforts. The Department has not
intentionally withheld any responsive information, and
anticipates withholding none. However, as you can appreciate,
conducting a comprehensive search of our electronic and paper
records, including files that have already been retired and
removed from the Department in accordance with federal records
management guidelines, is time consuming. We will continue to
respond as rapidly as possible to the Commission's requests.

The following is a detailed summary of the materials we have

provided in response to your August 26 memorandum;

Document Request No. 1, Items 1-5 and 9 - During the period

August 1-29, the Department sent six installments totaling 1,411
documents responsive to items 1, 3, 4, 5, and 9. Item 2,
concerning documents received from the National Security Council
and/or Executive Office of the President, were referred to the
White House for a determination on access restrictions, which I
have communicated to you in separate memoranda dated September 3,
4 and 5, 2003'.

Document Request No. 2, Item 11 - On September 2, the

Department of State sent the fifth installment of documents to
the Commission in response to Document Request No. 2. This
installment contained 37 documents with information responsive to
item 11 of Document Request No. 2. Documents in the fifth

UNCLASSIFIED
 UNCLASSIFIED
2
installment of particular interest to the Commission were
memoranda to "7th Floor Principals'" with visa issuance policy
discussions and post 9/11 refugee policy and procedures.
(Installments 1-4, containing documents responding to items 2-10
and 12-18, were sent to the Commission between July 16 and
August 28, 2003.)
Document Request No. 3, Items 1-4 - Three installments
consisting of 329 documents have been sent to the Commission in
response to Document Request No. 3. On August 15, the first
installment which contained documents responsive to items 1 and 4
was delivered to the Commission. The second installment of
documents, delivered to the Commission on August 22, contained
information responsive to items 2 and 3. The third installment
of documents, delivered to the Commission on August 29, contained
memoranda responsive to document request items 1, 2r 3, and 4.
Document Request No, 4, Items 2, 4, 6, 11, 13 - On
September 3, information responding to items 11 and 13 was
delivered to the Commission. An installment of 538 documents
covering items 2, 4, and 6 (as well as items 10, 12, 14-17, 19
and 23) was delivered to the Commission today. (Two installments
with information covering items 1 and 3 were sent to the
Commission on August 8 and 11, including 296 GAO documents
responsive to item I.)
V
An additional 3730 documents have been indexed and are in yvP
the final review stage for release, as follows: v§

request nos. 1 and 3 - 1,500 documents

request no. 4 - 2,230 documents.
Further, our document review teams are continuing to process
for indexing and release documents totaling some 9,225 pages,
which are estimated to be responsive to your five requests as
follows:
request no. 1 - 250 pages
request no. 2 - 1,125 pages
request no. 3 - 2,250 pages
request no. 4 - 5,000 pages
request no. 5 - 600 pages.
I expect these remaining materials to be provided to the
Commission no later than September 30, 2003.
We hope this information is useful to you. As always,
please do not hesitate to contact us if you have further
questions.

UNCLASSIFIED
 UNCLASSIFIED

Karl Hofmann
Executive Secretary

UNCLASSIFIED