In an interview with Salon.com on November 21, 2003, 9/11 Commissioner and former Senator Max Cleland (D-GA) said, regarding the lack of access by the White House to classified documents: ” ‘It should be a national scandal,’… ‘It’s been painfully obvious that the [Bush] administration not only fought the creation of the Commission but that their objective was the war in Iraq and one of the notions it was built on was that there was a direct connection between al Qaeda and 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. There was not. I feel like I have been duped. …We’re coming down to the final [months] of this Commission and we’re still messing with access issues. The President ought to be ashamed.’ ”
– Peter Lance, Cover Up, Page 141