As I said in another post, as an ex-New Yorker I am sometimes unfair in my judgments of my compatriots from west of the Hudson. If you are convinced that Tom Kean is an honorable, patriotic American, I accept your judgment.
However, give me this: it was still very poor judgment for him to make the statements he did about the report before it was ready for full release, and to an outfit, CBS News, that even a political neophyte would know would take what he said "out of context" and try to sensationalize it to the Administration's and the nation's disadvantage.
You and I agree there. I would prefer that Kean and the rest of the committee stay "out of touch" with the media until the report is finally issued.
I think and I may be wrong on this of course, that Mr. Kean may have been using his comments to try to leverage the administration into releasing some documents to the committee that the administration didn't want to (probably for National Security reasons). I don't think Mr. Kean is trying to get President Bush (my understanding is that they get along well) but I also don't think that Mr. Kean will cave in to the President or anyone else, if he thinks there is some information that is of importance to the committee.
I support the committee and it's effort to find out "what went wrong" before 9/11. My biggest gripe with them however is that much of what they discover may be things that are obvious flaws now but weren't then. They have the benefit of hindsight that the people involved in 9/11 didn't have.