RAZING KEAN:

Meet the New Boss (MATTHEW CALLAN, 1.17.2003, Freezerbox Magazine)

Anyone who lived within shouting distance of New Jersey in the 1980s will remember Governor Tom Kean as the tall, balding man who roamed the beach in tourism commercials for the Garden State. "New Jersey and you—perfect together," he recited, in a curiously New England accent. Despite being the Republican governor of a densely populated, highly unionized, and ethnically diverse state, his tenure in office came and went with little incident. This past fall, he made a brief political reemergence to campaign unsuccessfully for Doug Forrester, Frank Lautenberg's opponent in New Jersey's Senate race. Seemingly little had changed about Kean since his days in the capitol. He was still an innocuous looking man, with an aloof professorial air, who spoke with the patrician tones of George Plimpton. He remains extremely popular today, though few of his former constituents remember anything he did while in office.

This fact, as much as anything else, is what led President Bush to name Kean the head of the panel investigating September 11. Henry Kissinger, Bush's original choice, was far too high profile. Though Kissinger has not held an official governmental position since the end of the Ford administration, he remains the very essence of 21st century celebrity, with a face, voice, and checkered past that is burned into the memory of nearly every American.

On the surface, Kean is everything Kissinger is not. Surface is all that really matters, of course, since Bush shows little interest in going any deeper than that in his 9/11 probe. The administration waited well over a year to begin convening its investigation, and it has placed prohibitive and arcane strictures on the commission, such as requiring that any criminal subpoenas must be approved by six of the ten committee members. And when the time came to appoint a committee chair, a wanted war criminal was Bush's first choice: a man who will no longer leave the country for fear of being whisked off to the Hague, Milosevic-style.

Of course, as is true of nearly everyone associated with the Bush administration, the acrid scent of decaying skeletons wafts out of Tom Kean's closet. Though few in the mainstream media seem willing to discuss it, Kean has some very disturbing connections—some of which lead directly to the very people he should be investigating.

When do people who spin out conspiracy theories this elaborate find time to sleep? Posted by Orrin Judd at February 3, 2003 4:02 PM