October 2004: Harper’s Magazine Cover Story Slams 9/11 Commission Report

The cover of Harper’s Magazine, October 2004, depicting the whitewashing of the 9/11 Commission. [Source: Harper's Magazine]Bucking the trend of generally positive reviews of the 9/11 Commission’s final report, Harper’s Magazine publishes a cover story harshly criticizing the report. The story opines, “The plain, sad reality… is that The 9/11 Commission Report, despite the vast quantity of labor behind it, is a cheat and a fraud. It stands as a series of evasive maneuvers that infantilize the audience, transform candor into iniquity, and conceal realities that demand immediate inspection and confrontation.… In the course of blaming everybody a little, the Commission blames nobody—blurs the reasons for the actions and hesitations of successive administrations, masks choices that, fearlessly defined, might actually have vitalized our public political discourse.” [Harper's, 10/2004]