To: Chris Kojm

From: Tom Eldridge, Janice Kephart, Walter Hempel, Kelly Moore

Date: July 23, 2004

Re: Publication of a staff report on border security by the report's authors: Tom
Eldridge, Janice Kephart, Walter Hempel and Kelly Moore.

We have three issues we need your help to resolve at our meeting on Monday. First is whether
the staff report will be published. Second is reaching agreement about the proper attribution for
this work; and third is what should be the editing process for the staff report.

First, the staff report is of publication quality, and will provide new and very valuable scholarship
on our topic area. It will bolster the Commission Report and provide crucial facts supporting its
recommendations. While the report is the definitive history of 9/11, our staff report is the
definitive history of terrorist travel pre-9/11, and the post-9/11 border security actions. There is a
large audience of government officials, experts in the private sector, and ordinary citizens who
will read and use our supplemental staff report on "immigration, non-immigrant visas and border
control."

Second, is the question of who is responsible for the work contained in this staff report. The staff
report we have given you is overwhelmingly the work of the four of us. The four of us have:

o developed a timeline and internal deadlines for the production of the report;
o revised the outline to include a Preface, an Introduction, a Chronology of the hijacker's
entries, and the Saudi flights and removed a section on Lost Opportunities;
o drafted the entire report, which is about 235 pages plus graphics;
o edited the entire report;
o revised the draft and re-edited (several times);
o scrubbed the document footnotes;
o added graphics.

We accomplished this work over the past several months with no guidance or input from our team
leader. During this time, our team leader drafted 4.5 pages, and did not respond to our repeated
requests to edit these 4.5 pages, requests we made in May and again in June. Those pages are,
therefore, not in the current draft you have. After she reviewed the first couple of draft chapters
our team leader disengaged from the process completely to devote herself entirely to Commission
Report recommendations. (Of course, the four us were able to produce material for the
Commission Report and continue to draft the staff report.) For these reasons, it would be
inappropriate and unprofessional to attribute our work to her.

Third is the question of the editing process. We feel very strongly that it should move forward
with editorial control vested in the Front Office working with the authors of the staff report. As
we stated in our earlier email, this is not an easy topic to discuss, but this problem must be
addressed by the Front Office in a constructive way. The four authors of the staff report are
highly productive. Our research skills are strong. We write well. We meet deadlines. We are
objective. Unfortunately, despite these skills and abilities, for several months Team 5 has not
operated as a team. We know we should have come to you as a group sooner, but we kept trying
to work with our team leader. We even tried an off-site retreat. Unfortunately, we have found
that working with our team leader is so counterproductive that we have no alternative but to seek
your intervention. There are several reasons for this rupture that we can spell out for you in
greater detail if you feel it would be useful to you. In general, they concern the unwillingness
and/or inability of our team leader to seek consensus among our team, show proper respect for the
views of other team members, provide the team with information about Commission deadlines
and work requirements, produce work to us and to others in a timely fashion, and separate
personal political views from Commission work. We have many examples we can provide on
these topics, but the reality is that she has completely lost the trust and faith of her team, and this
loss is irreversible. Please understand that our concerns here are professional and profound, not
personal.

We lay this out to look forward, not back. We believe the report we have produced should be
published, but that will not be possible if our team leader is given editorial control over our work.
We need a new approach with a change in responsibilities, one that recognizes appropriately the
contribution of each team member, and moves us forward efficiently toward publishing. We are
flexible as to the process that would allow us to publish our work, so long as the above principles
are respected. What we cannot accept is a system where our team leader—who has utterly failed
to show leadership to this point—exercises editorial control over work she did not participate in
drafting.
To: Chris Kojm

From: Tom Eldridge, Janice Kephart, Walter Hempel, Kelly Moore

Date: July 23, 2004

Re: Publication of a staff report on border security by the report's authors: Tom
Eldridge, Janice Kephart, Walter Hempel and Kelly Moore.

We have three issues we need your help to resolve at our meeting on Monday. First is whether
the staff report will be published. Second is reaching agreement about the proper attribution for
this work; and third is what should be the editing process for the staff report.

First, the staff report is of publication quality, and will provide new and very valuable scholarship
on our topic area. It will bolster the Commission Report and provide crucial facts supporting its
recommendations. While the report is the definitive history of 9/11, our staff report is the
definitive history of terrorist travel pre-9/11, and the post-9/11 border security actions. There is a
large audience of government officials, experts in the private sector, and ordinary citizens who
will read and use our supplemental staff report on "immigration, non-immigrant visas and border
control."

Second, is the question of who is responsible for the work contained in this staff report. The staff
report we have given you is overwhelmingly the work of the four of us. The four of us have:

o developed a timeline and internal deadlines for the production of the report;
o revised the outline to include a Preface, an Introduction, a Chronology of the hijacker's
entries, and the Saudi flights and removed a section on Lost Opportunities;
o drafted the entire report, which is about 235 pages plus graphics;
o edited the entire report;
o revised the draft and re-edited (several times);
o scrubbed the document footnotes;
o added graphics.

We accomplished this work over the past several months with no guidance or input from our team
leader. During this time, our team leader drafted 4.5 pages, and did not respond to our repeated
requests to edit these 4.5 pages, requests we made in May and again in June. Those pages are,
therefore, not in the current draft you have. After she reviewed the first couple of draft chapters
our team leader disengaged from the process completely to devote herself entirely to Commission
Report recommendations. (Of course, the four us were able to produce material for the
Commission Report and continue to draft the staff report.) For these reasons, it would be
inappropriate and unprofessional to attribute our work to her.

Third is the question of the editing process. We feel very strongly that it should move forward
with editorial control vested in the Front Office working with the authors of the staff report. As
we stated in our earlier email, this is not an easy topic to discuss, but this problem must be
addressed by the Front Office in a constructive way. The four authors of the staff report are
highly productive. Our research skills are strong. We write well. We meet deadlines. We are
objective. Unfortunately, despite these skills and abilities, for several months Team 5 has not
operated as a team. We know we should have come to you as a group sooner, but we kept trying
to work with our team leader. We even tried an off-site retreat. Unfortunately, we have found
that working with our team leader is so counterproductive that we have no alternative but to seek
your intervention. There are several reasons for this rupture that we can spell out for you in
greater detail if you feel it would be useful to you. In general, they concern the unwillingness
and/or inability of our team leader to seek consensus among our team, show proper respect for the
views of other team members, provide the team with information about Commission deadlines
and work requirements, produce work to us and to others in a timely fashion, and separate
personal political views from Commission work. We have many examples we can provide on
these topics, but the reality is that she has completely lost the trust and faith of her team, and this
loss is irreversible. Please understand that our concerns here are professional and profound, not
personal.

We lay this out to look forward, not back. We believe the report we have produced should be
published, but that will not be possible if our team leader is given editorial control over our work.
We need a new approach with a change in responsibilities, one that recognizes appropriately the
contribution of each team member, and moves us forward efficiently toward publishing. We are
flexible as to the process that would allow us to publish our work, so long as the above principles
are respected. What we cannot accept is a system where our team leader—who has utterly failed
to show leadership to this point—exercises editorial control over work she did not participate in
drafting.