U.S.News, 7/14/03
By Chitra Ragavan
For biotech lobbyist Lisa Raines, it was supposed to be a quick business trip from suburban Virginia to California. "We kissed and said 'good-bye' and 'I love you,'" recalls her husband, Stephen Push, "and I never realized it was going to be the last time." The date was Sept. 11, 2001. The plane Raines was on, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon. The couple had been married 21 years. Push, now 51, quit his job as a public-relations executive and started a group called Families of September 11. Now he has a new mission in life: seeking accountability from the government. "I still don't know," he says, "what happened on my wife's plane."
Push and the families of more than 3,000 men, women, and children who died on September 11 want answers. But it remains to be seen whether official Washington wants to give them any. The hopes of the relatives rest with an independent bipartisan commission that, after months of delays, is just now beginning its work in earnest. This week, the commission will hold its third public hearing.
Its charge is sobering--and the panel is off to a rocky start. The staff has only recently sought millions of pages of government documents, and commission members have already angered some victims' relatives. Says 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser, "There's a whole range of things that this commission doesn't want to ask." . . .
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/030714/usnews/14comish.htm