WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?....As long as we're on the subject of "closely held" information, it looks like moderate Republican Thomas Kean and his compatriots on the 9/11 commission are finally getting pissed off:

"Any document that has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach," Mr. Kean said on Friday....

"I will not stand for it," Mr. Kean said in the interview in his offices here at Drew University, where he has been president since 1990.

....Interviews with several other members of the commission show that Mr. Kean's concerns are widely shared on the panel, and that the concern is bipartisan.

Slade Gorton, a Republican member of the panel who served in the Senate from Washington from 1982 to 2000, said that he was startled by the "indifference" of some executive branch agencies in making material available to the commission.

....Timothy J. Roemer, president of the Center for National Policy in Washington and a former Democratic member of the House from Indiana, said that "our May deadline may, in fact, be jeopardized — many of us are frustrated that we're still dealing with questions about document access when we should be sinking our teeth into hearings and to making recommendations for the future."

It's been obvious for a long time that the Bush administration knew more prior to 9/11 than it's let on, but so far they've been successful at stonewalling every request for potentially sensitive material. Here's hoping that Thomas Kean can finally force a showdown.