In other Washington news, the White House and House Speaker Denis Hastert are expected to reject any call from the independent 9/11 commission to extend the panel’s deadline to complete the investigation. Meanwhile family members of 9/11 victims are protesting the recent revelation of close ties between the executive director of the independent 9/11 commission, Philip Zelikow, and the Bush administration. Zelikow served as an advisor to National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice after Bush took office, he once co-authored a book with Rice and he served on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in October 2001. He was close enough to the White House that he was interviewed by the commission as part of the investigation. Meanwhile the commission has also interviewed one of its own commissioners, Jamie Gorelick. She served as a deputy attorney general in Janet Reno’s Justice Department during the Clinton administration. According to UPI, Gorelick and Zelikow are the two officials to whom the White House has granted the greatest access to the most secret and sensitive national security documents, the presidential daily briefings. Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband died in the World Trade Center responded to the news by saying “This is beginning to look like a whitewash.”