A pair of public interest groups, The 9/11 Family Steering Committee and 9/11 Citizens Watch, have called for the resignation of the director of the independent 9/11 commission, Philip Zelikow.

The calls for resignation come after former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke revealed that Zelikow participated in Bush administration briefings on al Qaeda prior to Sept. 11.

In a letter, the Family Steering Committee wrote “It is clear that [Zelikow] should never have been permitted to be a member of the commission, since it is the mandate of the commission to identify the source of failures. It is now apparent why there has been so little effort to assign individual culpability. We now can see that trail would lead directly to the staff director himself.”