Five days after the commission's announcement, the New York Times pointed out that Norton had a long-standing relationship with Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director. This relationship was not known to the commissioners when they selected Norton; nor had Zelikow, who was responsible for pushing the idea of a commercial publisher, recused himself during the process.

While Zelikow was not in a position to receive a tangible benefit from the 9/11 contract, the fact remained that anointing Norton was akin to giving his publisher a license to print money (Norton's gross proceeds would amount to approximately $6 million). After the Times article ran, the commission altered its stated plans. It was announced that the GPO would post the final report on-line the day of release and would also print an "official government edition."

Two factors in the commission's decision to privilege a private publisher were the supposed cost and availability of a GPO edition. But the GPO edition ended up costing only $8.50, while the retail price of the Norton paperback, an inferior book in terms of its manufacture (binding, paper quality, and size), was $10. Nor was it true, as Zelikow reportedly presumed, that the GPO would produce something that would be hard to get. There is no provision in the law that prohibits GPO-published works from being sold in chain stores or local bookshops.

According to historian Ernest May, a consultant to the commission, the unprecedented arrangement with Norton precipitated a "dreadful moment" the day before publication. Writing in The New Republic, May recalled that "an aide to a powerful member of the House telephoned the commission asking angrily about a rumor that the report would be issued by a private publisher. "It's a report to Congress," the aide thundered. The person on our end of the line remarked that stories about the commission's publication plans had been featured in the New York Times weeks earlier. "We don't read the fucking New York Times" was the reply.

"Fortunately," observed May, "the individual decided not to pursue the complaint."

INTERNET-ONLY ACCESS—The 9/11 Commission's second departure from long-standing tradition is possibly even more troubling. It concerned how the panel chose to disseminate other aspects of its inquiry, ranging from its staff reports to its public hearings. Historically, only the GPO could be expected to publish the entire opus of an investigative body at anything approaching an affordable price to the public. Of greater significance, GPO publication also assured inclusion in the permanent holdings of the 1,250 institutions that participate in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), an arrangement between research libraries and the federal government that dates back to 1813. Every depository library, in return for free copies of GPO publications, becomes legally bound to make these authentic documents freely available to all citizens without discrimination. Depository libraries, which are scattered across the nation, are thus the bedrock upon which public access to government information has always rested.

The 9/11 Commission, however, never submitted a printing requisition to the GPO for publishing the many supplemental volumes that are in fact part of the report. The panel regarded this obligation as having been discharged when it made its staff monographs, interim reports, and public hearings available on the Internet. To be sure, such access is highly desirable and ought to be part of standard procedure now. But should web publication alone be the new norm? The American Library Association (ALA) thinks not, with respect to significant government documents.

The ALA's "Key Principles on Government Information" make clear that Internet access is no substitute for publication of a work in that most venerable of forms: a book. Information should be presented in a format that promotes usefulness, and that means complex information must be disseminated in a printed and bound volume. The reasons are not hard to understand. For one, publication via the Internet discriminates against citizens without on-line access, as well as those without a broadband connection. Reading a document amounting to hundreds of pages is unwieldy on a computer, even one with a fast connection. Printing it out is one solution, but that unfairly shifts the burden and cost of production onto readers, and still results in something less accessible than a bound book. Internet publication, argues the ALA, should complement the printed dissemination of government information, not replace it, particularly when the subject is something as critical as the September 11 attacks.

A May 2005 article, "Government Information in the Digital Age," written by three University of California–San Diego librarians, also makes some important points about the problems inherent in Internet-only publication. In contrast to the robust FDLP system, which establishes multiple collections of printed documents, Internet publication concentrates power in the government's hands, allowing it to retract information whenever it sees fit.

Some small publishers have bridged the gap left by the 9/11 Commission. For a hefty price of $395, Oceana Publications is putting out a complete, four-volume set of the 9/11 Commission's hearings. Hillsboro Press has published the commission's staff monograph on terrorist travel, and PublicAffairs Reports has printed twelve of the seventeen initial staff studies and excerpts from some of the commission's hearings. Such entrepreneurship is desirable, but runs against the grain of long-standing practice regarding the dissemination of vital government documents.