Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard Ben-Veniste

The line tries to do three things at once: justify aggressive questioning, signal basic decency, and preempt the allegation that the 9/11 Commission’s hearings were political theater. Ben-Veniste, a prosecutor by temperament, frames the encounter with Condoleezza Rice as a professional ritual: hard questions inside the room, mutual respect outside it. That “I think she appreciated it” is less a report than a protective charm, aimed at a public primed to read confrontation as cruelty or partisanship.

The syntax is telling. It’s a long braid of clauses that keeps returning to “we”: we said, we had our job, we did it best we could. The repetition functions like a shield, moving attention away from the witness and toward the institution. In the post-9/11 atmosphere, where grief and patriotism could be mobilized to shut down inquiry, “job” becomes moral cover: not vengeance, not spectacle, but duty. “Best we could” quietly lowers expectations, acknowledging limits without conceding failure - a lawyer’s way of managing the record.

The subtext is also about optics. Mentioning Rice by name and describing a private moment “following her testimony” humanizes a high-ranking official who was under intense scrutiny, while also reassuring viewers that accountability can coexist with civility. The final phrase - “important questions that the 9/11 Commission must answer” - shifts responsibility upward, implying that the commission isn’t freelancing; history is demanding a narrative, and the state owes one. It’s institutional legitimacy, spoken in the language of courtroom ethics.