Kean to endorse McCain

John McCain, who is playing up his national defense credentials against his Republican rivals, will be in Boston today to add an endorsement in that area.

Former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, a co-chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, is to announce his support for the Arizona senator at a news conference at Logan International Airport.

Kean and the panel's other co-chairman, Lee Hamilton, published a book last year in which they said the commission was too soft in questioning Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, who is now McCain's rival for the GOP nomination. In "Without Precedent," they said that their interview of Giuliani was a "low point" of the panel's work and that they felt constrained because of criticism of their earlier questioning of New York police and fire officials.

Giuliani has been criticized for placing the city's emergency headquarters in the World Trade Center, which was destroyed along with the towers.

"We did not ask tough questions, nor did we get all the information we needed to put on the public record," Kean and Hamilton wrote.