At least two more US soldiers died in Iraq within the last 24 hours. For what?Well over 700 soldiers have died so far, over 600 of these deaths have occured since the incredible shrinking _resident declared "Mission Accomplished!" Now stories of US-perpetrated torture and massacres have begun to surface. And are you safer today than you were on September 11? No. You are in greater danger. Because the incredible shrinking _resident's disasterous policies have only swollen the ranks of Al Qaeda-style terror groups and drained away our intel and military resources into the quagmire of Iraq. Joe Wilson's name, of course, was scrawled on the John O'Neill Wall of Heroes awhile ago. Hopefully, his book will circulate among enough of us to contribute to the Electoral Uprising that is coming in November 2004.
Ambassador Joseph Wilson, www.buzzflash.com: I wrote
my article only after I had given the government
several months, both in terms of talking to people
close to the Administration, as well as some people
within the Administration, and by talking on
background to the press. I urged the government to
come clean with this story that was patently not true.
I did so because I fully understood that it is a
penchant of this Administration, and it is a modus
operandi of Karl Rove, to attempt to destroy the
messenger who brings bad news.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/04/int04023.html
April 30, 2004
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Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, Author of "The Politics
of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed
My Wife's CIA Identity."
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
"I did my civic duty and held my government to account for statements it had made. The government
acknowledged that the sixteen words about Iraq
purchasing uranium from Niger did not rise to the
level of inclusion in the State of the Union Address.
And then the Administration went out to savage my
family and myself.... Somebody close to the President
of the United States decided that in order to defend
Bush’s political agenda, that individual or
individuals would violate the national security of the
country and expose my wife’s name and her profession.
That was absolutely unexpected. That this government
would take a national security asset off the table,
working in an area that is of primordial importance to
the national security of the United States – the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction into the
hands of rogue states and non-state actors."
Ambassador Joe Wilson
Okay, for the umpteenth time, let's get this straight:
In order to send a message to any Bush Cartel
whistleblowers and truth tellers, Karl Rove or Scooter
Libby (or both) authorized the outing of a CIA
operative. But this wasn't just any CIA operative.
This was a woman who specialized in tracking the
illicit trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Well, the WMD-specializing outed CIA agent was Valerie
Plame. Why was she outed and our national security
threatened by the Bush Cartel? Because her husband,
Former Ambassador Joe Wilson, had the temerity to
reveal that the Bush Cartel mischaracterized a key
piece of alleged (i.e., phony) evidence that Saddam
Hussein was purchasing nuclear material from the
nation of Niger (not to be confused with Nigeria).
So, America's national security has been jeopardized
because a man who showed heroism in the diplomatic
corps told the truth about the Bush Cartel and the
Bush Cartel sought revenge.
The story is mind boggling, and it is even more
tragically ironic as you read the details in this
personal memoir by Ambassador Joe Wilson, "The
Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and
Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity-A Diplomat's Memoir."
Ambassador Joe Wilson is, like Richard Clarke, one of
the heroes of our time.
* * *
BuzzFlash: You have a new book coming out titled, "The
Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and
Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity." Could you start off
by telling us a little bit about what’s in your book
and why you decided to write it?
Ambassador Wilson: The book is the story of my foreign
service career, which included service in Iraq during
the first Gulf War, as well as many other postings in
Africa and in Europe. And of course, it deals a lot
with the debate and the run-up to this second war in
Iraq, and the positions that I took in the run-up to
the invasion.
I guess the part that everybody’s interested in is the
trip I took out to Niger on behalf of the
Administration, to check out whether there was any
truth to the allegations that Iraq had attempted to
purchase significant quantities of uranium. I detail
what the Administration did or rather did not do with
my report from Niger, and how I responded to what I
felt was a lie in the President’s State of the Union
Address that needed to be corrected. I did my civic
duty and held my government to account for statements
it had made. The government acknowledged that the
sixteen words about Iraq purchasing uranium from Niger
did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of
the Union Address. And then the Administration went
out to savage my family and myself.
BuzzFlash: You were a member of the diplomatic corps
for many years. In fact, the first President Bush
praised you for your heroism and your work when Iraq
invaded Kuwait.
Ambassador Wilson: That’s correct, and he made me an
ambassador to two African countries.
BuzzFlash: Tell us what was your experience like in
Iraq at the time just before Saddam invaded Kuwait in
the first Gulf War?
Ambassador Wilson: I was based in Baghdad, and I was
in charge of the embassy. Our ambassador, April
Glaspie, had left the post on vacation and
consultations. We were watching as the Iraqi troops
started massing along the Kuwaiti border. We were
giving it our best shot to corroborate information. We
had Saddam’s assurances that he had no intention of
invading Kuwait so long as there was a negotiating
process ongoing. And then, of course, he violated that
pledge that he had given to Ambassador Glaspie.
Shortly thereafter, the Iraqi government took about
150 Americans hostage and about 400 hostages in total
from other countries including French, British,
Japanese, and Germans. We went around and offered
another 65-70 Americans safe harbor in our diplomatic
quarters, and we housed them and fed them, and took
care of them so that they would not be taken hostage
by Saddam. And then we worked for the following six
months between the invasion of Kuwait and the sort of
counter-attack which we called Desert Storm to get all
Americans out of harm’s way. And we were successful.
We lost two Americans over those six months – one who
was an employee of the embassy who died of a cerebral
hemorrhage the night of the invasion of Kuwait, and
the other was an American businessman who died of a
heart attack several days after the invasion.
BuzzFlash: People such as yourself who make a career
in the State Department are known as people who don’t
rock the boat. Let’s talk about what compelled you to
write the column in The New York Times that dispelled
the Niger uranium accusation that Bush included in his
State of the Union Address. You had to know before you
submitted that column that there would be consequences
both personally and professionally.
Ambassador Wilson: First of all, I had been retired
for several years from government. But secondly, with
respect to this idea of diplomats not rocking the
boat, I think it’s important to understand that the
American diplomatic service is full of people who are
patriots, and who serve their country with great
distinction. These people carry out their government’s
foreign policy irrespective of which party happens to
be in power at any given time. Now that means that
they are generally very bright and very knowledgeable
about the practicality of doing international
relations and foreign policy, since most of them spend
a good part of their career overseas.
I wrote my article only after I had given the
government several months, both in terms of talking to
people close to the Administration, as well as some
people within the Administration, and by talking on
background to the press. I urged the government to
come clean with this story that was patently not true.
I did so because I fully understood that it is a
penchant of this Administration, and it is a modus
operandi of Karl Rove, to attempt to destroy the
messenger who brings bad news.
It was important that the government correct the
report that Iraq obtained uranium from Niger. And it
was important that if, in fact, the government was
going to come after me, which I fully understood they
would, that the story was fully understood by the
American people before they in fact destroyed the
messenger. In urging the government to come clean on
this Niger business, I was doing nothing more and
nothing less than any American has been taught from
social studies in seventh grade -- it is the
responsibility of any American citizen in our
democracy. We have checks and balances, and we have
rights, and we have protections to ensure that we hold
our government accountable for its actions. And that’s
exactly what I was doing.
Now understanding that they would come after me, I
didn’t feel that I had anything personally to worry
about. After all, as you correctly pointed out, the
former President Bush had called me an American hero
and had written me any number of laudatory handwritten
letters. What did shock me and I think shocks most
Americans was what this Administration decided when
they couldn’t discredit me to their satisfaction.
Somebody close to the President of the United States
decided that in order to defend Bush’s political
agenda, that individual or individuals would violate
the national security of the country and expose my
wife’s name and her profession.
That was absolutely unexpected, that this government
would take a national security asset off the table,
working in an area that is of primordial importance to
the national security of the United States -– the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction into the
hands of rogue states and non-state actors. Yet for
some reason, either because they wanted to discourage
other people from stepping forward and telling the
truth, or out of simple revenge, as was reported in
the Washington Post, this government decided that it
would go ahead and take that national security asset
off the table.
It was truly un-American. It was a betrayal of the
country, irrespective of whether they can prosecute
this through conviction. It was treasonous and clearly
the act and the subsequent pushing of the story, and
trying to sort of promote this lie, was un-American in
every sense of the word.
BuzzFlash: When the Administration falsely claimed
that Iraq was seeking enriched uranium from Niger, I
think some people in their minds didn’t fully
understand what that meant. It seems to me that most
people thought that meant the transfer of a suitcase
of highly explosive material or something. And in
reality, what we’re talking about was a very
large-scale operation.
Ambassador Wilson: Sure. We’re talking about 500 tons
that would have had to cross the Sahara Desert, been
loaded onto a ship in West Africa, transported to some
destination, and then further transported into
Baghdad. Five hundred tons is a lot of poundage.
BuzzFlash: And essentially that could not happen
without somebody noticing something, right?
Ambassador Wilson: That’s correct. And I lay all that
out in the book and why I concluded that it could not
have happened.
BuzzFlash: Right now, the Department of Justice
investigation into the national security leak that
exposed your wife is in the hands of a U.S. prosecutor
from the Northern District of Illinois. And Attorney
General Ashcroft has claimed that he is no longer
involved in the case. Is there anything that you can
add about the status of the Department of Justice
investigation, since there’s essentially been no real
media coverage of this important national security
issue?
Ambassador Wilson: Let me just say that the
investigation is in the hands of the professionals.
The prosecutor is a career prosecutor whom I hold in
the highest esteem, and the FBI people who are looking
into this are also professionals. So long as they’re
handling it, I know for a fact that they’re doing
everything they can to get to the bottom of it. Now
the fact that they haven’t yet been able to get to the
bottom of it suggests that there is a fair amount of
covering up and stonewalling going on over at the
White House, despite the President’s claim that he
wanted his senior government officials to cooperate.
Either he has no control over them, or they’re just
simply not doing it.
We’re not talking about hundreds of senior government
officials in this case. We’re talking about a few who
have both the means -- i.e., a national security
clearance that gives them access to the sorts of
conversations, and the building, where they might find
these secrets -- and the motive and political agenda
to carry this out. And finally that they have
sufficient seniority that a senior reporter in
Washington would actually listen to what they had to
say.
BuzzFlash: You are a member of a club of individuals
that include Richard Clarke, John O’Neill, John
DiIulio -- people who have come forward to tell the
truth about the Bush Administration, and then are
smeared as liars. It seems that there’s something
Orwellian about this practice. And the Bush
Administration’s strategy is clearly to attack the
messenger and not refute the message. What’s your
advice to other individuals who are thinking of coming
forward with information that they think would be
vital for the American public to know about the
Administration?
Ambassador Wilson: I’ll tell you the ones that I’m
most proud of, as I look out at this, are the Jersey
girls -- the widows of those Americans who gave their
lives in the World Trade Center. These brave women
have insisted since 9/11 that the U.S. government come
clean on what it knew before the attacks and what it
might have done to prevent this from happening. I
think that they have been profiles in American
courage. And it sickened me when I saw them savaged by
Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard in a television
appearance, and then subsequently in a Wall Street
Journal editorial by Dorothy Rabinowitz.
But what I have to say to people who might come
forward is that one of the great things about our
democracy is freedom of the press. And if we don’t
exercise that, we run the risk of losing it. One must
always keep one’s government under control. The
government serves the people -- not vice-versa.
BuzzFlash: Do you think that the Bush Administration
is just exercising raw brute power by trying to
silence people like yourself or is there some greater
good that they foresee in trying to strike voices such
as yours down?
Ambassador Wilson: It’s hard to see what greater good
they achieve by lying to the American people and then
ruthlessly trying to destroy those who call them on
their lies.
BuzzFlash: You’re continuing to speak out on behalf of
the truth and democracy. And the White House would
want you to just go away into your private life. After
everything you’ve been through, how do you forge on
when the attacks on you are relentless?
Ambassador Wilson: Because this is my country, and it
is a great country, and the American people have every
right to know what their government is doing and what
their government has done with the false pretenses
under which this government launched this war on Iraq.
And trust me when I tell you that once this battle is
won, I have every intention of retiring back to
private life.
BuzzFlash: Ambassador, thank you so much for your
time. We appreciate it.
Ambassador Wilson: My pleasure.
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
It's The Media, Stupid.
Timothy Karr, www.mediachannel.org: "Sinclair
Broadcast Group on Thursday ordered its eight ABC
affiliates to pre-empt Friday's "Nightline" broadcast
of the reading of the names of US military personnel
killed in Iraq, saying the program is "motivated by a
political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of
the United States in Iraq...If the Sinclair Broadcasting Group's track record of political contributions is any indication, executives at the company may have their own "political agenda."
According to The Center for Responsive Politics, an
organization devoted to tracking political
contributions by individuals, PACs and corporations,
Sinclair executives give overwhelmingly to Republican
causes and candidates. Of the top twenty TV and Radio
companies to make political contributions in 2004,
Sinclair Broadcasting Group, is among the most
conservative, giving 98 percent of its $65,434 in
political contributions to GOP candidates."
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert187.shtml
Broadcaster's Own 'Political Agenda' Plays Part in
Nightline Snub
By Timothy Karr
MediaChannel.org
NEW YORK, April 29, 2004 -- Sinclair Broadcast Group
on Thursday ordered its eight ABC affiliates to
pre-empt Friday's "Nightline" broadcast of the reading
of the names of US military personnel killed in Iraq,
saying the program is "motivated by a political agenda
designed to undermine the efforts of the United States
in Iraq."
The political leanings of Sinclair executives also may
have played a part in the company's decision to block
the popular ABC news program. In 2004, Sinclair
executives gave 98 percent of their political
contributions to GOP candidates.
In a fax to press Thursday, the Baltimore-based media
company, whose holdings include 62 local TV stations,
said that by airing Friday's Nightline program, "ABC
is disguising political statements as news content."
During the ABC News broadcast, anchorman Ted Koppel
will read aloud the names of more than 500 U.S.
service men or women who have lost their lives in the
war, as a corresponding photo appears on the screen
along with that person's name, military branch, rank
and age. In an emailed statement, ABC News
"respectfully disagreed" with Sinclair's view of the
program saying that Nightline "is dedicated to
thoughtful and balanced coverage and reports on the
events shaping our world with neither fear nor favor
-- as our audience expects, deserves, and rightly
demands."
If the Sinclair Broadcasting Group's track record of
political contributions is any indication, executives
at the company may have their own "political agenda."
According to The Center for Responsive Politics, an
organization devoted to tracking political
contributions by individuals, PACs and corporations,
Sinclair executives give overwhelmingly to Republican
causes and candidates. Of the top twenty TV and Radio
companies to make political contributions in 2004,
Sinclair Broadcasting Group, is among the most
conservative, giving 98 percent of its $65,434 in
political contributions to GOP candidates.
By comparison, Clear Channel Communications, the
conservative radio colossus run by longtime Bush
cronies Tom and Steve Hicks, has given only 75 percent
of its 2004 contributions to Republicans; Democratic
candidates have received the remaining 25 percent of
Clear Channel's political largesse.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics,
Sinclair CEO and President David Smith personally gave
$2,000, the maximum individual contribution, to
President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. Smith has
yet to reply to MediaChannel's request for comment on
his company's political leanings.
John Dunbar of the nonpartisan Center for Public
Integrity said, "I fell out of my chair when I read
Sinclair's statement." Dunbar, whose organization
monitors and reports upon the influence of money over
politics, considers Koppel's reporting to be
politically moderate. "Based on what Sinclair did,
it's impossible not to see where their political
interests lie," he said.
The broadcasting giant reported first quarter
preliminary results for net broadcast revenues reached
$158.3 million. The Q1 increase over last year --
about $4 million more than the company expected --
came in part from $1.3 million in additional political
advertising revenues in key election states such as
Ohio, Florida, West Virginia, Illinois and Maine,
where Sinclair owns stations.
-- Timothy Karr is Executive Director of
MediaChannel.org
© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.
It's The Media, Stupid.
www.dailyhowler.com: Al Qaeda plots around the world, hoping to destroy your society (more below). And Maureen Dowd—at our greatest newspaper—is concerned because a White House candidate doesn’t make his own peanut putter sandwiches! She draws her inanity from
the profile penned by Wilgoren, of course.
How inane—how ill—are Wilgoren and Dowd? As Wilgoren
wrote in yesterday’s profile, “[e]very modern
presidential candidate has a factotum, or ‘body
man,’”—a guy who serves as personal assistant to the
candidate himself. But for reasons only she can
explain, Wilgoren zeroed in on Kerry’s assistant,
painting him as Kerry’s “butler,” his “glorified
valet,” who exists because John Kerry “is comfortable
being catered to.” (Like Katharine Seelye’s report
about Kerry’s war record, Wilgoren’s imagery mimics
RNC spin. She also lards her slimy piece with
homoerotic imagery.) Why, the “butler” even makes
Kerry’s sandwiches, the troubled Wilgoren “reported.”
Today, this screaming trivia makes its way to the top
of Maureen Dowd’s worried piece.
Break the Bush Cabal's Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh042904.shtml
LET THEM EAT PEANUT BUTTER! The Washington press corps
is deeply disordered. Here—let the New York Times show
you:
THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2004
LET THEM EAT PEANUT BUTTER: Ask yourself a simple
question: What kind of “letters editor” would actually
publish the following text? This letter receives
prominent display in today’s New York Times:
To the Editor:
As a Vietnam veteran, I know the value of serving our
country in time of war. The medals are personal
service decorations awarded to us by our country for
serving with honor.
The medals John Kerry received represent an award
earned in battle. But with only fingernail scrapes to
show for his three Purple Hearts, it’s no wonder Mr.
Kerry was so willing to throw medals away.
Which of our servicemen now serving overseas would
want a commander in chief who has so little regard for
the medals they have earned that he would throw them
away, for political reasons? Truly they would have no
respect for him.
COOK BARELA
Riverside, Calif., April 26, 2004
Barela, of course, is a consummate rube, of the kind
found in every society. But what kind of journalist
would publish this letter—a letter whose “facts” are
so blatantly bogus? In fact, no one has ever so much
as claimed that Kerry had “only fingernail scrapes to
show for his three Purple Hearts.” Last week, the
claim that he received such a scrape when he got his
first Purple Heart was shown to be blatantly false.
But a week later, what does the great Times do? An
editor receives this idiotic letter—and incredibly, he
puts the letter in print! The Times of course knows
the letter is false. But how many readers will know
this?
Readers, only a fool could fail to see the truth in
this morning’s Times. The Washington press corps is
deeply disordered—in effect, mentally ill—and the
Times is quite eager to prove it. We principally speak
of Maureen Dowd’s column, which plays off Jodi
Wilgoren’s “profile” on the front page of yesterday’s
Times (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/28/04). Why do we use
the term “mentally ill?” At a time of building
national peril, Dowd is concerned about this:
DOWD (pgh 1): So let’s see. What’s our swell choice
here?
(2) A guy who mimed being a fighter pilot on a carrier
versus a guy who mimed throwing his medals over a
fence?…
(5) A president who can’t go anywhere without his vice
president to give him the answers versus a candidate
who can’t go anywhere without his campaign
butler/buddy to give him peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches?
Al Qaeda plots around the world, hoping to destroy
your society (more below). And Maureen Dowd—at our
greatest newspaper—is concerned because a White House
candidate doesn’t make his own peanut putter
sandwiches! She draws her inanity from the profile
penned by Wilgoren, of course.
How inane—how ill—are Wilgoren and Dowd? As Wilgoren
wrote in yesterday’s profile, “[e]very modern
presidential candidate has a factotum, or ‘body
man,’”—a guy who serves as personal assistant to the
candidate himself. But for reasons only she can
explain, Wilgoren zeroed in on Kerry’s assistant,
painting him as Kerry’s “butler,” his “glorified
valet,” who exists because John Kerry “is comfortable
being catered to.” (Like Katharine Seelye’s report
about Kerry’s war record, Wilgoren’s imagery mimics
RNC spin. She also lards her slimy piece with
homoerotic imagery.) Why, the “butler” even makes
Kerry’s sandwiches, the troubled Wilgoren “reported.”
Today, this screaming trivia makes its way to the top
of Maureen Dowd’s worried piece.
What does Dowd have on her mind today? George Bush
can’t answer questions about 9/11. And John Kerry
doesn’t make his own sandwiches!
Of course, inanity has been this corps’ stock-in-trade
over at least the last dozen years. When you read your
paper each day, you read the work of a vacuous press
which is happy to display its Millionaire Pundit
Values—a press corps addicted to trivia and inanity.
While Osama plotted in the summer of 2001, they rubbed
their thighs about Chandra Levy. Meanwhile, they’ve
turned your elections into trivia festivals, built
around earth tones, Love Story, dog pills, blow-jobs.
Now we’re handed our current fare. What is the
headline on Dowd’s piece? “Guns and Peanut Butter,” it
says.
And yes, simply put, it’s an illness. Even faced with
growing peril, the Wilgorens, the Dowds—and the
letters editors—simply can’t stop their incessant
group clowning. Are there real topics Dowd might have
explored? At one point, after all, she writes this:
DOWD: Communing with the Higher Father and the
Almighty, President Bush has either stumbled into a
Holy War or swaggered into one.
In their new book, “The Bushes,” Peter and Rochelle
Schweizer, who interviewed many Bushes, including the
president’s father and his brother Jeb, quote one
unnamed relative as saying that W. sees the war on
terror “as a religious war”: “He doesn’t have a P.C.
view of this war. His view of this is that they are
trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians
will strike back with more force and more ferocity
than they will ever know.”
Does Bush have some sort of religious view which
Americans ought to know more about? We don’t know, but
this passage from the Schweizers’ book is hardly the
first indication. Bush has made several odd statements
recently, including those made to Bob Woodward,
statements which produced this exchange when the
author did 60 Minutes:
WOODWARD: The president still believes, with some
conviction, that this was absolutely the right thing,
that he has the duty to free people, to liberate
people, and this was his moment.
MIKE WALLACE: Who gave George Bush the duty to free
people around the world?
WOODWARD: That’s a really good question. The
Constitution doesn’t say that’s part of the
commander-in-chief’s duties.
WALLACE: The president of the United States, without a
great deal of background in foreign policy, makes up
his mind and believes he was sent by somebody to free
the people, not just in Iraq, but around the world?
WOODWARD: That’s his stated purpose.
WALLACE: Right.
WOODWARD: It is far-reaching and ambitious, and I
think will cause many people to tremble.
It will cause many people to tremble! But what has
made Bush believe that “he was sent by somebody to
free the people, not just in Iraq, but around the
world?” It was fairly clear that Woodward and Wallace
believed—based on Bush’s statement about serving a
“higher father”—that the president might feel a
religious calling when he makes these surprising
statements. At any rate, Bush’s new belief is quite a
shift from his “humble foreign policy” of Campaign
2000, and when he talks about “the duty to free people
around the world,” that seems to suggest a different
mission than ridding the world of WMD. Does George
Bush feel a religious mission which Americans need to
hear discussed? We don’t know, and we never will,
because your press corps will never dare ask him.
Instead, Dowd’s headline talks about peanut butter. Is
she concerned about global war? Yes, but she’s also
concerned about John Kerry’s sandwich, the one we read
about on page one on yesterday’s inane New York
Times..
Their focus on trivia is an addiction—a raging,
millionaire’s mental illness. Their opinion leaders
are multimillionaires, and they do behave like a
perfumed court—like Marie Antoinette’s inner circle.
As they’ve long shown, they are impervious to serious
thought, as their class has always been. And they
continue to clown at a dangerous time, at a time that
imperils the world.
While they clowned about Gary Condit, Osama’s men were
tooling those planes. And now, as they clown about
peanut butter, Osama’s men are still at work. And what
will happen to your country because Wilgoren and Dowd
set the tone? Let us finally tell you your future:
Osama’s men will come with a bomb (see below), and
they’ll destroy an American city. American society
will end on that day. And when it does, you can think
of Wilgoren and Dowd—and you can think of the “letters
editor” who laughed in your face with that letter
today. They’ve made a joke of your discourse for
years—while your enemies hunt for a bomb. There is
little chance those enemies won’t succeed, because
screaming idiots—screaming idiots—have long been in
charge of your discourse.
History makes it crystal clear—those who clown will be
destroyed. Marie Antoinette’s posse lost their fine
heads. A larger disaster awaits you and yours. Let
them eat peanut butter, the Times says.
REMEMBER, CASSANDRA WAS RIGHT: Richard Gephardt, on
Hardball last November:
GEPHARDT: What are we worried about? We’re worried
about an A-bomb in a Ryder truck in Washington, in St.
Louis, in L.A. It can’t happen. We have to prevent it
from happening. It cannot happen.
“We have to prevent it from happening,” Gephardt said.
But readers, it won’t be prevented from happening if
we clown about peanut butter! We can’t put idiots in
charge of vital functions—and idiots currently run our
press corps. Go out and spend a dollar today. Let the
Times show you it’s true.
TINA BROWN, FULLY SANE: Yes! This disordered
discussion really occurred on last night’s Hardball.
Chris Matthews rapped about medals v. ribbons with RNC
chief Ed Gillespie (MSNBC transcript, including
quotation marks):
MATTHEWS: It turns out later that they were not
his—they were his service ribbons, which he now says
last night were the same as medals. What’s wrong with
him saying they’re medals if they’re ribbons, or
they’re both the same thing?
GILLESPIE: Because what he said was, he said, “Well, I
never implied that I threw my own medals.”
MATTHEWS: But he threw his ribbons, though.
GILLESPIE: He did. But hang on one second. Because he
said, I never implied that I threw my own medals. And
then he said on an interview on television—
MATTHEWS: Channel 4.
GILLESPIE: Yes. He said, “I threw my medals.” So
there—
MATTHEWS: OK. What happened was—I agree with you. I’m
with you on this but here’s the problem.
GILLESPIE: Can I finish the rest?
MATTHEWS: You’re arguing—you’re arguing about a third
of a century ago and a local Channel 4 reporter here
in Washington, WRC, saying you threw your bronze and
your star and he said beyond that and then he said
other ribbons, other medals, right? But he didn’t
actually say, “I threw my bronze and my—and my
silver.”
GILLESPIE: What she said was, you threw your Bronze
Star, your Purple Heart and your Silver Star, and he
said, “That’s right, and then a few other medals.” And
so the fact is he said—
MATTHEWS: But he said he threw away those ribbons.
GILLESPIE: But then fine. Then later on he said…
In a dangerous world, that discussion is insane. But
Matthews has hosted discussions like this for year
after year after year. By the way: True to the way
your discourse works, neither Matthews nor Gillespie
had a transcript of Kerry’s 33-year-old comments. Each
man kept misstating Kerry’s remarks. This is the way
the clowning clown Matthews has treated your lives for
seven years. (Happy anniversary, Chris!}
Yes, this is a form of illness, but they insist on
indulging it. They’ve built your discourse around this
nonsense for at least the past dozen years. Four years
ago, it was earth tones, Love Story, dog pills and
Love Canal, with RNC shills like Katharine Seelye
coming up with strange “misquotations,” and with
screaming mimis like Matthews lying in your face each
night (for one extended example, see THE DAILY HOWLER,
11/18/02). You must see this for what it is. And you
must understand that this bizarre group will never go
away until forced.
But one person—one—is quite sane today. In this
morning’s Washington Post, Tina Brown lays it out nice
and clear:
BROWN: The Republican attack machine—again—has made
the right calculation: Hit ’em with trivia. Bait the
hook with the absurd “issue” of whether it was medals
or ribbons that Kerry hurled over the wall when he was
a 27-year-old hothead. Then watch the media
bite—they’ll do it every time—and let Kerry rise to it
and blow it. Presto, a thrice-wounded, decorated war
hero running against a president who went missing from
the National Guard is suddenly muddying up his own
record on the morning talk shows. Shades of 2000, when
Bush jokily bowled oranges down the aisle of his
campaign plane while Gore argued about whether he did
or didn’t say he invented the Internet.
Tina is wrong on one point; Gore almost never
discussed the endless inanity about invented the
Internet. (Gore was criticized for not taking on the
endless trivia. Today, Kerry is being criticized for
having done so.) But the press corps flogged invented
the Internet for two solid years, feigning concern
about Gore’s troubling character, and they flogged
other fake inventions—Love Story, Love Canal, doggy
pills, earth tones—as they made a vast joke of your
lives.
“Hit ’em with trivia,” Brown derides. But why does the
press corps luv such talk? In October 2000, Margaret
Carlson explained. Carlson appeared on the Imus show
to discuss press coverage of Bush and Gore’s first
debate. As she noted, Gore was being slammed as a liar
because of a few exceptionally trivial misstatements.
(To state the obvious, most of Gore’s alleged
“misstatements” weren’t misstatements at all.)
Meanwhile, much larger howlers were being
ignored—misstatements by Bush about policy matters.
Speaking with Imus, Carlson explained the double
standard. Here she was, explaining why Bush’s groaners
were being ignored:
CARLSON (10/10/00): You can actually disprove some of
what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and
get out your calculator or you look at his record in
Texas. But it’s really easy, and it’s fun, to disprove
Gore.
Amazing, isn’t it? (And perhaps you can sense the
“liberal bias.”) According to Carlson, the press was
trashing Gore over trivia because it was “easy” and
“fun” to do so! The millionaire pundit kept talking:
CARLSON: I actually happen to know people who need
government, and so they would care more about the
programs, and [less] about the things we kind of make
fun of…But as sport, and as our enterprise, Gore
coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining
to us. And we can disprove it in a way we can’t
disprove these other things.
The press was chasing trivial errors because it was
“greatly entertaining.” Meanwhile, they were ignoring
Bush’s serious errors because they weren’t as easy to
disprove! According to Carlson, Candidate Gore was
being flogged because it was “entertaining” and “fun.”
The coverage of this election was “sport,” Carlson
amazingly said.
Much of what Carlson said this day was disingenuous,
of course. In fact, it was perfectly easy to
“disprove” much of what Bush was saying (see THE DAILY
HOWLER, 9/4/03). But on this day, Carlson gave an idea
of why you’re reading fake letters in today’s Times,
and why you’re reading about peanut butter. Brown is
quite sane, but she’s also polite, so let us say it
one more time: Your Washington press corps is deeply
disordered. Wilgoren and Dowd are eager to prove it.
There’s no sign they ever will stop.
TODAY’S OTHER CONSUMMATE FOOL: Today’s other
consummate fool is the Washington Post’s Richard
Cohen. Peanut butter makes his lead paragraph. Cohen
is part of a vacuous elite—pampered, perfumed,
overpaid, fat and happy. These people can’t grasp the
damage done by the trivialization of your discourse.
And Cohen, of course, is scolding Kerry because he
dared fight back this week. Understand how these
people “think.” Gore is wrong when he doesn’t fight.
Kerry is wrong when he does.
Cohen is a screaming fool. But it’s good to be Cohen,
squire of New York, overpaid and over-praised. As a
matter of fact, it will be good to be Richard Cohen
until al Qaeda comes to New York and puts an end to
all New Yorkers’ lives.
Here is another powerful example of the 9/11 families' extraordinary courage, conscience and clarity of mind as they provide the moral leadership so lacking in the "US mainstream news media" and its propapunditgandists...The "war on terror" is NOT the strength of the incredible shrinking _resident's administration, it is the SHAME of his administration...John O'Neill, Richard Clark, Sibel Edmonds, Colleen Rawley, Roger Cressy, Rand Beers and others have shown great courage and principle, so have a handful of Senators and Congressmen...But it is the 9/11 Families and in particular the "Jersey Moms" that have done the hard work. Whether or not the 9/11 Commission will meet the real challenge (i.e. underscoring the pre-9/11 failures of Condileeza Rice, John Ashcroft, the VICE _resident and in particular the incredible shrinking _resident in de-emphasizing the Al Qaeda threat to pursue their own agenda) is still not known...We will only know when and if their final report is released or leaked...in July...
Monica Gabrielle, Los Angeles Times: But I want to know the whole ugly truth. My husband, Richard Gabrielle, died on the 103rd floor of Tower 2 that day; I want to know what was done beforehand to prevent it from happening, and I want to know what we're doing to prevent it from happening again. My great fear is that their answers will never find their way to the public. I can't be at the meeting. I'm not allowed in. But if I were, this is what I would ask...
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabrielle29apr29,1,4950041.story
COMMENTARY
'I Want to Know the Ugly Truth'
By Monica Gabrielle
Monica Gabrielle is a member of the Family Steering Committee. Website: www.911IndependentCommission.org
April 29, 2004
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will sit down this morning with the entire 9/11 Independent Commission to give their account of events leading up to Sept. 11 — a day that took the life of my husband, along with 3,000 other innocent people. Bush and Cheney will appear together because they refuse to appear separately. It will be behind closed doors because they don't want to speak publicly. There will be a "note taker," no recorded transcript.
But I want to know the whole ugly truth. My husband, Richard Gabrielle, died on the 103rd floor of Tower 2 that day; I want to know what was done beforehand to prevent it from happening, and I want to know what we're doing to prevent it from happening again. My great fear is that their answers will never find their way to the public.
I can't be at the meeting. I'm not allowed in. But if I were, this is what I would ask.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For President Bush:
1. Why was our nation so utterly unprepared for an attack on our own soil?
2. On the morning of 9/11, who was in charge while you were away from the National Military Command Center? Were you informed or consulted about all decisions made in your absence?
3. At what time were you made aware that other planes were hijacked in addition to Flight 11 and Flight 175? What was your course of action?
4. Beginning with the transition period between the Clinton administration and your own, and ending on 9/11/01, specifically what information about terrorists, possible attacks and targets did you receive?
5. Please explain why no one in our government has yet been held accountable for the failures leading up to and on 9/11.
6. From May 1 until Sept. 11, 2001, did you receive any information from any intelligence agency official that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack this nation on its own soil? That terrorists were planning to use airplanes as weapons? That New York City landmarks were being targeted?
7. What defensive measures did you take in response to pre- 9/11 warnings and/or threats from 11 nations about a terrorist attack, many of which cited an attack in the continental U.S.?
8. From May 1, 2001, until Sept. 11, 2001, did you or any agent of the U.S. government carry out any negotiations or talks with Bin Laden, an agent of Bin Laden or Al Qaeda?
For Vice President Cheney:
1. On Sept. 11, when did you first become aware that the U.S. was under attack?
2. The Hart-Rudman report, released in January 2001, predicted a terrorist attack within the U.S. Yet the White House set aside report recommendations and announced in May that you would study the issue of domestic terrorism. Apparently, responsibility was then passed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency director. Congress had been willing to support the recommendations. What happened?
3. Besides ensuring the succession to the presidency, is there a defense protocol in the event our nation is attacked? What is it and was it followed?
4. What subsequent actions did you take to defend our nation?
a. Did you have open lines with the Secret Service, NORAD, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense?
b. Who was in the Situation Room with you?
c. Was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or anyone at the Pentagon informed that we were under attack? If so, at what time was the Pentagon informed? If not Rumsfeld, who?
d. Why wasn't the Pentagon defended?
e. Did you consult with President Bush about all decisions?
5. Please describe any discussions/negotiations between the Taliban and either public or private agents before Sept. 11 regarding Bin Laden and/or rights to pass a pipeline through Afghanistan, or any other subject pertaining to Afghanistan.
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
Article licensing and reprint options
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
Of course, the incredible shrinking _resident will not provide "testimony" because it will not be under oath...and, although the NYTwits (who would have done the country a great service if they had used a calculator in fact checking their own stories on the theft of Fraudida in 2000)are to be commended for this Editorial, and as bizarre (and embarrassing) as it is that the incredible shrinking _resident and the VICE _resident have insisted on appearing together, it is unfortunately NOT the worst capitulation to the White House's demands, the most egregious (and least publicized) "condition" is that only ONE PERSON will be taking notes. Yes, the 9/11 Commissioners former Senators, Governors and high ranking US officials will not be allowed to take their own notes...Who is that one person? What is going on in this country? Will the 9/11 Commission refuse to pull its punches in its final report? Will it tell the whole truth that has already come to light about the failures of Rice, Ashcroft, the VICE _resident and the incredible shrinking -resident himself? "Out, out damn spot!"
NYT Editorial: It would have been a pleasure to be able to congratulate President Bush on his openness in agreeing to sit down today with the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks and answer questions. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush conditioned his cooperation on stipulations that range from the questionable to the ridiculous...The strangest of the president's conditions is that he will testify only in concert with Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House has given no sensible reason for why Mr. Bush is unwilling to appear alone. (When asked at his recent press conference, the president gave one of his patented nonresponses: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.")
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/opinion/29THU1.html--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 29, 2004
The President's Testimony
t would have been a pleasure to be able to congratulate President Bush on his openness in agreeing to sit down today with the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks and answer questions. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush conditioned his cooperation on stipulations that range from the questionable to the ridiculous.
The strangest of the president's conditions is that he will testify only in concert with Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House has given no sensible reason for why Mr. Bush is unwilling to appear alone. (When asked at his recent press conference, the president gave one of his patented nonresponses: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.")
Given the White House's concern for portraying Mr. Bush as a strong leader, it's remarkable that this critical appearance is being structured in a way that is certain to provide fodder for late-night comedians, who enjoy depicting him as the docile puppet of his vice president.
Mr. Bush's reluctant and restrictive cooperation with the panel is consistent with the administration's pattern of stonewalling reasonable requests for documents and testimony and then giving up only the minimum necessary ground when the dispute becomes public. Today's testimony will be in private in the White House, away from reporters or television cameras. The session will not be recorded, and there will be no formal transcript. The president's aides have defended this excessive degree of secrecy with the usual arguments about protecting highly classified information and not wanting to establish dangerous precedents.
The idea that the panel may wring from Mr. Bush some comment that may endanger national security is ridiculous. The commission, led by the respected former Republican governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean, has already heard, in public, from the leaders of the nation's top intelligence agencies, the secretary of defense and Mr. Bush's national security adviser. It seems highly unlikely that the president knows secrets more sensitive than they do. If he did, he would certainly be free to go off the record while discussing them.
The president's aides have also been arguing that making the event anything more than a "meeting" or informal discussion would establish a pattern that future chief executives would be forced to follow. That is true, in a way. If Mr. Bush or any of his successors have the tragic misfortune to be in command at a time when terrorists strike the country, killing thousands of innocent civilians, they should be expected to cooperate with the official investigations, and to do so in a way that puts their statements on the record and into history.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
At least 10 more US soldiers died in Iraq over night. For what? And for whom?
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) quoted in the
Chicago Tribune: "I think a lot of veterans are going to be very angry at a president who can't account for his own service in the National Guard, and a vice president who got every deferment in the world and decided he had better things to do, criticizing somebody who fought for their country and served," Kerry told the Dayton Daily News. "I think it's
inappropriate. I think it shows how desperate the
Republicans are. They don't have a record to run on.
They have a record to run away from."
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
CAMPAIGN 2004
Kerry zeroes in on Cheney draft record
Senator criticizes VP's 5 deferments
Advertisement
By Jill Zuckman
Tribune national correspondent
April 28, 2004
CLEVELAND -- In a campaign unusually focused on the
Vietnam War, Sen. John Kerry trained his criticism on
Vice President Dick Cheney Tuesday, saying it is
"inappropriate" for Cheney to criticize his military
service when he "got every deferment in the world and
decided he had better things to do."
A day after Cheney questioned Kerry's credibility on
national security, the Massachusetts senator went
after the vice president--in addition to President
Bush--as he took his campaign bus tour from
economically depressed Youngstown to the shores of
Lake Erie. Though Kerry met with two unemployed people
and stopped by a construction site to greet workers
here, the Democrat's focus shifted for a second day in
a row to questions of military service.
"I think a lot of veterans are going to be very angry
at a president who can't account for his own service
in the National Guard, and a vice president who got
every deferment in the world and decided he had better
things to do, criticizing somebody who fought for
their country and served," Kerry told the Dayton Daily
News. "I think it's inappropriate. I think it shows
how desperate the Republicans are. They don't have a
record to run on. They have a record to run away
from."
>From 1963 to 1966, Cheney received five deferments:
four student deferments while attending the University
of Wyoming and one for having a child. "I had other
priorities in the '60s other than military service,"
Cheney told a reporter in 1989.
Kerry's campaign also released a document posing nine
"unanswered questions" about Bush's service in the
National Guard, asking why he hasn't proved that he
showed up for service in Alabama, whether he received
special treatment to get into the Guard, and why he
specifically requested not to be sent overseas, among
others.
During a fundraiser in Cleveland on Tuesday night,
Kerry continued his assault, complaining that the Bush
campaign had spent "about $70 million just trying to
destroy me."
"They want you to believe that John Kerry, who put the
uniform of his country on voluntarily, who felt an
obligation to go to Vietnam when so many others
didn't, who stood up and fought for our country, they
want you to believe that somehow I'm not strong for
the defense of our nation," Kerry said.
But the White House said Tuesday that Kerry's service
was not the subject of criticism.
"No one is questioning his military service," said
White House press secretary Scott McClellan. "Sen.
Kerry's service in the military is commendable. No one
is questioning his service in the military. Let's be
clear on this."
At a briefing with reporters, McClellan would not say
whether the president stood behind comments made by a
key adviser, Karen Hughes, that were critical of
Kerry's anti-war protests more than three decades ago.
The president, speaking at a veterans' medical center
in Baltimore, did not address the issue.
The White House declined to say whether the president
endorsed the comments made Monday by Cheney at
Westminster College in Missouri. Kerry on Tuesday
accepted an invitation to speak at the college Friday
after the school's president expressed dismay at the
partisan tone of Cheney's remarks.
McClellan, however, downplayed those concerns.
"I think a spirited discussion about how a president
leads in the war on terrorism and how a president acts
to protect the American people should be at the
forefront of the debate in this election," he said.
Meanwhile, the Bush campaign continued to make its
case that Kerry has voted against "the very weapons
systems that are helping our troops fight and win the
war on terror," according to spokeswoman Nicolle
Devenish.
Late Tuesday Kerry said that when Cheney was secretary
of defense under President George H.W. Bush, "he
bragged and led the effort to cut the military."
Earlier, Kerry spokesman David Wade said Bush
officials are questioning the senator's military
service, as well as his patriotism and commitment to
defend the nation. The Bush campaign has also launched
a $10 million advertising buy this week accusing Kerry
of opposing essential weapons.
"These are loathsome attacks," Wade said. "Cheney had five deferments for the Vietnam War and he's going to question John Kerry's commitment and ability to keeping American troops safe?"
Though Kerry once said he did not want to make Bush's
National Guard service an issue, Wade said the attacks
on Kerry's patriotism had forced him to fight back.
The contretemps between the two campaigns became
especially heated Monday as Republican officials
questioned whether Kerry actually threw his medals and
ribbons over a fence during an anti-war demonstration
in 1971, or threw other people's medals.
Over the years, Kerry's answers have been somewhat
varied, leading Republicans to accuse him of lacking
credibility. On Monday, as he campaigned in
Pennsylvania, Kerry said he no longer had his ribbons,
but still retained his three Purple Hearts as well as
his Silver Star and Bronze Star.
- - -
Cheney's military deferments
Dick Cheney received five deferments from the military
draft between 1963 and 1966.
Sept. 1959: Enters Yale.
June 1962: Withdraws from Yale.
Jan. 1963: Enters Casper College in Wyoming. Receives
first student deferment.
May 1965: Cheney earns his bachelor's degree from the
University of Wyoming. While there, his student
deferment was renewed twice.
Fall 1965: Enters graduate school at Wyoming and
receives another deferment.
Jan. 1966: Receives fifth deferment under a provision
exempting men with children from military service when
his wife becomes pregnant.
July 28, 1966: Cheney's first child, Elizabeth, is
born.
Jan. 1967: At 26, Cheney is no longer eligible for the
draft.
Sources: The Associated Press, The Yale Daily News
Chicago Tribune
JJeff Zeleny of the Tribune's Washington Bureau
contributed to this report
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
Another major scandal being kept off the air waves because of the complicity of network news organizations...Did intelligence from this hacking reach the White House? Well, hmmm....
Eric Lichtblau, New York Times: The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into accusations that Republican Congressional aides stole sensitive Democratic memorandums, and the department has tapped David N. Kelley, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, to lead the politically charged case, officials said Monday...In March, the Senate sergeant-at-arms concluded in a 65-page report that two Republican staff aides had engaged in widespread, unauthorized and possibly illegal spying by reading Democratic strategy memorandums on a Senate computer system.
Save the US Constitution, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/politics/27PROB.html?pagewanted=print&position=
April 27, 2004
Justice Dept. Opens Inquiry on Memo Theft
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
ASHINGTON, April 26 — The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into accusations that Republican Congressional aides stole sensitive Democratic memorandums, and the department has tapped David N. Kelley, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, to lead the politically charged case, officials said Monday.
The decision to bring in Mr. Kelley, rather than have prosecutors in Washington pursue the case, came after lawmakers from both parties urged the Justice Department to appoint an independent prosecutor to avoid the appearance of a conflict.
The department said in a letter dated Monday that it was confident that Mr. Kelley would conduct the investigation "in a thorough, fair, impartial and professional manner." Several leading Democrats applauded his appointment, with Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York saying it was "a very good first step."
The opening of the criminal inquiry increases the significance of the case, which has provoked open hostilities between Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in their continuing battle over President Bush's judicial nominations.
In March, the Senate sergeant-at-arms concluded in a 65-page report that two Republican staff aides had engaged in widespread, unauthorized and possibly illegal spying by reading Democratic strategy memorandums on a Senate computer system.
Over at least 18 months, the aides improperly read, downloaded and printed 4,670 files concerning Democratic tactics in opposing many of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees, the report said, and some of the material was leaked to conservative groups supporting the nominees and news media outlets.
The sergeant-at-arms suggested that the unauthorized spying could have violated laws against the receipt of stolen property and lying to investigators, among others. The report also suggested that many other Republican aides might have been involved in trafficking in the stolen documents, and Democrats have questioned whether officials at the Justice Department and the White House were also privy to the material in working to support Mr. Bush's nominees and derail Democratic opposition.
The two aides implicated in the affair have both left the Senate. One, Manuel C. Miranda, who had worked for both the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and Senator Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has defended his conduct in numerous interviews, saying he was able to access the computer memorandums because of Democratic negligence in securing them, not because of any theft or criminal wrongdoing.
Some conservative groups have said that the memorandums reveal ethical improprieties by the Democrats in colluding with liberal groups to block Mr. Bush's nominations. But there is no indication that this will be an element of the criminal inquiry by Mr. Kelley, officials said.
Mr. Hatch, who said in March that he was "mortified" by the ethical breach, said through a spokesman on Monday that he "has every faith" that the Justice Department and Mr. Kelley's office "will do the right thing here."
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the judiciary panel, also welcomed the Justice Department's decision, saying, "With the powers available to a federal prosecutor, this matter can now be more thoroughly investigated, so that those who engaged in criminal conduct may be brought to justice."
Senator Schumer said that while Mr. Kelley, a Democrat, was an independent and capable prosecutor "without conflicts," Attorney General John Ashcroft should still remove himself from oversight of the case to avoid any potential conflicts.
A Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity said, "Ashcroft has a potential conflict on many levels because he has a personal relationship with many of the Republican senators and he has direct control over Justice Department employees who may become involved in the investigation."
Mr. Kelley's office declined to comment. While the letter sent Monday by the Justice Department said that Mr. Kelley had been assigned to the case, it left open whether he would have the type of broad autonomy given to the prosecutor in another politically sensitive case involving the leak of a C.I.A. officer's identity.
In that case, Mr. Ashcroft recused himself after months of complaints from Democrats, and his deputy gave the United States attorney in Chicago, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, authority to conduct an independent investigation.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
2+2=4
Lynn Landes, www.ecotalk.org: Meet the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count (using BOTH computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen machines) about 80% of all votes cast in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Both ES&S and Diebold have been caught installing uncertified software in their machines.
http://www.ecotalk.org/UrosevichBrothers.htm
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
Lynn Investigates ...
Go back to Voting Machine Webpage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two Voting Companies & Two Brothers Will Count 80% of U.S. Election - Using BOTH Scanners & Touchscreens
by Lynn Landes 4/27/04
Voters can run, but they can't hide from these guys. Meet the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count (using BOTH computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen machines) about 80% of all votes cast in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
Both ES&S and Diebold have been caught installing uncertified software in their machines. Although there is no known certification process that will protect against vote rigging or technical failure, it is a requirement of most, if not all, states.
And, according to author Bev Harris in her book, Black Box Voting, "...one of the founders of the original ES&S (software) system, Bob Urosevich, also oversaw development of the original software now used by Diebold Election Systems."
Talk about putting all our eggs in one very bogus, but brotherly basket.
Even if states or counties hire their own technicians to re-program Diebold or ES&S software (or software from other companies), experts say that permanently installed software, called firmware, still resides inside of both electronic scanners and touchscreen machines and is capable of manipulating votes. For those who are unfamiliar with the term 'firmware', here's a definition by BandwidthMarket.com: "Software that is embedded in a hardware device that allows reading and executing the software, but does not allow modification, e.g., writing or deleting data by an end user."
The ability to rig an election is well within easy reach of voting machine companies. And it does not matter if the machines are scanners or touchscreens, or are networked or hooked up to modems.
So, for those states and counties who think they're dodging the bullet by not buying (or not using) the highly insecure and error-prone touchscreen voting machines (which will process 28.9% of all votes this year), a huge threat still remains - computerized ballot scanners. They will count 57.6% of all votes cast, including absentee ballots.
And don't count on recounts to save the day. In most states, recounts of paper ballots only occur if election results are close. The message to those who want to rig elections is, "rig them by a lot." In some states, like California, spot checks are conducted. But, that will not be an effective way to discover or deter vote fraud or technical failure, particularly in a national election where one vote per machine will probably be enough to swing a race.
Although touchscreens have been getting the bulk of negative publicity lately, electronic ballot scanners have a long and sordid past, as well. Electronic scanners were first introduced into U.S. elections in 1964, and ever since then a steady stream of reports of technical irregularities have caught the attention of scientists, journalists, and activists, most notably the 1988 report, Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying, by Roy G. Saltman, and the 1992 book, Votescam: The Stealing of America, by Jim and Ken Collier.
Even though there are several foreign and domestic corporations involved in the U.S. vote counting business, ES&S and Diebold clearly dominate the field. ES&S claims that they have tabulated "56% of the U.S. national vote for the past four presidential elections", while a Diebold spokesperson told this writer that the company processed about 35% of U.S. electronic vote count in 2002.
But, is there any real difference between Diebold and ES&S? Perhaps not.
Bob Urosevich is currently president of Diebold. Todd is vice president of ES&S. In 1999, American Information Systems (AIS), purchased Business Records Corporation (BRC) to become ES&S. AIS (1980) was formerly Data Mark (1979). Both AIS and Data Mark were founded by the brothers Urosevich. In 2002 Diebold acquired Global Election Systems. Global was founded 1991, which itself acquired the AccuVote system the same year. Bob Urosevich is a past president of Global.
Of course, most interested observers don't believe that the Urosevich brothers are the real brains behind their respective operations. For information on their financial backers, check out Chapter 8 of Bev's book - blackboxvoting.com, and my webpage - ecotalk.org/VotingMachineCompanies.htm.
Diebold and ES&S have been involved in countless election irregularities over the years, involving both ballot scanners and touchscreens. But, it seems that they've always managed to finesse a happy ending for themselves. Now, it appears that at least Diebold might be in real trouble.
On April 22, 2004, Jim Wasserman of the Associated Press (AP) reported, "By an 8-0 vote, the state's (California) Voting Systems and Procedures Panel recommended that (Secretary of State) Shelley cease the use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold has performed poorly in California and its machines malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election, turning away many voters in San Diego County...In addition to the ban, panel members recommended that a secretary of state's office report released Wednesday, detailing alleged failings of Diebold in California, be forwarded to the state attorney general's office to consider civil and criminal charges against the company."
Interestingly, no one in the U.S. federal government seems to be paying attention...as usual. There is no federal agency that has regulatory authority or oversight of the voting machine industry - not the Federal Election Commission (FEC), not the Department of Justice (DOJ), and not the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The FEC doesn't even have a complete list of all the companies that count votes in U.S. elections.
Once again we are witness to an 'eyes closed, hands off' approach to protecting America. The 2004 election rests in the private hands of the Urosevich brothers, who are financed by the far-out right wing and top donors to the Republican Party. The Democrats are either sitting ducks or co-conspirators. I don't know which.
My mantra remains - Vote Paper Ballots, Ditch the Machines.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lynn Landes is one of the nation's leading journalists on voting technology and democracy issues. Readers can find her articles at EcoTalk.org. Lynn is a former news reporter for DUTV and commentator for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Contact info: lynnlandes@earthlink.net / (215) 629-3553
The Emperor has no uniform...
Wesley Clark (D-NATO): Although President Bush has not engaged personally in such accusations, he has done nothing to stop others from making them. I believe those who didn't serve, or didn't show up for service, should have the decency to respect those who did serve — often under the most dangerous conditions, with bravery and, yes, with undeniable patriotism.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/opinion/28CLAR.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 28, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Medals of Honor
By WESLEY K. CLARK
ITTLE ROCK, Ark.
When John Kerry released his military records to the public last week, Americans learned a lot about Mr. Kerry's exceptional service in Vietnam. They also learned a lot about the Republican attack machine.
The evaluations were uniformly glowing. One commander wrote that Mr. Kerry ranked among "the top few" in three categories: initiative, cooperation and personal behavior. Another commander wrote, "In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action, Lt. j.g. Kerry was unsurpassed." The citation for Mr. Kerry's Bronze Star praises his "calmness, professionalism and great personal courage under fire."
In the United States military, there's no ideology — there are no labels, Republican or Democrat — when superiors evaluate a man or woman's service to country. Mr. Kerry's commander for a brief time, Grant Hibbard, now a Republican, gave Mr. Kerry top marks 36 years ago.
Now the standards are those of politics, not the military. Despite his positive evaluations, Mr. Hibbard recently questioned whether Mr. Kerry deserved one of his three Purple Hearts.
In the heat of a political campaign, attacks come from all directions. That's why John Kerry's military records are so compelling; they measure the man before his critics or his supporters saw him through a political lens. These military records show that John Kerry served his country with valor, and that those who served with him and above him held him in high regard. That's honor enough for any veteran.
Yet the Republican attack machine follows a pattern we've seen before, whether the target is Senator John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 or Senator Max Cleland in Georgia in 2002. The latest manifestation of these tactics is the controversy over Mr. Kerry's medals.
John Kerry was awarded three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for his service in Vietnam. In April 1971, as part of a protest against the war, he threw some ribbons over the fence of the United States Capitol.
Republicans have tried to use this event to question his patriotism and his truthfulness, claiming he has been inconsistent in saying whether he threw away his medals or ribbons. This is no more than a political smear. After risking his life in Vietnam to save others, John Kerry earned the right to speak out against a war he believed was wrong. Make no mistake: it is that bravery these Republicans are now attacking.
Although President Bush has not engaged personally in such accusations, he has done nothing to stop others from making them. I believe those who didn't serve, or didn't show up for service, should have the decency to respect those who did serve — often under the most dangerous conditions, with bravery and, yes, with undeniable patriotism.
Wesley K. Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate, was commander of NATO forces from 1997 to 2000.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
The Emperor has no uniform...
www.johnkerry,com:
Bush Has Said He Used No Special Treatment To Get Into The Guard. How Does He Explain The Fact That He Jumped Ahead Of 150 Applicants Despite Low Pilot Aptitude Scores?
Col. Albert Lloyd Said A Report >From Alabama To Ellington Should Have Been Filed. Where Is That Report?
Why Did Bush Miss His Medical Exam In 1972?
Where Are The Complete Results Of The Required Investigation Into Bush’s Absence From The Exam?
Why Did Bush Specifically Request To NOT Be Sent Overseas For Duty?
Why Does The White House Say Bush Was On Base When Bush’s Superiors Had Filed A Report Saying He Was Gone For A Whole Year?
Why Is The Pentagon Under Orders To Not Discuss Bush’s Record With Reporters?
Where Are Bush’s Flight Logs?
Why Hasn’t Bush Himself Demonstrated That He Showed Up For Service in Alabama?
Bush Has Said He Used No Special Treatment To Get Into The Guard. How Does He Explain The Fact That He Jumped Ahead Of 150 Applicants Despite Low Pilot Aptitude Scores?
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/pr_2004_0427b.html
KEY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Bush’s Record In The National Guard
April 27, 2004
For Immediate Release
“If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to have. I'm not going to stand around and let them play games.” -- John Kerry, NBC News, 4/26/04
Bush Has Said He Used No Special Treatment To Get Into The Guard. How Does He Explain The Fact That He Jumped Ahead Of 150 Applicants Despite Low Pilot Aptitude Scores?
Col. Albert Lloyd Said A Report >From Alabama To Ellington Should Have Been Filed. Where Is That Report?
Why Did Bush Miss His Medical Exam In 1972?
Where Are The Complete Results Of The Required Investigation Into Bush’s Absence From The Exam?
Why Did Bush Specifically Request To NOT Be Sent Overseas For Duty?
Why Does The White House Say Bush Was On Base When Bush’s Superiors Had Filed A Report Saying He Was Gone For A Whole Year?
Why Is The Pentagon Under Orders To Not Discuss Bush’s Record With Reporters?
Where Are Bush’s Flight Logs?
Why Hasn’t Bush Himself Demonstrated That He Showed Up For Service in Alabama?
Bush Has Said He Used No Special Treatment To Get Into The Guard. How Does He Explain The Fact That He Jumped Ahead Of 150 Applicants Despite Low Pilot Aptitude Scores?
“There was no special treatment.”
--Then-Gov. George W. Bush [Dallas Morning News, 7/4/99]
FACT: With Family Connection, Bush Got Coveted Slot in Texas Guard Shortly After Graduating from College.
A family friend of Bush’s father pulled strings to secure Bush’s spot; Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard after his student deferment ran out when he graduated from Yale in 1968. Before he graduated, Bush personally visited Col. Walter “Buck” Staudt -- the commander of the Texas Air National Guard -- to talk about the Guard. After Bush met with Staudt, he applied and was quickly accepted -- despite a waiting list of over 150 applicants. Staudt recommended Bush for a direct appointment, which allowed Bush to become a second lieutenant right out of basic training without having to go though officer candidate school. The direct appointment also cleared the way for a position in pilot training school. [New York Times, 9/27/99; Houston Chronicle, 10/10/92; Los Angeles Times, 7/4/99]
FACT: Bush Scored in 25th Percentile on Pilot Aptitude Test. When Bush applied for the Guard, his score on the Air Force pilot aptitude section, one of five on the test, was in the 25th percentile, the lowest allowed for would-be fliers. [Dallas Morning News, 7/4/99]
FACT: No Shortage of Pilots in Texas Guard. Although a Bush spokesman claimed Bush was fast-tracked because the Guard needed pilots, Charles C. Shoemake, a chief of personnel in the Texas Guard from 1972 to 1980 remembered no such shortage. “We had so many people coming in who were super-qualified,” Shoemake said Texas Guard Historian Tom Hail said there was no apparent need to fast-track applicants. “I’ve never heard of that,” he said. “Generally they did that for doctors only, mostly because we needed extra flight surgeons.” [Los Angeles Times, 7/4/99]
Col. Albert Lloyd Said A Report From Alabama To Ellington Should Have Been Filed. Where Is That Report?
FACT: Col. Lloyd: Guard Records Should Include Evidence Of Alabama Service. Lloyd also said he did not know whether Bush performed duty in Alabama. “If he did, his drill attendance should have been certified and sent to Ellington, and there would have been a record.” [Boston Globe, 5/23/00; AP, 6/24/00]
FACT: White House’s Own Expert Said Bush Should Have Done More. According to the Globe, “the White House included with the documents a memorandum from a Texas Air National Guard personnel specialist stating that the documents prove that Bush had a ‘satisfactory year’ for ‘retirement/retention’ purposes between May 27, 1972, and May 26, 1973. But that specialist, retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., acknowledged in an interview last night that he evaluated Bush using the lower of two measures for rating Guard service. Guardsmen, he said, needed to serve more days to meet minimum-training requirements than to meet the lower threshold to receive retirement credit for the year. ‘Should he have done more? Yes, he should have,’ Lloyd said of Bush, who was a fighter-interceptor pilot. ‘Did he have to? No.’” [Boston Globe, 2/11/04]
Why Did Bush Miss His Medical Exam In 1972?
FACT: Bush Was Suspended From Flight Duty For Failing To Take Mandated Medical Exam.
On September 29, 1972, Bush was officially suspended from flying for missing his annual medical examination. The orders note that Bush’s suspension is authorized under the guidelines presented in Air Force Manual 35-12 Para 2-29m, which reads that Bush’s local commander “will direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination.” [Aeronautical Orders, Number 87, 29 Sept 72; AFM 35-13, Para 2-29m]
Where Are The Complete Results Of The Required Investigation Into Bush’s Absence From The Exam?
FACT: The order suspending Bush from flight duty stated: “Verbal orders of the Comdr on 1 Aug 72 suspending 1STLT George W. Bush…from flying status are confirmed…Reason for Suspension: Failure to accomplish annual medical examination. Off will comply with para 2-10, AFM 35-13. Authority: Para 2-29m, AFM 35-13. [Aeronautical Orders, Number 87, 29 September 1972, emphasis added]
Para 2-29m, AFM 35-13: “When a Rated Officer Fails To Accomplish a Medical Examination Prescribed by AFM 160-1…(1)The local commander who has authority to convene a Flying Evaluation Board will direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination. After reviewing the findings of the investigation, the local commander may convene a Flying Evaluation Board or forward through command channels a detailed report of the circumstances which resulted in the officer’s failure to accomplish a medical examination, along with a recommendation that the suspension be removed. (2) The individual’s major command will forward the report along with the command recommendation to USAFMPC/DPMAJD, Randolph AFB TX 78148 for final determination.” [Para 2-29m, AFM 35-13, emphasis added]
Why Did Bush Specifically Request NOT To Be Sent Overseas For Duty?
FACT: Bush’s Application Indicated Bush Did Not Volunteer for Overseas Duty. On Bush’s application to the 147th Fighter Group at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas, Bush was asked what his “Area Assignment Preferences” were. Bush checked the box beside “Do Not Volunteer” for overseas duty. [Application for Extended Duty With The United States Air Force, 5/27/68]
Why Does The White House Say Bush Was On Base When Bush’s Superiors Had Filed A Report Saying He Was Gone For A Whole Year?
FACT: Bush’s Superiors Were Unable to Evaluate Him for a Full Year, Saying he “Has Not Been Observed at This Unit…”
May 2, 1973: Bush’s superior officers William D. Harris Jr. and Jerry B. Killian, wrote on his yearly evaluation form, “Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report,” and that a “civilian occupation made it necessary for him to move to Montgomery, Alabama. He cleared this base on 15 May 1972 and has been performing equivalent training in a non flying status with the 187 Tac Recon Gp, Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama.” [AF-77, 2 May 73, emphasis added]
…But the White House Claims Bush was on Base the Same Day Superiors Filed Report.
White House release says Bush paid on May 2, 1973, the very day his superiors reported, “Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report.” [2nd Q 1973 pay record]
FACT: Bush’s Superior Officer Says He Would Have Known If Bush Had Reported for Duty.
November 12, 1973: Rufus G. Martin signed a report on Bush’s evaluation, saying Bush was “Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30 April 73.” [AF-77a, 12 Nov 73, emphasis added]
Boston Globe: “But retired colonel Martin, the unit's former administrative officer, said he too thought Bush had been in Alabama for that entire year. Harris and Killian, he said, would have known if Bush returned to duty at Ellington.” [Boston Globe, 5/23/00, emphasis added]
Why Is The Pentagon Under Orders Not To Discuss Bush’s Record With Reporters?
FACT: Freedom of Information Officers Under Orders From Senior Pentagon Officials To Ignore Requests on Bush Files. According to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, “at the National Guard Bureau, now headed by a Bush appointee from Texas, officials last week said they were under orders not to answer questions. The bureau's chief historian said he couldn't discuss questions about Bush's military service on orders from the Pentagon. ‘If it has to do with George W. Bush, the Texas Air National Guard or the Vietnam War, I can't talk with you,’ said Charles Gross, chief historian for the National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C. Rose Bird, Freedom of Information Act officer for the bureau, said her office stopped taking records requests on Bush's military service in mid-February and is directing all inquiries to the Pentagon. She would not provide a reason. Air Force and Texas Air National Guard officials did not respond to written questions about the issue. James Hogan, a records coordinator at the Pentagon, said senior Defense Department officials had directed the National Guard Bureau not to respond to questions about Bush's military records.” [Spokane Spokesman-Review, 3/14/04, emphasis added]
-30-
The Emperor has no uniform...
CNN: Lautenberg pointed to a poster with a drawing of
a chicken in a military uniform defining a chickenhawk
as "a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone
else fights it." "They shriek like a hawk, but they have the backbone of the chicken," he said. "The lead chickenhawk against Sen. Kerry [is] the vice president of the United States, Vice President Cheney," Lautenberg said. "He was in Missouri this week claiming that Sen. Kerry was not up to the job of protecting this nation. What nerve. Where was Dick Cheney when that war was going on?"
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/28/lautenberg.kerry/index.html
Defending Kerry, senator blasts 'chickenhawks'
Lautenberg criticizes Cheney for questioning record
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg on
Wednesday called Vice President Dick Cheney "the lead
chickenhawk" against Sen. John Kerry and criticized
other Republicans for questioning the Democratic
presidential contender's military credentials.
But Sen. John McCain, a decorated war hero and former
prisoner of war, scolded Lautenberg for attacking the
Bush administration during the Iraq conflict and said
it was time to "declare that the Vietnam War is over."
In a scathing speech on the Senate floor, Lautenberg,
D-New Jersey, said that he did not think politicians
should be judged by whether they had military service
but added that "when those who didn't serve attack the
heroism of those who did, I find it particularly
offensive."
Lautenberg pointed to a poster with a drawing of a
chicken in a military uniform defining a chickenhawk
as "a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone
else fights it."
"They shriek like a hawk, but they have the backbone
of the chicken," he said.
"The lead chickenhawk against Sen. Kerry [is] the
vice president of the United States, Vice President
Cheney," Lautenberg said. "He was in Missouri this
week claiming that Sen. Kerry was not up to the job of
protecting this nation. What nerve. Where was Dick
Cheney when that war was going on?"
Lautenberg chastised members of the Bush
administration for being overly eager to go to war
when they had not been willing to fight themselves. He
quoted a Cheney interview from the 1980s that he had
"other priorities" in the '60s than military service.
In a speech Monday at Westminster College in Fulton,
Missouri, Cheney attacked Kerry's votes in the Senate
to cut weapons programs, his opposition to the 1991
Persian Gulf War and recent comments that the war on
terror should not be thought of primarily as a
military operation.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday
that Cheney criticized Kerry on policy issues and said
that "no one is questioning his military service."
But Lautenberg compared Cheney's remarks with the GOP
campaign against former Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia
Democrat whose defeat in 2002 has been a sore spot to
many in his party.
"Max Cleland lost three limbs in Vietnam and they
shamed him so, that he was pushed out of office
because he was portrayed as weak on defense. Where do
they come off with that kind of stuff?" he said.
He also criticized President Bush for declaring an end
to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003.
He showed a picture of Bush giving a speech on the
deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln with the banner
"Mission Accomplished" in the background.
"The mission accomplished was to get a picture that
could be used in an election campaign," Lautenberg
said.
Since that speech, 587 U.S. troops have died in Iraq,
including 415 from hostile fire.
Lautenberg also criticized the president for saying
"bring 'em on" to Iraqi insurgents.
"I served in Europe in World War II," he said. "The
last thing I wanted to hear from my commander in
chief, or my local commander, is dare the enemy to
launch attacks against us."
McCain, the next senator to speak, said he had planned
to discuss an Internet tax moratorium bill but that he
felt he needed to address Lautenberg's remarks.
He said reasonable differences of opinion existed
about the handling of the Iraq war but that the Senate
should focus on making the operation successful.
"What are we doing on the floor of the Senate? We're
attacking the president's credentials because of his
service that ended ... more than 30 years ago," McCain
said. "I think that's wrong. I wish we'd stop it. I
wish we'd just stop, at least until the fighting in
Iraq is over with."
He called for a bipartisan approach to "seeing this
thing through because we cannot afford to fail."
"At least could we declare that the Vietnam War is
over and have a cease-fire and agree that both
candidates -- the president of the United States and
Sen. Kerry served honorably -- end of story? Now let's
focus our attention on the conflict that's taking
place in Iraq, that is taking American lives as I
speak on this floor," he said.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/28/lautenberg.kerry/index.html
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Well, you probably missed it...I almost hope you did...This morning on SeeNotNews, while talking about the "problem" Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta)faces in "dealing" with "charges" about his military record and anti-war activism in the Vietnam era, the cable news network's "senior political analyst" Bill Schnooker said that there are "serious questions" about the incredibly shrinking _resident's National Guard service during Vietnam and that they would have "caused him problems IF they had been known during the 2000 campaign." Of course, they were known. But the "US mainstream news media" and its propapunditgandists refused to beat the drum on the issue as they have quite willing beaten the drum now for the Bush cabal and against JFK...It's the Media, Stupid...A few weeks ago, the incredible shrinking _resident had his "service record" released. All it really told us was that he had some dental work done in Alabama (and it wasn't even done to remove scrapnel from his gums), but hey, as the incredible shrinking _resident enjoys saying about his tax cuts, "it's your money."
Terry McAuliffe: "Why should we believe a word Dick Cheney says about John Kerry - especially when it comes to defending our country? For four years, Dick Cheney hasn't been straight with the American people. Why would he start now?
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the guy who took a year to finally admit to America that the Bush Administration had sent our troops to war in Iraq without the body armor they needed.
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the guy who told us there was "no doubt" that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction and that he "knew" Saddam Hussein had ties with Al-Qaeda. We now know neither was true.
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the former head of Halliburton who rewarded his old buddies with over $7 billion in no-bid contracts to rebuild Iraq. But his old buddies rewarded America by overcharging us for gas and rewarded our troops by skimping on basic services like clean working conditions and safe food.
"You remember Dick Cheney. When John Kerry was risking his life for his country in Vietnam, Dick Cheney was getting deferments because, in his words, he had "other priorities than military service." And he feels qualified to tell us that John Kerry won't do whatever it takes to defend America?
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.democrats.org/news/200404260001.html
DNC releases text of McAuliffe letter to Bush
Elizabeth Alexander Named Press Secretary to Chairman McAuliffe
DNC Faults Bush for Legacy of Secrecy and Stonewalling
more…
Apr 26, 2004
DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe delivers speech on Vice President Dick Cheney's record
"I understand it's been a difficult few months for the Republican Party.
"This week is no different - the Bush Administration faces more questions from the 9/11 commission, the Supreme Court case on Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, and the anniversary of George Bush standing on an aircraft carrier behind a banner that read "Mission Accomplished."
"After a year without a primary opponent, a $100 million war chest, and one of the most intensely negative ad campaigns we've ever seen, our friends at the Bush-Cheney campaign thought they'd be on the road to victory by now.
"Instead, they're on the run. They've wasted $50 million on an ad campaign where truth was the first casualty and it hasn't even made a dent in the polls. They refuse to change course on almost every problem facing America, leaving our troops alone, our country in debt, and our middle-class working harder and harder for less and less. And, with each day that passes, they give more Americans fewer reasons to trust what this President says.
"The Republicans are desperate to hold on to power. And we all know that when it comes to the Republican Party, desperation is usually followed by distortion and distraction.
"Last week, we saw the Republican attack machine go back to their favorite playbook when they criticized John Kerry's tour of duty in Vietnam. Apparently, two tours in Vietnam, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and Three Purple Hearts weren't good enough for the folks who never miss a chance to say that military service shouldn't be an issue in this campaign. Just today, they are trying to attack John Kerry for protesting the Vietnam War when he came home. A protest, even John McCain said he had the right to make.
"They had attacks, but we had the facts, and we released them for all to see: John Kerry is a decorated war hero who risked his life trying to save the lives of others. His records say so, his superiors say so, and the band of brothers he served with say so. End of discussion.
"But for the Republicans, twisting the truth into distracting attack is like a bad habit they just can't break. That's why today, Dick Cheney, the Bush Campaign's Attack Dog-in-Chief, is kicking off a week-long ad campaign that will question John Kerry's commitment to defending the country he risked his life for.
"The American people deserve better. And that's why I'm calling on Dick Cheney to call off the Republican attack dogs' attempts to smear John Kerry's service to America and his commitment to defending it as President.
"What's really amazing about today's attacks is this: while I know that the Republicans have had a tough few months, I didn't know that things had gotten so bad over there that they feel the need to keep using Dick Cheney to attack John Kerry's record on defense.
"Why should we believe a word Dick Cheney says about John Kerry - especially when it comes to defending our country? For four years, Dick Cheney hasn't been straight with the American people. Why would he start now?
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the guy who took a year to finally admit to America that the Bush Administration had sent our troops to war in Iraq without the body armor they needed.
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the guy who told us there was "no doubt" that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction and that he "knew" Saddam Hussein had ties with Al-Qaeda. We now know neither was true.
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the former head of Halliburton who rewarded his old buddies with over $7 billion in no-bid contracts to rebuild Iraq. But his old buddies rewarded America by overcharging us for gas and rewarded our troops by skimping on basic services like clean working conditions and safe food.
"You remember Dick Cheney. When John Kerry was risking his life for his country in Vietnam, Dick Cheney was getting deferments because, in his words, he had "other priorities than military service." And he feels qualified to tell us that John Kerry won't do whatever it takes to defend America?
"Finally, with the latest set of misleading attack ads beginning today, I hope you'll remember this about Vice President Dick Cheney:
"When he was Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney consistently proposed massive cuts to weapons programs that our troops are using right now in Iraq.
"In fact, Dick Cheney tried to kill over 81 weapons programs, and tried to gut the Army's M-1 tank, the B-2 bomber program, the AH-64 Apache Helicopters, and the F-16 aircrafts.
"He called for the closure of 72 domestic military installations, and the reduction of 500,000 active-duty military personnel and 200,000 reservists. Time and time again, he has voted to cut funding for the Veterans Administration, forcing our Veterans to fight for the health care and benefits they earned and were promised by this Administration.
"Our friends at the Republican National Committee have not been shy about telling us that the weapons systems I just mentioned were crucial to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet, as Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney wanted them cut. John Kerry stood tall against no-bid contracts for Halliburton - Dick Cheney cut funding for weapons programs CRUCIAL to our troops' success in Iraq today.
"Why did Dick Cheney propose all these defense cuts over the course of his career? We may never know. Perhaps he had "other priorities" those times too.
"But what we do know is this: George Bush has sent Dick Cheney to kick off a misleading ad campaign attacking John Kerry's commitment to defending America. And Dick Cheney is still able to stand by with a straight face and watch these attacks unfold.
"With all that time Dick Cheney spent in that bunker and in those secret energy task force meetings, sometimes it's hard to remember all the tall tales he's been telling. But we remember Dick Cheney - and he's the last guy who should be lecturing John Kerry about how to defend America and keep the faith with those who wear the uniform.
"It's time for Dick Cheney to call off the Republican attack dogs. The American people have better things to do with their time than listen to more misleading attacks from a man who has been misleading them from the day he took office.
"We saw what the Republican attack dogs did to Senator McCain in 2000. We shockingly saw what they did to Max Cleland in 2002. We remember how their ads put his face next to Osama bin Laden's and told America that a triple-amputee who fought in Vietnam would not defend the security of his country.
"That was outrageous. That was wrong. And it will not happen again.
"We will not let this multi-state, muilt-million dollarsmear campaign triumph over the truth. The issues facing America in 2004 are too important.
"If the debate is who can best keep this country safe and secure, we will remind every voter that John Kerry served as a Naval officer, faced combat, was wounded multiple times in Vietnam, saved lives and was awarded three purple hearts, a silver star and a bronze star for his service.
"If the debate is who can best keep this country safe and secure, we will remind every voter that following September 11th, the world was united with us in fighting terror.But this President pushed that good will aside and dropped an Iron Curtain between America and the rest of the world. His policies have made us more isolated, more vulnerable, and less secure than before — and Dick Cheney's misleading attacks today and this unprecedented smear campaign are nothing more than a desperate attempt to distract us from that central fact.
"But we won't let them attack to distract. We won't let them run from their record. And this November, we will help John Kerry lead a stronger America in a better direction."
At least three more US soldiers died in Iraq over the last 24 hours. For what? The Emperor has no uniform...Meanwhile, the "US mainstream news media" has sunk to a new low in running with the bogus "controversy" about the military record and anti-war activism of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta). Of course, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) has also sunk to a new low. This Sunday morning on SeeBS Fork The Nation, McCain had an opportunity to defend the man he calls friend, and indeed a fellow war hero, from the rapid pit bull attacks of the same Bush cabal machine that slimed his own wife and daughter in the 2000 Carolina primary, but McCain wimped out and equated the service records of JFK and the incredible shrinking _resident, saying that both "served honorable." What happened to John McCain? I do not think he is a coward. I do not think he is a fool. How can he allow this visciousness to go unchallenged from someone in the Republican Party?
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): "If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to have," Kerry told NBC News in an interview. "I'm not going to stand around and let them play games."
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004, Defeat Bush (again!)
Kerry Demands Bush Prove Guard Service
2 hours, 56 minutes ago
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WHEELING, W.Va. - John Kerry (news - web sites), a
decorated Navy veteran criticized by Republicans for
his anti-war activities during the Vietnam era, lashed
out at President Bush (news - web sites) on Monday for
failing to prove whether he fulfilled his commitment
to the National Guard during the same period.
Conservative critics have questioned whether Kerry
deserved his three Purple Hearts for battle wounds, an
issue the Democratic presidential candidate sought to
put to rest last week by releasing his military
records. On Sunday, a top Bush adviser criticized
Kerry for leading anti-war protests after he returned
from the battlefield.
"If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that
through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation
about whether or not he showed up for duty in the
National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to
have," Kerry told NBC News in an interview. "I'm not
going to stand around and let them play games."
Kerry's direct criticism of Bush's Guard record
reflected an aggressive strategy to challenge the
president. It came as Vice President Dick Cheney (news
- web sites) used a speech in Missouri to question
Kerry's fitness to be commander in chief, and the Bush
campaign launched a $10 million television ad campaign
criticizing Kerry's Senate votes on weapons systems.
During the primaries, Kerry often deflected questions
about Bush's military service although when asked in
February whether Bush had fulfilled his Vietnam-era
commitment, the Democrat said, "Just because you get
an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that
question."
In 1992, as Democratic candidate Bill Clinton (news -
web sites) faced criticism for avoiding service in
Vietnam, Kerry said, "We do not need to divide America
over who served and how. I have personally always
believed that many served in many different ways."
Democrats have questioned whether Bush fulfilled his
obligations to the National Guard in spite of White
House claims that he completed his duty
satisfactorily. Bush joined the Texas Air National
Guard in 1968 and transferred to the Alabama Guard in
1972 while working on a political campaign. How often
Bush reported for duty in Alabama is unclear.
Bush supporters have tried to turn Kerry's service in
Vietnam — a centerpiece of his Democratic campaign —
against him even as they say they honor his service to
his country. Kerry released his medical records when
questioned about the extent of his war wounds,
including a report showing he still carries shrapnel
in one leg.
That criticism silenced for the moment, Bush adviser
Karen Hughes turned to what Kerry did after returning
from Vietnam. Hughes said Sunday she was offended by
Kerry's anti-war activities in 1971 and accused him of
not throwing back his medals when he and other
veterans protested in Washington.
"He only pretended to throw his," Hughes said in a CNN
interview. "Now, I can understand if, out of
conscience, you take a principled stand, and you would
decide that you were so opposed to this that you would
actually throw your medals. But to pretend to do so —
I think that's very revealing."
Kerry has never said he pretended to throw away his
medals. For years, he has said that he threw his
ribbons over a fence at the Capitol, not his three
Purple Hearts, Bronze Star and Silver Star. He also
has said that after the protest he threw the medals of
two other veterans.
Nearly 800 veterans "gave back" their medals, ribbons,
dog tags and other military items during a protest in
April 1971. However, a tape of a television interview
Kerry gave shortly after the protest suggested he had
claimed that he also threw his medals.
In the exchange, aired Monday by ABC and published in
The New York Times, an interviewer asks Kerry, "How
many did you give back, John?" Kerry responds, "I gave
back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine." The
host then notes that Kerry had won the Purple Hearts,
and Bronze and Silver stars. Kerry says, "Well, and
above that, I gave back my others."
Kerry told ABC on Monday that the terms ribbons and
medals were interchangeable. He accused Republicans of
trying to discredit his presidential campaign with a
"phony controversy."
"The U.S. Navy (news - web sites) pamphlet calls them
medals," he said. "We referred to them as the symbols,
they were representing medals, ribbons. Countless
veterans threw the ribbons back."
Kerry was asked to reconcile two explanations for why
he didn't throw his own medals: He told The Washington
Post in 1985 it was because he didn't want to
personally, and told the Boston Globe in 1996 that he
didn't have time to go home and get them.
"I've expressed that there was great, sort of, sense
of wrenching about the whole thing," Kerry said. He
noted that the anti-war veterans were conflicted over
whether to throw them, and although they voted to do
so, "I threw my ribbons. I didn't have my medals. It's
very simple."
The controversy over the medals overshadowed the start
of Kerry's three-day bus tour of four manufacturing
states that are expected to be pivotal in this year's
election — West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Michigan. Kerry began the tour in Wheeling, W.Va.,
with a speech accusing Bush of failing to enforce
trade rules that protect U.S. workers.
___
On the Net:
Kerry campaign: http://www.johnkerry.com
At least three more US soldiers died in Iraq over the last 24 hours. For what? The Emperor has no uniform...Meanwhile, the "US mainstream news media" has sunk to a new low in running with the bogus "controversy" about the military record and anti-war activism of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta). Of course, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) has also sunk to a new low. This Sunday morning on SeeBS Fork, McCain had an opportunity to defend the man he calls friend, and indeed a fellow war hero, from the rapid pit bull attacks of the Bush cabal machine that slimed his own wife and daughter in the 2000 Carolina primary, but McCain wimped out and equated the service records of JFK and the incredible shrinking _resident, saying that both "served honorable." What happened to John McCain? He is not a coward. He is not a fool. How can he leave this onslaught go unanswered?
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): "If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to have," Kerry told NBC News in an interview. "I'm not going to stand around and let them play games."
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004, Defeat Bush (again!)
Kerry Demands Bush Prove Guard Service
2 hours, 56 minutes ago
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WHEELING, W.Va. - John Kerry (news - web sites), a
decorated Navy veteran criticized by Republicans for
his anti-war activities during the Vietnam era, lashed
out at President Bush (news - web sites) on Monday for
failing to prove whether he fulfilled his commitment
to the National Guard during the same period.
Conservative critics have questioned whether Kerry
deserved his three Purple Hearts for battle wounds, an
issue the Democratic presidential candidate sought to
put to rest last week by releasing his military
records. On Sunday, a top Bush adviser criticized
Kerry for leading anti-war protests after he returned
from the battlefield.
"If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that
through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation
about whether or not he showed up for duty in the
National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to
have," Kerry told NBC News in an interview. "I'm not
going to stand around and let them play games."
Kerry's direct criticism of Bush's Guard record
reflected an aggressive strategy to challenge the
president. It came as Vice President Dick Cheney (news
- web sites) used a speech in Missouri to question
Kerry's fitness to be commander in chief, and the Bush
campaign launched a $10 million television ad campaign
criticizing Kerry's Senate votes on weapons systems.
During the primaries, Kerry often deflected questions
about Bush's military service although when asked in
February whether Bush had fulfilled his Vietnam-era
commitment, the Democrat said, "Just because you get
an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that
question."
In 1992, as Democratic candidate Bill Clinton (news -
web sites) faced criticism for avoiding service in
Vietnam, Kerry said, "We do not need to divide America
over who served and how. I have personally always
believed that many served in many different ways."
Democrats have questioned whether Bush fulfilled his
obligations to the National Guard in spite of White
House claims that he completed his duty
satisfactorily. Bush joined the Texas Air National
Guard in 1968 and transferred to the Alabama Guard in
1972 while working on a political campaign. How often
Bush reported for duty in Alabama is unclear.
Bush supporters have tried to turn Kerry's service in
Vietnam — a centerpiece of his Democratic campaign —
against him even as they say they honor his service to
his country. Kerry released his medical records when
questioned about the extent of his war wounds,
including a report showing he still carries shrapnel
in one leg.
That criticism silenced for the moment, Bush adviser
Karen Hughes turned to what Kerry did after returning
from Vietnam. Hughes said Sunday she was offended by
Kerry's anti-war activities in 1971 and accused him of
not throwing back his medals when he and other
veterans protested in Washington.
"He only pretended to throw his," Hughes said in a CNN
interview. "Now, I can understand if, out of
conscience, you take a principled stand, and you would
decide that you were so opposed to this that you would
actually throw your medals. But to pretend to do so —
I think that's very revealing."
Kerry has never said he pretended to throw away his
medals. For years, he has said that he threw his
ribbons over a fence at the Capitol, not his three
Purple Hearts, Bronze Star and Silver Star. He also
has said that after the protest he threw the medals of
two other veterans.
Nearly 800 veterans "gave back" their medals, ribbons,
dog tags and other military items during a protest in
April 1971. However, a tape of a television interview
Kerry gave shortly after the protest suggested he had
claimed that he also threw his medals.
In the exchange, aired Monday by ABC and published in
The New York Times, an interviewer asks Kerry, "How
many did you give back, John?" Kerry responds, "I gave
back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine." The
host then notes that Kerry had won the Purple Hearts,
and Bronze and Silver stars. Kerry says, "Well, and
above that, I gave back my others."
Kerry told ABC on Monday that the terms ribbons and
medals were interchangeable. He accused Republicans of
trying to discredit his presidential campaign with a
"phony controversy."
"The U.S. Navy (news - web sites) pamphlet calls them
medals," he said. "We referred to them as the symbols,
they were representing medals, ribbons. Countless
veterans threw the ribbons back."
Kerry was asked to reconcile two explanations for why
he didn't throw his own medals: He told The Washington
Post in 1985 it was because he didn't want to
personally, and told the Boston Globe in 1996 that he
didn't have time to go home and get them.
"I've expressed that there was great, sort of, sense
of wrenching about the whole thing," Kerry said. He
noted that the anti-war veterans were conflicted over
whether to throw them, and although they voted to do
so, "I threw my ribbons. I didn't have my medals. It's
very simple."
The controversy over the medals overshadowed the start
of Kerry's three-day bus tour of four manufacturing
states that are expected to be pivotal in this year's
election — West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Michigan. Kerry began the tour in Wheeling, W.Va.,
with a speech accusing Bush of failing to enforce
trade rules that protect U.S. workers.
___
On the Net:
Kerry campaign: http://www.johnkerry.com
Do not be distracted...Keep your eyes on the
prize...Tell everyone who cares...The "war on
terrorism" is not the strength of the incredible
shrinking _resident's White House, it is the SHAME of
the incredible shrinking _resident's White House...
Andrew Buncombe, Independent: The Bush administration
will today seek to prevent a former FBI translator
from providing evidence about 11 September
intelligence failures to a group of relatives and
survivors who have accused international banks and
officials of aiding al-Qa'ida.
Sibel Edmonds was subpoenaed by a law firm
representing more than 500 family members and
survivors of the attacks to testify that she had seen
information proving there was considerable evidence
before September 2001 that al-Qa'ida was planning to
strike the US with aircraft. The lawyers made their
demand after reading comments Mrs Edmonds had made to
The Independent.
The Bush administration has been put on the back
foot by allegations that senior officials - perhaps
even Mr Bush himself - were provided with considerable
information warning of an imminent attack by al-Qa'ida
and that they failed to act. Mrs Edmonds said
yesterday: "What are they are afraid of? If I am not
allowed to give evidence, the families will not get
the information I have; that will be that."
She said it was wrong for the Bush administration
to claim it wanted a full investigation. "If there is
transparency, there is going to be accountability and
that is what they don't want."
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up & the Iraq War Lies, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://truthout.org/docs_04/042704A.shtml
Lawyers Try to Gag FBI Worker over 9/11
By Andrew Buncombe
Independent UK
Monday 26 April 2004
The Bush administration will today seek to prevent a former FBI translator from providing evidence about 11 September intelligence failures to a group of relatives and survivors who have accused international banks and officials of aiding al-Qa'ida.
Sibel Edmonds was subpoenaed by a law firm
representing more than 500 family members and
survivors of the attacks to testify that she had seen
information proving there was considerable evidence
before September 2001 that al-Qa'ida was planning to
strike the US with aircraft. The lawyers made their
demand after reading comments Mrs Edmonds had made to
The Independent.
But the US Justice Department is seeking to stop
her from testifying, citing the rarely used "state
secrets privilege". Today in a federal court in
Washington, senior government lawyers will try to gag
Mrs Edmonds, claiming that disclosure of her evidence
"would cause serious damage to the national security
and foreign policy interests of the United States".
Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who had top
secret security clearance, claimed this month that
while working in the FBI's Washington headquarters,
she saw information proving senior officials knew of
al-Qa'ida plans to attack the US with aircraft months
before the strikes. She has provided sworn testimony
to the independent panel appointed by President George
Bush to investigate the circumstances surrounding 11
September.
Mrs Edmonds was subpoenaed by the law firm
Motley-Rice, which represents hundreds of families who
are taking civil action against a number of banks and
two members of the Saudi royal family for allegedly
aiding al-Qa'ida.
Her lawyer, Mark Zaid, said last night: "The FBI
wants to shut her up completely." He said it was
ridiculous to claim that everything Mrs Edmonds knew
had national security implications. Rather, he said,
the FBI wanted to silence his client to save its
embarrassment.
The Bush administration has been put on the back
foot by allegations that senior officials - perhaps
even Mr Bush himself - were provided with considerable
information warning of an imminent attack by al-Qa'ida
and that they failed to act. Mrs Edmonds said
yesterday: "What are they are afraid of? If I am not
allowed to give evidence, the families will not get
the information I have; that will be that."
She said it was wrong for the Bush administration
to claim it wanted a full investigation. "If there is
transparency, there is going to be accountability and
that is what they don't want."
-------
At least five more US soldiers have died this weekend in Iraq. That's over 100 in April so far, and over 700 since this foolish military adventure. For what? Not to "fight terrorism," it has only swelled their ranks. Not to seize "WMDs," there were none. Not to bring "democracy" to the Middle East, we will only allow a "democracy" that does our bidding. Yes, five more young US soldiers have died. For what?
Here is another name for the John O'Neill Wall of Heroes...His story is very bad news for the incredible shrinking _resident...And it from the front page of the Wall Street Journal...
Michael Phillips, Wall Street Journal: On a Friday afternoon last April, a couple of weeks after he returned from Iraq, Marine Lt. Col. Steve Brozak walked into the town hall here and changed his voter registration from Republican to Democrat...A social moderate and fiscal conservative, he's emerging as the Democrats' dream challenger to an entrenched Republican. The son of immigrants, he's an investment banker specializing in biotechnology companies and a Marine who has served three years on active duty and 18 years in the Reserve, including brief volunteer deployments to Haiti, Bosnia, Kuwait and Iraq...Jim Bird, a white-haired 85-year-old who called the waitress "Honeybun," opened his wallet and handed Mr. Brozak a card. It read "Silver Star Association," a testament to Mr. Bird's bravery in Italy in World War II. "I'm a registered Republican who is thoroughly disgusted with what's going on in Washington," he said. "That's why I'm here."
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108250044928188538,00.html
April 21, 2004
PAGE ONE
A Marine Jumps Party Lines to Join Democrats in Trenches: The Battle for Military Vote Plays Out in House Race In a New Jersey Suburb
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 21, 2004; Page A1
WESTFIELD, N.J. -- On a Friday afternoon last April, a couple of weeks after he returned from Iraq, Marine Lt. Col. Steve Brozak walked into the town hall here and changed his voter registration from Republican to Democrat.
That put Mr. Brozak in the middle of Democratic efforts to chip away at Republicans' political strength on national-security matters. With Vietnam veteran John Kerry at the top of the ticket and unease growing over the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and terrorism, Democrats are hoping to tap a new constituency: members of the military and veterans, who vote overwhelmingly Republican.
It's a mission being embraced by the 42-year-old Mr. Brozak, now running for Congress in a well-to-do swath of suburban New Jersey. A social moderate and fiscal conservative, he's emerging as the Democrats' dream challenger to an entrenched Republican. The son of immigrants, he's an investment banker specializing in biotechnology companies and a Marine who has served three years on active duty and 18 years in the Reserve, including brief volunteer deployments to Haiti, Bosnia, Kuwait and Iraq.
"Unfortunately, not many members of Congress know what it is to serve," Mr. Brozak told a dozen aging veterans at the Reo Diner in Woodbridge recently. But, he added, "they're very quick to commit" U.S. troops to combat.
Jim Bird, a white-haired 85-year-old who called the waitress "Honeybun," opened his wallet and handed Mr. Brozak a card. It read "Silver Star Association," a testament to Mr. Bird's bravery in Italy in World War II. "I'm a registered Republican who is thoroughly disgusted with what's going on in Washington," he said. "That's why I'm here."
Mr. Brozak's uphill bid to unseat an incumbent comes at a crucial point in the presidential campaign. While Mr. Bush is running even with Mr. Kerry, pro-Bush strategists fear that a failure to demonstrate progress in Iraq could lead a decisive bloc of Republicans and independents to lose confidence in the president's leadership. If that happens, the beneficiaries could include dark-horse candidates such as Mr. Brozak.
At the same time, some observers say there's little evidence so far that Mr. Bush is in trouble with military voters. "People have been looking for Bush to lose the hearts and minds of the military," says Duke University political scientist Peter D. Feaver, a former Navy reservist and Clinton national-security aide. "When you look at systematic data, it doesn't show up."
Mr. Brozak isn't against the Iraq war, and he opposes a withdrawal. But, like Mr. Kerry, he criticizes the Bush administration for failing to assemble an overwhelming international coalition for the invasion, saying the effort to rebuild Iraq may be doomed by inadequate forces and inept planning. His opponent, Mike Ferguson, who was elected in 2000 and didn't serve in the military, is playing up his support of Mr. Bush. "I've stood shoulder to shoulder with the president and with my colleagues in the Congress as we wage this war on terrorism," he says.
Mr. Ferguson's aides say they aren't worried, and that constituents are more focused on their boss's staunch support for tax cuts than on foreign-policy debates. For years, New Jersey's 7th district has sent Republicans to the House.
Mr. Brozak, who plans to retire from the Reserve May 1, began turning against the Republican Party during the South Carolina primary in 2000, when a Bush ally accused Sen. John McCain of neglecting his fellow Vietnam veterans. Mr. Brozak grew even angrier in 2002, when Republican Saxby Chambliss, aided by President Bush, defeated Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Cleland in a bitter campaign. Ads for Mr. Chambliss implicitly questioned the patriotism of Mr. Cleland -- who lost three limbs serving in Vietnam.
When Mr. Brozak decided to change his party affiliation, the only person he told ahead of time was his father, an immigrant who had piloted a fighter plane in a brief uprising against the Nazi occupation of his native Yugoslavia and wound up in a slave-labor camp. Later, he found himself discussing the war with a Marine buddy, who told Mr. Brozak he sounded as if he were campaigning. The idea stuck, Mr. Brozak says, and he decided to discuss running with New Jersey and national Democrats.
These days, Mr. Brozak is especially angry about the administration's treatment of National Guard and Reserve troops, the traditional weekend warriors who now find themselves deployed for years. Within the next few months, 70% of the 7,000 members of the New Jersey Army National Guard will be on active duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sinai Peninsula or elsewhere -- a higher share than at any time since World War II.
In the Marines, Mr. Brozak served as an infantry commander and public-affairs officer. His last post was as liaison with companies whose employees had been called up for duty. When he went to Kuwait and Iraq a year ago, he accompanied a survey team assessing how deployment affects citizen-soldiers. The survey found a third of the troops expected to pay a heavy price: lost jobs, lost businesses, lost promotions, lost income.
"As bad as it is for people in this economy, it's twice as bad for the guard, reserve" and active-duty military, Mr. Brozak told a political action committee of service-academy graduates at a meeting last month aboard the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid. Despite legal safeguards, many of them aren't guaranteed a job when they return, he says. He believes the regular military should be beefed up to take the stress off the part-timers.
Mr. Brozak says he has been fortunate with his small investment bank, Westfield Bakerink Brozak, which researches and invests in medical devices and biotechnology. Whenever he has been called up for active duty, his partner has taken up the slack.
The 33-year-old Mr. Ferguson is also stressing his concern for the troops. He visited Baghdad for several hours in January and hand-delivered fourth-graders' letters to the soldiers. He highlights his votes to raise military salaries, combat pay and family-separation allowances. And he is reaching out to the New Jersey National Guard troops who are about to be called up. "There are people doing extraordinary work and making extraordinary sacrifices," Mr. Ferguson says.
Mr. Ferguson's aides say the congressman, who won 58% of the vote in 2002 after a squeaker in 2000, hasn't started campaigning in earnest yet. He had raised $1.3 million, as of March 31.
Nonetheless, a poll paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in February suggested Mr. Ferguson is vulnerable. The poll, which the Democrats won't release, convinced them that voters would welcome a candidate who, like Mr. Brozak, supports abortion rights and boasts military and business credentials.
Mr. Brozak, who had raised just under $150,000 at the end of last month, estimates it will cost up to $2 million to mount a credible campaign in the pricey New York-area media market. If Mr. Brozak's poll numbers look good in September, the Democratic campaign committee plans to spend as much as $1 million in independent advertising and other support.
To broaden his message, Mr. Brozak, in remarks in Cranford recently, talked of unemployment, taxes and health care.
But it's his experience in uniform that gives him an opening with voters. At the Reo Diner, Bob Borst of Rahway, a 71-year-old Korean War veteran who usually votes Republican, told Mr. Brozak that he's "going Democratic" this time. "We're losing too many boys," he said.
Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com1
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108250044928188538,00.html
It is unfortunate that the NYTwits did not seem as concerned about "Making Votes Count" in 2000-2001 when they could not even get the simple arithmetic right in their own stories and participated through the complicity in the Theft of a Presidential Election...For which we will never forgive them. Perhaps if they made the story of John O'Neill front page news....Ah, but the odds are they wouldn't get the story straight...It is afterall, or has become the "Newspaper of Revision." However, it is significant that they are speaking out on the situation in California...
NYT Editorial: More disturbing than these equipment breakdowns was the failure of machine manufacturers to have voting machines properly certified. It is not hard to program a computer to steal an election. A crucial safeguard is review of the software and hardware by federal and state monitors. But according to the report, the manufacturers regularly flouted the certification law. Many changes were made at the last minute, introducing the possibility of vote tampering, or simple malfunctions. "The result was a choice between using equipment that had not been fully tested and approved, or using no equipment at all," the report found.
Mr. Shelley's second report singles out Diebold, a leading manufacturer, as particularly blameworthy. Among other serious charges, it says that last year Diebold installed uncertified software in all 17 of the counties it served without notifying the secretary of state, as the law requires.
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/24/opinion/24SAT1.html
MAKING VOTES COUNT
A Compromised Voting System
Published: April 24, 2004
California's secretary of state, Kevin Shelley, is expected to decide in the next week whether the state's electronic voting machines can be used in November. His office has just issued two disturbing studies — one on machine malfunctions in last month's primary, another on misconduct by one of the nation's leading voting machine manufacturers — that make a strong case against the current system. Refusing to certify the state's electronic voting machines at this late date is a serious step, but there are compelling reasons for Mr. Shelly to decertify some, and perhaps all, of them.
Electronic voting is no doubt the wave of the future, but it is being rolled out with too little thought, and without the necessary safeguards. The two new California reports, which are online at www.ss.ca.gov, provide strong evidence that this is the case. The study of electronic voting in the March 2 primary describes a slapdash system that falls far short of the minimum standards for running an election. A critical machine part failed on Election Day, causing more than half of the 1,038 polling places in San Diego County to open late and an unknown number of voters to be turned away. Faulty equipment in another county miscounted 13,300 ballots that had been mailed in. There were also widespread reports of teenagers' "rebooting" machines for poll workers who could not operate them, a clear security breach.
More disturbing than these equipment breakdowns was the failure of machine manufacturers to have voting machines properly certified. It is not hard to program a computer to steal an election. A crucial safeguard is review of the software and hardware by federal and state monitors. But according to the report, the manufacturers regularly flouted the certification law. Many changes were made at the last minute, introducing the possibility of vote tampering, or simple malfunctions. "The result was a choice between using equipment that had not been fully tested and approved, or using no equipment at all," the report found.
Mr. Shelley's second report singles out Diebold, a leading manufacturer, as particularly blameworthy. Among other serious charges, it says that last year Diebold installed uncertified software in all 17 of the counties it served without notifying the secretary of state, as the law requires.
The answer to all of these problems is a "voter-verified paper trail," a paper record that the voter can check for accuracy. This paper trail will guard against computer tampering by creating a hard copy of votes that can be compared to the electronic results in a recount. Mr. Shelley has already directed that by 2006, every electronic voting machine in California must produce a paper trail. Now he must decide what to do about this year's election.
A state advisory panel has urged Mr. Shelley to bar the use of one model of Diebold machine whose certification was improper; 15,000 of them are in place in four California counties. Based on the two reports, this is the correct course. Diebold's record does not inspire the sort of confidence voters deserve. Equally important, banning these machines is the only way to make it clear that the certification laws must be followed scrupulously.
The harder question Mr. Shelley faces is whether to ban all electronic voting machines that do not produce a paper trail, as many voting experts, and some state legislators, are urging him to do. His obligation to ensure that voting machines function properly and inspire voter confidence argues for a total ban. To do otherwise is to risk Election Day meltdowns, and another presidential election in which voters lack faith in the outcome.
There is the practical question of whether an alternative system can be perfected in six months. It may be possible, by using a combination of more reliable machines and paper ballots, and perhaps some electronic machines fitted with printers. Given the short time frame, the best course is to proceed on two tracks: to work to put in place a system in which every vote creates a paper record, but to keep the existing electronic machines as a fallback.
Bad decisions by voting machine manufacturers and local election officials have left California with a seriously compromised election system. Mr. Shelley's job now is to make it as reliable as reasonably possible by November.
Politics is ugly. That's why Dick Morris understands it so
well. You may not respect Morris as a person, but you
have to respect him as an analyst. He is not always
correct. No one is...But he is damn good...Ask Bill
linton...In Thursday's LNS, you read James Zogby,
America's most credible and independent political
pollster offering his analysis, i.e. the 2004 election
is "Kerry's to lose." Now here is Morris' take on the
2004 election, posted, interestingly, on Zogby's site.
Dick Morris, Zogby Sound Bite: One of the (very few)
immutable laws of politics is that the undecided vote
almost always goes against the incumbent...More bad
news for Bush: Democrats usually grow 2-3 points right
before Election Day as downscale voters who have not
paid much attention to the election, suddenly tune in
and "come home" to their traditional Democratic Party
moorings. Remember, virtually every poll (except
Zogby) showed Bush slightly ahead of Al Gore as the
2000 election approached - yet Gore outpolled Bush by
500,000 votes...Women disagree with the entire Bush
strategy of fighting terrorism. Offered a choice
between "letting terrorists know we will fight back
aggressively" and "working with other nations," men
opt for fighting aggressively by 53 to 41 percent
while women want us to work with other nations instead
by 54 to 36 percent - a gender gap of 30 points.
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://zogby.com/Soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=8053
Dubya In Trouble
BOTH of the polling organizations that track the presidential race in daily surveys have concluded that the contest has settled into a stalemate. Scott Rasmussen reports that for eight of the last nine days, President Bush has gotten 45 to 46 percent of the vote, while Sen. John Kerry ranged from 44 to 46 percent. John Zogby shows Kerry ahead by three and reports little movement either way. This "tie" is terrible news for the Bush camp.
One of the (very few) immutable laws of politics is
that the undecided vote almost always goes against the
incumbent. Consider the past seven presidential
elections in which an incumbent ran (1964, '72, '76,
'80, '84, '92, and '96) - that is, look at the final
vote versus the last Gallup or Harris polls. My
analysis shows that the challengers (Goldwater,
McGovern, Carter, Reagan, Mondale, Perot, Clinton, and
Dole) got 85 percent of the undecided vote. Even
incumbents who won got only 15 percent of those who
reported that they were undecided in the final polls.
So . . . when Bush and Kerry are tied, the challenger
really has the upper hand.
More bad news for Bush: Democrats usually grow 2-3
points right before Election Day as downscale voters
who have not paid much attention to the election,
suddenly tune in and "come home" to their traditional
Democratic Party moorings. Remember, virtually every
poll (except Zogby) showed Bush slightly ahead of Al
Gore as the 2000 election approached - yet Gore
outpolled Bush by 500,000 votes.
I had thought - and hoped - that Bush could open up a
big lead in the two months after Kerry locked up the
Democratic nomination. After all, Kerry is, in fact,
way too liberal for the average American voter. But
Bush's negative ads - though good, plentiful, and on
target - lost their impact in April.
What happened? Iraq. The surprising casualties of this
disastrous month let Kerry skate by the avalanche of
attack ads relatively unscathed. And by now, Bush may
have lost the ability to define Kerry
Lying behind the bad news for Bush is his inability to
appeal to women in the campaign. His "stand firm"
press conference last week was entirely male-oriented.
His tough words and determination to defend the cause
of the "fallen" resonated well with men but crashed
among women.
The genders see the War on Terror in totally different
terms. Rasmussen reports that men, by 51 percent to 36
percent, say that the U.S. is safer than it was before
9/11. But women are evenly divided, with 41 percent
feeling more safe and 42 percent, less.
Women disagree with the entire Bush strategy of
fighting terrorism. Offered a choice between "letting
terrorists know we will fight back aggressively" and
"working with other nations," men opt for fighting
aggressively by 53 to 41 percent while women want us
to work with other nations instead by 54 to 36 percent
- a gender gap of 30 points.
To bounce back, Bush obviously has to staunch the
bleeding in Iraq. But he also has to appeal to women
voters as he did in 2000.
Then, he was a "compassionate conservative" committed
to leaving "no child behind." Now he needs to speak of
the human toll exacted by Saddam Hussein when he ran
Iraq. He should speak about saving the children of
that beleaguered nation. At home, he has to explain
why a democratic - or at least a stable - Iraq means
more safety for our families. He should discard the
military-macho rhetoric and the bureaucratic
references to American "credibility" and focus on
values, human beings, children and hope.
If Bush permanently alienates women by his words and
tone in the War on Terror, he'll throw away the issue
that he needs to carry him into a second term.
(4/20/2004)
- By Dick Morris, The New York Post
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Where is Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona)? When will he
stand up on the floor of the US Senate and denounce
the Bush cabal's shameless attacks on the highly
distinguished and decorated military record of Sen.
John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta)? The "vast reich wing
conspiracy" is behaving like a rapid dog cornered by
animal control officers...red state Rapidlican Rep. Sam Johnson called JFK "Hanoi John" on the floor of the House...they are lashing out in all directions now...The dregs of the US Senate, including Trent Lott (R-KKK), Saxby Chambliss (R-GoForgia) and Norm Coleman (R-SmallPlanesota) are trying to derail, distract and discredit the 9/11 Commission (established through legistaltion co-authored by McCain) by calling for Jamie Gorelick (D-DoJ) to be forced to testify and/or resign...And it is only April...What do you stand for Sen. McCain? Where is your backbone now? Remember Carolina in 2000? John Kerry is your friend, and a fellow hero. They are attacking him now. The 9/11 Commission is your creation. They are trying to destroy it. In Carolina, in 2000, it was your wife they attacked? How long? How long?
Thomas Lang, Columbia School of Journalism: How many ways can the press distort the picture painted by John Kerry's military service records? Yesterday, we hoped we had nipped this one in the bud with our report on the press's consistent failure to track down just what the U.S. Navy's policy was for awarding Purple Hearts and for reassigning troopers in Vietnam who received
three Purple Hearts. Alas, today, the Washington
Times' fatally-wounded coverage of Kerry's
newly-released service records makes yesterday's
various media bloopers look like journalism at its
finest...In short, little in Hurt's rambling,
accusatory article is remotely on the mark, other than
his description of the discrepancy between Kerry's
Personnel Casualty Report from March 13, 1969 and the
Bronze Star citation issued for Kerry's actions that
day. Even for a reporter in a hurry, it almost takes
an extra effort to get this many things wrong-- but
Hurt seems to have pulled it off.
Cleanse the Whitehouse of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000456.asp
Fact Check
April 22, 2004
Hurt In The Fog of War
By Thomas Lang
How many ways can the press distort the picture
painted by John Kerry's military service records?
Yesterday, we hoped we had nipped this one in the bud
with our report on the press's consistent failure to
track down just what the U.S. Navy's policy was for
awarding Purple Hearts and for reassigning troopers in
Vietnam who received three Purple Hearts.
Alas, today, the Washington Times' fatally-wounded
coverage of Kerry's newly-released service records
makes yesterday's various media bloopers look like
journalism at its finest.
In the fourth paragraph of Charles Hurt's Times
report, we get our first hint of who Hurt is going to
rely on to build a case that Kerry's military record
is somehow flawed. Hurt quotes one Mel Howell, a
retired Navy officer who flew helicopters in Vietnam,
but who apparently never served with Kerry, as saying,
"Most of us came away with all kinds of scratches like
the ones Kerry got but never accepted Purple Hearts
for them."
As Lt. Mike Kafka, a U.S. Navy spokesman, told us
yesterday, in line with official U.S. Navy
documentation, wounded combatants neither nominate nor
award themselves Purple Hearts. The Purple Heart is
awarded only after a commander determines that a
soldier or sailor has incurred a wound inflicted by
the enemy and forwards a recommendation to his
superiors.
One paragraph later, Hurt errs more explicitly,
writing that it was the award of his third Purple
Heart on March 13, 1969, "that let Mr. Kerry request a
transfer out of Vietnam and into a desk job eight
months before his tour expired." Again, as we noted
yesterday, Navy regulations at the time specified that
any trooper wounded three times be reassigned outside
of Vietnam (soldiers, including Kerry, did get to
request specific new assignments). Such a reassignment
could be stopped only by a soldier's request.
Next, Hurt turns to one Charles Kaufman, who Hurt
describes as a retired Air Force captain now living in
Germany "whose job once was to submit military award
requests" to analyze a discrepancy in Kerry's war
records. (The Personnel Casualty Report (PDF) on Kerry
from March 13, 1969 does not correspond in every
particular with the injuries described in a Bronze
Star citation (PDF) that Kerry was awarded for action
that day.) Nowhere does Hurt note that Kaufman served
in the Air Force, while Kerry served in the U.S. Navy.
Nor did they ever serve together. He does note,
however, that Kaufman declares of Kerry's wounds, "I
don't want to say it's a lie, but it isn't true," and
"his Bronze Star medal citation appears to be based on
an injury he did not receive."
According to Lt. Kafka, the U.S. Navy spokesman, the
Bronze Star is awarded for bravery, independent of any
wounds a soldier may or may not suffer in battle.
Hurt then moves on to veterans who "say [Kerry's]
record is too good to be true." One veteran, Ray
Waller, is identified as "a combat medic in the
Marines" who "was responsible for determining whether
injuries warranted Purple Hearts." Waller tells Hurt
he doesn't "remember anybody getting three Purple
Hearts and leaving [Vietnam], even within six or eight
months" of service. He adds, "if they did, it was
very, very rare."
However, as noted above, Navy medics neither award
Purple Hearts nor recommend others for a Purple Heart.
Commanders do that based on, as US Navy guidelines put
it, confirmation of medical treatment by "the doctor
that provides medical care."
The expansive Waller goes on to tell Hurt that he had
"never heard of" a shrapnel injury so minor that it
did not require a tetanus shot and time off which had
led to a Purple Heart. As Lt. Kafka notes, however,
the written "Purple Heart Criteria for the U.S. Navy"
does not list either a tetanus shot or time off due to
injury as a requirement for receiving a Purple Heart.
Finally -- having apparently run out of sources who
weren't there, or were there at a different time, or
were in another branch of service -- Hurt winds up his
piece by launching a trial balloon of speculation
attributed to no one at all:
One possible reason why Mr. Kerry racked up so many
battle awards in such a short period of time might be
the command structure. Because awards are generally
recommended by superiors, Mr. Kerry's bosses would
have relied on accounts of the action from Mr. Kerry
and his underling crew mates.
And because injuries warranting Purple Hearts are
verified by medics -- or corpsmen -- it would have
been a soldier inferior to Mr. Kerry who was in charge
of determining the seriousness of his injuries.
Got that? It was up to corpsmen reporting to Kerry to
determine if the boss deserved a medal. In a way,
that's true, in that a wounded officer is going to be
treated by a medic. But no one thinks that calls into
question every Purple Heart ever awarded to such
officers.
In short, little in Hurt's rambling, accusatory
article is remotely on the mark, other than his
description of the discrepancy between Kerry's
Personnel Casualty Report from March 13, 1969 and the
Bronze Star citation issued for Kerry's actions that
day. Even for a reporter in a hurry, it almost takes
an extra effort to get this many things wrong-- but
Hurt seems to have pulled it off.
If Campaign Desk ever gets around to awarding its own
commendations, Hurt is a prime candidate for our
tinfoil star.
Posted 04/22/04 at 05:08 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are getting close now...very close...Will the "US
mainstream news media" dare explore the
interpenetrating business relationships between the
House of Bush, the House of Saud and the House of Bin
Laden? Probably not. Of course, they could ask Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong
Delta) for some background. JFK led the US Senate BCCI
investigation...Yes, he is not only a warrior, he is a
prosecutor...We are getting close now, very
close...Will the story of John O'Neill be told? Probably not. Will
the the contents of the 28 blacked out pages in the
Congressional 9/11 report be revealed? Maybe.
"Out, out, damn spot"
Center for American Progess: Now, with esteemed journalist Bob Woodward reporting that the Bush administration and top Saudi officials agreed to manipulate oil prices in conjunction with the 2004 election, President Bush's passivity towards Saudi Arabia is raising disturbing questions. Why won't the
administration exert serious pressure on the regime
both on oil and terrorism policy? Why does the
president continue to refer to Saudi Arabia as "our
friend" when the country has potential ties to the
9/11 terrorists? Why, as author Daniel Benjamin
reported, did the administration weaken efforts to
scrutinize potential Saudi money-laundering schemes
before 9/11? A look at the president's "deep personal
ties with Saudi officials" – and his financial
connections to the Saudi royal family and powerful
Saudi businessmen – may provide clues.
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=47995#7
UNDER THE RADAR
SAUDI ARABIA
Under the Influence
As a presidential candidate in 2000, then-Gov. George
W. Bush promised that, if elected, he would use the
full weight of the White House to pressure
oil-producing countries to increase production if
there was a gas-price crisis. He charged, "The
president of the United States must jawbone OPEC
members to lower the price" and promised that as
president he would "convince them to open up the
spigot to increase the supply." Yet, when Saudi Arabia
led the fight within OPEC last month to cut production
and raise prices, the president "refused to lean on
the oil cartel" and refused to even "personally lobby
OPEC leaders to change their minds." Now, with
esteemed journalist Bob Woodward reporting that the
Bush administration and top Saudi officials agreed to
manipulate oil prices in conjunction with the 2004
election, President Bush's passivity towards Saudi
Arabia is raising disturbing questions. Why won't the
administration exert serious pressure on the regime
both on oil and terrorism policy? Why does the
president continue to refer to Saudi Arabia as "our
friend" when the country has potential ties to the
9/11 terrorists? Why, as author Daniel Benjamin
reported, did the administration weaken efforts to
scrutinize potential Saudi money-laundering schemes
before 9/11? A look at the president's "deep personal
ties with Saudi officials" – and his financial
connections to the Saudi royal family and powerful
Saudi businessmen – may provide clues.
BUSH'S PERSONAL FINANCIAL TIES TO SAUDIS RUN DEEP:
According to various sources, Bush has been awash in
Saudi money for years. Journalist/author Craig Unger
in his new book "House of Bush, House of Saud" traced
millions "in investments and contracts that went from
the Saudis over the past 20 years to companies in
which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent
positions - Harken Energy, Halliburton, and the
Carlyle Group among them." According to the Boston
Herald, that includes a $1 million gift from Prince
Bandar to the Bush Presidential Library in Texas.
THE BCCI-BUSH-SAUDI-TERRORIST NEXUS: The Bank of
Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which was
investigated by Congress in the 1980s, appears to be
at the nexus of the Bush-Saudi connection. It's
principal was Khalid bin Mahfouz, a man USA Today
reported was among Saudi businessmen who, even after
the U.S.S. Cole attack, "continued to transfer tens of
millions of dollars to bank accounts linked to
indicted terrorist Osama bin Laden." Under Mahfouz
(who was later indicted for his actions at BCCI), the
Wall Street Journal noted in 1991 that there was a
"mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy"
and "number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings
with Harken — all since George W. Bush came on board."
And according to U.S. officials who investigated the
bank in the 1980s, "BCCI was the mother and father of
terrorist financing operations." A secret French
intelligence report "identifies dozens of companies
and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were
found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank
collapsed. Many went on to work in banks and charities
identified by the United States and others as
supporting al Qaeda."
WAS BCCI'S INDICTED PRINCIPAL A BUSH BUSINESS BACKER?:
Author Kevin Phillips, a top Republican strategist
under President Nixon, reported in his new book, "Bush
made his first connection in the late 1970s with James
Bath, a Texas businessmen who served as the North
American representative for two rich Saudis (and Osama
bin Laden relatives) - billionaire Salem bin Laden and
banker and BCCI insider Khalid bin Mahfouz. Bath put
$50,000 into Bush's 1979 Arbusto oil partnership,
probably using bin Laden-bin Mahfouz funds." Also of
interest: Former CIA Director James Woolsey testified
to the Senate on 9/3/98 that Mafouz's sister was
married to Osama bin Laden. And according to the
conservative American Spectator, "Bush has given
conflicting statements about Bath's investment in
Arbusto, finally admitting to the Wall Street Journal
that he was aware that Bath represented Saudi
investors."
BUSH CAMPAIGN TIES TO THE SAUDIS: A 12/11/01 Boston
Herald report found that "a powerful Washington, D.C.,
law firm with unusually close ties to the White House
has earned hefty fees representing controversial Saudi
billionaires as well as a Texas-based Islamic charity
fingered last week as a terrorist front." The
influential law firm of Akin, Gump, whose partners
"include one of President Bush's closest Texas
friends, James C. Langdon, and Bush fundraiser George
R. Salem," has represented three wealthy Saudi
businessmen – BCCI's Mahfouz, Mohammed Hussein
Al-Amoudi and Salah Idris – "who have been scrutinized
by U.S. authorities for possible involvement in
financing Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network."
WHY THESE TIES ARE IMPORTANT: Charles Lewis, executive
director of the Center for Public Integrity, told the
Boston Herald "that these intricate personal and
financial links have led to virtual silence in the
administration on Saudi Arabia's failings in dealing
with terrorists like bin Laden" and in oil policy. He
said, "It's good old fashioned 'I'll scratch your
back, you scratch mine.' You have former U.S.
officials, former presidents, aides to the current
president, a long line of people who are tight with
the Saudis, people who are the pillars of American
society and officialdom. So for that and other reasons
no one wants to alienate the Saudis, and we are
willing to basically ignore inconvenient truths that
might otherwise cause our blood to boil. We basically
look away. Folks don't like to stop the gravy train."
The Woodward interviews yesterday with Larry Clueless
and Wolf Bluster of SeeNotNews are significant. The
SeeBS Sixty Minutes interview was last Sunday. The
White House has been distorting the truth in his book
all week. But Woodward has not capitulated, AND
SeeNotNews had him on prime-time to counter the White
House spin. Yes, there is a fracture developing in the
"US Mainstream News Media." The Bush cabal's grip on
power is weakening...Therefore, it is a very dangerous
time...
CNN: Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan's assertions that he did not learn of President Bush's decision to launch war on Iraq before Secretary of State Colin Powell are false, journalist Bob Woodward told CNN on Friday. "For some reason, Bandar wants to fuzz this up," said Woodward, whose book "Plan of Attack" tells of a meeting in early January 2003 in which Vice
President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld briefed Bandar on war plans..."Bandar called
me last night," he added. "Woke me up -- a quarter of
12. And we went through this. And I said, 'What are
you doing?'
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/23/woodward.bandar/index.html
Woodward: Saudi envoy trying to 'fuzz up' meeting He says Bandar told him he thought Iraq war was imminent
Friday, April 23, 2004 Posted: 7:15 PM EDT (2315 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan's
assertions that he did not learn of President Bush's
decision to launch war on Iraq before Secretary of
State Colin Powell are false, journalist Bob Woodward
told CNN on Friday.
"For some reason, Bandar wants to fuzz this up," said
Woodward, whose book "Plan of Attack" tells of a
meeting in early January 2003 in which Vice President
Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
briefed Bandar on war plans.
He said Bandar woke him up with a late phone call
Thursday night and ended up acknowledging that
Woodward's description of the meeting was accurate.
Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, has
said Woodward was correct when he said he attended a
meeting at the White House on a Saturday -- two days
before Powell was told of the decision to go to war.
But Bandar said this week on CNN's "Larry King Live"
that Woodward missed an element.
"Both Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld
told me before the briefing that the president has not
made a decision yet, but here is the plan," Bandar
said.
"Not true," Woodward told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "In this
meeting you have the secretary of defense saying --
according to the secretary of defense's own words --
'you can take this to the bank; this is going to
happen.' And I interviewed the president, and we spent
a long time going over that meeting and the meeting
with Colin Powell.
"And the president is the one who said, like to Colin
Powell, 'time to get your war uniform on.' That's not
a maybe. That's: War is coming. It could not have been
clearer. For some reason Bandar wants to fuzz this up.
"Bandar called me last night," he added. "Woke me up
-- a quarter of 12. And we went through this. And I
said, 'What are you doing?' "
Woodward said Bandar told him that he had officially
been told that a decision had not been made, but that
the White House had made it clear the decision was in
fact made.
"I said, 'Well, the issue here is when you left that
meeting did you think the president had decided on
war?' Woodward told CNN. "Bandar said 'absolutely.' "
Woodward is not caving in to the White House Thought
Reform...It is probably less of a sign of personal
redemption for Woodward than it is a sign of a deep
fracture developing in the Bush Cabal stranglehold on
the "US Mainstream News Media." The WASHPS, in
particular, represent a closed circle of interests, a
power elite, THE establishment (yes, it is real and
tangible, Chomsky has denlineated it). Woodward is the
court hagiographer. This Establishment has become very
*uncomfortable* with the incredible shrinking
_resident and his Cardinal Richileiu (Cheney), his
Torquemada (Ashcroft) and his Custer (Rumsfeld)...They
have become *unseemly* Their methods have become
*unsound* The Bush cabal are making a *mess* That
closed circle of interests, the power elite, THE
establishment, has turned on the Bush Cabal...That is
where Woodward's strength is coming from...And,
frankly, it is probably more powerful than personal
redemption...
Eric Alterman, The Nation: The Administration has reacted to this revelation with(a) dishonesty: On CBS's Face the Nation, Condoleezza Rice tried to argue that "resources were not taken from Afghanistan." This is false--Bush removed Special Forces from Afghanistan in 2002 to send them to Iraq, as David Sirota of the Center for American Progress notes; and (b) disingenuousness and more dishonesty: White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy told an
interviewer that the "significant buildup" in the
Persian Gulf region before the war was not necessarily
preparation for an invasion. (Apparently it was in
preparation for a regional swim meet, to be held on a
date yet to be determined.) Duffy also said the
Administration wanted to be ready to aid weapons
inspectors. This is ridiculous. The record
demonstrates that the White House went out of its way
to undercut the weapons inspectors in order to justify
its obsession with war. For the past year, the
goofball President of the United States and his
Defense Secretary have been denying that inspectors
were ever even allowed inside Iraq--something that
goes all but unreported in the US media because
reporters apparently find it too weird (see my last
column).
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040510&s=alterman
column | Posted April 22, 2004
STOP THE PRESSES by Eric Alterman
Woodward Returns
Well, Bob Woodward has partially redeemed himself. His
last book, Bush at War, read like a superhero comic
book mistranslated from its original Serbo-Croatian.
Everyone in the Bush Administration was portrayed as
they might have wished: brave, steadfast, determined
to protect America from evildoerdom, no matter the
cost.
Because Colin Powell and his aides evidently decided
to tiptoe off the reservation in preparation for their
long-overdue departure, the new book, Plan of Attack,
has texture. There are conflicts. Not everybody can be
right about everything. And while the book does gloss
over many of the Administration's most nefarious
characteristics--its serial dishonesty with Congress
and the media, for instance--the trust Woodward earned
with his hagiographic first account put him in good
stead to expand our understanding of how these people
go about making their catastrophic decisions and then
denying them. Here's what I learned:
1. For foreign policy purposes, Dick Cheney is
President: Cheney wanted this war from way back when;
it was Bush who needed convincing. As Slate's Tim Noah
points out, "The closest Woodward comes to showing
Bush making a final decision is when Bush pulls
Rumsfeld aside in early January 2003 and says, 'Look,
we're going to have to do this I'm afraid. I don't see
how we're going to get him to a position where he will
do something in a manner that's consistent with the UN
requirements, and we've got to make an assumption that
he will not.'" When the President is not around,
Administration officials refer to Cheney as "the Man,"
as in, "The Man wants this" or "The Man thinks that."
2. That's too bad, because unfortunately Cheney is
nuts. As Powell puts it, Cheney was in the grip of a
"fever," no longer the "steady, unemotional rock that
he had witnessed a dozen years earlier during the
run-up to the Gulf War. The vice president was beyond
hell-bent for action against Saddam. It was as if
nothing else existed." Woodward gives us the
backstory: Cheney, confirmed by his equally fevered
aide "Scooter" Libby, repeatedly pitched--as he does
today--the apparently imaginary meeting between
Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague.
Powell/Woodward aptly term this contention "worse than
ridiculous." It goes on. "Cheney would take an
intercept and say it shows something was happening.
No, no, no, Powell or another would say, it shows that
somebody talked to somebody else who said something
might be happening. A conversation would suggest
something might be happening, and Cheney would convert
that into a 'We know.'"
3. Rumsfeld's Pentagon, led by Paul Wolfowitz and
Douglas Feith, caught Cheney's nutty fever too. The
war party in the Pentagon was no less obsessed than
Cheney and Libby with finding the nonexistent link
between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Powell considered them to
be "a separate little government" and referred to them
as the "Gestapo office."
4. George W. Bush cannot be bothered to listen to the
views of those with whom he disagrees, even
(particularly?) people who clearly know a great deal
more about the topic than he does and hold Cabinet
responsibility for it. Bush told Woodward that when he
saw Powell for twelve minutes in the Oval Office on
January 13, 2003, it was "not a meeting to have a
discussion. This was a meeting to tell Colin Powell
that a decision had been made and that the president
wanted his support."
5. Which is also too bad, because Bush lives in a
dream world. This from the transcript of Larry King
Live,:
WOODWARD:...I said, OK, you've found no weapons of
mass destruction, and one of my bosses at "The Post"
said, The question is, did you deceive us or were you
deceived? And I got two very emphatic, No. No.
KING: On both?
WOODWARD: On both.
6. The United States Constitution is meaningless to
these people: The Bush Administration decided to lay
out $700 million on a "massive, covert public works
program" in Kuwait in 2002, even though, as Woodward
aptly notes, they did not inform Congress. This is a
violation of Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the
Constitution, which vests the power of the purse in
Congress, along with various statutes that bar the
executive from unilaterally moving money out of areas
explicitly mandated by spending bills. It is,
moreover, an explicit violation of the post-9/11
emergency supplemental bill, which gave the President
discretion to direct the $40 billion it appropriated
but specifically required him to "consult with the
chairmen and ranking minority members of the
Committees on Appropriations prior to the transfer" of
any funds. There is no evidence of any such
consultation, and indeed the White House is not
claiming any exists.
The Administration has reacted to this revelation with
(a) dishonesty: On CBS's Face the Nation, Condoleezza
Rice tried to argue that "resources were not taken
from Afghanistan." This is false--Bush removed Special
Forces from Afghanistan in 2002 to send them to Iraq,
as David Sirota of the Center for American Progress
notes; and (b) disingenuousness and more dishonesty:
White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy told an
interviewer that the "significant buildup" in the
Persian Gulf region before the war was not necessarily
preparation for an invasion. (Apparently it was in
preparation for a regional swim meet, to be held on a
date yet to be determined.) Duffy also said the
Administration wanted to be ready to aid weapons
inspectors. This is ridiculous. The record
demonstrates that the White House went out of its way
to undercut the weapons inspectors in order to justify
its obsession with war. For the past year, the
goofball President of the United States and his
Defense Secretary have been denying that inspectors
were ever even allowed inside Iraq--something that
goes all but unreported in the US media because
reporters apparently find it too weird (see my last
column).
There's plenty more in Plan of Attack, like the Saudis
playing with our elections and stuff, but those are
the lowlights. Read it and weep.
Remember, 2+2=4. If the Bush cabal is allowed to say
that 2+2=5, than the US Constitution and the
democratically elected government it guarantees us is
finished. 2+2=4. Read Orwell, check on your voter
registration, encourage your friends to do the same.
Get out the vote in November. Our best hope is that
the turnout and the majority vote in this national
referendum on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and
COMPETENCE of the incredibly shrinking _resident is so
overwhelming that there is no ambiguity to be
exploited...
Kim Zetter, Wired: The voting panel also recommended to Shelley that he ask the state attorney general to examine the possibility of bringing civil and criminal charges against Diebold for violating California election codes, which state that vendors cannot change software without notifying the secretary of state's office. The codes also say that no vendor can install
uncertified software on voting systems.
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Eleciton,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,63179,00.html
Diebold Machine May Get Boot By Kim Zetter
Story location:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63179,00.html
11:56 AM Apr. 22, 2004 PT
SACRAMENTO, California -- A California voting systems
panel recommended Thursday that the secretary of state
decertify an electronic voting machine made by Diebold
Election Systems, making it likely that four counties
that used the machines will have to find others for
the November election.
The panel said the state should decertify the Diebold
TSx. The TSx was used for the first time in California
during the March primary in Kern, San Joaquin, Solano
and San Diego counties. Kevin Shelley, California's
secretary of state, has until April 30 to decide
whether to act on the panel's recommendation. The
state must give counties a six-month notice to take
machines out of commission before an election.
The panel discovered last November that Diebold had
installed uncertified software on the machines.
The voting panel also recommended to Shelley that he
ask the state attorney general to examine the
possibility of bringing civil and criminal charges
against Diebold for violating California election
codes, which state that vendors cannot change software
without notifying the secretary of state's office. The
codes also say that no vendor can install uncertified
software on voting systems.
"This doesn't solve the problems," said Tab Iredale, a
Diebold developer. "It just sets a tone of
confrontation at a time when we should be working
together to address issues with the certification
process."
Diebold spokesman David Bear said the company intends
to try to resubmit the TSx machines for federal and
state certification before the November election.
Members of the voting-systems panel have said they no
longer want to certify machines under the pressure of
an impending election. But a spokesman for the
secretary of state said Diebold will not be barred
from resubmitting for certification.
Deborah Hench, San Joaquin County's registrar of
voters, expressed surprise at the panel's move. She
said she had no idea what her county would do if
instructed not to use the TSx machines in the November
election. For the March election, the county borrowed
optical-scan machines from other counties and from
Diebold. If the secretary of state agrees to decertify
the TSx, the counties will have to scramble to find
optical-scan machines, and there might not be enough
to go around.
Diebold Election Systems President Bob Urosevich was
forced to defend his company's business practices
Wednesday at a contentious meeting in Sacramento
before the panel. Urosevich, accompanied by a defense
lawyer and a public relations consultant hired
specifically to see the company through its California
crisis, worked hard to convince the panel that the
company has reformed its ways and can be trusted to
conduct elections.
But members of the panel appeared to disagree with the
company's claims, saying repeatedly that Diebold had
been less than forthcoming during the state's nearly
five-month investigation into its practices, often
producing "frivolous" documents or responding slowly
to state queries.
Remember, 2+2=4. If the Bush cabal is allowed to say
that 2+2=5, than the US Constitution and the
democratically elected government it guarantees us is
finished. 2+2=4. Read Orwell, check on your voter
registration, encourage your friends to do the same.
Get out the vote in November. Our best hope is that
the turnout and the majority vote in this national
referendum on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and
COMPETENCE of the incredibly shrinking _resident is so
overwhelming that there is no ambiguity to be
exploited...
Jim Wasserman, Associated Press: California should ban the use of 15,000 touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems from the Nov. 2 general election, an advisory panel to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley recommended Thursday. By an 8-0 vote, the state's Voting Systems and
Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the
use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold
has performed poorly in California and its machines
malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election,
turning away many voters in San Diego County.
Thwart the Theft of a Second US Presidential Election, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
URL:
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi file=/news/archive/2004/04/22/financial1458EDT0107.DTL
Don't use Diebold touch-screen voting machines
JIM WASSERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, April 22, 2004
©2004 Associated Press
(04-22) 18:17 PDT SACRAMENTO (AP) --
California should ban the use of 15,000 touch-screen
voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems from
the Nov. 2 general election, an advisory panel to
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley recommended Thursday.
By an 8-0 vote, the state's Voting Systems and
Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the
use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold
has performed poorly in California and its machines
malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election,
turning away many voters in San Diego County.
The recommendation affects 15,000 Diebold touch-screen
machines in San Diego, Solano, Kern and San Joaquin
counties.
Thousands more machines made by Diebold and other
manufacturers in 10 other counties are unaffected,
although the panel is to make a recommendation
regarding them next Wednesday.
The panel's decision has national implications for the
voting machine maker, coming as states plan to spend
billions of dollars to upgrade election equipment in
the wake of the disputed 2000 presidential election in
Florida.
If Shelley follows through with the recommendation,
the affected counties would have to revert to paper
ballots, specifically those marked by filling in ovals
which are read by electronic scanners. The prospects
of starting anew just months before a presidential
election prompted outcries from more than a dozen
voting officials statewide who would have to buy
voting booths, ballot boxes, marking supplies, card
readers and more scanners while retraining poll
workers.
"We sold all of our voting booths to Los Angeles
County. We sold our surplus card readers to smaller
counties," said Riverside County Registrar of Voters
Mischelle Townsend, who estimated costs of reverting
to paper at $2.5 million.
Diebold was disappointed and disagreed with the
recommendation, said its marketing director, Mark
Radke. The company will quickly write a report
outlining its objections to Shelley, who has until
April 30 to make a final decision.
The vote doesn't affect thousands of Diebold optical
scan machines that read marked ballot cards in 17
counties. Nor does it affect an earlier generation of
4,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in Alameda and
Plumas counties.
In addition to the ban, panel members recommended that
a secretary of state's office report released
Wednesday, detailing alleged failings of Diebold in
California, be forwarded to the state attorney
general's office to consider civil and criminal
charges against the company.
Diebold Election Systems is an affiliate of Ohio-based
Diebold, Inc., a leading ATM machine maker supplying
banks in North and South America.
Panel member Marc Carrel, an assistant secretary of
state, said he was "disgusted" by Diebold, which has
"been jerking us around." The company, he said, has
disenfranchised voters in California and undermined
confidence in the new and developing technology of
touch-screen voting.
Local elections officials in Kern, San Diego and San
Joaquin counties, which use Diebold's newest
touch-screen machines said they were surprised and
confused.
"I don't understand how they can say they didn't work
well," said San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters
Debbie Hench, who argued that the county's March
election was largely problem free. The county bought
1,626 Diebold touch-screen machines for $5.7 million.
This decision will be a "step backward" for Kern
County, said Registrar of Voters Ann Barnett, who
bought 1,350 Diebold touch-screen machines for $5
million.
San Diego County Registrar of Voters Sally McPherson
said the county spent almost $30 million for its
10,200 Diebold machines and officials there "believe
in touch screens. We were prepared to move forward."
A secretary of state's report on the March 2 elections
found that 573 of 1,038 polling places in San Diego
County failed to open on time because Diebold voting
machines malfunctioned. Voters were told to go
elsewhere or come back.
Regardless of what happens in California, the head of
Diebold Inc. told shareholders Thursday that the
company is not considering getting out of the
elections business.
Chairman and CEO Walden W. O'Dell told reporters after
an annual shareholders meeting that "we will help in
California if we are allowed. If we are not, we won't.
I think whatever goes on in California is separate
from what goes on in other states. Each state will
make their own decisions."
O'Dell said the North Canton, Ohio-based company
remains confident the machines are safe and secure.
California panel members, however, cited a litany of
alleged problems with Diebold in recent months,
including its sale of machines to the four counties
without federal and state certification, last-minute
software fixes before the March election and
installation of uncertified software in voting
machines in 17 counties.
"In my view we need a clean slate with this vendor,"
said panel member John Mott-Smith, chief of the
state's elections division. "Most of the big problems
in the March election came with Diebold equipment.
People did not get to vote because these things did
not function and that's not acceptable."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the Net:
Diebold Election Systems: www.diebold.com/dieboldes/
Read the bills to ban paperless electronic voting this
November, SB 530 and SB1723, at www.legislature.ca.gov
California Secretary of State: www.ss.ca.gov
True Majority: www.truemajority.org
©2004 Associated Press
More evidence that Fraudida was not an anomaly but
rather what the Bush cabal has planned for our
future...BTW, he study that the US Civil Rights
Commission issued after the Theft of the 2000
Presidential Election is one of the most important
documents in US history. Of course, it was almost
wholly ignored by the "US mainstream news media" and
smeared and maligned by the "vast reich wing
conspiracy" that intimidates the "US mainstream news
media" and its propapunditgandists...The LNS has
stored hard copies of it in case it "disappears" from
the Internet...Remember, 2+2=4
Andrew Gumbel, Independent: The United States may be
on the way to another Florida-style presidential
election fiasco this year because legislation passed
to fix the system has either failed to address the
problems or has broken down because of missed
deadlines and unmet funding targets. Such is the
conclusion of a damning new report by the US
Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan government
body which previously looked into the Florida mess and
found alarming evidence of voter disenfranchisement
among poor and minority groups, incorrectly compiled
voter rolls and other glaring irregularities. "Many of
the problems that the commission previously cautioned
should be corrected yet prevail ... Unless the
government acts now, many of those previously
disenfranchised stand to be excluded again," the
report said.
Thwart the Theft of a Second US Presidential Election,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=513967&host=3&dir=70
US heading for another election fiasco as reforms fail
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
22 April 2004
The United States may be on the way to another
Florida-style presidential election fiasco this year
because legislation passed to fix the system has
either failed to address the problems or has broken
down because of missed deadlines and unmet funding
targets. Such is the conclusion of a damning new
report by the US Commission on Civil Rights, a
bipartisan government body which previously looked
into the Florida mess and found alarming evidence of
voter disenfranchisement among poor and minority
groups, incorrectly compiled voter rolls and other
glaring irregularities. "Many of the problems that the
commission previously cautioned should be corrected
yet prevail ... Unless the government acts now, many
of those previously disenfranchised stand to be
excluded again," the report said.
The commission's criticisms focused on the failure to
implement President George Bush's Help America Vote
Act (Hava), passed in October 2002, which promised
$4bn (£2.3bn) to help states overhaul antiquated
voting machinery - notably the notorious punchcard
devices that caused so much trouble in Florida - and
sought to set up a nationwide system of provisional
voting for people who believe they have a right to
vote but find themselves omitted from the official
list.
It said that out of 22 key deadlines that have come
and gone since the act's passage, only five have been
met. Most seriously, an oversight committee designed
to advise states on streamlining their voting
procedures and implementing the act's provisions was
not appointed until last December, 11 months behind
schedule. Most states are unlikely to make reforms
before the presidential election on 2 November.
In addition, the Bush White House has consistently
proposed less money than promised by the act, so
states that have passed their own reform legislation
have found themselves crucially short of money for
implementation.
On signing the act 18 months ago, Mr Bush said: "When
problems arise in the administration of elections we
have a responsibility to fix them. Every registered
voter deserves to have confidence that the system is
fair and elections are honest, that every vote is
recorded, and that the rules are consistently
applied."
Almost half of the states have requested exemptions
from updating their voting equipment, and 41 out of 50
have requested extensions until 2006 to consolidate
voter registration lists at state level so they can
more easily be checked for accuracy. "It will be
difficult if not impossible for states to build the
necessary election infrastructure by November," it
concluded.
The commission report can only heighten the anxieties
of an electorate already alarmed by a growing
controversy over touchscreen voting machines being
introduced - with Hava money - in many parts of the
South and West. The machines make meaningful recounts
impossible and rely on software developed by companies
with strong ties to President Bush and his Republican
Party. California is expected to decide this week
whether to decertify its touchscreen machines.
The debate over the health of America's electoral
procedures is turning into a partisan fight, with
Republicans dismissing the concerns as Democratic
politicking unworthy of serious examination. When the
Commission on Civil Rights convened an expert panel in
Washington this month to discuss its report, the
Republican Party delegation walked out before the
proceedings began, one panel participant, Rebecca
Mercuri, a Harvard University voting machinery expert,
said.
In Florida during the 2000 election, thousands of
eligible, predominantly black, voters were erroneously
identified as former felons and purged from the voter
rolls by a private company hired by Katherine Harris,
who acted as the state's top electoral official and
also as co-chair of George Bush's state campaign
committee.
Also in Americas
_______________________________________________
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Website: http://www.mindspace.org/liberation-news-service/
Manage your subscription to this list:
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700 + US soldiers have died in the incredible
shrinking _resident's foolish military adventure in
Iraq. The release of the incredible shrinking
_resident's National Guard service file leaves many
more questions unanswered. And yet, the incredible
shrinking _resident's operatives are attacking Sen.
John F. Kerry's highly distinguished and decorated
record of heroism in combat...Well, where is Sen. John
McCain (R-Arizona)? Will he speak out? He must rise on
the floor of the US Senate to denounce these disgraceful
attacks, just as JFK has repeatedly condemned the
attacks made not only on former Sen. Max Cleland
(D-GA), but also on McCain himself in 2000..
Terry McAuliffe, DNC Chairman: "...we welcome any
opportunity to contrast Kerry's distinguished record
of service as a Naval officer who faced combat and was
wounded in Vietnam to Bush using his family
connections to get placed in the Texas Air National
Guard, requesting to not be sent overseas and then not
even bothering to show up for duty or even fulfilling
his required length of service. Simply put, Kerry has a proud record of sacrifice and service whereas Bush has a record of cashed-in connections and evasion."
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.democrats.org/news/200404210001.html
Apr 21, 2004
Statement by DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe on GOP
Attacks on Kerry's Military Service
Washington, DC — In response to numerous Republican
surrogates attacking John Kerry's military record, the
Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
today issued the following statement, contrasting
Kerry's proud record of sacrifice and service to
George W. Bush's own record of "evasion and cashed-in
connections." In addition, the DNC research department
released a side-by-side comparison of Kerry and Bush's
military service.
"Since Bush himself is in no position to criticize
John Kerry on his military service, he has opted
instead to let others do his dirty work for him. But
whether he's making this charge himself or relying on
surrogates, we welcome any opportunity to contrast
Kerry's distinguished record of service as a Naval
officer who faced combat and was wounded in Vietnam to
Bush using his family connections to get placed in the
Texas Air National Guard, requesting to not be sent
overseas and then not even bothering to show up for
duty or even fulfilling his required length of
service. Simply put, Kerry has a proud record of
sacrifice and service whereas Bush has a record of
cashed-in connections and evasion."
2+2=4...At least for John Zogby...Here is a rare
reality-check in one of the US's two most important
newspapers...And remember, you wouldn't know it if you
were watching the TV and radio network news
broadcasts, but Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) is
leading in 8 of the 12 major national polls...
John Zobgy, Washington Post: First of all I think the
following red states are very much at play: New
Hampshire, Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, Florida and
possibly Arizona. I think the following blue states
are in play: Pennsylvania, Oregon and Minnesota. There
are more reds than blues I think are in play this
year. As for New Mexico, even though it was very very
close in 2000, I think that both the growing Latino
vote and the presence of Richardson as governor will
probably carry the day for Kerry. I think this
election is John Kerry’s to lose. Which is not to say
that he can’t rise to the occasion.
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/04/sp_politics_zogby042204.htm
Recent Polls
John Zogby
Zogby International
Thursday, April 22, 2004; 12:30 p.m. ET
Are the recent poll numbers showing President Bush
ahead of Kerry a sign that his $50 million ad blitz is
working? How accurate are polls this far from the
election? What is happening in the battleground
states?
John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International,
discussed the newest polling numbers, his data and the
2004 election.
The transcript follows.
Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain
editorial control over Live Online discussions and
choose the most relevant questions for guests and
hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer
questions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington, D.C.: Your poll of 4/18 showed Kerry up by
three and this was one day before The Washington Post
poll showing Bush up by five. What gives? Are the
pollsters and pundits going to get it all wrong AGAIN
this election year!?
John Zogby : I haven’t gotten it wrong. I have gotten
the presidential elections almost perfect. 1996 was
within a couple of tenths of a percent, I had the Gore
victory in the popular vote in 2000 and nailed almost
all of my elections in 2004 – the primaries. I don’t
think that you should look at pinpoint precision, I
think you should look at how close the polls are to
each other. If you look at mine and the other two we
are all in the margin of error.
_______________________
New York, N/Y.: When a polls margin of error is plus
or minus 3 percent, what exactly does this mean? For
example, a poll says Bush 48 Kerry 45, does it mean
that Kerry could be at 48 and Bush at 45 or can Kerry
be at 43 with bush at 51?
John Zogby : You are right, it actually means both.
The person with 48 percent can be at plus or minus
three, same with the person at 45 percent. So
translated, it can be as much as a six point spread.
_______________________
Baltimore, Md. : Part of the reason for Kerry's poll
drop might be the fading of the economy as an issue,
with Iraq dominating the news and reports of job
growth and other positive economic signs. But what
evidence is there that the economy remains a major
problem for the president, especially in crucial
Midwestern swing states (like Ohio), where job losses
have been heavy and recovery is slow?
John Zogby : The premise that you start with I think
is wrong because my poll has Kerry ahead with no drop.
My poll also indicates that the economy by 10 points
is the number one issue – 30 percent. When voters say
the economy is the issue, they are not saying because
it is good. I still have one in five voters who tell
me that they are afraid of losing a job in the next 12
months and one in four voters in households earning
$75,000 or more. Voters don’t measure their lives in
trillions and billions of dollars. Essentially the
economy will be a major issue in this campaign and
offer Kerry an opportunity in some of the battleground
states like Ohio, Missouri, West Virginia, etc.
_______________________
Key West, Fla.: Dear Mr. Zogby:
First, let me say that since the 2000 Presidential
Election you are the only pollster that I trust. You
stated that Gore would win the popular vote and you
were right. Personally, I think that Gore won Florida
but that's a different matter. Here is my two-part
question: What states did President Bush win in 2000
that John Kerry has a decent chance to win and what
states did Al Gore win in 2000 that President Bush has
a decent chance to win? Also, I realize that the
election is six months away but if you were a betting
man who do you think is going to win and why? Thanks
John Zogby : Good questions. First of all I think the
following red states are very much at play: New
Hampshire, Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, Florida and
possibly Arizona. I think the following blue states
are in play: Pennsylvania, Oregon and Minnesota. There
are more reds than blues I think are in play this
year. As for New Mexico, even though it was very very
close in 2000, I think that both the growing Latino
vote and the presence of Richardson as governor will
probably carry the day for Kerry.
I think this election is John Kerry’s to lose. Which
is not to say that he can’t rise to the occasion.
_______________________
Stockton, Calif.: How long does an event or series of
events generally take to make a noticeable effect on
the candidates' standings in natonal polls? Is it
immediate or is there lag time? (Examples: large buys
on television; major players testifying before a
commission; capture or death of important enemy
leader)
John Zogby : Good point. I operate by a 48-hour rule.
Unless it’s a Kennedy assassination or 9/11, which
would have an immediate effect, most other events
generally take 48 hours to gestate. Meaning it takes
that long to talk about it, see the talking heads,
discuss it at the water cooler or hairdresser. With
that said I think you are going to see very little
fluctuation from now to Nov. 2nd. I think we are
evenly polarized, pretty hardened and I think there
are pretty few swing voters out there.
_______________________
Mt. Lebanon, Pa.: Ralph Nader -- a man rising in the
polls and raising money. But during the recent months
the media circus said he wouldn't be a factor this
time and it was all ego and pathos. Cue the clowns and
balloons.
Which is right here? A candidate on the move or hubris
and hooey?
And if momentum is working here -- did he get that
from the Deaniacs, third parties, his own base, or
working a philosopher's stone?
By the way, I'm a Vietnam Era Vet who contributed to
Dean and have now moved on to Nader -- not a Deaniac
by any means.
For your insights and analyses: Thanks much.
John Zogby : I think that both those arguments are
wrong. I think that what is making Nader’s numbers as
high as they are – and it is 3 points in my poll – are
voters who are not with the Democrats who are on the
left, would ordinarily not vote. There is a fraction
of that 3 percent who want to see Kerry move to the
left. Nader will be on the ballot on fewer states, but
even if he captures only 25 percent of the vote he got
in 2000 he could still hurt Kerry in some closely
competitive states.
_______________________
Concord, N.H.: John:
Have you polled on any aspect of a military draft
recently?
John Zogby : I have not, but here is what I think. I
don’t believe any candidate will touch it with a
ten-foot pole. And I also believe that the greater
intensity is with the opposition to the war and that
could generate a higher turnout among 18-25 year olds,
especially woment.
_______________________
Baltimore, Md.: Why is that your "brand" as a pollster
seems to get more respect from pundits and
politicians? Conservatives, especially, seem to hold
you in high regard, even though I am sure your
questions and methodology have no built-in bias. Can
you explain your credibility? Thanks.
John Zogby : Well, I think it is a number of things.
One is that I did have a reputation for getting some
very high profile races closer than many of my
colleagues. Secondly, even though personally I have
never hidden the fact that my politics are on the very
left, my numbers don’t reflect it. That was enough for
people like Rush Limbaugh and others like Bill
O’Reilly and Shawn Hannity to label me as honest. And
then, thirdly, I think some of it has to do with the
fact that there is a Zogby behind the Zogby poll. So
instead of the AJAX Polling Firm, there is a real
person and analyst who carries the same name as the
brand. I hope that answers the question.
_______________________
Charlotte, N.C.: Have you done any polling in
battleground states? Can you tell us anything about
these states at this stage of the game?
John Zogby : I have not in battleground states,
however I have seen other polls and right now it is
razor thin in so many of them. Fior example Bush and
Kerry trade leads in New Hampshire. Bush is ahead by a
few points in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The two
are tied in West Virginia. They trade leads in
Florida. Etc. It is like that and I think it will
continue to be.
_______________________
Mineola, N.Y.: The great journalist Walter Lippman in
his famous book "Public Opinion" discussed polling as
being potentially insidious because poll results can
actually affect public opinion as opposed to reflect
it.
Do you believe polls accurately reflect opinion at a
point in time or do the impact public opinion? Also,
can polls be easily manipulated by one campaign or
another to impact news coverage?
John Zogby : Another very good question. In all
honesty I think we accurately take a snapshot of
public opinion. It is very much like a photographer
taking that snapshot of a moment in time. In many,
instances if not most instances, I think that the
snapshot confirms conventional wisdom. I don’t think
you need a poll to tell you that this race is close
just as I don’t think you needed a poll to tell you
that Reagan was going to defeat Mondale in a landside.
The good thing about a poll is that it grounds us. We
all tend to hangout with people who agree with our
views and then we extrapolate on the broader public
what we learn within those circles. Example: “how can
you say Bush isn’t leading by 50 points, everyone I
know is voting for Bush” – that sort of thing. I don’t
think the polls impact anymore on how people vote than
conventional wisdom does. And even though there are
differences in the polls from time to time – for
example, Monday – I think anyway you slice it, this is
a very close race.
_______________________
Brooklyn, N.Y.: Mr. Zogby -- last week CNN-Gallup and
WAPO-ABC released polls showing Bush with a 4-6 point
lead, while you (whose polls I put much more stock in)
released a poll showing Kerry with a 3 point lead.
Presumably, this does not come from the margin of
error -- how is your selection technique different
from the other two polls?
John Zogby : It really isn’t very different. I use
listed telephone numbers instead of random digit
dialing. At times I apply a weight for political party
identification while at other times I don’t. But
again, I think the polls are much closer to each other
than they are apart and I would ask this question –
after the two weeks that the president has had do
people really believe he got a bump in the polls?
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: What do you think of sites like the
Iowa Electronic Markets that predict elections by
simulating stock markets? They claim to be more
accurate than polls -- is this right?
John Zogby : They were up until 2000 when they had
Bush leading by about six points. It is interesting. I
watch it. But we are all in this kind of business
humans, not gods. So we all have our moments when we
are right and unfortunately some moments when we are
wrong. But it sure as hell is fun playing this game.
_______________________
Arlington, Va.: Do you see any difference in the
effectiveness of a candidate's own ads versus those
produced by an independent interest group like
Moveon.org? Is one type of ad better at swaying voters
than the other?
John Zogby : Needless to say, the 527 ads are
certainly more hard hitting, but in both instances I
think the ads are mainly reinforcement mechanisms,
meaning their greater impact is reinforcing support
among the base for each candidate. That is why you are
not really seeing any big bumps for any candidate.
_______________________
Milwaukee, Wis.: I read your list of blue states in
play. What about Wisconsin?
John Zogby : I have a map right in front of me and I
think Wisconsin stays blue –- it is the economy.
_______________________
Rochester, N.Y.: I believe you've done some
international polling, particularly in the Middle
East. Which countries do you find more pro-U.S. (or at
least less hostile)? Do you think the theocracy in
Iran has produced a pro American backlash?
John Zogby : Those are very good questions.
Unfortunately Arabs and Muslims are very alienated. I
am going in the field in the next couple of days in
six Arab countries and I don’t believe I am going to
see any increase in favorability toward the United
States anywhere. If anything one might argue that the
numbers are a little more favorable to the U.S. in
Lebanon because of a heavier Christian population and
because of the significant number of relatives and
family members who are Lebanese and live in the U.S.
But lets not kid ourselves, public opinion of the U.S.
is down in Lebanon too.
I think it had produced a pro-American backlash until
Iran was labeled as part of the Axis of Evil and that
created a counter backlash.
_______________________
College Park, Md.: You've received some criticism for
polling methods, particularly for only doing daytime
polling and for not calling back if there is no one at
home. What are the statistical differences between
your methods and those who do call at night and call
back? Why did you decide to poll the way you do?
John Zogby : That is so ridiculous. I don’t do only
daytime calling. 70 percent of our calls are between 5
p.m. and 9 p.m. I used daytime calling to convert
people who are not reached in the evening and we do no
less than three call backs to people who have not been
reached initially.
Some of my colleagues have been critical and I have
been critical of theirs, but my methodology is sound.
_______________________
Kalida, Ohio: Will the selection of Kerry's vice
president change any of the polling in certain
battlegrounds States? Example Richardson in New Mexico
and Florida. Thanks.
John Zogby : Sure, Kerry has to decide if he is going
to chose a running mate that will help him in a few
states or help him in complimenting or supplementing
an image. The Richardson choice could be a good one
which could help in Arizona as well. The Gephardt
choice, which I think would be the strongest choice,
could certainly help tip Missouri, Ohio or even West
Virginia. An Edwards choice would be more an image
choice and a decision by Kerry to run a national
campaign. So I don’t see Edwards helping to carry any
southern state.
_______________________
Fairfax, Va.: Could we see a reverse of 2000 in this
year's election with Kerry winning the electoral vote
and losing the popular vote?
John Zogby : Oh in this election you can have many
types of combinations like that. We are even more
closely matched blue versus red than we were four
years ago.
_______________________
Columbia, Md.: What must Kerry do to define himself
with voters?
John Zogby : As he did in the latter weeks of the
primary campaign he has got to define himself in
bumper-sticker terms. I am a veteran. I can win. Here
is where I stand: one, two, there. He is a very bright
candidate and perhaps a bit too thoughtful on issues.
One comes away with a sense that he is very nuanced
and very philosophical but he needs to sharply focus
on who he is and where he stands.
_______________________
John Zogby : Thanks for a lot of very good question.
Look forward to doing this again. Feel free to visit
my website at zogby.com.
_______________________
The National Council of Churches is expressing "grave
moral concern" about the Bush cabal's efforts to
undermine the Clean Air Act...The incredible shrinking
_resident has failed this country...NATIONAL SECURITY,
ECONOMIC SECURITY and ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY...All
three issues, not one or the other, will decide this
election...
Associated Press: The National Council of Churches
argued that planned changes to power plant regulations
will allow major polluters to avoid installing
pollution-control equipment when they expand their
facilities. "In a spirit of shared faith and respect,
we feel called to express grave moral concern about
your 'Clear Skies' initiative -- which we believe is
The Administration's continuous effort to weaken
critical environmental standards to protect God's
creation," the council wrote in an advance copy of the
letter provided to The Associated Press.
Save the Environment, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/04/22/churches.bush/index.html
Church group slams Bush on Clean Air Act
SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- A national group of
Christian leaders is sending a scathing letter to
President Bush to coincide with Earth Day, accusing
his administration of chipping away at the Clean Air
Act.
The National Council of Churches argued that planned
changes to power plant regulations will allow major
polluters to avoid installing pollution-control
equipment when they expand their facilities.
"In a spirit of shared faith and respect, we feel
called to express grave moral concern about your
'Clear Skies' initiative -- which we believe is The
Administration's continuous effort to weaken critical
environmental standards to protect God's creation,"
the council wrote in an advance copy of the letter
provided to The Associated Press.
The New-York based group, which represents 50 million
people in 140,000 Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox
congregations, said it was sending its two-page letter
to the president on Thursday, as people all over the
country celebrate Earth Day. It took out a full-page
ad in The New York Times, scheduled to run in
Thursday's editions, calling on Bush to leave the
Clean Air Act's new source review rules in place.
The Environmental Protection Agency did not
immediately return calls seeking comment Wednesday,
but the agency has defended the rule changes proposed
in August. EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt has called
it "the biggest investment in the air quality
improvement in the nation's history."
The proposal would cap emissions and allow polluters
to buy and sell pollution allowances, but
environmental groups complain the new system would be
far too lenient. In December a federal appeals court
temporarily blocked the new rules from taking effect,
agreeing with more than a dozen states and cities that
contended the changes could cause irreparable harm to
their environments and public health.
"The people we talk to, both inside and outside the
administration, say ... that these changes will in
fact weaken, not strengthen the Clean Air Act," said
the Rev. Bob Edgar, a United Methodist minister and
the church council's general secretary.
"And we will in fact have dirtier air and less
compliance," said Edgar, who served six terms in
Congress in the 1970s and '80s, representing a
suburban Philadelphia district. The council is urging
ministers across the country to talk about the
problems of air pollution during this week's services.
Monica Myers, pastor at Seattle's Northwest Christian
Church, a Disciples of Christ congregation, said she
doesn't plan to bash Bush in her sermon Sunday.
Instead, she said she'll simply remind her
congregation that pollution and other environmental
problems tend to affect the poor more harshly than
those who can afford to live in places far away from
polluting factories or toxic waste sites.
"I want to emphasize that their faith should direct
them as they vote," she said. "Responsible Christians
should weigh the teachings of Jesus Christ, especially
as they speak of those who are poor and marginalized."
The council joined the Evangelical Environmental
Network in a "What would Jesus drive?" campaign in
2002, urging the auto industry to adopt stricter
emissions standards and calling on SUV owners to
switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles.
The US Congress has passed two supplemental appropriations totaling $160 billion since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The cost of the recent decision to keep 20,000 US soldiers in Iraq for an extra three months will be an additional $700 million. Estimates are that it will cost another $50 billion to $75 billion to sustain operations in Iraq for this year. But the White House and the Pentagon are avoiding the subject...CNN reports: "The Bush administration has failed to provide a realistic assessment of how much the war in Iraq will cost taxpayers, lawmakers charged Wednesday. That charge, leveled by Democrats and Republicans, came as Pentagon officials spent a second day on Capitol Hill talking about the situation in Iraq."
But, hey, as the incredible shrinking _resident was fond of observing during the debate about his disasterous tax cuts: "It's your money!"
Of course, the financial cost of this foolish military adventure is not the only truth that they want to keep from you. As the LNS reported months ago, the Pentagon bans photographs of the flag-drapped coffins of the 700+ US soldiers that have been shipped home from Iraq, and even more cravenly, the capitulating, complicit "US mainstream news media" has allowed the ban to go unchallenged. The cable TV news networks, the major city newspapers and the wire services should be suing the US government..BUT Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker, defied the ban. She took such photos. The Seattle Times defied the ban too. It published her photos. Silicio was fired...Her name will be scrawled on the John O'Neill Wall of Heroes...Her photos have a life of their own now -- not in the "US mainstream news media" unfortunately, and disgracefully, but in the Internet-based Information Rebellion...
Hal Bernton, Seattle Times: A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times...Her photograph, taken earlier this month, shows more than 20 flag-draped coffins in a cargo plane about to depart from Kuwait. Since 1991, the Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of caskets being returned to the United States. That policy has been a lightning rod for debate, and Silicio's photograph was quickly posted on numerous Internet sites and became the subject of many Web conversations. Times Executive Editor Michael R. Fancher yesterday appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" news show with U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who supported the Pentagon policy prohibiting such pictures.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001909527_coffin22m.html
Woman loses her job over coffins photo
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
TAMI SILICIO
Flag-draped coffins are shown inside a cargo plane April 7 at Kuwait International Airport, in a photograph published Sunday. The photographer said she hoped the image would help families understand the care with which fallen soldiers are returned home.
A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times.
Silicio was let go yesterday for violating U.S. government and company regulations, said William Silva, president of Maytag Aircraft, the contractor that employed Silicio at Kuwait International Airport.
"I feel like I was hit in the chest with a steel bar and got my wind knocked out. I have to admit I liked my job, and I liked what I did," Silicio said.
Her photograph, taken earlier this month, shows more than 20 flag-draped coffins in a cargo plane about to depart from Kuwait. Since 1991, the Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of caskets being returned to the United States.
Tami Silicio's photo fueled a debate over a U.S. policy on casket images.
That policy has been a lightning rod for debate, and Silicio's photograph was quickly posted on numerous Internet sites and became the subject of many Web conversations. Times Executive Editor Michael R. Fancher yesterday appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" news show with U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who supported the Pentagon policy prohibiting such pictures.
As a result of the broader coverage, The Times received numerous e-mail and phone calls from across the country — most of which supported the newspaper's decision.
Pentagon officials yesterday said the government's policy defers to the sensitivities of bereaved families. "We've made sure that all of the installations who are involved with the transfer of remains were aware that we do not allow any media coverage of any of the stops until (the casket) reaches its final destination," said Cynthia Colin, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
Maytag also fired David Landry, a co-worker who recently wed Silicio.
Silicio said she never sought to put herself in the public spotlight. Instead, she said, she hoped the publication of the photo would help families of fallen soldiers understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home.
"It wasn't my intent to lose my job or become famous or anything," Silicio said.
The Times received Silicio's photograph from a stateside friend, Amy Katz, who had previously worked with Silicio for a different contractor in Kosovo. Silicio then gave The Times permission to publish it, without compensation. It was paired with an article about her work in Kuwait.
Silicio, 50, is from Edmonds and previously worked as an events decorator in the Seattle area and as a truck driver in Kosovo. Before the war started, she went to work for Maytag, which contracts with the Air Mobility Command to provide air-terminal and ground-handling services in Kuwait.
In Kuwait, Silicio pulled 12-hour night shifts alongside military workers to help in the huge effort to resupply U.S. troops. These workers also helped transport the remains of soldiers back to the United States.
Her job put her in contact with soldiers who sometimes accompanied the coffins to the airport. Having lost one of her own sons to a brain tumor, Silicio said, she tried to offer support to those grieving over a lost comrade.
"It kind of helps me to know what these mothers are going through, and I try to watch over their children as they head home," she said in an earlier interview.
Since Sunday, Silicio has hunkered down in Kuwait as her employer and the military decided her fate.
Maytag's Silva said the decision to terminate Silicio's and Landry's employment was made by the company. But he said the U.S. military had identified "very specific concerns" about their actions. Silva declined to detail those concerns.
"They were good workers, and we were sorry to lose them," Silva said. "They did a good job out in Kuwait and it was an important job that they did."
Landry, in an e-mail to The Times, said he was proud of his wife, and that they would soon return home to the States.
Will the shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader
redeem himself and salvage his legacy -- before it is
too late? The LNS hopes so, but doubts it. Meanwhile,
here is another name for the John O'Neill Wall of
Heroes: Denise Giardina, founder of West Virginia's
Mountain Party. Like Noam Chomsky (yes, Noam Chomsky),
she understands what another four years of the Bush
cabal would mean...The difference between Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) and the incredible shrinking _resident begins with the tens of thousands if not millions of deaths and goes on from there...The shell-of-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader got 22K votes in New Hampsire in 2000, Gore lost New Hampshire to Bush by 7K votes, the electoral college votes from New Hampshire would have cancelled out the winning edge give to Bush with Fraudida's stolen electoral college votes. In Fraudida, BTW, where the shell-of-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader spent the final days of the 2000 campaign, Gore allegedly lost by approx. 500 votes (although many thousands were thrown out), while the shell-of-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader got 90K+ votes. If even one third of those who voted for the shell-of-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader in either New Hampshire or Fraudida have voted for Gore, we would not be where we are today...We would not have abandoned the Kyoto Accords, we would not have trashed the Middle East peace process, we would not have invaded Iraq, we would not have torn up the ABM treaty, we would not have trashed the opportunity for peace and disarmament on the Korean pennisula, the EPA would not have been prostituted, we would not have gutted the Federal surplus and plunged the US into debt, we would not have suffered a phoney "energy crisis" in California and Conan the Deceiver would not be Governor of California, and oh yes, 9/11 itself might not have happened...
Paul Nyden, Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail: Last
week, Giardina called Nader’s 2000 campaign “extremely
unfortunate. But I am in a state of shock that Nader
is running again. It worries me that something I did
might make it possible for him to get on the ballot
this year.” In a letter she plans to send to Mountain
Party supporters, Giar-dina wrote, “Nothing could
better illustrate the need for a local alternative
than the 2004 governor’s race. A Mountain Party
candidate will provide an alternative to Republicrat
Coal candidates. “Having said that, I am appalled at
the attempt to add Ralph Nader as a presidential
candidate on the Mountain Party ballot,” her letter
states. Vince George, Giardina’s campaign manager in
2000, is working to get Nader’s name on the ballot
this year. “I would feel horrible if this happened. I
also think it would be a real mistake for the Mountain
Party. There would not be a Mountain Party on the
ballot today if we had not run that gubernatorial
campaign. “I have not regretted that until now,”
Giardina added. “The Bush administration is such a
dangerous administration. We’ve got to get this guy
out. Then we can get back to normal. “Because of the shallowness of the media, especially television, there are a lot of uninformed people who are going to vote for Bush. If a small percentage of people are not practical and vote for Nader, it could be enough to throw the election.”
Restore the Timeline, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://sundaygazettemail.com/news/Other+News/2004041713/
Back to Gazette-Mail
Mountain Party’s Giardina doesn’t back Nader
Sunday April 18, 2004
By Paul J. Nyden
STAFF WRITER
Third-party candidate Ralph Nader has asked West
Virginia’s Mountain Party to nominate him for the
presidency. But the party’s former gubernatorial
candidate doesn’t want that to happen. Author Denise
Giardina helped found the Mountain Party in 2000 and
ran for governor that year. Her novels include
“Storming Heaven” and “The Unquiet Earth” about the
struggles of miners in the southern coalfields. “I
decided to run as a third-party candidate to establish
a statewide independent party so people discouraged
about the political process would have a place on the
ballot. But I did not see national politics as part of
that,” she said last week. Giardina received 10,228
votes for governor, about 2 percent of the vote, in
2000. Any party winning at least 1 percent of the vote
gets an automatic place on the state ballot in the
next election. Today, some Mountain Party members hope
delegates to their upcoming convention — to be held
May 1 at Jackson’s Mill near Weston — will nominate
Nader for president. If the party does not, Nader will
have to collect about 14,000 valid signatures to win a
place on this fall’s ballot. To guarantee 14,000 valid
signatures, a typical petition drive would try to
collect at least 18,000 signatures. The Mountain Party
Constitution sets up 17 voting districts — one in each
State Senate district. Each district can have up to
four voting delegates at the Jackson’s Mill
convention. A majority vote of delegates determines
who gets the party’s statewide nominations on the
November ballot. Last week, Giardina called Nader’s
2000 campaign “extremely unfortunate. But I am in a
state of shock that Nader is running again. It worries
me that something I did might make it possible for him
to get on the ballot this year.” In a letter she plans
to send to Mountain Party supporters, Giar-dina wrote,
“Nothing could better illustrate the need for a local
alternative than the 2004 governor’s race. A Mountain
Party candidate will provide an alternative to
Republicrat Coal candidates. “Having said that, I am
appalled at the attempt to add Ralph Nader as a
presidential candidate on the Mountain Party ballot,”
her letter states. Vince George, Giardina’s campaign
manager in 2000, is working to get Nader’s name on the
ballot this year. “I would feel horrible if this
happened. I also think it would be a real mistake for
the Mountain Party. There would not be a Mountain
Party on the ballot today if we had not run that
gubernatorial campaign. “I have not regretted that
until now,” Giardina added. “The Bush administration
is such a dangerous administration. We’ve got to get
this guy out. Then we can get back to normal. “Because
of the shallowness of the media, especially
television, there are a lot of uninformed people who
are going to vote for Bush. If a small percentage of
people are not practical and vote for Nader, it could
be enough to throw the election.” To contact staff
writer Paul J. Nyden, use e-mail or call 348-5164.
Back to Gazette-Mail
© Copyright 2003 Sunday Gazette-Mail
King Abdullah, another name for the "International
Leaders" section of the John 0'Neill Wall of
Heroes...Abdullah's father, BTW, the late King Hussein
is on record as having considered Bill Clinton as the
American President who had done the most (and he had
worked with them all personally since Eisenhower) for
world peace in general and Middle East peace in
particular...Sadly, his son has to deal with the
incredible shrinking _resident, who has done te most
damage to world peace in general and Middle East peace
in particular...SeeNotNews, AnythingButSee, SeeBS,
NotBeSeen and Faux News will not spend any time on
this story tonight. It is too damning...But it is just
one of many...The incredible shrinking _resident is
now presiding over an incredible shrinking "coalition
of the witless." Spain and Honduras have withdrawn
from it. Thailand, Singapore and the Netherlands and
others will probably soon withdraw from it...The
almost unnanimous good will and cooperation of the
world community post-9/11 has been wholly
squandered...Even long-standing Arab allies in the
Middle East are distancing themselves from the US in
significant and unprecendented ways...The entire
planet (except for Al Qaeda which is already on record
as wanting Bush over Kerry) is praying for REGIME
CHANGE here...We are almost alone...Will the US
electorate drink the cool-aid that the Bush cabal has
concocted for it?
Ewen MacAskill, Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian (UK): A growing rift between America and the Arab world was exposed yesterday when two Middle Eastern allies delivered damaging rebuffs to President George Bush's policies in the region. King Abdullah of Jordan flew home from the US after abruptly canceling a meeting planned for today with the president in Washington. The king's move came as the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, said there was more hatred of Americans in the Arab world today than ever before.
Restore the Timeline, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0421-02.htm
Published on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 by the
Guardian/UK
Arab Ally Snubs Bush Amid 'Unprecedented Hatred' for
US
by Ewen MacAskill in Jerusalem and Suzanne Goldenberg
in Washington
A growing rift between America and the Arab world was
exposed yesterday when two Middle Eastern allies
delivered damaging rebuffs to President George Bush's
policies in the region.
King Abdullah of Jordan flew home from the US after
abruptly canceling a meeting planned for today with
the president in Washington. The king's move came as
the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, said there was
more hatred of Americans in the Arab world today than
ever before.
The White House scrambled on April 20, 2004 to mend
diplomatic fences with Jordan's King Abdullah, who
abruptly postponed a meeting with President Bush
because of concerns over the U.S. stance on the Middle
East. King Abdullah is seen in San Francisco April 16.
Photo by Kimberly White/Reuters
King Abdullah and Mr Mubarak are two of the most
moderate leaders in the Middle East and the two
normally closest to the US.
King Abdullah's cancellation was in retaliation for Mr
Bush's support last week for a plan by the Israeli
prime minister, Ariel Sharon, in which he offered to
pull out of Gaza in return for US recognition of
illegal settlements on the West Bank and an end of the
right of 3.6 million Palestinians to return to Israel.
Mr Mubarak cited as reasons for the increased hatred
Israel and the US occupation of Iraq. In an interview
with Le Monde published yesterday, he said : "After
what has happened in Iraq, there is an unprecedented
hatred. What's more - they [Arabs] see Sharon act as
he wants, without the Americans saying anything".
The Jordanian government said yesterday it was seeking
clarification of US intentions towards Israel and the
Palestinians before agreeing to a new meeting with Mr
Bush.
Mr Bush's administration yesterday tried to play down
the rift with one of its few allies in the Middle
East. The secretary of state, Colin Powell, said the
White House remained committed to a negotiated
settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, and
was not acting in the interests of the Jewish state.
"I think people will see over time that the US is
committed to the welfare and benefit and the hopes and
dreams and aspirations of Arab nations," he told
reporters,
Pressure on King Abdullah to make a gesture has been
building in Jordan, half of whose population is made
up of Palestinians.
There has long been a threat of an Islamist militant
backlash, a point reinforced yesterday when the
Jordanian government said it had killed three
militants in a shootout in the capital, Amman.
A Jordanian government spokeswoman, Asma Khader, said
yesterday that King Abdullah, who had been in the US
for a business conference, still wanted to meet Mr
Bush but felt more time was needed to prepare for it.
A palace statement said the meeting would not be held
"until discussions and deliberations are concluded
with officials in the American administration to
clarify the American position on the peace process and
the final situation in the Palestinian territories."
The Arab League, which represents all Arab countries,
welcomed the king's decision to cancel his meeting.
Ali Muhsin Hamid, its London ambassador, said Mr
Bush's statement had reduced US-Arab relations to a
level comparable to 1967.
The countries are trying to get a resolution through
the UN condemning the assassination of the Hamas
leader, Abdel-Aziz Rantissi. About 40 countries have
spoken in the debate so far, all of them - other than
the US - critical of Israel.
Mr Sharon secured his deal with Mr Bush partly through
brinkmanship, sitting at Ben Gurion airport for three
hours last week and threatening to cancel his
Washington visit. Mr Bush caved in.
But similar tactics by King Abdullah are unlikely to
achieve the same result. The palace statement said the
king had written to Mr Bush before his meeting with Mr
Sharon saying the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza had to
be part of an overall peace plan, not an alternative
to it. But Mr Bush ignored his plea.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
###
The Emperor has no uniform...Another US soldier died today in Iraq. For what? The "war on terrorism" is not the strength of the incredible shrinking _resident's White House, it is the SHAME of the incredibly shrinking _resident's White House...Give us Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) and Gen. Wesley Clark (D-NATO) together on the ticket. They will hurry from the right and the center to join us in the Electoral Uprising, and on the left, Michael Moore, Madonna and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-Harlem), all Wesley Clark supporters, will drown out the-shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader...
E.J. Dionne, Jr.: The current president's standing on terrorism and security has been dented by the situation on the ground in Iraq, the early findings of the 9/11 commission and one book after another calling into question Bush's decision-making on the war. Kerry's approach also marks a break with the patterns of the past. Kerry is said by his advisers to believe that the Democrats made a crucial mistake in 2002 by largely ducking terrorism and foreign policy. Democrats thought they could win by trying to shift the focus of the election to domestic issues: the economy generally, and prescription drugs for the elderly and a patients' bill of rights in particular.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16797
E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Washington Post Writers Group
04.20.04 Printer-friendly version
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The war candidate
Kerry reverses status quo, positions Dems as security party for 2004
WASHINGTON -- Here is the biggest surprise of the 2004 election so far: It is John Kerry who is eager to talk about terrorism and national security, and President Bush's campaign that is trying to quash a far-reaching debate on these issues.
It wasn't supposed to be this way, at least according to the conventions of presidential politics. Usually it's the Republicans who try to change the subject to foreign policy.
Ronald Reagan in 1984 and the first President Bush in 1988 both did exceptionally well among voters who said that international questions and toughness on defense were central to how they cast their ballots. Just a few months ago, George W. Bush was expected to have the same advantages on the same issues.
But the contours of the election have been altered by events, and by Kerry's reading of the 2002 midterm election results.
The current president's standing on terrorism and security has been dented by the situation on the ground in Iraq, the early findings of the 9/11 commission and one book after another calling into question Bush's decision-making on the war.
Kerry's approach also marks a break with the patterns of the past. Kerry is said by his advisers to believe that the Democrats made a crucial mistake in 2002 by largely ducking terrorism and foreign policy. Democrats thought they could win by trying to shift the focus of the election to domestic issues: the economy generally, and prescription drugs for the elderly and a patients' bill of rights in particular.
The strategy failed because the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 guaranteed that even among voters primarily concerned with bread-and-butter questions, terror and war loomed as genuine fears.
"Terrorism and national security are going to be the constant backdrop of the election," said one top Kerry adviser. While domestic issues will still be decisive for most voters, the aide said, Kerry recognizes "that a candidate needs to make clear he understands that the president's first job is to protect the nation."
In making his case against Bush, Kerry has several advantages over the 2002 Democrats. Because the course of the war in Iraq has been much more difficult than the administration predicted, voters outside the Republican base are more open to criticisms of the president than they were two years ago.
In 2002, by contrast, many Democrats -- especially those running in states that Bush carried in 2000 -- felt intimidated by the president's high standing in the polls and obligated to embrace his terrorism policies. This created a vicious cycle for Democrats and a virtuous cycle for Republicans. If even Democrats were saying that Bush's policies against terror were right, most voters had little basis for thinking otherwise.
Moreover, the argument two years ago was carried out on a highly general level -- whom could voters trust to be "tough" enough on terror? Bush's lieutenants had hoped the argument would stay on the same abstract plane this year.
But this election is now about the practical results of Bush's policies. When it came to Iraq, did the administration know what it was getting into and plan effectively? Was it honest with the public, and itself, about the costs of the enterprise? Was it mistaken in not seeking more international support in advance? Thanks to the findings of the 9/11 commission, parts of the public are also questioning whether Bush had effectively organized the government in advance to prevent attacks.
This creates middle ground on which Kerry can challenge specific judgments made by Bush without necessarily breaking with all of Bush's objectives.
Thus Kerry during his Sunday "Meet the Press" appearance: "Our diplomacy has been about as arrogant and ineffective as anything that I have ever seen. ... I think that I can fight a far more effective war on terror. I will build alliances and cooperation. I will make America safer."
Bush's campaign is trying to discredit any criticisms of the president. After Kerry spoke, Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot said the Democrat had offered only "conditional support for the troops" by refusing to say if he'd vote for further financial support for the war if Bush requested it. Racicot also accused Kerry of demonstrating "a disturbing lack of judgment" and a failure to understand "the murderous ideology of our enemies."
The Bush campaign wants to recreate the dynamic of 2002 and render criticism of Bush's antiterror policies illegitimate and unpatriotic. Kerry wants Bush held accountable for the decisions he made. The side that wins this definitional war is likely to win the election. For more, please visit the E.J. Dionne, Jr. archives.
Because the course of the war in Iraq has been much more difficult than the admin-istration predicted, voters outside the Republican base are more open to criticisms of the president than they were two years ago.
(c) 2004, Washington Post Writers Group
Cooked poll data is powerful, but it is not enough. They need compromised voting machines to thwart the coming electoral Uprising...And, of course, they have been working on it for quite awhile...It is a Diebolic scheme...
Ian Hoffmen, Tri Valley Herald: Attorneys for Diebold Election Systems Inc. warned in late November that its use of uncertified vote-counting software in Alameda County violated California election law and broke its $12.7 million contract with Alameda County. Soon after, a review of internal legal memos obtained by ANG Newspapers shows, Diebold's attorneys at the Los Angeles office of Jones Day realized the McKinney, Texas-based firm also faced a threat of criminal charges and exile from California elections...Yet despite warnings from the state's chief elections officer, Diebold continued fielding poorly tested, faulty software and hardware in at least two of California's largest urban counties during the Super Tuesday primary, when e voting temporarily broke down and voters were turned away at the polls.
Restore the Integrity of the Electoral Process, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2095693,00.html
Article Last Updated: Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 2:27:57 PM PST
Diebold was aware of shortcomings early
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
Attorneys for Diebold Election Systems Inc. warned in late November that its use of uncertified vote-counting software in Alameda County violated California election law and broke its $12.7 million contract with Alameda County.
Soon after, a review of internal legal memos obtained by ANG Newspapers shows, Diebold's attorneys at the Los Angeles office of Jones Day realized the McKinney, Texas-based firm also faced a threat of criminal charges and exile from California elections.
Yet despite warnings from the state's chief elections officer, Diebold continued fielding poorly tested, faulty software and hardware in at least two of California's largest urban counties during the Super Tuesday primary, when e voting temporarily broke down and voters were turned away at the polls.
Other documentation obtained by ANG shows that the latest approved versions of Diebold's vote-counting software in this state cast doubt on the firm's claims elsewhere that it has fixed multiple security vulnerabilities unearthed in the last year.
"In California those issues can be addressed," said Diebold spokesman David Bear. "They were addressed in Maryland, and they could be changed in California."
California elections officials said they are perplexed that Diebold apparently has not changed practices since a December audit revealed uncertified software running in every county that it serves.
"Diebold may suffer from gross incompetence, gross negligence. I don't know whether there's any malevolence involved," said a senior California elections official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I don't know why they've acted the way they've acted and the way they're continuing to act. Notwithstanding their rhetoric, they have not learned any lessons in terms of dealing with this secretary (of state)."
The memos show that for months, Diebold attorneys at Jones Day have been exploring ways to keep the nation's second-largest electronic voting provider from losing an eighth of the national market.
Jones Day partner Daniel D. McMillan declined to comment on the content of the documents except to confirm they were internal papers from his office. He warned against drawing conclusions from the firm's memos.
Diebold's legal team appears to have been exploring whether California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has the power to investigate the company's practices. The memos reflect an argument that the regulations by which California approves voting equipment for elections may never have been properly codified and are unenforceable.
Diebold's Bear said his company is cooperating with Shelley's office.
"I've been working with the SOS, and we're hopeful we can move forward and the advantages of electronic voting can be continued to be offered to the citizens of California," he said. "We will continue to work with state and local elections officials to address any and all elections issues."
The law firm's memos reflect a corporate defense firm on a $500,000-a-month campaign to protect Diebold.
It is a critical moment for Diebold, for electronic voting in California and for at least some of the 19 counties statewide that purchased Diebold voting systems for more than $50 million.
On Wednesday, state elections officials begin debating their advice to Shelley on whether to disallow some or all Diebold voting systems, or all touch-screen voting machines, from the November elections.
What Shelley decides will be a test of state authority over makers of the computers that will determine the electoral votes in California and other states. His decision also could send two of California's largest counties -- Alameda and San Diego -- scrambling for other ways to count votes six months from now.
Voting experts say the industry's factories and printing plants probably can handle the extra demand for replacement voting machines and paper ballots, given at least three months' notice. But Shelley's decision also could unleash a barrage of lawsuits that could mire orders of equipment and ballots in legal wrangling over who will pay for them.
At the center of those battles will be Jones Day. The firm's internal memoranda show its attorneys considered the idea of calling a new bit of uncertified voting software "experimental." State rules say local governments can use entire experimental voting systems without state approval.
The lawyers also presented California officials who were seeking documents from Diebold with sweeping confidentiality agreements designed to hide flaws in Diebold software as much as its intellectual property.
In drafts of a Feb. 13 letter to state regulators, Diebold's attorneys declared that Diebold makes no changes to electronic devices that the company and its predecessor have been programming for at least five years.
The drafts show they staked out a firm position that a critical piece of Diebold's voting system -- its voter-card encoders -- did not need national or state approval because they were commercial off-the-shelf products, never modified by Diebold.
But on the same day the letter was received, Diebold-hired techs were loading non-commercial Diebold software into voter-card encoders in a West Sacramento warehouse for shipment to Alameda and San Diego counties.
"They were still crunching and working on that software in the middle of February," said James Dunn, who worked as an assembly technician in Diebold's Sacramento warehouse.
More than 600 of the devices froze or displayed unfamiliar screens and error messages on the morning of Election Day, for failure rates of 24 percent in Alameda County and about 40 percent in San Diego County.
Diebold Elections executives were told in October by state officials to ensure every piece of its voting systems was fully tested and approved by national and state authorities.
But Diebold resisted, arguing that the encoders did not need testing and approval because they were a "peripheral" device on its voting systems and that the devices were common, commercial products.
That was true for the hardware. But not the software.
In fact, Diebold engineers were writing and rewriting the software at DESI headquarters in Texas and in Sacramento, supplying the latest versions two weeks before the encoders failed at high rates in the Super Tuesday presidential primary.
Diebold eventually sent a sample of the encoders to an outside laboratory, but it did not have time for more than cursory testing.
The encoders were the only way that poll workers were trained to create cards that let voters call up digital ballots on Diebold's touch-screen machines at more than 2,000 polling places in Alameda and San Diego counties. Dunn says he is not surprised.
As he and other techs raced to assemble the encoders out of tablet-PC screens, batteries and card-writing bases shipped to Sacramento from factories in Asia, Diebold officials kept supplying new versions of the software.
In addition, the hardware components often failed to mate well, resulting in frozen screens. And when the batteries lost power, the devices lost their internal clock and operating settings, often Diebold's software as well.
Dunn blames Diebold's rush to get the devices into the March2 elections and the lack of standard quality controls in assembling and configuring them. No instructions, no checklists, no tracking system.
An outspoken tech complained about the poor quality controls and the failure of the devices when sapped of power.
"He was gone. They fired him," Dunn said. "The attitude among the others there was, 'I don't care how screwed up these things are, I'm going to keep quiet. I'm not going to get fired.'"
A Diebold software engineer pressed her superiors to allow testing of all the devices before they were shipped to Oakland, San Diego and elsewhere, but the tests -- successful creation of voter cards -- were performed only on the last 10 percent to 15 percent of the devices, Dunn said.
"I got the feeling that the whole thing was rushed, that the products were brought to market too fast, and they did it because they had to get products to these counties before the election and they weren't ready," he said. "It wasn't fully developed. It was still prototyped, and they were out of time."
Alameda County had paper provisional ballots on hand at polling places for use in lieu of the disabled touch screens. At least 14 polling places ran out and turned away voters. San Diego County relied on one of Diebold's latest features, electronic provisional ballots, so larger numbers of voters were turned away at the polls.
Diebold's claims to California elections officials, through its attorneys, that it does not modify the encoder software is blatantly untrue, according to Dunn and electronic-voting opponent Jim March.
"That's a lie," March said.
Last year, Seattle-based journalist Bev Harris found nine versions of Diebold encoder software on an unsecure Internet site. Software engineers such as March have been marveling at their multitude since.
"When you vote, you are inserting a memory card containing up to 128k of God-only-knows what. With no oversight, the 'smart cards' could contain some very stupid stuff indeed, or even deliberate subversion," he said.
Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com .
It's the Media, Stupid.
Zach Fox, Daily Trojan: For each press conference, the White House press secretary asks the reporters for their questions, selects six or seven of the questions to answer and those reporters are the only ones called upon to ask their questions during the press conference, Suskind said. This system makes it so that the president has answers already prepared for questions that he knows will be asked, Suskind said...Suskind also said that the White House uses intimidation to force writers into only writing favorable stories about the administration.
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.dailytrojan.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=656561
Bush's press conferences too scripted, author says
Two noted journalists arguing about Bush policies are
featured in discussion.
By Zach Fox
Published: Friday, April 9, 2004
Article Tools: Page 1 of 1
Media Credit: Steven Tai | Daily Trojan
Insider. Ron Suskind talks to a student about issues
in his book, which has garnered national attention.
Ron Suskind, author of the recent controversial book
on former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, and Michael
Barone, senior writer for the U.S. News & World
Report, argued politics in a heated discussion as part
of the Annenberg series "Dean's Open Forum," on
Thursday.
The forum was hosted by Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the
Annenberg School for Communication, and featured an
open discussion about the possible outcomes of the
upcoming presidential election and the current
policies of the Bush administration, including the
handling of the press and the war in Iraq.
One of Suskind's most severe critiques of Bush was not
only Bush's lack of press conferences but also his
management of those conferences.
For each press conference, the White House press
secretary asks the reporters for their questions,
selects six or seven of the questions to answer and
those reporters are the only ones called upon to ask
their questions during the press conference, Suskind
said.
This system makes it so that the president has answers
already prepared for questions that he knows will be
asked, Suskind said.
"He needs unmanaged time in front of the nation right
now," Suskind said. "The White House has to engage in
a way that it hasn't engaged in before."
Suskind also said that the White House uses
intimidation to force writers into only writing
favorable stories about the administration.
"If you write something the White House doesn't like,
they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something
like you did today, nobody from the White House will
ever talk to you again,'" Suskind said. "(The White
House is) pissed, and ... angry."
Barone said Suskind's evaluation of the press'
relationship with the White House must be taken into
perspective considering that "90 percent" of the press
corps is Democratic.
Suskind called Barone's estimation of the press'
political affiliation "absurd."
Barone rebutted with an evaluation of how the press
treats different administrations.
"The press corps is not lenient to the Democrats, as
we found out during the Clinton administration, but
they are consistently anti-Republican," Barone said.
Both of the speakers agreed that the Bush campaign has
developed a streamlined message for the press.
"You only need to make one phone call, and you've
heard everyone's story," Barone said.
Barone and Suskind slightly differed on the issue of a
campaign's unified message in that Barone said that
the Clinton campaign also had a policy of everyone
having the same information - though it was less of a
centralized message than that of the Bush campaign.
Suskind said that he could call 30 people in the
Clinton administration and get different information
so that he could discover the truth.
Suskind also made the distinction that the press is
adversarial to Bush because he lied about policy,
whereas Clinton lied about personal issues but never
about policy.
Cowan introduced Barone to the audience by saying that
there is "nobody more knowledgeable about American
politics." Barone is editor of "The Almanac of
American Politics."
Suskind was introduced as a Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist and the author of the controversial book
"The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White
House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill."
Barone began the discussion by offering an analysis of
voting trends for the upcoming presidential campaign.
The upcoming election looks very much like the 2000
election in that it was possible that a candidate
could again win the popular vote but lose the
electoral vote, Barone said.
The election will come down to the 17 swing or
"target" states that will receive the most attention
from candidates, Barone said. California is not
considered to be one of the 17 target states, so the
Bush campaign will not spend money on advertising in
the state.
"California is an expensive state, and (the Bush
campaign has) only got $180 million," Barone said.
The Republicans have already won the race for control
of the House of Representatives, but the race for the
Senate could be interesting, Barone said.
The current breakdown of the Senate is 51 Republicans,
48 Democrats and one Independent, while the House of
Representatives has 228 Republicans, 205 Democrats and
one Independent.
Since there are multiple seats that are up for
election, the majority could go either way with the
Democrats possibly picking up as many as three seats
or the Republicans gaining as many as four seats,
Barone said.
Barone predicted that the Republicans would gain one
seat and maintain control of the Senate.
The discussion also touched on the testimony of
Condoleezza Rice early Wednesday morning and on the
situation in Iraq.
"The casualties we've had (in Iraq) are much more like
the casualties for training during peacetime than
during war," Barone said.
Suskind said again that Bush needs to have more
unmanaged time in front of the press to explain the
war in Iraq.
"Bush is not good at what he needs to do right now,"
Suskind said.
Barone also said that Bush needs to have a frank
address to the nation on the state of the war in Iraq.
"The president needs to do the type of explaining that
Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did," Barone
said.
Suskind also briefly addressed the controversy over
his book and the involvement of O'Neill in the
publication of his book.
Since the discussion mainly focused on the war in Iraq
and how Bush handled the situation, the speakers'
closing comments summarized their thoughts on those
issues.
Some writers have likened the war in Iraq to the
Vietnam War, and this misconception arises because the
media "suffers from a lack of historical perspective,"
Barone said.
On the other hand, Suskind focused on his view of Bush
in his closing comment.
"I am not pro-Bush or anti-Bush," Suskind said. I am
pro-facts."
Woodward's "Plan of Attack" reveals that the
incredible shrinking _resident "informed Prince
Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States,
before telling his own Secretary of State."
How can Secretary of Stone Calm 'Em Powell sleep at
night? He is a better man than Clarence Thomas, or I
guess I should say he *was* a better man than Clarence
Thomas...
Center For American Progress: The war in Iraq diverted
critical resources from the fight against al Qaeda.
Woodward's book reveals that President Bush ordered
Secretary of Defense Rumseld to secretly draw up plans
to invade Iraq less than two months after the
terrorist attacks on 9/11. Rather than finishing off
al Qaeda and bin Laden, President Bush changed focus
to a fight a less immediate threat in Iraq. And in his rush to war he informed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, before telling his own Secretary of State.
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=3456
Powell Spills Goods on Flawed Iraq War
April 19, 2004
In Bob Woodward's latest book, "Plan of Attack,"
Secretary of State Colin Powell confirms what critics
of the war in Iraq have known all along. The Bush
administration – against the strong desires of most of
the world community – sent the United States to war
under false pretenses, based on distorted
intelligence, and with no hard plan for dealing with
the aftermath. Powell understood best what other Bush
administration officials chose to ignore: the United
States would not be greeted as liberators in Iraq and
it would not be a cost free war.
The Bush administration trumped up intelligence about
weapons of mass destruction to win public support for
an ideological war in Iraq. Secretary Powell received
the unfortunate charge of presenting the Bush
administration's bogus intelligence assessment to the
U.N. Security Council just prior to the U.S. invasion
last year. Unfortunately for Powell and the nation, we
now have independent confirmations that Iraq did not
possess weapons of mass destruction and was not in
collusion with al Qaeda prior to our invasion.
The war in Iraq diverted critical resources from the
fight against al Qaeda. Woodward's book reveals that
President Bush ordered Secretary of Defense Rumseld to
secretly draw up plans to invade Iraq less than two
months after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Rather
than finishing off al Qaeda and bin Laden, President
Bush changed focus to a fight a less immediate threat
in Iraq. And in his rush to war he informed Prince
Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States,
before telling his own Secretary of State.
The administration failed to plan for the aftermath of
war and has created a terrorist front in Iraq where
none existed before. Secretary Powell correctly
assessed the risks in Iraq. Less than three months
before transferring sovereignty to Iraqis, the Bush
administration still has no concrete political plan
for the nation and is quickly losing control of
security on the ground. Rather than decreasing threats
of terror in Iraq, President Bush's unwise war has now
created a central front for terrorists determined to
kill Americans.
Daily Talking Points is a product of the Center for
American Progress, a non-partisan research and
educational institute committed to progressive
principles for a strong, just and free America.
CREDIBILITY? COMPETENCE? CHARACTER? Yes, the
incredible shrinking _resident fails on all three
counts...But clearly it is even worse than that...How
long will the leadership of the Republican Party front
for this belligerent, troubled man and his cabal?
Robert Dreyfuss, www.tompaine.com: Yesterday in The Washington Post and on 60 Minutes, Bob Woodward presented a terrifying picture of a president obsessed. Bush demonized Saddam, creating a Manichean
world in which America was a God-inspired nation
combating the Beelzebub-led hell of Iraq. It's not
clear whether Bush believed—like LaHaye—in the
necessity of a climactic struggle with Satan's legions
from Babylon, but the president's crusade had all the
same fervor...Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any
advice? "I asked the president about this. And
President Bush said, 'Well no,' and then he got
defensive about it," says Woodward. "And then he said
something that really struck me. He said of his
father, 'He is the wrong father to appeal to for
advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in
terms of strength.' And then he said, 'There's a
higher father that I appeal to.'"
Perhaps Bush believes that he has a pipeline to God,
that he can ask God for advice about which wars to
launch. By all accounts, however, his real father—the
earthly one, not the imaginary one in the sky—was
against the war. Or, perhaps Bush mixed up God and
Dick Cheney.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10267
God Made Me Do It
Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in
Alexandria, Virginia, who specializes in politics and
national security issues. He is currently working on a
book about America's policy toward political Islam
over the past 30 years.
Is Dick Cheney God? If you read the Gospel According
to Woodward, it's clear that the president seems to
think so.
A few months ago, I wrote a profile of the Rev. Tim
LaHaye for Rolling Stone. LaHaye is the author of Left
Behind, the best-selling series of books on the End of
the World, a hyped-up version of alleged Biblical
prophecies that predict that Jesus Christ will return
to earth after a climactic battle between God and
Satan at Armageddon. Satan, of course, happens to set
up his headquarters in Babylon, just south of where
Baghdad is today. LaHaye is a highly influential
organizer of the Christian right—he founded the Moral
Majority and the secretive Council on National
Policy—and he helped elect Bush by swinging skeptical
Christian-right leaders behind him in 2000. LaHaye and
his fundamentalist flock often equated Saddam with the
Antichrist—literally, not figuratively. In Rolling
Stone, I speculated that LaHaye's weird beliefs might
have influenced the president, a born-again Christian
whose decision to go war in Iraq seems to have been
directed as much at Satan as against Saddam.
Maybe I was right.
Yesterday in The Washington Post and on 60 Minutes,
Bob Woodward presented a terrifying picture of a
president obsessed. Bush demonized Saddam, creating a
Manichean world in which America was a God-inspired
nation combating the Beelzebub-led hell of Iraq. It's
not clear whether Bush believed—like LaHaye—in the
necessity of a climactic struggle with Satan's legions
from Babylon, but the president's crusade had all the
same fervor.
Apparently he talked to the wrong father. Reports
Woodward and 60 Minutes:
Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? "I asked
the president about this. And President Bush said,
'Well no,' and then he got defensive about it," says
Woodward. "And then he said something that really
struck me. He said of his father, 'He is the wrong
father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go
to, to appeal to in terms of strength.' And then he
said, 'There's a higher father that I appeal to.'"
Perhaps Bush believes that he has a pipeline to God,
that he can ask God for advice about which wars to
launch. By all accounts, however, his real father—the
earthly one, not the imaginary one in the sky—was
against the war. Or, perhaps Bush mixed up God and
Dick Cheney. Woodward makes it startlingly clear that
Cheney was the driving force behind the Iraq
misadventure. But for Bush, war in Iraq wasn't
Cheney's will, it was God's:
Going into this period, I was praying for strength to
do the Lord's will. I'm surely not going to justify
the war based on God. . . Nevertheless, in my case I
pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as
possible. And then of course I pray for personal
strength and forgiveness.
Says Woodward, succinctly, of Bush: "He's not an
intellectual." He's not. But Woodward makes clear that
Bush is perfectly capable of disguising his godly work
from people who disagree, such as Colin Powell, who
wasn't told of the decision to go to war even after
war planning was well underway:
And there's this low boil on Iraq until the day before
Thanksgiving, Nov. 21, 2001. This is 72 days after
9/11. This is part of this secret history. President
Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes
Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically, and takes
him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door
and says, "What have you got in terms of plans for
Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you
to get on it. I want you to keep it secret."
There's lots more in the book. It ought to be required
reading for anyone planning to cast a vote in
November. With at least 11 more Americans killed this
weekend, with well over a thousand Iraqis killed since
April 1, with U.S. troops poised for massive assaults
on Najaf and Fallujah, with Iraq's Governing Clowncil
crumbling fast, with civil war looming in Iraq,, and
with the growing possibility that the crisis in Iraq
could spill over into Iran and Syria, too, Americans
are asking: How did we stuck in this mess? Woodward
has answered that question better than anyone else so
far.
Published: Apr 19 2004
When will the "US mainstream news media" start asking hard, real, pressing questions about the House of Bush, the House of Saud, the House of Bin Laden, BCCI, Harken, etc.? When will the US Senate drain the cesspool? When will the contents of the 28 blanked out pages of the Congressional 9/11 report be revealed? What is happening in this country?
Al Gore said it best one night in Tennessee several weeks ago during the Democratic primary season: "He BETRAYED this country!"
2+2=4
Bloomberg News: Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S.
has promised President George W. Bush the Saudis will
reduce oil prices before this November's election to
help the U.S. economy, according to Bob Woodward,
author of a new book about the Iraq war. Oil prices
are ``high, and they could go down very quickly,''
Woodward said last night in an interview on CBS's ``60
Minutes.'' ``That's the Saudi pledge,'' said
Woodward. ``Certainly over the summer or as we get
closer to the election they could increase production
several million barrels a day and the price would drop
significantly.''
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0419-01.htm
Published on Monday, April 19, 2004 by Bloomberg News
Saudi Envoy Promised Bush a Drop in Oil Prices Ahead of Election
WASHINGTON - Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. has
promised President George W. Bush the Saudis will
reduce oil prices before this November's election to
help the U.S. economy, according to Bob Woodward,
author of a new book about the Iraq war.
Oil prices are ``high, and they could go down very
quickly,'' Woodward said last night in an interview on
CBS's ``60 Minutes.''
``That's the Saudi pledge,'' said Woodward.
``Certainly over the summer or as we get closer to the
election they could increase production several
million barrels a day and the price would drop
significantly.''
US President George W. Bush walks outside the Oval
Office at the White House. Saudi Arabia's ambassador
to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, promised Bush
that his country would lower oil prices before the
November 2 presidential election, according to the
author of a new book on the war in Iraq. (AFP/File/Tim
Sloan)
In his book, titled ``Plan of Attack,'' Woodward also
says that the ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan,
was given advance information about plans to invade
Iraq by Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The Saudis trimmed their output by 1 million barrels a
day in the first quarter, according to Bloomberg data.
Crude oil has risen 15 percent to more than $37 a
barrel this year. The rise in crude has helped send
gasoline prices to a record average of $1.79 a gallon
in the U.S., according to the AAA, formerly the
American Automobile Association.
The record gasoline prices may blunt the economic
benefits of President Bush's tax cuts and become an
issue in the presidential election. Democratic
candidate John Kerry, 60, a four-term Democratic
senator from Massachusetts, cited higher gasoline
prices as one reason for a rising `misery index'' he
released last week that he said shows Bush's economic
policies have hurt working families.
Bandar Briefed Before Powell
Bandar learned of the attack plans on Jan. 11, 2003,
two days before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
was told of the decision, according to Woodward.
In a meeting on Jan. 11 with Cheney, Rumsfeld and
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Bandar was shown a map laying out plans for
attacking Iraq, Woodward writes in the book. The map
was marked TOP SECRET NOFORN, meaning the classified
material wasn't to be shown to non-U.S. officials,
according to Woodward.
At the meeting Bandar asked for assurances that Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein wouldn't survive the war as he
did the 1991 Persian Gulf War led by Bush's father,
President George H.W. Bush. Cheney responded, ``Prince
Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast,'' according to
Woodward.
Bandar said he would take the message to the Saudi
leadership if he got the same information he had just
received directly from Bush. On Jan. 13 Bandar was
called to meet with Bush, who said: ``Their message is
my message,'' said Woodward. Powell was told of Bush's
decision the same day.
Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil exporter and
the most influential member of the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps a third of
the world's oil.
OPEC on March 31 agreed to reduce its production
quotas to keep prices from dropping.
Before the March 31 meeting in Vienna at which OPEC
announced it was cutting its quotas, Saudi Arabia's
oil minister, Ali al- Naimi, said that the kingdom was
already implementing its share of production cuts for
April.
© 2004 Bloomberg L.P.
###
Eleven more US soldiers (at least) have died in Iraq this weekend. The death toll for US soldiers has now risen to 700 (at least). For what?
MEANWHILE, the so-called "war on terrorism," both pre-9/11 and post-9/11, is not the strength of the incredible shrinking _resident's White House, it is the SHAME of the incredible shrinking _resident's White House. It is no surprise that the only former Clinton-Gore official on the 9/11 Commission, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, was SLIMED by John Ashcroft (R-Misery) in an attempt to divert attention from his glaring pre-9/11 FAILURES and that subsequently she has been hit with a call for her resignation from a former Clinton Impeachment House Manager and deluged with death threats and hate mail, including a telephone bomb threat on her home. Why no surprise? Well, the evidence is compelling, and damning for the incredible shrinking _resident. It includes the testimony of former National Security counterterrorism official Richard Clark (R-Reality), former Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard as well as thousands of pages of Clinton-Gore documents and the work of the Hart-Rudman Commission. The overhwhelming preponderance of evidence underscores the simple fact that Clinton-Gore took the threat more seriously and did more about it than the incredible shrinking _resident and his "team." The Clinton-Gore "principles meeting" on Al Qaeda that were discontinued by the incredible shrinking _resident's "team" were evidence of the Clinton-Gore commitment to immediate, stop-gap measures to overcome the systemic disconnect between intelligence and law enforcement, the Hart-Rudman commission recommendations for Homeland Security were evidence of the Clinton-Gore commitment to coming up with a long-term solution to the systemic disconnect. The "principles meetings" were discontinued by the Bush "team," the Hart-Rudman report was dismissed by the Bush "team" and in her 9/11 Commission, Rice shamelessly cravenly belittled and besmirched the success of the Clinton-Gore effort to thwart the "Millenium" attack(s)...
Here are some important perspectives and new developments on the 9/11 Commission investigation...
Pre-9/11 Files Show Warnings Were More Dire and Persistent, By DAVID JOHNSTON and JIM DWYER, New York Times, 4/18/04: The new information produced by the commission so far has led 6 of its 10 members to say or suggest that the attacks could have been prevented, though there is no consensus on when, how or by whom. The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, has described failures at every level of government, any of which, if avoided, could have altered the outcome. Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat, said, "My conclusion is that it could have been prevented. That was not my conclusion when I went on the commission."
Terrifying reading, St Petersburg Times Editorial, 4/18/04: The commission's work inevitably represents a threat to much of Washington's power structure, so it is not surprising that some powerful forces would attempt to discredit the commission's work. The Bush administration, which fought the creation of a commission for more than a year, has since tried to limit its funds, block its access to documents, force an early deadline on its work and limit testimony from White House officials. (President Bush's insistence on having Vice President Dick Cheney accompany him during his only private interview with the commission is perhaps the most bizarre of the administration's restrictions.)
Letter from Project On Government Oversight (POGO) to Hon. Thomas K. Kean, Chairman, Hon. Lee H. Hamilton, Vice-chairman, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 4/14/04: Yesterday the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) made public the attached internal email from staff assigned to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). It details the U.S. military's refusal to heed concerns that terrorists might try to strike domestic targets with hijacked airliners. In April 2001, five months before the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, NORAD officials wanted to develop a strategy and simulation to respond to a scenario wherein terrorists commandeer a commercial aircraft and fly it into the Pentagon. As the email reveals, aides to the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to authorize this type of exercise because these senior military officials deemed such an attack as "too unrealistic."
In light of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice's testimony before the Commission and press reports saying the United States intelligence pipeline offered no insight into how or with what terrorists might strike domestically, we urge the Commission to investigate this matter and ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff why it prohibited NORAD from preparing for what we now know was a very likely, and very deadly terrorist strike.
(http://www.pogo.org/p/homeland/hl-040402-homelandsecurity.html)
As the LNS has observed, the 9/11 Commission's genteel treatment of Ashcroft and Rice, it's failure to explore in public the stories of John O'Neil, Sibel Edmonds and others, its cursory and inadequate treatments of the secret, post-9/11 Saudi flights out of the US and Ashcroft's switch from commercial flights in the summer of 2001, are deeply disturbing. But there is still hope that the 9/11 Commission is holding its fire and will lower the boom on Rice and Ashcroft in particular, in its final report.
Here is Jamie Gorelick's dignified, substantive response, with five devasting counterpoints to Ashcroft's desperate attack...
Jamie Gorelick, Washington Post: At last week's hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft, facing criticism, asserted that "the single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents" and that I built that wall through a March 1995 memo. This is simply not true.
First, I did not invent the "wall," which is not a wall but a set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA) and federal court decisions interpreting it. In a nutshell, that law, as the courts read it, said intelligence investigators could conduct electronic surveillance in the United States against foreign targets under a more lenient standard than is required in ordinary criminal cases, but only if the "primary purpose" of the surveillance were foreign intelligence rather than a criminal prosecution.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20786-2004Apr17.html
The Truth About 'the Wall'
By Jamie S. Gorelick
Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page B07
The commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has a critical dual mission to fulfill -- to help our nation understand how the worst assault on our homeland since Pearl Harbor could have occurred and to outline reforms to prevent new acts of terrorism. Under the leadership of former governor Tom Kean and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the commission has acted with professionalism and skill. Its hearings and the reports it has released have been highly informative, if often disturbing. Sept. 11 united this country in shock and grief; the lessons from it must be learned in a spirit of unity, not of partisan rancor.
At last week's hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft, facing criticism, asserted that "the single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents" and that I built that wall through a March 1995 memo. This is simply not true.
First, I did not invent the "wall," which is not a wall but a set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA) and federal court decisions interpreting it. In a nutshell, that law, as the courts read it, said intelligence investigators could conduct electronic surveillance in the United States against foreign targets under a more lenient standard than is required in ordinary criminal cases, but only if the "primary purpose" of the surveillance were foreign intelligence rather than a criminal prosecution.
Second, according to the FISA Court of Review, it was the justice departments under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the 1980s that began to read the statute as limiting the department's ability to obtain FISA orders if it intended to bring a criminal prosecution. The practice of prohibiting prosecutors from directing intelligence investigations was first put in place in those years as well. Then, in July 1995, Attorney General Janet Reno issued written guidelines that spelled out the steps FBI intelligence agents and criminal investigators and prosecutors needed to follow when sharing information. The point was to preserve the ability of prosecutors to use information collected by intelligence agents.
Third, Mr. Ashcroft's own deputy attorney general, Larry Thompson, formally reaffirmed the 1995 guidelines in an Aug. 6, 2001, memo addressed to the FBI and the Justice Department. Ashcroft has charged that the guidelines hampered the department's ability to pursue terrorists Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in August 2001, but his own department had endorsed those guidelines at the pivotal time.
Fourth, the memo I wrote in March 1995 -- which concerns information-sharing in two particular cases, including the original World Trade Center bombing -- permits freer coordination between intelligence and criminal investigators than was subsequently permitted by the 1995 guidelines or the 2001 Thompson memo. The purpose of my memo was to resolve a problem presented to me: facilitating investigations on both the intelligence side and criminal side at the same time. My memo directed agents on both sides to share information -- and, in particular, directed one agent to work on both the criminal and intelligence investigations -- to ensure the flow of information "over the wall." We set up special procedures because of the extraordinary circumstances and the necessity to prevent a court from throwing out any conviction in those cases. Had my memo been in place in August 2001 -- when, as Ashcroft said, FBI officials rejected a criminal warrant of Moussaoui because they feared "breaching the wall" -- it would have allowed those agents to obtain a criminal warrant without fear of jeopardizing an intelligence investigation.
Fifth, nothing in the 1995 guidelines prevented the sharing of information between criminal and intelligence investigators. Indeed, the guidelines require that FBI foreign intelligence agents share information with criminal investigators and prosecutors whenever they uncover facts suggesting that a crime has been or may be committed. The guidelines did set forth procedures, but those procedures implemented court decisions and, as noted, were reaffirmed by the Ashcroft Justice Department.
The Patriot Act, enacted after 9/11, together with an unprecedented appeal to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, paved the way for the Justice Department to permit largely unrestricted information-sharing between intelligence and criminal investigators because the law changed the legal standard that had given rise to the guidelines in the first place. The Patriot Act says that electronic surveillance can be conducted in the United States against foreign threats as long as a "significant purpose" -- rather than the "primary purpose" -- is to obtain foreign intelligence.
This history has all been well-rehearsed in publicly available briefs, opinions and reports, all available to the 9/11 commission. I have -- consistent with the policy applied to all commissioners -- recused myself from any consideration of my actions or of the department while I was there. My fellow commissioners have spoken for themselves in rejecting the call by a few partisans that I step aside based upon false premises. I have worked hard to help the American public understand what happened on Sept. 11. I intend -- with my brethren on the commission -- to finish the job.
The writer is a member of the 9/11 commission and was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration from March 1994 through March 1997.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
NOTE to Senator John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): Yes, John. This tone is the right tone. Do not flinch, do not parse, do not pull any punches. Speak for the soldiers, speak for the firefighters, speak for the 9/11 Families. Shine the bright white light of truth on the incredible shrinking _resident. But you must be ready to pick up the lightening rod of the Bush cabal's pre-9/11 INCOMPETENCE, you must be ready to call for the RESIGNATIONS of Rice and Ashcroft over 9/11 and Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney over Iraq. You must be willing to either speak to their egregious mistakes which will hopefully be documented in the 9/11 Commission's final report due in July, BUT you must also be ready to speak to their egregious mistakes and FAILURES if the 9/11 Commission wimps out or breaks apart. Do not be afraid of speaking about their pre-9/11 failures. Yes, it is prudent to wait for the 9/11 Commission to finish it work and hopefully produce a report worthy of the suffering of the 9/11 Families, but once the end game is played out you must pick up the lighenting rod either way. 9/11 is the shame of this White House, not its strength. The 2004 US Presidential election is a national referendum on the CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER of the incredible shrinking _resident revolves, indeed, around the issue of SECURITY: NATIONAL SECURITY, ECONOMIC SECURITY, SOCIAL SECURITY, ENVIRONMENTAL SECUITY...There is an Electorate Uprising coming in November...
Dab Balz, Washington Post: "Home base for George Bush in this race, as you saw to the nth degree in his press conference, is terror," Kerry told about 100 donors at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York. "Ask him a question and he's going to go to terror," Kerry said. "And everything he did in Iraq, he's going to try to persuade people it has to do with terror, even though everybody here knows that it has nothing whatsoever to do with al Qaeda and everything to do with an agenda that they had preset, determined. That's where they're going to go."
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15951-2004Apr15.html
Bush Uses 'Terror' as A Fallback, Kerry Says U.N. Role in Iraq His Idea, Senator Adds
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 16, 2004; Page A04
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., April 15 -- Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) accused President Bush on Thursday of exploiting the war on terrorism, saying the president has tried to draw links between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network for political purposes. He vowed to convince voters that he can do a better job than Bush in fighting to keep the country safe.
"Home base for George Bush in this race, as you saw to
the nth degree in his press conference, is terror,"
Kerry told about 100 donors at a Democratic National
Committee fundraiser in New York.
"Ask him a question and he's going to go to terror,"
Kerry said. "And everything he did in Iraq, he's going
to try to persuade people it has to do with terror,
even though everybody here knows that it has nothing
whatsoever to do with al Qaeda and everything to do
with an agenda that they had preset, determined.
That's where they're going to go."
Kerry's criticism drew another swift reply from Bush's
campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, who said Kerry's
"reckless allegation" demonstrates "a profound
misunderstanding" of the global war on terrorism and
the threat facing the United States.
"On a day when Osama bin Laden again threatened the
United States and our allies, it is disturbing to
realize that John Kerry neither recognizes nor
understands the murderous ideology of our enemies and
the threat that they pose to our nation," Racicot said
in a statement.
On a busy day that took Kerry from the morning New
York fundraiser to Washington for an appearance at
Howard University and a private meeting with Cardinal
Theodore E. McCarrick, and then to New Jersey for
another fundraiser, the presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee repeatedly attacked his opponent
and the Republican Party on terrorism, taxes and the
economy.
Continuing to draw differences with Bush over Iraq,
Kerry accused the administration of now embracing his
calls for giving the United Nations a significant role
in overseeing the creation of a new government. But
for the second day in a row, Kerry, who prides himself
on his expertise in foreign policy, repeatedly
misnamed the U.N. special representative, Lakhdar
Brahimi, who is helping to negotiate the terms of the
transfer of power to the Iraqis on June 30. Kerry
referred to him as "Brandini."
"What you're seeing already is the administration is
essentially trying to implement my strategy without
admitting they're implementing my strategy," he said.
"They've got Brandini over there, and he's
negotiating. They've basically turned over the
decision of what they're going to turn over the
government to, to Brandini -- whatever he creates. . .
. And they're desperately trying to avoid a visible
public transfer of authority to the U.N., because that
would be an admission of failure in the way they've
approached it."
Republicans said Kerry's latest criticism of Bush was
especially ill-timed because of the new bin Laden
tape, but Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said the
issue was not whether the nation is united in its
determination to bring bin Laden to justice but what
she called Bush's shifting rationale for going to war
in Iraq.
Saying even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell agreed
there was no link between al Qaeda and Iraq before the
war, Cutter said Iraq has now become a breeding ground
for terrorists. "This president has to decide what the
mission is in Iraq and how we're going to achieve that
goal instead of challenging John Kerry's patriotism
and his commitment to the security of this nation,"
she said.
At Howard University, where Kerry held a
question-and-answer session with students, he sought
to rebut charges by the Bush campaign that he would
raise taxes significantly as president by asserting
that despite Bush's tax cuts, most middle-class
Americans have seen their overall tax burdens rise
because the weak economy has forced state and local
governments to raise taxes and colleges to raise
tuition.
After the campus event, Kerry met with McCarrick for
about 45 minutes, at Kerry's request. Campaign
officials declined to provide any information, with
Cutter calling it "a private meeting between a man and
a member of his clergy."
Kerry, who is likely to be the first Roman Catholic
presidential nominee since John F. Kennedy in 1960,
supports abortion rights, which puts him at odds with
the church's position. McCarrick heads a church task
force addressing the issue of what to do about
politicians who openly disagree with the church's
teaching.
Some Catholic prelates have criticized Kerry, and
Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis said he would
not want Kerry to take communion in his archdiocese.
On Easter, McCarrick defended the bishops' right to
criticize Kerry during an interview with "Fox News
Sunday," saying, "It's an issue, yes."
McCarrick said Kerry "certainly should follow the
teachings of the church" but stopped short of saying
he would recommend denying communion to Kerry. "I
would want to get to talk to him, get to see him and
get to understand him before I would make a decision
like that," he said.
Staff researcher Brian Faler contributed to this
report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Retired US Marine General Anthony Zinni's name was
scrawled on the John O'Neill Wall of Heroes during the
long desperate months in 2002-2003 while the Bush
Cabal geared up for its foolish military adventure in
Iraq. Zinni continues to speak out...The Emperor has no uniform...
Rick Rodgers, San Diego Union Tribune: Retired Marine
Gen. Anthony Zinni wondered aloud yesterday how
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be caught off
guard by the chaos in Iraq that has killed nearly 100
Americans in recent weeks and led to his announcement
that 20,000 U.S. troops would be staying there instead
of returning home as planned. "I'm surprised that he
is surprised because there was a lot of us who were
telling him that it was going to be thus," said Zinni,
a Marine for 39 years and the former commander of the
U.S. Central Command. "Anyone could know the problems
they were going to see. How could they not?"
For years Zinni said he cautioned U.S. officials that an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would likely be more dangerous to U.S. interests than one with him because of the ethnic and religious clashes that would be unleashed. "I think that some heads should roll over Iraq," Zinni said. "I think the president got some bad advice."
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20040416-9999-7m16zinni.html
Retired general assails U.S. policy on Iraq
Warnings ignored, says retired Marine
By Rick Rogers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
April 16, 2004
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni wondered aloud
yesterday how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could
be caught off guard by the chaos in Iraq that has
killed nearly 100 Americans in recent weeks and led to
his announcement that 20,000 U.S. troops would be
staying there instead of returning home as planned.
"I'm surprised that he is surprised because there was
a lot of us who were telling him that it was going to
be thus," said Zinni, a Marine for 39 years and the
former commander of the U.S. Central Command. "Anyone
could know the problems they were going to see. How
could they not?"
At a Pentagon news briefing yesterday, Rumsfeld said
he could not have estimated how many troops would be
killed in the past week.
Zinni made his comments during an interview with The
San Diego Union-Tribune before giving a speech last
night at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc
Institute for Peace & Justice as part of its
distinguished lecturer series.
For years Zinni said he cautioned U.S. officials that
an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would likely be more
dangerous to U.S. interests than one with him because
of the ethnic and religious clashes that would be
unleashed.
"I think that some heads should roll over Iraq," Zinni
said. "I think the president got some bad advice."
Known as the "Warrior Diplomat," Zinni is not a peace
activist by nature or training, having led troops in
Vietnam, commanded rescue operations in Somalia and
directed strikes against Iraq and al Qaeda.
He once commanded the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
at Camp Pendleton.
Out of uniform, Zinni was a troubleshooter for the
U.S. government in Africa, Asia and Europe and served
as special envoy to the Middle East under the Bush
administration for a time before his reservations over
the Iraq war and its aftermath caused him to resign
and oppose it.
Not even Zinni's resumé could shield him from the
accusations that followed.
"I've been called a traitor and a turncoat for
mentioning these things," said Zinni, 60. The problems
in Iraq are being caused, he said, by poor planning
and shortsightedness, such as disbanding the Iraqi
army and being unable to provide security.
Zinni said the United States must now rely on the U.N.
to pull its "chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq."
"We're betting on the U.N., who we blew off and
ridiculed during the run-up to the war," Zinni said.
"Now we're back with hat in hand. It would be funny if
not for the lives lost."
Several things have to happen to get Iraq back on
course, whether the U.N. decides to step in or not,
Zinni said.
Improving security for American forces and the Iraqi
people is at the top of the list followed closely by
helping the working class with economic projects.
But it's not the lack of a comprehensive American plan
for Iraq nor the surging violence that has cost allied
troops their lives – including about 30 Camp Pendleton
Marines – that most concerns Zinni.
"In the end, the Iraqis themselves have to want to
rebuild their country more than we do," Zinni said.
"But I don't see that right now. I see us doing
everything.
"I spent two years in Vietnam, and I've seen this
movie before," he said. "They have to be willing to do
more or else it is never going to work."
Last night at the Kroc institute during his speech
"From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table:
Preventing Deadly Conflict," Zinni detailed the
approach he believes the United States should take in
the Middle East.
He told an overflow crowd that the United States tries
to grapple with individual issues in Middle East
instead of seeing them as elements of a broader
question.
"We need to step back and get a grand strategy," he
said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rick Rogers: (760) 476-8212;
rick.rogers@uniontrib.com
NOTE to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): Thank you for this brave statement...Unlike so many others, you have shown courage and defiance. It is of vital importance to the future of this country and the world itself that you remain steadfast. You are the right man for this hour, despite their attempts to portray you as a Dole or a Dukakis...Remember, John, where you came from...You are a WARRIOR, you are a PROSECUTOR, you are a man of toughness and compassion...Remember who you are, and the US electorate will respond to you no matter what assails them between now and the day of reckoning in November...
Reuters: Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry, lashing out at the White House's "twisted sense of ethics and morality," accused Republicans on Friday of distorting his record and attacking his patriotism..."I'm tired of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and a bunch of people who went out of their way to avoid their chance to serve when they had the chance," the Massachusetts senator said. "I'm not going to listen to them talk to me about patriotism. I've seen how these people in the White House today, in their twisted sense of ethics and morality, don't think twice about challenging John McCain and what happened to him as a prisoner of war," he said in reference to attacks by President Bush (news - web sites) in 2000 on his Republican primary rival McCain, an Arizona senator.
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040416/pl_nm/campaign_kerry_dc
Kerry Hits Back at White House, Defends Patriotism
1 hour, 58 minutes ago Add Politics to My Yahoo!
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry (news - web sites), lashing out at the White House's "twisted sense of ethics and morality," accused Republicans on Friday of distorting his record and attacking his patriotism.
Kerry, at an outdoor rally on the University of Pittsburgh campus, used an American flag and the national anthem to fire back at Republicans who charge he is weak on defense for voting against some weapons systems and an $87 billion bill to pay for operations in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites).
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, pointed out Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and political adviser Karl Rove did not serve in the military.
"I'm tired of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and a bunch of people who went out of their way to avoid their chance to serve when they had the chance," the Massachusetts senator said. "I'm not going to listen to them talk to me about patriotism."
"I've seen how these people in the White House today, in their twisted sense of ethics and morality, don't think twice about challenging John McCain and what happened to him as a prisoner of war," he said in reference to attacks by President Bush (news - web sites) in 2000 on his Republican primary rival McCain, an Arizona senator.
Kerry, who has tried to make his military experience a centerpiece of his campaign, is in a tight battle with Bush for the White House more than seven months before the November election.
Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman, said Kerry's judgment in his voting record on defense and security was in question, not his patriotism.
"The fundamental difference in this election will be between President Bush's steady leadership in the war on terror and John Kerry's consistent political opportunism on the war on terror," Schmidt said.
Kerry has come under heavy attack from Bush and Republicans, who have launched tens of millions of dollars of advertising trying to paint him as a waffling, traditional tax-and-spend Democrat.
QUOTES STAR SPANGLED BANNER
"They don't think twice about trying to pretend to America that I somehow don't care about the defense of our nation," Kerry said, paraphrasing wording in the Star Spangled Banner including reference to "political bombs" bursting in the air.
"When I look up, that flag is still there and it belongs to all Americans," he said, pointing to a flag near the stage. "Not to them, not to a party. It belongs to us."
Kerry told the crowd of more than 5,000 that "asking questions about the direction of our country is patriotism."
The Bush campaign said on Thursday that it is cutting back its advertising by two-thirds, which Kerry said was designed to "distort" his record. Kerry told reporters he believed he had withstood the early Republican charge.
"They're out 50 million bucks and they got nothing for it," Kerry told reporters on his campaign plane on Thursday night.
The rally in Pittsburgh, which featured a performance by rocker Jon Bon Jovi, concluded a week-long tour of college campuses where Kerry plugged his programs to make college more affordable.
He appeared in Pittsburgh on the same day the powerful pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, opened its annual convention in town. More than 50,000 gun-lovers packed the downtown convention center to sample what organizers billed as "Four Acres of Guns and Gear."
Cheney will make the keynote speech at the convention on Saturday, but Kerry did not mention the gun issue during his appearance.
The NRA has not made an endorsement yet but is certain to back Bush in November over Kerry, who supports the federal ban on assault weapons and a waiting period and background checks for the purchase of handguns.
The incredible shrinking _resident led the US into
this foolish military adventure with LIES about Saddam
possessing WMDs and being in cahoots with Osama bin
Laden. Of course, there were no WMDs. (And none have been
planted -- yet.) Nor was Saddam ever in cahoots with
Osama bin Laden -- indeed, they were sworn enemies.
(No "intelligence breakdowns," the Bush cabal was
warned of these facts by the UN, our allies and our
own CIA.) In painful irony, however the Bush cabal's
disasterous occupation and the neo con wet dream that
spawned it has turned Iraq into an Al Qaeda breeding
ground, launching pad and barrel for shooting US
soldiers. It may also lead to WMDs in the hands of Al
Qaeda. But will the "US mainstream news media" (e.g.,
the cable news networks and their propapunditgandists)
or your elected representatives in Congress have the
courage, indendence or clarity of mind to provide the
CONTEXT and the CONTINUITY needed to grasp the
implications of this unnecessary Mega-Mogadishu and
all that will flow from it? Unlikely. Will Sen. John
F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta)? He better.
Associated Press: Some Iraqi nuclear facilities appear to be unguarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency reported after reviewing satellite images and equipment that has turned up in European scrapyards.
The International Atomic Energy Agency sent a letter
to U.S. officials three weeks ago informing them of
the findings. The information was also sent to the
U.N. Security Council in a letter from its director,
Mohamed ElBaradei, that was circulated Thursday.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3981804,00.html
Probe Shows Iraq Nuke Facilities Unguarded
Thursday April 15, 2004 8:16 PM
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Some Iraqi nuclear facilities
appear to be unguarded, and radioactive materials are
being taken out of the country, the U.N.'s nuclear
watchdog agency reported after reviewing satellite
images and equipment that has turned up in European
scrapyards. The International Atomic Energy Agency
sent a letter to U.S. officials three weeks ago
informing them of the findings. The information was
also sent to the U.N. Security Council in a letter
from its director, Mohamed ElBaradei, that was
circulated Thursday.
The IAEA is waiting for a reply from the United
States, which is leading the coalition administering
Iraq, officials said.
The United Sattes has virtually cut off
information-sharing with the IAEA since invading Iraq
in March 2002 on the premise that the country was
hiding weapons of mass destruction.
No such weapons have been found, and arms control
officials now worry the war and its chaotic aftermath
may have increased chances that terrorists could get
their hands on materials used for unconventional
weapons or that civilians may be unknowingly exposed
to radioactive materials.
According to ElBaradei's letter, satellite imagery
shows ``extensive removal of equipment and in some
instances, removal of entire buildings,'' in Iraq.
In addition, ``large quanitities of scrap, some of it
contaminated, have been transfered out of Iraq from
sites'' previously monitored by the IAEA.
In January, the IAEA confirmed that Iraq was the
likely source of radioactive material known as
yellowcake that was found in a shipment of scrap metal
at Rotterdam harbor.
Yellowcake, or uranium oxide, could be used to build a
nuclear weapon, although it would take tons of the
substance refined with sophisticated technology to
harvest enough uranium for a single bomb.
The yellowcake in the shipment was natural uranium ore
which probably came from a known mine in Iraq that was
active before the 1991 Gulf War.
The yellowcake was uncovered Dec. 16 by
Rotterdam-based scrap metal company Jewometaal, which
had received it in a shipment of scrap metal from a
dealer in Jordan.
A small number of Iraqi missile engines have also
turned up in European ports, IAEA officials said.
``It is not clear whether the removal of these items
has been the result of looting activities in the
aftermath of the recent war in Iraq or as part of
systematic efforts to rehabilitate some of their
locations,'' ElBaradei wrote to the council.
The IAEA has been unable to investigate, monitor or
protect Iraqi nuclear materials since the U.S. invaded
the country in March 2003. The United States has
refused to allow the IAEA or other U.N. weapons
inspectors into the country, claiming that the
coalition has taken over responsibility for illict
weapons searches.
So far those searches have come up empty-handed and
the CIA's first chief weapons hunter has said he no
longer believes Iraq had weapons just prior to the
invasion.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
What is happening in this country? The complicity and
capitulation of the "US mainstream news media" has
never been more starkly revealed. The story of John
O'Neill is not the only glaring ommission from the
line of questioning followed by the 9/11 Commission
during its public hearings on the pre-9/11 activities
of the DoJ, the FBI and the CIA. The story of Sibel
Edmonds and her colleague also went unexplored.
Richard Ben-Veniste (D-Truth and Reconciliation), who
all too often seems to be the only one of the
Commissioners with any sense of what the real issues
look like, did invoke the name of Sibel Edmonds as
well as the name of John O'Neill, signally the LNS
hopes that there will be substantive treatment of both
of these compelling stories in the 9/11 Commission's
final report...It is unfortunate that the US has to
rely on the courage, common sense and caring of the
9/11 families to lead the national debate, but that is
where we are...Unless the 9/11 Commission surprises
soon or is really holding its fire for the final
report, the verdict of history will be that they
choose to shore up the Establishment and the current
White House, instead of fighting for the future of the
country (like John O'Neill, Sibel Edmonds, Colleen
Rawley, Richard Clark and yes the 9/11 Families
Steering Committee) by being willing to retell the
recent past without flinching. The fate of so much and
so many hangs in the balance...
James Ridgeway, Village Voice: Despite the best
efforts of the Jersey Girls, leaders of the 9-11
Family Steering Committee, no member of the 9-11
commission this afternoon asked FBI chief Robert
Mueller embarrassing questions about two former FBI
translators who claim to have knowledge bearing on the
attacks. One of them says she is being suppressed and
can't talk because Attorney general John Ashcroft has
placed a gag order on her. Instead, the commissioners
lauded Mueller for his running of the agency, which
only yesterday they were bitterly attacking as
incompetent and ineffective. Today one commissioner
after another lavished praise on Mueller.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0415/mondo10.php
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
FBI Whistle-Blowers Go Unheard: 9-11 Commission disregards survivor families' interests
April 14th, 2004 4:30 PM
Plane Truth Among Questions Still Up In The Air Is Why
Our Jet Fighters Weren't
Shock and Disgust British officials blast U.S. for its
'HAM-fisted overkill' in Iraq
Daily Condi A closer look at Rice's testimony
Say What?
Breaking: Correcting Condi
Condi's Pre-Testimony Primer Looking ahead to
Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9-11 panel
9-11 Hearings Get Partisan "Prior to 9-11, the FBI did
not have an adequate ability to know what it knew."
ASHINGTON D.C.—Despite the best efforts of the Jersey
Girls, leaders of the 9-11 Family Steering Committee,
no member of the 9-11 commission this afternoon asked
FBI chief Robert Mueller embarrassing questions about
two former FBI translators who claim to have knowledge
bearing on the attacks. One of them says she is being
suppressed and can't talk because Attorney general
John Ashcroft has placed a gag order on her.
Instead, the commissioners lauded Mueller for his
running of the agency, which only yesterday they were
bitterly attacking as incompetent and ineffective.
Today one commissioner after another lavished praise
on Mueller.
Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste briefly alluded to
accusations by the translators, and said he would
pursue it in private.
In particular the Jersey Girls wanted the commission
to closely question Mueller about Sibel Edmonds, a
former FBI translator, who is openly challenging the
agency's veracity in the 9-11 investigation. Attorney
General John Ashcroft has put a gag order on Edmonds
by making her internal complaint to the inspector
general secret. Soon after she came out publicly,
Edmonds was fired.
She subsequently told the commission that the FBI had
information that an attack using airplanes was being
planned before September 11. "Some of our group has
met several times with Edmonds, and from what we can
tell, we think her claims are extremely credible,"
Lori van Auken, one of the leaders of the Jersey
Girls, told The Voice. "So much so that some of our
group hand walked her in to testify before the 9-11
commissioners."
They are also eager to find out more about the
unconfirmed story of a second FBI linguist, Behrooz
Sarshar, who claims he translated for an FBI informant
with information on a supposed Al Qaeda plot to attack
the U.S. with planes back in April 2001. "Some of the
group have also met with Sarshar," said van Auken.
"His claims seem to back up what Edmonds is saying."
Edmonds came to attention most recently following
Condoleezza Rice's assertion in a Washington Post
op-ed piece that the White House had no specific
information on a domestic threat or one involving
planes as "an outrageous lie. And documents can prove
it's a lie," according to Edmonds.
Edmonds, a Turkish American, has been a citizen for 10
years and speaks Farsi, Turkish, and Arabic. The FBI
assigned her to translate documents seized by agents
in its post–9-11 probe. "President Bush said they had
no specific information about September 11, and that's
accurate," says Edmonds. "But there was specific
information about use of airplanes, that an attack was
on the way two or three months beforehand and that
several people were already in the country by May of
2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat
we were facing."
In 2002, then–Senate Judiciary Committee chairman
Patrick Leahy and Senator Charles Grassley, a senior
member, asked John Ashcroft about Edmonds's statements
to the committee in a closed briefing that she was
told by a superior "not to translate important,
intelligence-related information, instead limiting her
translation to unimportant and innocuous information."
She also claimed her superior had previous contacts
with one of the people whose work she had been
prevented from translating.
The FBI, the senators noted at the time, "verified
that this monitor indeed failed to translate certain
material properly, but has attributed the failure to a
lack of training as opposed to a malicious act."
The Justice Department inspector general has been
looking into the case over the last two years, and
still has not produced a report. Ashcroft, on the
advice of Mueller in 2002, invoked the "state secret
privilege," making the entire matter secret, "to
prevent disclosure of certain classified and sensitive
national security information." That effectively put a
gag order on Edmonds.
Among other things, she now suggests one translator
sent to Guantánamo by the FBI "was not even qualified
in basic English." She is questioning whether
translators handling terrorism-related information are
so poorly trained they can't make competent sense of
what they are translating.
A second FBI whistle-blower case involves another
former FBI translator, Behrooz Sarshar, who left the
agency in 2002. He supposedly translated an interview
between an Iranian source, once a member of the Shah's
secret police, with two FBI agents in which the
informant told the agents he had heard in Afghanistan
of an Al Qaeda plot to attack the U.S. in a suicide
mission with planes. Details of the story were first
reported by the WorldNetDaily website.
Eight more US soldiers have died in Iraq, bringing the
toll to 93 for April so far. For what?
You will hear much about involving the UN from both
the incredibly shrinking _resident and the
shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Tony-Blair as well as
Secretary of Stone Calm 'Em Powell...But here is what
the UN is saying about them...It is not likely that
you will hear this harsh criticism on the air waves,
or from the forked tongues of the propapunditgandists
who carry the Bush cabal's water...The ONLY way out of
this quagmire is REGIME CHANGE here in the US...Our
NATIONAL SECURITY, ECONOMY SECURITY and ENVIRONMENTAL
SECURITY depend on it...
Jonathan Steele, Guardian: The UN's adviser on Iraq made a surprising attack on Washington's handling of its year-long occupation last night, condemning the detention of prisoners without trial or charge and offering a withering analysis of America's governance of the country. Lakhdar Brahimi, a respected veteran diplomat who used to be the senior UN representative
in Afghanistan and now serves as special adviser on
Iraq to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, also
criticized the Americans for their onslaught on
Falluja.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines04/0415-07.htm
Published on Thursday April 15, 2004 by the
Guardian/UK
Annan Adviser Attacks American Occupation and Bremer's Tactics
by Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
The UN's adviser on Iraq made a surprising attack on
Washington's handling of its year-long occupation last
night, condemning the detention of prisoners without
trial or charge and offering a withering analysis of
America's governance of the country. Lakhdar Brahimi,
a respected veteran diplomat who used to be the senior
UN representative in Afghanistan and now serves as
special adviser on Iraq to the UN secretary general,
Kofi Annan, also criticized the Americans for their
onslaught on Falluja.
"The cordoning off and siege of a city is not
acceptable," he said. His comments, on a day when the
US said that another eight of its soldiers had died,
were unexpectedly sharp.
Mr Brahimi is known as a cautious diplomat in public,
but he made it clear he was speaking in the name of
most Iraqis.
After a 10-day visit to Iraq, he prefaced his
catalogue of American mistakes by saying: "We heard of
many grievances which need to be addressed."
Mr Brahimi made it clear he thought it a grave mistake
for the US to have dismissed thousands of qualified
professional people, including teachers, doctors and
engineers, simply because of their links with the now
outlawed Ba'ath party.
He said sacking former army officers had caused
problems.
There was only a crumb of comfort for Paul Bremer, the
US administrator of Iraq, who is reeling from the
hostage seizures, the collapse of security in large
parts of the country, the failure to subdue the
largely Sunni city of Falluja, and the uprising by
radical Shi'a militias, all in the space of the past
two weeks.
Mr Brahimi gave a clear endorsement of the US plan to
appoint a prime minister as Iraq's chief executive and
disband the governing council and supported the June
30 deadline for the handover.
Most of the 25 members of the council appointed by the
US last July have been arguing for it to double its
size and remain after the transfer of sovereignty.
They will find it hard to resist their demise now it
has UN backing.
Massoud Barzani, the council's current president, who
stood alongside Mr Brahimi at yesterday's press
conference, joked nervously when asked if he agreed.
"Our life began before the establishment of the
governing council. Our life will continue," he said.
Mr Brahimi said he was "confident" a caretaker
government could be in place by June 30. He suggested
a national conference should be held in July to
promote "national dialogue and national
reconciliation." It could elect a consultative
assembly to work alongside the new government until
elections next January.
His visit was severely restricted by the collapse of
security and his team only managed to visit the
northern city of Mosul. He made it clear that if the
UN returns to help prepare for elections, it will need
security guarantees.
As he made his comments there were more clashes
between Sunni insurgents and US marines in Falluja.
Witnesses said an air strike hit the Hay al-Dubat area
at dusk. Four civilians and two rebels died in
overnight fighting.
Iraqi mediators said they had extended the
much-violated truce for 48 hours. They had achieved an
agreement under which the Iraqi police would return to
duty and US forces would withdraw.
Army officers said eight more US soldiers had died in
combat, bringing to 93 the number killed in action in
April.
In Baghdad US soldiers fired on looters raiding a
military lorry, killing or wounding several. In Mosul,
four civilians were killed by a rocket aimed at a
police station. A rocket hit the Sheraton hotel in
central Baghdad yesterday, where foreign contractors
are staying, but caused no casualties.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
###
Even with a tightly scripted and docile "White House Press corp" to provide comic relief, the incredibly shrinking _resident is a liability and only hurts his cause whenever he opens his mouth. So what would drive Karl Rove to dare putting the incredibly shrinking _resident on prime time TV? Fear of this story breaking out on the air waves. We understand why the _resident got on the boob tube that night, to provide cover for Ashcroft, but what we still do not understand is why the 9/11 Commission held its fire. We hope it is because they hae their eyes on the prize, and want to deliver a real report to the US electorate and get it out there in print and on-line before the national referendum on the incredibly shrinking _resident's CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER in November.
Cam Simpson, Chicago Tribune: Former interim FBI chief Thomas Pickard testified Tuesday that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft didn't want to hear about terrorism when Pickard tried to brief him during the summer of 2001, as intelligence reports about terrorist threats were reaching a historic level... Pickard told commissioners that Ashcroft told him he did not want to hear about terrorist threats after just two briefings in the summer of 2001... But Pickard wasn't the only one who portrayed Ashcroft as disengaged on terrorism. Commission investigators said Dale Watson, the former head of counterterrorism at the FBI, told them "that he almost fell out of his chair" when he saw a May 10, 2001, memo from Ashcroft on Justice Department budget priorities "because it made no mention of counterterrorism."... Investigators also said Ashcroft's budget for fiscal year 2003 "did not increase counterterrorism funding over its pending proposal for fiscal year 2002." They also said Ashcroft turned down an appeal from Pickard for more funding--an appeal that Ashcroft formally rejected on Sept. 10, 2001.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://truthout.org/docs_04/041504D.shtml
Ashcroft Ignored Terrorism, Panel Told
By Cam Simpson
The Chicago Tribune
Wednesday 14 April 2004
WASHINGTON - Former interim FBI chief Thomas Pickard testified Tuesday that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft didn't want to hear about terrorism when Pickard tried to brief him during the summer of 2001, as intelligence reports about terrorist threats were reaching a historic level.
Ashcroft flatly denied the charge Tuesday in testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks and blamed the Clinton administration for creating bureaucratic hurdles that impeded the nation's defense against the assaults. He portrayed himself as taking decisive action against Osama bin Laden and portrayed his predecessors as weak, charging that former President Bill Clinton failed to authorize bin Laden's assassination.
Despite his sometimes pointed attacks, Ashcroft told commissioners that his goal was "not to add to the nation's considerable stock of pain, but to heal our wounds."
His nationally televised, sworn testimony capped a day in which official after official blamed other people and factors beyond their control for problems that commissioners believe made the nation vulnerable to the worst terrorist attacks in its history.
In addition to his testimony about Ashcroft, Pickard said he didn't know why his 56 local FBI chiefs across the nation didn't do more in the summer of 2001 after he asked them to do so, though commissioners said virtually none of those officials recalled such orders.
Louis Freeh, who headed the agency for almost eight years before retiring in June 2001, blamed legal impediments and a lack of resources, while also suggesting the CIA should have done more to alert him that two Al Qaeda members who would become hijackers were in the country.
Cofer Black, the former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, said, "We didn't have enough people to do the job and we didn't have enough money--by magnitudes."
The commission members also heard their own investigators lay out a series of missteps at the FBI that Thomas Kean, the panel's chairman, called "an indictment of the FBI" that stretched "over a long period of time." But witnesses rejected calls for the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency, with Freeh saying that "you would, in effect, be establishing a secret police."
The possible creation of such an agency is expected to be a hot topic of debate when CIA Director George Tenet and current FBI Director Robert Mueller testify before the commission Wednesday.
In a prime time news conference Tuesday, President Bush said he would be open to any suggestion about structural reforms. "What I'm saying is, let the discussions begin, and I won't prejudge the conclusion," Bush said.
"I will encourage and foster these kinds of discussions, because one of the jobs of the president is to leave behind a legacy that will enable other presidents to better deal with the threat that we face."
Ashcroft dove straight into one of the debates that has played out before the commission--whether the Clinton White House authorized the assassination of bin Laden or merely said that he could be killed only in the event that an attempt to capture him turned into a gunfight.
`Web of Requirements'
"Let me be clear," Ashcroft said, "my thorough review revealed no covert action program to kill bin Laden."
Instead, agents and operatives were "crippled by a snarled web of requirements, restrictions and regulations that prevented decisive action," Ashcroft testified, adding that even "if they could have penetrated bin Laden's training camp, they would have needed a battery of attorneys to approve the capture."
Ashcroft testified that little more than a month after assuming office he told National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that he wanted to "fix covert authorities to allow for decisive, lethal action" against bin Laden.
But under questioning, Ashcroft couldn't point to anything he did to pursue or enact such a plan after his meeting with Rice.
He said he believed Tenet was handling it as part of a broader review.
And two commissioners, Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste and Republican Fred Fielding, suggested that the panel recently received a previously undisclosed--and highly classified--document showing that Clinton may have authorized just such a strike.
Ashcroft said he was unaware of it. And despite what he called his own thorough review, Ashcroft acknowledged under questioning from Fielding that he couldn't recall what documents he was given, where they came from or whether his staff briefed him on the issue.
Pickard told commissioners that Ashcroft told him he did not want to hear about terrorist threats after just two briefings in the summer of 2001.
But when it was his turn, Ashcroft fired back, testifying, "I did never speak to him saying that I did not want to hear about terrorism."
Ashcroft, answering extensive questions in public for the first time about his actions before the attacks, also said: "I care greatly about the safety and security of the American people and was very interested in terrorism, and specifically interrogated him [Pickard] about threats to the American people."
Ashcroft's former deputy, Larry Thompson, told reporters after Tuesday's hearing that he did not recall Ashcroft cutting off discussions of terrorism during any of the briefings he attended with the men.
Ashcroft Called Disengaged
But Pickard wasn't the only one who portrayed Ashcroft as disengaged on terrorism.
Commission investigators said Dale Watson, the former head of counterterrorism at the FBI, told them "that he almost fell out of his chair" when he saw a May 10, 2001, memo from Ashcroft on Justice Department budget priorities "because it made no mention of counterterrorism."
The day before, Ashcroft had testified at a Capitol Hill budget hearing that terrorism was his top priority.
Investigators also said Ashcroft's budget for fiscal year 2003 "did not increase counterterrorism funding over its pending proposal for fiscal year 2002." They also said Ashcroft turned down an appeal from Pickard for more funding--an appeal that Ashcroft formally rejected on Sept. 10, 2001.
But Ashcroft testified that he requested 50 percent increases two years in a row for the FBI's troubled technology program.
When he wasn't on the defensive, Ashcroft was pointing at his predecessors.
He said the Clinton Justice Department never briefed him during or after the transition between the administrations on a counterterrorism plan written after successful efforts to detect and disrupt plots during the millennium celebration.
He saved his sharpest criticism for legal barriers that he said blocked intelligence and law-enforcement officials from sharing critical information. Although previous witnesses also have pointed to these problems, including Rice, Ashcroft blamed Clinton's Justice Department for creating "a wall" separating law enforcement and intelligence operations.
He called it "the single greatest structural cause" of Sept. 11.
Ashcroft also testified that "somebody did make these rules. Someone built this wall."
In dramatic fashion, he then declassified a 1994 memo written by Jamie Gorelick, a Democrat on the 10-member panel who was the deputy to Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno.
He said Gorelick's memo, written to offer guidance on a pending terrorism prosecution in New York, created the "basic architecture for the wall."
Gorelick did not question Ashcroft about his actions or his assertions. Commission staff members said she has formally removed herself from any discussions of actions that she was personally involved with.
But Slade Gorton, a panel member and former Republican senator, sharply questioned Ashcroft about what he did to take down such barriers before the attacks during his first seven months in office.
Gorton also cited an Aug. 6, 2001, memo in which Ashcroft's deputy left the same rules largely intact. Staff investigators said there were no substantial changes under Ashcroft until after the attacks.
And more and more stringent requirements also came from a special federal court regulating intelligence, investigators found.
`Totally Dedicated People'
While witnesses were pointing fingers, Kean, the panel's chairman, was zeroing in on the countless missteps at the FBI that he said were identified by his investigators.
Although he said he knew there "are totally dedicated people" throughout the FBI, he also said, "The agency doesn't work very well, and hasn't worked very well for a long time."
Reno said she recognized problems at the FBI and tried to work through them, despite resistance at the agency, which has zealously guarded its independence.
She said she passed a stack of memos to Ashcroft on the issue during the transition. But she also testified, "I don't blame anybody. I'm responsible. If somebody wants to be responsible it's going to be me because I tried to work through these issues while I was attorney general and time ran out on me."
Freeh said the nation was not prepared to properly confront the threat until after the Sept. 11 attacks, and defended his former agency against virtually all of the commission's attacks.
Freeh said he believed there was one thing that could have prevented the assaults, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
"Sept. 11, had we had the right sources overseas or in the United States, could have been prevented," he said. "We did not have those sources. We did not have that telephone call. We didn't have that e-mail intercept that could've done the job."
Black, who headed the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, echoed Freeh and others by pointing to a lack of resources. He said the CIA only got new infusions of cash when it worked so hard that all funds were exhausted, or when it was too late.
"It's a constant track," he said. "Either you run out, or people die. When people die, you get more money."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/11 Commission: FBI `Hobbled'
Two 9/11 commission staff reports released Tuesday describe the FBI's difficulties in focusing its resources on counterterrorism.
May 1998
FBI issues a five-year strategic plan making national and economic security, including counterterrorism, its top priority for the first time in FBI history.
1998-2001
FBI's counterterrorism spending remains constant after the bureau's counterterrorism budget tripled in the mid-1990s.
1999
Counterterrorism and counterintelligence divisions created to focus FBI on national security missions.
2000
External review of the FBI finds that twice as many agents are devoted to drug enforcement as to counterterrorism.
May 10, 2001
Justice Department identifies reducing gun violence and reducing drug trafficking as top priorities for the 2003 budget. The commission's staff reports that FBI counterterrorism head Dale Watson "almost fell out of his chair when he saw the memo because it made no mention of counterterrorism."
Summer 2001
According to one staff report, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said "he did not want to hear this information anymore" when Thomas Pickard tried to brief him about terrorist threats. Ashcroft denied Pickard's account.
Sept. 10, 2001
Ashcroft rejects interim FBI director Thomas Pickard's appeal for further counterterrorism funding in the budget.
-------
Source: 9/11 commission staff statements Nos. 9 and 10.
-------
Jump to TO Features for Thursday April 15, 2004
It's the Media, Stupid.
Norman Solomon, www.commondreams.org: When the anchor of public television's main news program goes out of his way to tell viewers that he's setting the record straight about a recent historic event, the people watching are apt to assume that they're getting accurate information. But with war intensifying in Iraq, a bizarre episode raises some very troubling concerns about the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0415-09.htm
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Featured Views
Published on Thursday, April 15, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
How the "NewsHour" Changed History
by Norman Solomon
When the anchor of public television's main news program goes out of his way to tell viewers that he's setting the record straight about a recent historic event, the people watching are apt to assume that they're getting accurate information. But with war intensifying in Iraq, a bizarre episode raises some very troubling concerns about the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
Here's what happened:
During a panel discussion April 7 on the NewsHour, while battles raged in close to a dozen Iraqi cities, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel referred to the American authorities' closure of a newspaper that had served as a megaphone for the anti-occupation Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr. "The immediate problem we have to remember is we started this ... with the aggressive policies towards Sadr that came from us, shutting down his press," Col. Sam Gardiner said.
The program's anchor spoke next.
Jim Lehrer: "The reason we shut down his press is because it was calling for violence and anti-American --"
Col. Gardiner: "Sure."
Lehrer: "I just want to get that on the record."
But Lehrer's comment -- ostensibly setting the record straight -- was at odds with the available factual record about Sadr's newspaper. In sync with other news accounts, the New York Times had reported two days earlier that "the paper did not print any calls for attacks."
I contacted the NewsHour and asked whether Lehrer's statement had been based on information contrary to what had been reported in the April 5 edition of the Times. If so, I asked for any citation that backed up his assertion. Or, if Lehrer did not have such a citation, I asked if there were plans for an on-air correction to set the factual record straight on the program (which reaches nearly 3 million viewers across the United States each night).
In reply to my inquiry, a NewsHour spokesperson cited two articles: A Chicago Tribune piece, dated April 5, said that "the pro-Sadr newspaper Al Hawza was shut down ... for allegedly printing false information that incited violence against the coalition." And an April 6 New York Times piece said that the Sadr newspaper "was closed last week after American authorities accused it of printing lies that incited violence."
The NewsHour spokesperson, Lete Childs, told me: "I hope these two articles help you understand the citations for Jim Lehrer's statement to Col. Gardiner."
But the two articles that the NewsHour cited only seemed to underscore the disconnect. Apparently, the NewsHour staff hadn't been able to find a single source to back up Lehrer's on-air statement that "the reason we shut down his press is because it was calling for violence." And the NewsHour did not provide any explanation for why, in sharp contrast to the flat-out report in the New York Times that "the paper did not print any calls for attacks," Lehrer had gone on the air and claimed that it did.
I reached the reporter in Baghdad who'd written the Chicago Tribune article, Vincent Schodolski, and asked if he was aware of any evidence that the American authorities shut down Al Hawza because it was "calling for violence." Schodolski replied: "I have no other citations than the reasons given by the CPA itself." My search of the official Web site for the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq, turned up briefings and news releases with references to Sadr's newspaper -- but no backup for what Lehrer had said on the air.
At a March 30 press conference, Dan Senor of the CPA charged that Al Hawza had tried to "incite violence." That was very much in keeping with what the April 5 New York Times reported -- that while "the American authorities said false reporting, including articles that ascribed suicide bombings to Americans, could touch off violence," nevertheless "the paper did not print any calls for attacks."
Lehrer's refusal to correct his evident error is especially striking because he had emphasized his incorrect statement on the air by immediately adding: "I just want to get that on the record." (My request to a NewsHour spokesperson for a direct comment from Lehrer did not yield any statement from him.)
When I asked whether a decision had been made, one way or the other, about doing a correction on the NewsHour to set the factual record straight, the last piece of stone in the damage-control wall moved into place. I got the message: "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer stands behind the 'Iraq: What Now?' discussion segment from April 7 and will not be making a correction."
Journalists should scrutinize U.S. government spin, not contribute to it.
Here we have what some people believe to be the nation's most credible news program compounding a factual error by refusing to make a correction.
First-rate journalists change history. But not this way.
Norman Solomon is co-author, with foreign correspondent Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You."
###
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The 9/11 Commission's two days of public hearings on
the pre-9/11 activities of US DoJ, FBI and CIA have
concluded. The name of John O'Neill was bravely
invoked by Richard Ben-Veniste (D-Truth and
Reconciliation) at the beginning of Tuesday's hearing,
but that's it. There was no exploration over the
disturbing questions that swirl around John O'Neill's
resignation from FBI Counterterrorism in the Summer of
2001. There is nothing more disturbing in all of this
miserable business. What happened on Tuesday, April
13, 2004? Why didn't the 9/11 Commission lower the
boom on Attorney General John Ashcroft (R-Misery) for
his well-documented indifference to the threat from Al
Qaeda prior to 9/11? Why is the "US mainstream news
media" ignoring the fact the either Ashcroft or his
chief accuser Tom Pickard perjured themselves? And
most importantly, why wasn't the story of John O'Neill
examined in public and under oath? What is on the 28
blacked out pages of the congressional 9/11 report?
Even the Saudis have asked to have it declassified.
What has happened in this country? If the "US
mainstream news media" is too timid or too complicit
to provide you the CONTEXT and CONTINUITY you need,
the LNS will, if the 9/11 Commission is unable to open
this file, the LNS will...Here is the October 2002 PBS
Frontline documentary on John O'Neill. It is
excellent, and sadly it is all there is except for a
New Yorker (which I will also forward you this
morning) and the French best-seller Forbidden
Truth..."Out, out damn spot!"
"The Man Who Knew," PBS Frontline: John had heard the alarm bells, too, and we used to talk about it. And he knew that there was a lot of noise out there and that there were a lot of warnings, a lot of red flags, and that it was at a similar level that they were hearing before the millennium, which was an indication that there was something going on. And yet
he felt that he was frozen out, that he was not in a
capacity to really do anything about it anymore
because of his relationship with the FBI. So it was a
source of real anguish for him.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat (again!)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/etc/script.html
Program #2103
"The Man Who Knew"
Air date: October 3, 2002
The Man Who Knew
Produced and Directed by:
MICHAEL KIRK
Co-Produced and Reported by:
JIM GILMORE
Written by
MICHAEL KIRK
September 11
3,025 Murdered
One of them knew it was going to happen
JERRY HAUER, Dir. Emergency Mgmt. NYC '96-'00: The
night before he died, he had said to me, "We're due,
and we're due for something big."
NARRATOR: His name was John O'Neill. And long before
the world knew about Osama bin Laden, FBI agent
O'Neill was obsessed with him.
TEDDY LEB: He was among the first people to see the
bin Laden threat.
NARRATOR: He warned of Al Qaeda.
TEDDY LEB: He said that we're at war with these
people.
NARRATOR: He warned of the threat to the United
States.
TEDDY LEB: And we better not take them for granted
because they are here to hurt us.
NARRATOR: But people at FBI headquarters thought John
O'Neill was too much of a maverick and they stopped
listening to him.
JOE CANTAMESSA, FBI Special Agent NYC: You could be
flagged as a problem, and your career could pretty
much be over.
NARRATOR: Last summer, O'Neill left the FBI and took a
new job as head of security at the World Trade Center.
JOE CANTAMESSA: Of all the places to go to work, and
of all the ways that you could lose your life.
NARRATOR: Tonight FRONTLINE investigates the internal
power struggle at the heart of the FBI's failure on
September 11th.
NARRATOR: There was after the horror of September 11th
the inevitable question: Did anyone in the government
know?
The move from Chicago to headquarters was a big
promotion for Special Agent John O'Neill. He'd be the
chief of the counterterrorism section. He drove all
night from Chicago and went straight to the office on
a Sunday morning.
September 5, 1995
He'd just arrived when the White House called.
RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism '92-'01:
It was a Sunday morning and I was in my office and I
was reading intelligence. And I saw a report that
indicated that the man who had plotted the World Trade
Center bombing in 1993, the ringleader, Ramzi Ahmed
Yousef --
Subject: Ramzi Ahmed Yousef
Plots:
WTC bombing
Pope assassination
Pacific airline bombings
Place of Birth:
Kuwait?
Pakistan?
Iraq?
UAE?
RICHARD CLARK: He was about to move within Pakistan.
And there was a small window, a closing window, to
catch him. And so thinking there might be somebody at
the FBI on a Sunday morning, I called.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
It's sort of typical -- I mean, you know, John in the
office on a Sunday. John, a new job, was going to get
his feet on the ground and get himself settled in and
was going to make sure that he was -- if that was his
job, he was going to be the expert in it in short
order.
NARRATOR: O'Neill had made his reputation
investigating white-collar crime, drug rings and
abortion clinic bombings.
Subject: John P. O'Neill
Age: 43
1976: Baltimore -- White Collar Crime
1991: Chicago -- Drugs and Organized Crime
1994: Task Force Abortion Clinic Violence
RICHARD CLARKE: I said, "Who's this?" And he
responded, "Well, who the hell are you? I'm John
O'Neill." And I explained, "Well, I'm from the White
House, and I do terrorism. And I need some help." And
I told him my story on the classified phone line.
And he went into action, and over the course of the
next two or three days, he never left the office. He
worked the phones out to Pakistan. He worked the
phones to the Pentagon. He works the phones at the
State Department.
NARRATOR: O'Neill was new to the counterterrorism
game. In 20 years, he'd chased a lot of bad guys but
nobody like Ramzi Yousef.
MARY JO WHITE, U.S. Atty. So. District of NY '93-'02:
Yousef is one of the most dangerous people on the
planet -- very smart. Getting him and incapacitating
him was a significant public safety issue, and John
O'Neill recognized that, was not about to take no for
an answer anywhere before he was taken into custody.
RICHARD CLARKE: O'Neill put together an arrest team
that managed to catch Ramzi Ahmed Yousef in Pakistan
just before he moved into Afghanistan, which would be
been beyond our reach. It was a pretty intense couple
of days, but it worked.
NARRATOR: At headquarters, down in the SIOC -- the
situation room -- they waited for word from New York
that Yousef was in the lock-up.
LEWIS SCHILIRO, Director of FBI NYC '98-'00: When we
loaded him on the helicopter, he had been blindfolded.
It was a very clear night -- very, very clear --
sometime in January. And one of the agents asked me if
he could take the blindfold off Yousef, and I said,
"Sure. Go right ahead." And it was ironic because as
he finally focused his eyes, we were right adjacent to
the World Trade Center, and he kind of focused in on
that. And of course, one of the agents sitting next to
him gave him a little bit of a nudge and said, "Do you
see? It still stands?"
And Yousef, in no uncertain terms, said, "It would not
have been had we had more funding." And I looked at
him at that point. Really, just the way that he said
that, the coldness of it, is something that I'll
probably never forget.
NARRATOR: For the next six years, O'Neill and his
agents would follow the bloody and complex trail from
Ramzi Yousef to Osama bin Laden. He'd painstakingly
pieced together bits of information gathered from
sources around the world, sources who would sometimes
become close friends. One of them was a journalist.
CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: He was one of those rare birds
that -- inside a government, who had access to highly
classified information, and yet also understood that
talking to a journalist was not necessarily a
violation of any rules, and it could actually be
helpful on both sides.
NARRATOR: In analyzing the information about Ramzi
Yousef, Isham said his friend, O'Neill, saw a
different sort of terrorist with a new kind of
mission.
CHRIS ISHAM: The picture was still fuzzy -- I mean, it
was by no means sharp -- that there was an emerging
global Islamic fundamentalist terrorist network that
was becoming more and more engaged in the objective of
attacking American targets.
MARY JO WHITE: When Yousef fled from the Trade Center
bombing in 1993, among the places he went, really
right before he was apprehended in Pakistan, was to
the Philippines, where he was mixing the bombs to blow
up, you know, 12 jumbo jets in a 48-hour period, and
was not far away from at least attempting to carry out
that plot, which would have resulted in thousands of
deaths in two days.
NARRATOR: For Agent O'Neill, the trail of Ramzi Yousef
was an introduction into the sophisticated and
interconnected world of the new terrorism.
JAMES WOOLSEY, CIA Director '93-'95: We now know that
he was planning an operation to crash a dozen American
airliners virtually simultaneously with bombs. Now,
one version of this, I believe, from the Philippines,
has it that he was planning on crashing one of the 12
not in the Pacific but into the CIA headquarters in
Langley. What's interesting is whether that was part
of his plan or not. If you look together at crashing
airliners and at Ramzi Yousef's plot to blow up the
World Trade Center in '93 by explosives, what happened
in September 11th, 2001, is some kind of a weird
amalgam of those two Ramzi Yousef plots.
NARRATOR: Another of O'Neill's friends worked in the
upper reaches of the Justice Department.
FRAN TOWNSEND: John completely throws himself into
this. He's reading everything he can get his hands on
about radical fundamentalism. He's already got in his
mind this is a major and long-term problem for us that
we are ill-equipped to deal with, not because we lack
the commitment to deal with it, but because it's a
mindset he's now read. He's studied it.
NARRATOR: From the beginning, O'Neill obsessed about
the details of the Ramzi Yousef case. He dug into that
plan to blow up the planes, known as the Bojinka plot.
Investigators had found a connection with the World
Trade Center bombing that led to Yousef's
co-conspirator, Ahmad Ajaj, and a terrorist training
manual with a title that would translate into "Al
Qaeda" --"the base."
They uncovered a list of phone numbers called by
Yousef and other World Trade Center conspirators from
their safe houses. One of those numbers belonged to
Osama bin Laden, identified by an early CIA report as
an "Islamic extremist financier."
RICHARD CLARKE: I think if you ask most terrorism
experts in the mid-1990s, "Well, what about this man,
bin Laden?" most people in the mid-1990s would have
said, "Ah, yes, the financier, the terrorist
financier." What O'Neill said was, "No, this man is
not a financier. The money is money for a purpose. The
purpose is building a worldwide terrorist network
based out of Afghanistan, the point of which is going
after the United States and after governments friendly
to the United States, particularly in the Arab world."
NARRATOR: Once convinced bin Laden was a threat to
America, O'Neill began a campaign within the FBI to
sound the alarm.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT, Deputy Director FBI '97-'99: The
first time I ever heard the name Osama bin Laden was
from John O'Neill. And John O'Neill was very much
aware of who he was, who his group was, Al Qaeda.
NARRATOR: Over time, Robert "Bear" Bryant would become
second in command at the FBI and a supporter of John
O'Neill.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: He was a person that I had
immense personal regard for, and we could argue like a
couple of thieves in the night over issues because we
were both hard-headed. We were both a little bit
Irish, and he much more so than I. And we had strong
opinions about things, and we could get into it really
quick.
NARRATOR: O'Neill argued for a plan that would
represent a seismic shift in the way the FBI had
always operated. He would give authority to a new,
more analytic agent who would have enhanced technology
to fight the new terrorism. That directly threatened
the dominance of the group who held sway over the
culture, the criminal division.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: From his point of view, it was
very clear what had to be done. You would basically
have a whole branch of the FBI that would be -- not be
touched by the criminal side.
NARRATOR: The criminal side -- the J. Edgar Hoover
G-men who carried the guns and made cases and arrests.
The man who would eventually lead the criminal
division, Tom Pickard, aggressively competed with
O'Neill for the attention of the director, Louis
Freeh.
Subject: Louis J. Freeh
1974: J.D. Rutgers Law
1975: Agent FBI
1981: Federal Prosecutor
1991: Federal Judge
1993: Director FBI
NARRATOR: As a former street agent himself, Freeh
identified with the criminal division, and Tom Pickard
was a long-time friend. O'Neill's counterterrorism
section was on the FBI's radar, but just barely.
JOE CANTAMESSA, FBI Special Agent NYC: A lot of people
don't realize that a year prior to the first bombing
of the World Trade Center, all but one squad was
eliminated or reconsolidated in New York, so -- and we
were the flagship office that had most of the
counterterrorism issues. We were pretty much scaling
back. And while we would never close the program, it
certainly was given much less resource support, and
the thought -- and the threat was thought to have been
diminishing.
NARRATOR: To reinvigorate the counterterrorism effort,
O'Neill would try to muscle his way through the
bureaucracy that surrounded Louis Freeh. But in that
struggle, O'Neill's personal style got in the way.
They said he was too intense, pushed too hard, had
what they called "sharp elbows."
JOE CANTAMESSA: We often talked and joked about the
fact that we weren't really in the club, and we really
didn't care. And that was something that John and I
had shared on occasion. And there is a difference
between those people who spend time in an organization
and are happy to make it to the top and have never
rolled over a stone or created a problem or solved a
problem, you know, just to carefully run through, and
be there and be promoted. John was not like that.
NARRATOR: O'Neill just didn't do anything the FBI way.
Where at the end of a long shift, they went home to
their families --
MICHAEL SHEEHAN, Chief Counterterrorism, State Dept.
'98-'01: He was the type of guy who'd put his arm
around you and take you out to dinner, and smoke
cigars and drink whiskey with at the end of the day,
and really -- and talk about all the issues in great
depth. And he -- that's -- he took this -- the
business -- his business beyond the work hours and
well into the evening, or he'd like to do that.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's evenings were spent at
Washington's watering holes with a network of spies --
CIA, DIA, NSC and foreign intelligence officers.
JERRY HAUER, Dir. Emergency Mgmt. NYC '96-'00: John
tended to be a little more flamboyant than a lot of
the traditional agents in the FBI. I think there were
jealousies. John did know everybody all over the
world. John could pick up a phone and talk to somebody
in an embassy in a foreign intelligence service
anywhere in the world, and they all knew him.
NARRATOR: And in the buttoned-down FBI, O'Neill was
considered too flashy.
FRAN TOWNSEND: It was the presentation. It was the --
as he would call it, it was the "package." They
resented sort of the Burberry suit and the white
pocket square and the expensive tie and the Bruno
Magli shoes. You know, this wasn't the bureau.
CLINT GUENTHER, FBI Agent NYC - Counterterrorism: I
kind of thought he was kind of a dandy. You know, he
was impeccably dressed and looked like his fingernails
were polished and his hair swooped back. And a bunch
of us kind of, you know, started to call him the
"Prince of Darkness."
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: He worked both ends of the
candle pretty hard. We had a morning briefing every
morning at 7:30, and sometimes he would come in late.
And I told him I wanted him there. I don't care if he
came in his slippers and pajamas, be there. And he
was.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's days were spent analyzing
fragments of information. There was the story about
two of Ramzi Yousef's Bojinka co-conspirators, Wali
Khan Amin Shah and Abdul Hakim Murad. In 1995, Murad
told a story of Middle Eastern pilots training at U.S.
flight schools and of a proposal to divebomb a
jetliner into a federal building. It was a tantalizing
bit of information. Agents were dispatched but then
withdrawn. The investigation languished.
JAMES KALLSTROM, Director FBI NYC '95-'97: I had a
fairly low opinion of headquarters throughout my whole
career. It seemed like, you know, the headquarters was
a very negative place, where they would find a million
reasons why you couldn't do something, as opposed to
why you could do something. It was not the type of
place where you always felt you were getting a lot of
assistance.
John was the opposite of that. John you could talk to,
and you could tell John what you needed and John would
get it.
NARRATOR: James Kallstrom was the powerful boss of the
FBI's New York office. Watching from a distance, he
saw O'Neill's attitude and expertise make enemies
among the group that surrounded Louis Freeh.
JAMES KALLSTROM: Yeah, I'm sure there was some
jealousy in the bureaucracy. There always is. You can
get by with some sharper elbows for a while, but you
need to be right a lot. You know the old saying, "When
you run with the wolves, don't trip," you know? You
can have those types of character traits -- you really
need to have those to get the job done sometimes --
but there'll always be a comeuppance in bureaucracies
if you exercise that too much and you don't restrain
it.
NARRATOR: At headquarters there were those in the
upper reaches of the bureaucracy who looked for ways
to wound O'Neill. A whispering campaign began about
O'Neill's personal life. There was one version:
married his high school sweetheart and had a couple of
kids. Then there was the truth.
FRAN TOWNSEND: John had been separated from his family
for some time. And I think John would have said to you
his family suffered as a result of that, as a result
of his devotion to his job.
VALERIE JAMES: I think the FBI was his mistress. He
loved it. He loved it more than he loved any woman in
his life. He loved it.
NARRATOR: And he loved Valerie James.
VALERIE JAMES: Very first time I saw John, I did
something I had never done before and will never do
again. I sent him a drink. He just had the most -- he
was standing at the bar, and he had the most
compelling eyes I had ever seen.
NARRATOR: She had her own children, and after a while,
they started calling him "Dad." He hinted he might
marry their mom. The trouble was, he hadn't told her
he was already married.
VALERIE JAMES: I didn't know that for two or three
years. And someone that John worked with in the FBI's
wife told me, and it was bad. I was shocked. You know,
my family was shocked. I loved him. It had been two or
three years, by that point. What are you going to do,
you know?
NARRATOR: There weren't exactly FBI regulations
against O'Neill's behavior, but there were unwritten
rules of the road, and the whisperers said O'Neill's
lifestyle made him unfit for his sensitive job.
VALERIE JAMES: John's brilliant. He's a guy that gets
it. He is working on this incredible stuff day after
day that he can basically talk to none of us about. He
can talk to very few, some people in law enforcement.
He can't even tell any of his peers about what he's
working on, it's that intense. Does a man like that
come home and eat roast chicken and mashed potatoes
every night? You know, I think his whole life needed
to be complicated. I think he was complicated.
NARRATOR: O'Neill said he could care less what the
bureaucrats thought. The only one he was concerned
about was Louis Freeh.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
Louis Freeh is extraordinary, in the sense of being
sort of a regular person, very committed to his
children and his wife. He wasn't one to be out late or
wasn't a big drinker, wasn't -- that was not his style
at all.
NARRATOR: O'Neill figured a personal connection to
Freeh was out of the question. He'd have to find
another way to make his case about reorganizing the
FBI.
Then, after Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia blew up
the U.S. Air Force barracks known as Khobar Towers,
O'Neill saw his chance. Both O'Neill and Freeh got
deeply involved, taking 14-hour plane rides to Saudi
Arabia, time enough for a sustained O'Neill terrorism
tutorial.
From the beginning, O'Neill's cop instincts told him
the Saudis weren't fully cooperating. They were hiding
something.
RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism '92-'01:
On at least one occasion, John told me that he
believed that the Saudis were telling us one thing but
doing another, and that he tried to persuade the
director of the FBI of that, but the director wanted
to believe that the Saudis were cooperating.
NARRATOR: Finally, on a flight back to Washington,
O'Neill decided to give Freeh a piece of his mind. The
way they tell the story at the bureau, O'Neill uttered
an indelicate phrase, telling his boss the Saudis were
blowing smoke up a particular portion of the
director's anatomy.
CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: He never told me the precise
words, but I can hear John saying them. I -- you know,
I think that he felt that the Saudis were definitely
playing games and that the senior officials in the
U.S. government, including Louis Freeh, just didn't
get it.
NARRATOR: The story has it that Freeh didn't
appreciate the bluntness. The two flew home in silence
for 12 hours.
FRAN TOWNSEND: If that was what John said, and he said
it in that indelicate a way, it wouldn't surprise me
that Freeh would have viewed that as inappropriate and
therefore disrespectful. If John said it in that way,
it wouldn't surprise me if Louis chose not to sort of
deal with him while he was in that mood.
NARRATOR: Louis Freeh has reportedly denied this
story, but declined FRONTLINE's request to talk with
us.
And as to the substance of the dispute between Freeh
and O'Neill, over at the White House, where they
always thought Iran was behind the bombing, they
eventually learned the truth about the way the Saudis
were acting.
RICHARD CLARKE: Well, it turns out that the Saudi
government had a suspicion that it was Iran, and the
Saudi government didn't really want the United States
to conclude that it was Iran and go off and start
bombing Iran. So the Saudi government decided at a
very high level to give the United States and the FBI
only a little bit of cooperation, not the full
picture.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's instincts had been right, but it
was a Pyrrhic victory.
JOE CANTAMESSA, FBI Special Agent NYC: Well, remember
about this being in the club I mentioned? You have to
be a little bit of a minimal threat to the
organization and the director and the management
structure. John, because of his aggressive posture,
his aggressive nature, his willingness to go forward
when it may not be politically correct -- I think a
few people were just uncomfortable with John's
aggressive style.
NARRATOR: But for every enemy O'Neill made at
headquarters, it seems he'd made an ally elsewhere.
One of them, in the midst of her own struggle with
Louis Freeh and the headquarters bureaucracy, he kept
secret.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
The attorney general had seen John at meetings, knew
he was an expert from his position at the FBI. And she
would frequently say, "Well, what does John think?"
There were times I was sitting in her office, and
she'd ask that, and I'd say I didn't know. And she
said, "Well, call him."
And literally, I would be dialing John's cell phone
from the attorney general of the United States'
office. And you know, he'd get on the phone, "Hi. How
are you?" And I'd -- "Look, I'm in Ms. Reno's office."
And so if she wanted to know, she knew she had the
ability to reach out to him. This made him, in
fairness, a little bit uncomfortable. He knew that
this would not have been looked upon kindly by other
people in the bureau.
NARRATOR: Around Washington, O'Neill's allies and
drinking buddies began to warn him that he should take
his Al Qaeda crusade to a field office. He should
leave headquarters.
JERRY HAUER, Dir. Emergency Mgmt. NYC '96-'00: You got
to be careful whose toes you step on, particularly in
Washington, because there are some pretty big shoes.
And he created some headaches for himself at
headquarters because he did manage to step on some
toes.
VALERIE JAMES: He told me that was the most intense
time he spent with the FBI. I mean it burnt John out.
Do you know how Jimmy Carter looked when he started
office and the pictures of him afterwards, how he
aged? I felt that that -- I said it to John. I felt
that job aged John.
NARRATOR: There was an opening in the New York City
division. The boss up there, Jimmy Kallstrom, was also
a tough guy, a thorn in Washington's side. He grabbed
O'Neill -- saved him, really. At headquarters, they
were happy to see him go, and on January 1st, 1997,
John O'Neill moved to New York.
It was a promotion, assistant special agent in charge
of counterterrorism and national security. He'd be in
charge of a team of about 350 agents. And best of all,
it was in New York.
JAMES KALLSTROM, Director FBI NYC '95-'97: New York
was the flagship office of the FBI. It's where it
happens, in New York. I mean, that's where you wanted
to be if you were an FBI agent. So it's only natural
that John O'Neill, who's -- you know, his whole life
was the FBI, from what I could see -- would want to be
in New York.
NARRATOR: In the New York office, they were still
piecing together the evidence in the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing. They also had new information that bin
Laden had been involved in the shooting down of two
American Black Hawk helicopters in Somalia. The
confession of captured Al Qaeda member Jamal Ahmed
al-Fadl told of Osama bin Laden's efforts to develop
chemical weapons, buy weapons-grade uranium and to
spread the Al Qaeda network into Europe.
O'Neill was working to connect all these dots with the
powerful U.S. attorney Mary Jo White.
MARY JO WHITE, U.S. Atty. So. District of NY '93-'02:
I had a reputation of being fairly autonomous also,
and not being afraid to rattle cages to get things
done, and he had that reputation, too. And so when he
came to New York, he wanted to try to get us both off
on the right foot and, you know, not have those two
cage-rattlers, you know, work at counter-purposes.
NARRATOR: U.S. Attorney White was among the first of
his allies in Manhattan. His forays into the night
added more. He connected with many of them at the
epicenter of the New York scene, Elaine's.
ELAINE KAUFMAN, Owner: He's a lovely man, intelligent,
easy to talk to, very well groomed. He wasn't a
braggart. He was low-key. Because I know some of the
others, they tell you they just saved the whole world
out there. But he never spoke like that.
CHRIS ISHAM: Elaine's has a very hierarchical seating
structure. And sort of the tourists and the peasants
are relegated to the back end of the restaurant, and
you simply don't want to be there. And there are about
seven or eight tables in the front. John always made
sure that he was in one of those front tables because
he understood the importance of being completely
wired, and he felt in order to be wired, he needed to
be in the front of the restaurant, not the back of the
restaurant.
ELAINE KAUFMAN: It's like George Plimpton. I mean,
he's George Plimpton on the job. There's no place that
George can't sit. And so it was with John. He could
sit anyplace he wanted. He was the Big Kahuna.
NARRATOR: O'Neill would return to the office often
after midnight. He might have a scrap of information
or a new name.
CLINT GUENTHER, FBI Agent NYC - Counterterrorism: John
always feared that somehow we would miss something. He
would be after his investigators to make sure they
covered every base, and woe be you if you failed to
cover everything.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's investigators now had more
evidence about one of the conspirators in that Bojinka
plot of Ramzi Yousef. Wali Khan Amin Shah admitted
involvement in a plot to assassinate President
Clinton. The plot had links to bin Laden.
CLINT GUENTHER: Under John's investigative leadership,
he pressed his investigators to try to look for the
ties, look for the -- any connectivity between these
organizations. This larger picture turned out to be Al
Qaeda.
NARRATOR: O'Neill was becoming obsessed, haunted by
the specter of bin Laden.
JOHN P. O'NEILL, Jr.: My dad had a lot of video of
Osama bin Laden. Whatever was out there was actually
in his apartment. He studied him several times,
watched the videos, I know, several times.
VALERIE JAMES: He would watch videotapes. He would
read whatever material he could get his hands on. We
had a fax in the house. People would fax him
information all the time. John would sit in bed or sit
on the couch or wherever and constantly underline
everything.
CHRIS ISHAM: By then, bin Laden was in Afghanistan.
And I organized through some channels to do an
interview with him, which took shape in the early '98
through spring of '98. The interview actually happened
in May of '98 with John Miller.
NARRATOR: And some of O'Neill's information helped
Isham and correspondent John Miller draw up their
questions.
JOHN MILLER, Correspondent, ABC News: I wanted to ask
-- did he either -- Mr. Bin Laden, either finance or
order the World Trade Center bombing, because of the
Ramzi Yousef association? Because of the association
is why I would want to ask that. But would you ask him
now if we could ask that before he starts again?
NARRATOR: O'Neill couldn't wait to get his hands on
the tape.
CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: He wanted to see everything. He
was, well, "I need to see the whole thing. I need to
see the whole interview."
INTERPRETER: He says he doesn't know.
JOHN MILLER: Oh. So [unintelligible] issue. Disregard.
CHRIS ISHAM: I said, "Well, you know, we have this
whole thing about outtakes, and, you know, it -- you
know, it may sound stupid, but we, you know, really
can't give you all the outtakes of the interview." He
says, "No, you don't understand. I have to see the
whole interview." It was like he wasn't taking no for
an answer.
NARRATOR: O'Neill finally saw the entire interview on
the ABC News Web site.
CHRIS ISHAM: He was obsessed by him. I think there's
no question about it. He always knew that there was so
much more that he didn't know, and that's what spooked
him. What spooked him and what really used to drive
him crazy was what he didn't know and how much was out
there that he didn't know.
NEWSCASTER: [August 7, 1998] Two bombs, minutes apart,
exploded without warning Friday outside the U.S.
embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania."
LEWIS SCHILIRO, Director of FBI NYC '98-'00: We had
turned on the TV, watching CNN. And John O'Neill put
it together in relatively short order and was
convinced, in his own mind, that Al Qaeda was behind
that.
MARY JO WHITE: I had the same immediate reaction. What
I did was to call both Lew Schiliro and the attorney
general and I think John O'Neill. And I, in
particular, having been enmeshed in bin Laden and Al
Qaeda, was our immediate reaction.
LEWIS SCHILIRO: And it was really the first time ever
that I began to at least focus in on, really, the
significance of Osama bin Laden.
NARRATOR: Two American embassies had been bombed in
east Africa virtually simultaneously.
MICHAEL SHEEHAN, Chief Counterterrorism, State Dept.
'98-'01: That clearly was the event that changed bin
Laden's profile dramatically because it was such a
major event. Two embassies blown up simultaneously
over 500 miles apart in the continent of Africa was
not expected. Most of the attacks previous to that
were in the Middle East. This was in a part of the
world we didn't expect. Two embassies done
simultaneously showed a great deal of sophistication
in the organization. So this was a major event.
NARRATOR: But at headquarters, the brass were engaged
in a procedural dispute.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
We're in the command center, and people are being
pulled in. I'm over there. There's all sorts of senior
bureau people there. Everybody's coming together. And
the reason this becomes a significant question almost
immediately is because the FBI's got to deploy people
overseas. They're going to deploy people initially to
Kenya and Tanzania. And who's going to be the on-scene
commander?
NARRATOR: O'Neill believed his experience and
expertise made him the obvious choice to lead the
investigation as the on-scene commander.
FRAN TOWNSEND: And he really wanted to roll up his
sleeves and get into it, and wanted to be there and
wanted responsibility. He believed the New York field
office had the greatest depth of expertise of anybody
in the country on this issue. And if it's al-Qaeda,
how could you send anybody else but the people who
know the most?
NARRATOR: But down in the SIOC, there were those who
wanted to cut New York and O'Neill out. On the QT,
Townsend called O'Neill.
FRAN TOWNSEND: And he was -- to say angry,
disappointed, hurt -- there becomes this bureaucratic
arm-wrestle over who's going to be the office of
origin.
NARRATOR: O'Neill desperately needed the help of U.S.
Attorney Mary Jo White.
MARY JO WHITE, U.S. Atty. So. District of NY '93-'02:
He and I were both very adamant that the New York
field agents who were most knowledgeable about bin
Laden and the Al Qaeda organization get over to Africa
as quickly as possible as the investigation was
unfolding because those first few days are often the
most critical to whether you capture somebody or not
or figure out who's involved.
And he and I certainly shared the view that you need
the folks who know what they're looking at in charge
of, or very much in the thick of the investigations.
FRAN TOWNSEND: I'm basically sitting at the SIOC, at
this point, as the attorney general's representative.
And so I'm running back and forth across Pennsylvania
Avenue twice a day to brief her, say, "There is
tremendous consternation about who's going to be the
office of origin." You'd think it would be bigger
things than that but you're -- in the early going,
we're involved in that discussion.
NARRATOR: The attorney general decided to stay out of
it. Fran Townsend and Mary Jo White couldn't win the
argument. And as it happened, O'Neill's other ally,
Deputy Director Bear Bryant, was out of cell phone
range, on vacation.
So the head of the criminal division, one of those men
in Louis Freeh's inner circle, Tom Pickard, was
temporarily in charge. He decided the New York team
would not take the lead in the investigation,
Washington would. And John O'Neill would not get
command.
FRAN TOWNSEND: This is the World Series, and he's
gotten benched. And that's exactly how he feels about
it. And he is very hurt, very upset about it. And
bitter.
NARRATOR: O'Neill hit the phones. He ended up venting
to Bear Bryant.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT, Deputy Director FBI '97-'99: I
said, "You're going to have a stroke." He was so
intense.
INTERVIEWER: This is the first guy you heard the word
Al Qaeda and bin Laden from. Shouldn't he be there?
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: Well, he wasn't.
INTERVIEWER: But that wasn't your decision. I got a
feeling that wasn't your decision.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: Well, he wasn't there.
INTERVIEWER: It wasn't your decision, was it?
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: He wasn't there.
NARRATOR: After a couple of weeks, O'Neill's belief
that Al Qaeda was responsible for the bombings turned
out to be right. Headquarters reversed itself and gave
the investigation to O'Neill's New York team. But
Washington refused to send O'Neill himself. Stuck in
New York, he had to be content to learn as much as
possible long-distance from his agents.
RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism '92-'01:
You'd go into John's office, and on the wall there
would be a chart with lines connecting phone numbers
in the United States and phone numbers in the Middle
East and phone numbers in Africa -- names. This guy
was involved in this case, and he talked to that guy
over in that case.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's agents in east Africa had found
another training manual nearly identical to the one
found in the World Trade Center bombing. One
cooperating witness revealed that bin Laden was
planning to send operatives to the U.S for pilot
training. A computer found in a raid showed hundreds
of targets around the world already surveilled and
approved.
O'Neill's agents identified a man named Mohamed
Rasheed Daoud al-'Owhali. He led them to a safe house
in Yemen that acted as a kind of terrorist telephone
exchange, relaying messages to and from bin Laden in
Afghanistan.
[www.pbs.org: Explore the full map of connections]
RICHARD CLARKE: Certainly, after the embassy bombing
in Africa in '98, it was very obvious that what John
was saying was right, that this was more than a
nuisance, that this was a real threat.
But I don't think everyone came to the understanding
that it was an existential threat. Question was, "You
know, this group is more than a nuisance, but are they
worth going to war with? After all, they've only
attacked two embassies, and maybe that's a cost of
doing business. This kind of thing happens. Yes, we
should spend some time and some energy trying to get
them, but it's not the number-one priority we have."
NARRATOR: O'Neill's message still hadn't gotten
through, and yet he had come to believe Al Qaeda had
infiltrated the United States.
He had studied the videotapes of bin Laden's training
camp in Afghanistan. He knew thousands of Al Qaeda
fighters had been exported throughout the world. His
police contacts in Germany, Spain, Italy were tracing
their movements. But he could not convince
headquarters that they were in the United States.
CLINT GUENTHER, FBI Agent NYC - Counterterrorism: He
fully believed that they had moved in and had cells
here for a long time, that groups were coming in from
various parts of the world. And we couldn't really
find out what they were about, but we could see
movements of groups into this country.
CHRIS ISHAM: John understood that this was a global
operation and that if we were going to get a handle on
this, we had to work very, very closely with liaison
services, such as the British, the Jordanians and the
Egyptians and the Yemenis and the French.
RICHARD CLARKE: What John O'Neill was trying to do was
to get a momentum going in the FBI to look seriously
for those cells, to look for the connections, which,
frankly, most FBI offices were not doing. It was not
one of the priorities of most FBI field offices.
NARRATOR: At headquarters, as he prepared to retire,
Bear Bryant tried one last push of the reorganization
plan he and O'Neill had been talking about for years.
It would emphasize new ways of gathering and passing
on information about groups like Al Qaeda.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: The trouble with the FBI, it
never knew what it knew. I mean, it had information,
but it never got to the right places. And that goes to
automation. That goes to, you know, analysts. It goes
to a lot of things.
NARRATOR: The reform plan meandered up the ladder at
the FBI, through the Justice Department, the Congress
and the White House. But it was never enacted.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: It was never funded. It was just
-- it was put in the back burner somewhere.
INTERVIEWER: By?
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: I don't know. I left in '99. I
left in December of '99. The thing I saw was that it
was never properly funded. Whether it's priorities or
whatever, I don't know. I wasn't there.
[www.pbs.org: Read the complete interview]
NARRATOR: At just this time in New York, a new crisis
was emerging that would eventually get the entire
bureau's attention. O'Neill's international contacts
were on full alert about the upcoming millennium
celebrations, and O'Neill was lobbying for a
full-blown FBI response in the United States.
MARY JO WHITE: The millennium, not only because of
what that represented symbolically -- which, again,
raises its danger value tremendously -- but also
because of intelligence we were getting throughout our
government -- had us all extremely concerned.
NARRATOR: From the New York SIOC, O'Neill and his team
began to track a case that proved his theory that Al
Qaeda had infiltrated the United States. An Algerian
national, Ahmed Ressam, had been arrested on the
border between Canada and the state of Washington.
Among his possessions they found bomb-making material
and maps. He had circled the Los Angeles airport on
this one.
RICHARD CLARKE: We had always talked about the
possibility that there were Al Qaeda cells in the
United States, and we had looked for evidence. And we
had encouraged FBI offices other than John O'Neill's
office in New York to start looking for evidence.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
Anybody who's anybody, who could be anybody related to
this, we're watching. We're -- the entire FBI is
mobilized.
NARRATOR: The agents dug into the details of the plot.
From the plan to blow up the Los Angeles airport,
another trail led from Boston to a planned attack in
Jordan. There were other conspirators in Seattle,
Brooklyn, and Manhattan, where O'Neill was worried
about the massive New Year's Eve celebration in Times
Square.
LEWIS SCHILIRO: Certain documents were found on
Ressam's possession, documents that indicated a New
York connection -- in fact, a pretty strong connection
to New York.
FRAN TOWNSEND: John's frankly terrified. New York
presents a real target to him. He's got the New York
City Police Department, he's got hundreds of agents
working. He's got all kinds of things in his world of
work that he's got to worry about.
NARRATOR: O'Neill personally hit the streets, seeking
fast-track warrants and pushing the investigative
envelope. One of Ressam's co-conspirators lived in New
York. Abdel Meskini was supposed to deliver money and
a cell phone to Ressam. O'Neill's agents arrested him.
MARY JO WHITE: Arrests were made that, had they not
been uncovered, the plot had not been uncovered and
those arrests made, we could have had horrific
tragedies around the millennium.
NEWSCASTER: We have two million people -- two million
people -- compressed in this small area here in
mid-town Manhattan. No incidents in --
NARRATOR: O'Neill was one of those two million people.
If Al Qaeda struck here, this was where he wanted to
be.
FRAN TOWNSEND: We were in the SIOC. The attorney
general was there. And we waited for midnight with
sort of bated breath on the East Coast. And he called
in to the SIOC, and we put him on speakerphone, and he
clearly couldn't have been any more pleased that we
had gotten through it.
LEWIS SCHILIRO: And I remember talking to John shortly
after midnight. There was a sense of accomplishment.
We had just made the arrests in the Ressam spin-off.
And you know, certainly, we believed that we got
everybody that we needed to find, but you know, you're
never really 100 percent sure of that.
RICHARD CLARKE: And so I think a lot of the FBI
leadership for the first time realized that O'Neill
was right, that there probably were Al Qaeda people in
the United States. They realized that only after they
looked at the results of the investigation of the
millennium bombing plot. So by February of 2000, I
think senior people in the FBI were saying, "There
probably is a network here in the United States, and
we have to change the way the FBI goes about finding
that network."
NARRATOR: If the bureau was finally going to
reorganize itself to take on terror, O'Neill wanted
significant influence in that process. He needed a
highly visible, powerful platform. As it happened,
Jimmy Kallstrom's old job, head of the New York
office, was open. O'Neill pulled out all the stops and
made a play for it.
FRAN TOWNSEND: He couldn't stop himself. He
desperately wanted that job. He really wanted that
promotion. And it would have been unlike John to want
something and not really throw himself into it.
NARRATOR: O'Neill aggressively lobbied. But there were
some administrative problems on his record. He'd lost
a bureau cell phone and a Palm Pilot. Then there was
the time his old Buick broke down. Val was with him.
He figured he'd just pop into an FBI safe house to
pick up a bureau car. He'd take her home, and that
would be that. But headquarters called taking the car
"unauthorized use of government property." And letting
Val use the bathroom at the safe house was considered
a security breach.
VALERIE JAMES: John went through a couple of really
bad years here. The first really bad year was in 1999.
And I believe that was the first year that the car
issue came up. And it was hideous. It was horrendous.
NARRATOR: Headquarters initiated a formal inquiry.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT, Deputy Director FBI '97-'99: I
think what happens in the FBI -- it's a very
militaristic society, and you have to -- if you're
being investigated by OPR, Office of Professional
Responsibility, there's a question, they don't want to
promote somebody that's got a cloud over them, even a
minor thing like a vehicle.
NARRATOR: Bear Bryant, O'Neill's biggest supporter at
headquarters, had retired. Louis Freeh promoted his
long-time friend, Tom Pickard, to deputy director. It
was not good news for Agent O'Neill. It was Pickard
who decided O'Neill would not lead the investigation
in east Africa, and now Pickard and Freeh decided John
O'Neill would not get the big job in New York.
CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: John was somebody that the
bureaucrats were not always pleased with because they
felt that he wasn't marching to their tune, that he
was too ambitious and too -- that he operated out of
the box too often. And this was an FBI that believed
very much, under the Freeh regime, of operating within
the box. This was a guy that was constantly pushing
the envelope, when the envelope didn't want to be
pushed. And so the envelope fought back.
NARRATOR: At 48, it looked like the bureaucracy was
sending John O'Neill a message. The old-timers had
seen it all before.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: My daddy always said don't kill
your mavericks. They might save your life some day,
and they're the ones that will always have the great
ideas. So try to take care of them. And John was a
maverick. A brilliant maverick.
NARRATOR: The buzz around the New York office was that
the new boss, Barry Mawn, wasn't keen on keeping
O'Neill around.
BARRY MAWN, Director FBI NYC '00-'02: I had heard
stories that, you know, he was "Mr. New York," that he
was the FBI in New York. And so if you needed anything
or wanted anything, you had to go through John. And he
was also -- I think he enjoyed being -- having the
contacts liaison, being a power broker, the Elaine's.
I think John enjoyed all of that.
NARRATOR: Mawn had all but made up his mind to move
O'Neill out of the New York office.
FRAN TOWNSEND: Barry was a skeptic. He had heard sort
of the headquarters gossip about John O'Neill's style,
But it was funny. I can remember saying to John,
"Barry doesn't stand a chance. If you decide to win
him over, you'll win him over. You just have to -- if
you put your mind to it, you know very well you'll do
it." And I used to tell John, John was his own best
advocate, when he put his mind to it.
BARRY MAWN: There was a knock on the door, and John
was holding two beers. And he said, "Well I understand
you're an Irishman, and you like to drink beer. These
are for you." So I laughed and said, "Well, you got
that correct." And he said, "Well, where are we at?"
referring to the relationship between us.
[www.pbs.org: Read more O'Neill anecdotes]
CHRIS ISHAM: John loved the bureau. He loved the FBI.
And he also felt that there was a lot that he could be
doing for the FBI and that, given the war on terrorism
was escalating, it wasn't in any way getting resolved,
it was getting worse and not better.
BARRY MAWN: He wanted to stay in New York. He said, "I
will be your most loyal supporter, and all I ask in
return is that you be supportive of me in my efforts."
And so I said, "Well, we got a deal. And we'll go
forward." So I -- we went forward, and essentially, he
lived up to his agreement, and I believe I lived up to
my agreement.
FRAN TOWNSEND: Bless Barry. I give him credit. Barry
saw John O'Neill's talent. He saw past the sort of --
the package issue, if you will, the style issue. And
Barry recognized John's enormous contribution and how
bright John was. And Barry came to rely on John.
NARRATOR: As the weeks wore on, and just as that
investigation about the car incident seemed a thing of
the past, headquarters ordered O'Neill to attend a
conference of other agents in Florida.
VALERIE JAMES: We were meeting in Bal Harbor at the
Marriott. John came in. He is just -- I don't remember
seeing John as distraught as he was this night. What
has happened? He told me he left his briefcase in this
room of 150 FBI agents and got a phone call, couldn't
hear on his cell phone, so he just walked outside to
take his call. Walked back in, his briefcase was gone.
He was completely freaked.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's bag contained classified
documents. Taking them out of his FBI office was
against the rules.
FRAN TOWNSEND: It's one of those moments I remember
where I was. I remember what I was doing and because I
could -- John was a -- you know, you used to say he
swaggered. You know, he had all this -- he exuded
self-confidence. And I could hear the fear in his
voice. I could hear his throat tighten. I could hear
he was wound that he had lost -- that this bag was
gone. And he knew -- even if there had been nothing in
it, his sense was, because the bureau had come down
hard on him the time before for something stupid, that
even if it was nothing more than he lost bureau
equipment, he was going to get -- this was going to
become a federal case. This was going to be a big deal
in terms of the bureau, and it was going to be used to
hurt him.
NARRATOR: Hours later, the bag was retrieved.
Fingerprint analysis showed the documents hadn't been
tampered with. But the damage was done.
RICHARDCLARKE: John always wanted to be thought of as
being close to perfect. At the end of any meeting, he
would hang around and say, "How'd I do? What can I do
better next time? What am I doing wrong?" And of
course, he was doing nothing wrong. He was doing
everything spectacularly well. But he always wanted to
do better. He always needed that reassurance.
And for him to be criticized for something like the
suitcase -- the briefcase incident, whatever the truth
value of that incident was, it hurt him a lot because
he always wanted to be thought of as close to perfect
-- perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed -- and didn't
want anybody to think that he was in any way not the
number-one guy in terms of performance.
NARRATOR: At headquarters, they pounced. Upstairs,
they said that O'Neill was getting sloppy, burning the
candle at both ends. Carrying around classified
documents was a serious problem. The FBI's Office of
Professional Responsibility began a criminal
investigation.
BARRY MAWN: I knew it wasn't good. He knew it wasn't
good. He felt that this would probably be used by some
of the detractors -- unnamed detractors at
headquarters that would use this against him.
NARRATOR: O'Neill was in real trouble. He hired a
lawyer and hunkered down to save his job.
FRAN TOWNSEND: He was consumed by this job, and the
job turned on him. When he would make some foolish
mistake, they came down awfully hard on him. Given
what his contribution was, given what he had
sacrificed, there was a sense of entitlement. And it's
a terrible sense of unfairness. "Why? Because you
don't like that I had a drink at Elaine's? You don't
like my suit?" Well, because -- and he really -- he
really felt people -- he didn't -- people above him --
his view was people above him felt threatened by him,
by his expertise, and so didn't really want him
around.
NARRATOR: As the criminal investigation against
O'Neill dragged on inside the FBI, he and his team
began noticing increased telephone activity from that
safe house in Yemen. One intercepted message,
confirmed by millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, said bin
Laden was planning a "Hiroshima-type" event.
O'Neill had his agents paying attention to American
embassies, especially in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and
U.S. military targets because an Egyptian informant
had told them an American warship would be hit by Al
Qaeda.
Then, on October 12th, 2000, Al Qaeda struck. The
guided missile destroyer USS Cole was the target of a
suicide mission. Seventeen sailors died.
BARRY MAWN, Director FBI NYC '00-'02: John came to me
and said "It's Al Qaeda," and I totally agreed with
him. And he said, "You got to get to the director, and
we got to get this so the New York office responds
initially.''
NARRATOR: At headquarters, down in the SIOC, there was
once again strong resistance to the idea of sending
O'Neill and his crew from New York to Yemen. It took
hours for Barry Mawn to convince Director Freeh to let
New York take the lead and to authorize O'Neill as the
on-scene commander.
INTERVIEWER: Washington Headquarters of the FBI happy
that O'Neill was going?
BARRY MAWN: My recollection is that I got questioned
on it. "Is John the best guy to send?" And I had no
hesitancy and said, "Absolutely, he's the best guy to
send."
INTERVIEWER: Why would they have said that?
BARRY MAWN: Well, again, I think it kind of goes back
to a little bit of the history John had with some of
the folks back there, that there was probably some
questioning as, "Well, do we want to send O'Neill?"
And "He does have sharp elbows" or "His style may be
-- " they were concerned that he wasn't the best guy
to go, and that you needed someone more of a diplomat
to -- in my view, to a certain extent, is when you
have a major incident like that, you really don't need
a diplomat at that particular point in time. You need
somebody that knows what to do and is going to do it
and get it done.
NARRATOR: Headquarters gave in to Mawn. This time,
O'Neill was named on-scene commander in charge of the
Yemen investigation.
FRAN TOWNSEND: And he was like a kid. He couldn't have
been any more excited. I can remember him leaving the
office to go to his apartment to pack a bag to go. And
he was so pleased. He said, "This is it for me." You
know, "I needed this. I needed this." And in some
ways, he believed it was a vindication of him, and
that the bag incident wasn't that important, because
if it had been that important, they wouldn't have sent
him, if the bureau thought it was that important.
NARRATOR: O'Neill and the members of his rapid
deployment team immediately headed for Yemen. O'Neill
knew time was of the essence. The Al Qaeda attacks had
been coming more frequently.
CHRIS ISHAM: This was a case that he was really
pushing hard on, that he understood that this wasn't
just a venue where they set off a bomb, that there
were connections between Yemen and east Africa, and
Yemen and Afghanistan, and Yemen and Europe, and that
there were -- this was very much of an important
operational base for these guys, and that if he could
illuminate that base, that he could begin to really
put a dent in this network.
NARRATOR: But when he got to Yemen, O'Neill discovered
how hard his task was going to be.
MICHAEL DORSEY, Naval Criminal Investigative Service:
It's much like living in a 14th-century or a
15th-century country, listening to sporadic gunfire
from AK-47s. And certainly, Yemen was bin Laden's back
yard. That's where he was from. That's where his
family is from. That's where he lived. And we
recognized that. It was very difficult to get
information out of the Yemeni security forces to
actually cooperate with us initially. They were
suspect of the U.S. government being in their
territory and what our ultimate purposes were.
FRAN TOWNSEND: They're in impossible conditions, the
agents. They don't have anyplace to sleep. He's got
agents sleeping on the floor. They're working
ridiculous hours. It's hot as all get-out. And you're
in an impossible -- and it's in a hostile environment.
MICHAEL DORSEY: We had to move in caravans from the
hotel out to the Cole, or from the hotel to some of
the sites where we believed the terrorists and their
support network had been. And those were in caravans
of NCIS-FBI personnel, all armed, surrounded by Yemeni
security force personnel. So these caravans would be
8, 10, 12 cars long. It was certainly announcing our
presence. Any time we went somewhere, everybody in
that city knew who we were and where we were going.
And it gave us an uneasy feeling.
NARRATOR: To protect the hundreds of investigators on
the ground, O'Neill and American military commanders
wanted to show the Yemenis a forceful presence -- guns
ready, perimeters established. But much to O'Neill's
surprise, that approach quickly angered the American
ambassador, Barbara Bodine, who felt his actions were
harming U.S.-Yemeni government relations.
Subject: Amb. Barbara K. Bodine
Age: 53
Career Diplomat
Postings: Hong Kong
Thailand
Iraq
Kuwait
Yemen
RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism '92-'01:
You had an ambassador who wanted to be fully in
control of everything that every American official did
in the country and resented the fact that suddenly
there were hundreds of FBI personnel in the country
and only a handful of State Department personnel. She
wanted good relations with Yemen as the number-one
priority. John O'Neill wanted to stop terrorism as the
number-one priority. And the two conflicted.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
This results in meetings between the attorney general
and State, FBI, C.I.A. and Justice. But Ambassador
Pickering is at it, the undersecretary, and the
attorney general. Things are getting raised to that
kind of a level, this has become such a bone of
contention between them.
RICHARD CLARKE: Almost all of us who were following
the details in Washington, whether we were in the
Justice Department, the FBI, the White House, the
State Department, the Defense Department -- almost all
of us thought that John O'Neill was doing the right
thing.
NARRATOR: But not the higher-ups at the FBI.
BARRY MAWN, Director FBI NYC '00-'02: There may have
been people at FBI headquarters that were going, "See?
I told you so." You know, "John does upset people and
get them upset. And maybe he wasn't the right guy."
But that's -- I mean, that's all childish gossip and
rumoring, as far as I'm concerned.
NARRATOR: But on the ground in Yemen, the law
enforcement agents saw a very different John O'Neill.
MICHAEL DORSEY: I think he developed a real sense of
closeness with the senior Yemeni officials. They
referred to him in Arabic as "Alach [sp?]," which is
"the brother," and oftentimes referred to him as "the
commander" or "your commander." They had a real sense
of appreciation for his seniority in the U.S.
government and for what he represented. And I knew
that they came to trust John.
NARRATOR: For six years at the center of the FBI's
counterterrorism effort, O'Neill and his team had
built the evidence on the mounting bin Laden threat:
failed plots to kill hundreds of Americans in Jordan,
Ressam's explosives headed to LAX, an aborted Al Qaeda
plot to blow up another American warship, the USS The
Sullivans, and now the Cole. The Yemenis finally
agreed to let the FBI join in the interrogation of one
of their most prominent suspects, Fahad al Quso.
O'Neill and his agents believed al Quso knew about bin
Laden's desire to videotape the destruction of the
Cole, and possibly a whole lot more. O'Neill worked
his newly developed Yemeni police officials and old
allies in the CIA.
NARRATOR: He had come to believe that some Yemeni
officials were not being forthcoming about information
from al Quso and other suspects. It was the Khobar
Towers investigation all over again.
But the weeks were taking their toll. O'Neill needed a
break. He'd get back to al Quso after he returned from
New York at the first of the year.
VALERIE JAMES: I have to tell you, when John came home
-- he got home, I think it was two days before
Thanksgiving because he kept telling me he was going
to try to be home for Thanksgiving. He -- John had
dropped 20, 25 pounds.
NARRATOR: In New York, he plotted his return to Yemen.
He had taken a Yemeni police delegation on a tour of
Elaine's and other hotspots. He was working them,
trying to get unfettered access to al Quso and what he
knew. But then he was told he wouldn't be allowed to
return to Yemen. Ambassador Bodine denied his visa.
CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: I mean, John was not rational
on the topic of Ambassador Barbara Bodine. He was -- I
mean, "livid" would be putting it mildly. I mean, one
can't forget that John was -- he very American, but he
was also very Irish.
INTERVIEWER: And that means?
CHRIS ISHAM: That means when he got hot, he got hot.
And he was hot. There's no question about it. I think
he felt that she was on the wrong side.
NARRATOR: Ambassador Bodine would not grant
FRONTLINE's request for an interview. She was quoted
in The New Yorker magazine. "The idea that John or his
people or the FBI were somehow barred from doing their
job is insulting to the U.S. government, which was
working on Al Qaeda before John ever showed up. This
is all my embassy did for 10 months."
For weeks, the ambassador had been making the case
against O'Neill, even lobbying Louis Freeh. Finally,
her accusations had their intended effect.
Headquarters supported her decision not to let O'Neill
back into Yemen.
BARRY MAWN: John was upset. She was bad-mouthing him.
She had caused a stir at headquarters. I actually
think John was more disappointed that our headquarters
didn't back us, as far as sending him back and taking
a stronger stand with the State Department.
Eventually, our headquarters said, "Well, let's try
and work around not having John go back." And so
that's what I had to do.
NARRATOR: So O'Neill would not be in Yemen. The
investigation slowed to a crawl.
MICHAEL SHEEHAN, Chief Counterterrorism, State Dept.
'98-'01: I watched with dismay as the issue of the USS
Cole completely disappeared from the U.S. scene,
completely -- again, in a new administration. It was
just not on their agenda. Clearly, it was not on the
agenda of the Congress, the media or anyone else.
Again, it went into oblivion.
NARRATOR: By spring, intelligence about Al Qaeda
forces in Yemen convinced O'Neill they were about to
target his agents. O'Neill pleaded with Barry Mawn to
pull them out, and Mawn agreed. O'Neill's
investigation in Yemen was effectively over.
[www.pbs.org: More on the FBI, CIA and Yemen]
CHRIS ISHAM: We don't know what would have happened if
John could have done his job in Yemen and had really
had the full back-up to go and to really push in Yemen
and what kind of networks he could have exposed. But
you know, we do know there were Yemenis involved in
the attacks of September 11th. So is it possible that
if he had been able to really open up that network and
really expose that network, that he could have in some
way deterred the tragedy of September 11th? I don't
think we know, but it's sad because we won't know the
answer to that. But I think there is a fighting -- he
would have had had a fighting chance if he'd been able
to do his job.
NARRATOR: By early summer of 2001, other intelligence
services were putting the Bush White House on full
alert. Every single indication was that Al Qaeda was
planning a major attack on the United States.
RICHARD CLARKE: In June of 2001, the intelligence
community issued a warning that a major Al Qaeda
terrorist attack would take place in the next many
weeks. They said they were unable to find out exactly
where it might take place. They said they thought it
might take place in Saudi Arabia. We asked, "Could it
take place in the United States?" They said, "We can't
rule that out."
And so in my office in the White House complex, the
CIA sat, briefed the domestic U.S. federal law
enforcement agencies, Immigration, Federal Aviation,
Coast Guard, Customs -- and the FBI was there, as
well, agreeing with CIA -- told them that we were
entering a period where there was a very high
probability of a major terrorist attack.
NARRATOR: In New York, O'Neill was also convinced Al
Qaeda had picked a target. But he was by now more
marginalized than ever at the FBI. And so in July of
2001, when that memo from the Phoenix office pleading
for investigations of flight schools made its way to
headquarters, it was not passed on to O'Neill or Mawn
in New York, nor was the struggle that August of the
Minnesota office to investigate the alleged 20th
hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui.
The most sophisticated office in the FBI, the office
that, under O'Neill, had been dealing with these
matters for six years, apparently was out of the loop.
CHRIS ISHAM: John had heard the alarm bells, too, and
we used to talk about it. And he knew that there was a
lot of noise out there and that there were a lot of
warnings, a lot of red flags, and that it was at a
similar level that they were hearing before the
millennium, which was an indication that there was
something going on. And yet he felt that he was frozen
out, that he was not in a capacity to really do
anything about it anymore because of his relationship
with the FBI. So it was a source of real anguish for
him.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's after-hours reveries around
Manhattan took on a morose quality. He knew it was
time to go. But where? His friend at the White House,
Dick Clarke, had an idea.
RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism '92-'01:
Shortly after the Bush administration came into
office, the question came, "Well, who would you
recommend to do the terrorism job?" And I came up with
four or five names. The first name that came to mind
was John O'Neill.
NARRATOR: But the job required Senate confirmation.
The FBI would have to endorse him, and O'Neill knew
better than to believe they would. And then, 13 months
after that briefcase incident, with the investigation
still open, a well-placed leak to a newspaper made
sure his government career was over.
FRAN TOWNSEND: The New York Times is now starting to
ask questions about that incident both at the
headquarters level and at the New York field office.
In spite of sort of Jimmy Kallstrom and others trying
to persuade The New York Times that somebody had an
agenda here, this was really sort of ill-motivated, it
was clear that they were going to run with it.
VALERIE JAMES: And that was the final nail in John
O'Neill's coffin that they were going to use to have
him retire.
INTERVIEWER: Did he know who did it?
VALERIE JAMES: He suspected.
INTERVIEWER: Did he confront them?
VALERIE JAMES: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: And what happened?
VALERIE JAMES: It was completely denied. The person
that he felt did it said, "Absolutely not. Wouldn't
want to hurt you in any way, shape or form."
INTERVIEWER: It's been reported that was Tom Pickard.
VALERIE JAMES: That's who John felt it was, Tom
Pickard. And John really never knew. He was out to get
John for a long time, and John never really knew why.
NARRATOR: At the time, Tom Pickard was interim
How could the 9/11 Commission fail to explore the
story of John O'Neill in the context of its
investigation of pre-9/11 activities of the US DoJ,
the FBI and the CIA? What is happening in this
country? What is in those 28 blacked out pages from
the congressional 9/11 report? Even the Saudis have
requested that the incredible shrinking _resident
declassify them? But most people don't remember
that...CONTEXT, my friends, CONTEXT and
CONTINUITY...The LNS distributed this story when it
first came out, here it is again, if the "US
mainstream news media" refuses to provide you the
CONTEXT and the CONTINUITY you need, the LNS will, if
the 9/11 Commission is incapable of opening up this
file, the LNS will..."Out, out damn spot!"
Lawrence Wright, New Yorker: During the next six years, O'Neill became the bureau's most committed tracker of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network of terrorists as they struck against American interests around the world. Brash, ambitious, often full of
himself, O'Neill had a confrontational personality
that brought him powerful enemies. Even so, he was too
valuable to ignore. He was the point man in the
investigation of the terrorist attacks in Saudi
Arabia, East Africa, and Yemen. At a time when the
Clinton Administration was struggling to decide how to
respond to the terrorist threat, O'Neill, along with
others in the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., realized that Al
Qaeda was relentless and resourceful and that its
ultimate target was America itself. In the last days
of his life, after he had taken a new job as the chief
of security for the World Trade Center, he was warning
friends, "We're due."
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/020114fa_FACT1
THE COUNTER-TERRORIST
by LAWRENCE WRIGHT
John O'Neill was an F.B.I. agent with an obsession: the growing threat of Al Qaeda.
Issue of 2002-01-14
Posted 2002-01-14
The legend of John P. O'Neill, who lost his life at
the World Trade Center on September 11th, begins with
a story by Richard A. Clarke, the national coördinator
for counter-terrorism in the White House from the
first Bush Administration until last year. On a Sunday
morning in February, 1995, Clarke went to his office
to review intelligence cables that had come in over
the weekend. One of the cables reported that Ramzi
Yousef, the suspected mastermind behind the first
World Trade Center bombing, two years earlier, had
been spotted in Pakistan. Clarke immediately called
the F.B.I. A man whose voice was unfamiliar to him
answered the phone. "O'Neill," he growled.
"Who are you?" Clarke said.
"I'm John O'Neill," the man replied. "Who the hell are
you?"
O'Neill had just been appointed chief of the F.B.I.'s
counter-terrorism section, in Washington. He was
forty-two years old, and had been transferred from the
bureau's Chicago office. After driving all night, he
had gone directly to headquarters that Sunday morning
without dropping off his bags. When he heard Clarke's
report about Yousef, O'Neill entered the F.B.I.'s
Strategic Information Operations Center (SIOC) and
telephoned Thomas Pickard, the head of the bureau's
National Security Division in New York. Pickard then
called Mary Jo White, the United States Attorney for
the Southern District of New York, who had indicted
Yousef in the bombing case.
One of O'Neill's new responsibilities was to put
together a team to bring the suspect home. It was
composed of agents who were working on the case, a
State Department representative, a medical doctor, a
hostage-rescue team, and a fingerprint expert whose
job was to make sure that the suspect was, in fact,
Ramzi Yousef. Under ordinary circumstances, the host
country would be asked to detain the suspect until
extradition paperwork had been signed and the F.B.I.
could place the man in custody. There was no time for
that. Yousef was reportedly preparing to board a bus
for Peshawar. Unless he was apprehended, he would soon
cross the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, where he would
be out of reach. There was only one F.B.I. agent in
Pakistan at the time, along with several agents from
the Drug Enforcement Administration and the State
Department's diplomatic-security bureau. "Our
Ambassador had to get in his car and go ripping across
town to get the head of the local military
intelligence," Clarke recalled. "The chief gave him
his own personal aides, and this ragtag bunch of
American law-enforcement officials and a couple of
Pakistani soldiers set off to catch Yousef before he
got on the bus." O'Neill, working around the clock for
the next three days, coördinated the entire effort. At
10 A.M. Pakistan time, on Tuesday, February 7th, SIOC
was informed that the World Trade Center bomber was in
custody.
During the next six years, O'Neill became the bureau's
most committed tracker of Osama bin Laden and his Al
Qaeda network of terrorists as they struck against
American interests around the world. Brash, ambitious,
often full of himself, O'Neill had a confrontational
personality that brought him powerful enemies. Even
so, he was too valuable to ignore. He was the point
man in the investigation of the terrorist attacks in
Saudi Arabia, East Africa, and Yemen. At a time when
the Clinton Administration was struggling to decide
how to respond to the terrorist threat, O'Neill, along
with others in the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., realized
that Al Qaeda was relentless and resourceful and that
its ultimate target was America itself. In the last
days of his life, after he had taken a new job as the
chief of security for the World Trade Center, he was
warning friends, "We're due."
"I am the F.B.I.," John O'Neill liked to boast. He had
wanted to work for the bureau since boyhood, when he
watched Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., as the buttoned-down
Inspector Lewis Erskine in the TV series "The F.B.I."
O'Neill was born in 1952 and brought up in Atlantic
City, where his mother drove a cab for a small taxi
business that she and his father owned. After
graduating from Holy Spirit High School, he got a job
as a fingerprint clerk with the F.B.I. During his
first semester in college, he married his high-school
sweetheart, Christine, and when he was twenty their
son, John P. O'Neill, Jr., was born. O'Neill put
himself through a master's program in forensics at
George Washington University by serving as a tour
guide at the F.B.I. headquarters. In 1976, he became a
full-time agent in the bureau's office in Baltimore;
ten years later, he returned to headquarters and
served as an inspector. In 1991, he was named
assistant special agent in charge in the Chicago
office. In 1994, he received the additional assignment
of supervising VAPCON, a national investigation into
violence against abortion providers. The following
year, he transferred to headquarters to become the
counter-terrorism chief.
John Lipka, an agent who met O'Neill during the VAPCON
probe, marvelled at his ability to move so easily from
investigating organized crime and official corruption
to the thornier field of counter-terrorism. "He was a
very quick study," Lipka told me. "I'd been working
terrorism since '86, but he'd walk out of the Hoover
building, flag a cab, and I'd brief him on the way to
the White House. Then he'd give a presentation, and
I'd be shocked that he grasped everything I had been
working on for weeks."
O'Neill entered the bureau in the J. Edgar Hoover era,
and throughout his career he had something of the
old-time G-man about him. He talked tough, in a New
Jersey accent that many loved to imitate. He was
darkly handsome, with black eyes and slicked-back
hair. In a culture that favors discreet anonymity, he
cut a memorable figure. He favored fine cigars and
Chivas Regal and water with a twist, and carried a
nine-millimetre automatic strapped to his ankle. His
manner was bluff and dominating, but he was always
immaculately, even fussily, dressed. One of his
colleagues in Washington took note of O'Neill's
"night-club wardrobe"—black double-breasted suits,
semitransparent black socks, and ballet-slipper shoes.
"He had very delicate feet and hands, and, with his
polished fingernails, he made quite an impression."
In Washington, O'Neill became part of a close-knit
group of counter-terrorism experts which formed around
Richard Clarke. In the web of federal agencies
concerned with terrorism, Clarke was the spider.
Everything that touched the web eventually came to his
attention. The members of this inner circle, which was
known as the Counter-terrorism Security Group
(C.S.G.), were drawn mainly from the C.I.A., the
National Security Council, and the upper tiers of the
Defense Department, the Justice Department, and the
State Department. They met every week in the White
House Situation Room. "John could lead a discussion at
that level," R. P. Eddy, who was an N.S.C. director at
the time, told me. "He was not just the guy you turned
to for a situation report. He was the guy who would
say the thing that everybody in the room wishes he had
said."
In July of 1996, when T.W.A. Flight 800 crashed off
the coast of Long Island, there was widespread
speculation in the C.S.G. that it had been shot down
by a shoulder-fired missile from the shore. Dozens of
witnesses reported having seen an ascending flare that
culminated in an explosion. According to Clarke,
O'Neill, working with the Defense Department,
determined the height of the aircraft and its distance
from shore at the time of the explosion, and
demonstrated that it was out of the range of a Stinger
missile. He proposed that the flare could have been
caused by the ignition of leaking fuel from the
aircraft, and he persuaded the C.I.A. to do a video
simulation of this scenario, which proved to be
strikingly similar to the witnesses' accounts. It is
now generally agreed that mechanical failure, not
terrorism, caused the explosion of T.W.A. Flight 800.
Clarke immediately spotted in O'Neill an obsessiveness
about the dangers of terrorism which mirrored his own.
"John had the same problems with the bureaucracy that
I had," Clarke told me. "Prior to September 11th, a
lot of people who were working full time on terrorism
thought it was no more than a nuisance. They didn't
understand that Al Qaeda was enormously powerful and
insidious and that it was not going to stop until it
really hurt us. John and some other senior officials
knew that. The impatience really grew in us as we
dealt with the dolts who didn't understand."
Osama bin Laden had been linked to terrorism since the
first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993. His name
had turned up on a list of donors to an Islamic
charity that helped finance the bombing, and
defendants in the case referred to a "Sheikh Osama" in
a recorded conversation. "We started looking at who
was involved in these events, and it seemed like an
odd group of people getting together," Clarke
recalled. "They clearly had money. We'd see C.I.A.
reports that referred to 'financier Osama bin Laden,'
and we'd ask ourselves, 'Who the hell is he?' The more
we drilled down, the more we realized that he was not
just a financier—he was the leader. John said, 'We've
got to get this guy. He's building a network.
Everything leads back to him.' Gradually, the C.I.A.
came along with us."
O'Neill worked with Clarke to establish clear lines of
responsibility among the intelligence agencies, and in
1995 their efforts resulted in a Presidential
directive giving the F.B.I. the lead authority both in
investigating and in preventing acts of terrorism
wherever Americans or American interests were
threatened. After the April, 1995, bombing in Oklahoma
City, O'Neill formed a separate section for domestic
terrorism, but he concentrated on redesigning and
expanding the foreign-terrorism branch. He organized a
swap of deputies between his office and the C.I.A.'s
counter-terrorism center, despite resistance from both
agencies.
"John told me that if you put the resources and
talents of the C.I.A.'s counter-terrorism center and
the F.B.I.'s counter-terrorism section together on any
issue, we can solve it—but we need both," Lipka
recalled. In January, 1996, O'Neill helped create a
C.I.A. station, code-named Alex, with a single-minded
purpose. "Its mission was not just tracking down bin
Laden but focussing on his infrastructure, his
capabilities, where he got his funding, where were his
bases of operation and his training centers," Lipka
said. "Many of the same things we are doing now, that
station was already doing then."
The coöperation that O'Neill achieved between the
bureau and the C.I.A. was all the more remarkable
because opinions about him were sharply polarized.
O'Neill could be brutal, not only with underlings but
also with superiors when they failed to meet his
expectations. An agent in the Chicago office who felt
his disapproval told me, "He was smarter than
everybody else, and he would use that fine mind to
absolutely humiliate people."
In Washington, there was one terrorist-related crisis
after another. "We worked a bomb a month," Lipka
recalled. Often, O'Neill would break for dinner and be
back in the office at ten. "Most people couldn't keep
up with his passion and intensity," Lipka said. "He
was able to identify those people who shared his work
ethic, and then he tasked the living shit out of them,
with E-mails and status briefings and phones and
pagers going off all the time, to the point that I
asked him, 'When do you sleep?' " O'Neill began
acquiring nicknames that testified to his
relentlessness, among them the Count, the Prince of
Darkness, and Satan.
But many in the bureau who disliked O'Neill eventually
became devoted followers. He went to extraordinary
lengths to help when they faced health problems or
financial difficulty. "He was our Elvis—you knew when
he was in the house," Kevin Giblin, the F.B.I.'s head
of terrorist warning, recalled.
O'Neill's tenure in the F.B.I. coincided with the
internationalization of crime and law enforcement.
Prior to his appointment as the bureau's
counter-terrorism chief, the F.B.I. had limited its
involvement to operations in which Americans had been
killed. "O'Neill came in with a much more global
approach," Lipka told me. One of his innovations was
to catalogue all the explosives used by terrorists
worldwide. "He thought, When a bomb goes off in the
Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, even though no
Americans were killed, why don't we offer our
assistance, so that we can put that information on a
global forensic database," Lipka said. Since 1984, the
F.B.I. had had the authority to investigate crimes
against Americans abroad, but that mandate had been
handicapped by a lack of coöperation with foreign
police agencies. O'Neill made a habit of entertaining
every foreign cop or intelligence agent who entered
his orbit. He called it his "night job."
"John's approach to law enforcement was that of the
old Irish ward boss to governance: you collect
friendships and debts and obligations, because you
never know when you're going to need them," Clarke
told me. He was constantly on the phone, doing favors,
massaging contacts. By the time he died, he had become
one of the best-known policemen in the world. "You'd
be in Moscow at some bilateral exchange," Giblin
recalled, "and you'd see three or four men approach
and say, in broken English, 'Do you know John
O'Neill?' "
The need to improve relationships with foreign police
agencies became apparent in November, 1995, when five
Americans and two Indians died in the bombing of an
American-run military-training center in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia. The F.B.I. sent over a small squad to
investigate, but the agents had scarcely arrived when
the Saudis arrested four suspects and beheaded them,
foreclosing any opportunity to learn who was behind
the operation.
In the spring of 1996, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, who had
supported a plot by Al Qaeda against American soldiers
in Somalia four years earlier, arrived at the American
Embassy in Asmara, Eritrea. The C.I.A. debriefed him
for six months, then turned him over to the F.B.I.,
which put him in the witness-protection program. Fadl
provided the first extensive road map of the bin Laden
terrorist empire. "Fadl was a gold mine," an
intelligence source who was present during some of the
interviews told me. "He described the network, bin
Laden's companies, his farms, his operations in the
ports." Fadl also talked about bin Laden's desire to
attack Americans, including his ambition to obtain
uranium. The news was widely circulated among members
of the intelligence community, including O'Neill, and
yet the State Department refused to list Al Qaeda as a
terrorist organization.
On June 25, 1996, O'Neill arranged a retreat for
F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents at the bureau's training
center in Quantico, Virginia. "We had hot dogs and
hamburgers, and John let the C.I.A. guys on the firing
range, because they never get to shoot," Giblin
recalled. "Then everyone's beeper went off." Another
explosion in Saudi Arabia, at the Khobar Towers, a
military-housing complex in Dhahran, had killed
nineteen American soldiers and injured more than five
hundred other people, including Saudis. O'Neill
assembled a team of nearly a hundred agents, support
personnel, and members of various police agencies. The
next day, they were on an Air Force transport plane to
Saudi Arabia. A few weeks later, they were joined by
O'Neill and the F.B.I. director, Louis Freeh.
It was evening when the two men arrived in Dhahran.
The disaster site was a vast crater illuminated by
lights on high stanchions; nearby lay charred
automobiles and upended Humvees. Looming above the
debris were the ruins of the housing complex. This was
the largest bomb that the F.B.I. had ever
investigated, even more powerful than the explosives
that had killed a hundred and sixty-eight people in
Oklahoma City in 1995. O'Neill walked through the
rubble, greeting exhausted agents who were sifting the
sand for evidence. Under a tarp nearby, investigators
were gradually reconstructing fragments of the truck
that had carried the bomb.
In the Khobar Towers case, neither the Saudis nor the
State Department seemed eager to pursue a trail of
evidence that pointed to Iranian terrorists as the
likeliest perpetrators. The Clinton Administration did
not relish the prospect of military retaliation
against a country that seemed to be moderating its
anti-Western policies, and, according to Clarke, the
Saudis impeded the F.B.I. investigation because they
were worried about the American response. "They were
afraid that we would have to bomb Iran," I was told by
a Clinton Administration official, who added that that
would have been a likely course of action.
Freeh was initially optimistic that the Saudis would
coöperate, but O'Neill became increasingly frustrated,
and eventually a rift seems to have developed between
the two men. "John started telling Louis things Louis
didn't want to hear," Clarke said. "John told me that,
after one of the many trips he and Freeh took to the
Mideast to get better coöperation from the Saudis,
they boarded the Gulfstream to come home and Freeh
says, 'Wasn't that a great trip? I think they're
really going to help us.' And John says, 'You've got
to be kidding. They didn't give us anything. They were
just shining sunshine up your ass.' For the next
twelve hours, Freeh didn't say another word to him."
Freeh denies that this conversation took place. "Of
course, John and I discussed the results of every trip
at that time," he wrote to me in an E-mail. "However,
John never made that statement to me. . . . John and I
had an excellent relationship based on trust and
friendship."
O'Neill longed to get out of Washington so that he
could "go operational," as he told John Lipka, and
supervise cases again. In January, 1997, he became
special agent in charge of the National Security
Division in New York, the bureau's largest and most
prestigious field office. When he arrived, he dumped
four boxes of Rolodex cards on the desk of his new
secretary, Lorraine di Taranto. Then he handed her a
list of everyone he wanted to meet—"the mayor, the
police commissioner, the deputy police commissioners,
the heads of the federal agencies, religious and
ethnic leaders," di Taranto recalled. Within six
months, O'Neill had met everyone on the list.
"Everybody knew John," R. P. Eddy, who left Washington
in 1999 for a job at the United Nations, told me. "You
would walk into Elaine's or Bruno's with him, and
everyone from the owner to the waiters to the guy who
cleaned the floor would look up. And the amazing thing
is they would all have a private discussion with him
at some point. The waitress wanted tickets to a
Michael Jackson concert. One of the wait staff was
applying for a job with the bureau, and John would be
helping him with that. After a night of this, I
remember saying, 'John, you've got this town wired.'
And he said, 'What's the point of being sheriff if you
can't act like one?' "
O'Neill was soon on intimate terms with movie stars,
politicians, and journalists—what some of his
detractors called "the Elaine's crowd." In the spring
of 1998, one of O'Neill's New York friends, a producer
at ABC News named Christopher Isham, arranged an
interview for a network reporter, John Miller, with
Osama bin Laden. Miller's narration contained
information to the effect that one of bin Laden's
aides was coöperating with the F.B.I. The leak of that
detail created, in Isham's words, "a firestorm in the
bureau." O'Neill, because of his friendship with Isham
and Miller, was suspected of providing the
information, and an internal investigation was
launched. The matter died down after the newsmen
denied that O'Neill was their informant and
volunteered to take polygraphs.
In New York, O'Neill created a special Al Qaeda desk,
and when the bombings of the American embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania occurred, in August, 1998, he was
sure that bin Laden was behind them. "He was pissed,
he was beside himself," Robert M. Blitzer, who was
head of the F.B.I.'s domestic-terrorism section at the
time, remembered. "He was calling me every day. He
wanted control of that investigation." O'Neill
persuaded Freeh to let the New York office handle the
case, and he eventually dispatched nearly five hundred
investigators to Africa. Mary Jo White, whose
prosecuting team subsequently convicted five
defendants in the case, told me, "John O'Neill, in the
investigation of the bombings of our embassies in East
Africa, created the template for successful
investigations of international terrorism around the
world."
The counter-terrorist community was stunned by the
level of coördination required to pull off the
simultaneous bombings. Even more troubling was the
escalation of violence against civilians. According to
Steven Simon, then a terrorist expert at the N.S.C.,
as many as five American embassies had been
targeted—luck and better intelligence had saved the
others. It was discouraging to learn that, nearly a
year before, a member of Al Qaeda had walked into the
American Embassy in Nairobi and told the C.I.A. of the
bombing plot. The agency had dismissed this
intelligence as unreliable. "The guy was a bullshit
artist, completely off the map," an intelligence
source said. But his warnings about the impending
attacks proved accurate.
Moreover, key members of the Al Qaeda cell that
planned the operation had been living in one of the
most difficult places in the Western world to gain
intelligence: the United States. The F.B.I. is
constrained from spying on American citizens and
visitors without probable cause. Lacking evidence that
potential conspirators were actively committing a
crime, the bureau could do little to gather
information on the domestic front. O'Neill felt that
his hands were tied. "John was never satisfied," one
of his friends in the bureau recalled. "He said we
were fighting a war, but we were not able to fight
back. He thought we never had the tools in place to do
the job."
O'Neill never presumed that killing bin Laden alone
would be sufficient. In speeches, he identified five
tools to combat terrorism: diplomacy, military action,
covert operations, economic sanctions, and law
enforcement. So far, the tool that had worked most
effectively against Al Qaeda was the last one—the
slow, difficult work of gathering evidence, getting
indictments, hunting down the perpetrators, and
gaining convictions.
O'Neill was worried that terrorists had established a
beachhead in America. In a June, 1997, speech in
Chicago, he warned, "Almost all of the groups today,
if they chose to, have the ability to strike us here
in the United States." He was particularly concerned
that, as the millennium approached, Al Qaeda would
seize the moment to dramatize its war with America.
The intelligence to support that hypothesis was
frustratingly absent, however.
On December 14, 1999, a border guard in Port Angeles,
Washington, stopped an Algerian man, Ahmed Ressam, who
then bolted from his car. He was captured as he tried
to hijack another automobile. In the trunk of his car
were four timers, more than a hundred pounds of urea,
and fourteen pounds of sulfate—the makings of an
Oklahoma City-type bomb. It turned out that Ressam's
target was Los Angeles International Airport. The
following day, Jordanian authorities arrested thirteen
suspected terrorists who were believed to be planning
to blow up a Radisson Hotel in Amman and a number of
tourist sites frequented by Westerners. The Jordanians
also discovered an Al Qaeda training manual on CD-ROM.
What followed was, according to Clarke, the most
comprehensive investigation ever conducted before
September 11th. O'Neill's job was to supervise the
operation in New York. Authorities had found several
phone numbers on Ressam when he was arrested. There
was also a name, Ghani, which belonged to Abdel Ghani
Meskini, an Algerian, who lived in Brooklyn and who
had travelled to Seattle to meet with Ressam. O'Neill
oversaw the stakeout of Meskini's residence and spent
much of his time in the Brooklyn command post. "I
doubt he slept the whole month," David N. Kelley, an
assistant United States Attorney and chief of
organized crime and terrorism for the Southern
District, recalled. A wiretap picked up a call that
Meskini had made to Algeria in which he spoke about
Ressam and a suspected terrorist in Montreal. On
December 30th, O'Neill arrested Meskini on conspiracy
charges and a number of other suspected terrorists on
immigration violations. (Meskini and Ressam eventually
became coöperating witnesses and are both assisting
the F.B.I.'s investigation of the September 11th
attacks.)
O'Neill was proud of the efforts of the F.B.I. and the
New York Joint Terrorism Task Force to avert
catastrophe. On New Year's Eve, he and his friend
Joseph Dunne, then the Chief of Department for the New
York City Police, went to Times Square, which they
believed was a highly likely target. At midnight,
O'Neill called friends at SIOC and boasted that he was
standing directly under the giant crystal ball.
After the millennium roundup, O'Neill suspected that
Al Qaeda had sleeper cells buried in America. "He
started pulling the strings in Jordan and in Canada,
and in the end they all led back to the United
States," Clarke said. "There was a general disbelief
in the F.B.I. that Al Qaeda had much of a presence
here. It just hadn't sunk through to the organization,
beyond O'Neill and Dale Watson"—the assistant director
of the counter-terrorism division. Clarke's
discussions with O'Neill and Watson over the next few
months led to a strategic plan called the Millennium
After-Action Review, which specified a number of
policy changes designed to root out Al Qaeda cells in
the United States. They included increasing the number
of Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country;
assigning more agents from the Internal Revenue
Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service
to monitor the flow of money and personnel; and
creating a streamlined process for analyzing
information obtained from wiretaps.
Many in the F.B.I. point to the millennium
investigation as one of the bureau's great recent
successes. A year earlier, O'Neill had been passed
over when the position of assistant director in charge
of national security became available. When the post
of chief of the New York office opened up, in early
2000, O'Neill lobbied fiercely for it. The job went to
Barry Mawn, a former special agent in charge of the
Boston office. As it happened, the two men met at a
seminar just after the decision was announced. "I got
a knock on the door, and there was John holding two
beers," Mawn recalled. O'Neill promised complete
loyalty in return for Mawn's support of his work on
counter-terrorism. "It turns out that supporting him
was a full-time job," Mawn said.
O'Neill had many detractors and very few defenders
left in Washington. Despite occasional disagreements,
Louis Freeh had always supported O'Neill, but Freeh
had announced that he would retire in June, 2001. A
friend of O'Neill's, Jerry Hauer, of the New
York-based security firm Kroll, told me that Thomas
Pickard, who had become the bureau's deputy director
in 1999, was "an institutional roadblock." Hauer
added, "It was very clear to John that Pickard was
never going to let him get promoted." Others felt that
O'Neill was his own worst enemy. "He was always trying
to leverage himself to the next job," Dale Watson
said. John Lipka, who considers himself a close friend
of O'Neill, attributes some of O'Neill's problems to
his flamboyant image. "The bureau doesn't like
high-profile people," he said. "It's a very
conservative culture."
The World Trade Center had become a symbol of
America's success in fighting terrorism, and in
September, 2000, the New York Joint Terrorism Task
Force celebrated its twentieth anniversary in the
Windows on the World restaurant. The event was
attended by representatives of seventeen
law-enforcement agencies, including agents from the
F.B.I. and the C.I.A., New York City and Port
Authority policemen, United States marshals, and
members of the Secret Service. Mary Jo White praised
the task force for a "close to absolutely perfect
record of successful investigations and convictions."
White had served eight years as the United States
Attorney for the Southern District, and she had
convicted twenty-five Islamic terrorists, including
Yousef, six other World Trade Center bombers, the
blind cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and nine of
Rahman's followers, who had planned to blow up the
Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the United Nations
headquarters, and the F.B.I. offices.
O'Neill seemed at ease that night. Few of his
colleagues knew of a troubling incident that had
occurred two months earlier at an F.B.I.
pre-retirement conference in Orlando. During a
meeting, O'Neill had been paged. He left the room to
return the call, and when he came back, a few minutes
later, the other agents had broken for lunch. His
briefcase, which contained classified material, was
missing. O'Neill immediately called the local police,
and they found the briefcase a couple of hours later,
in another hotel. A Montblanc pen had been stolen,
along with a silver cigar cutter and a lighter. The
papers were intact; fingerprint analysis soon
established that they had not been touched.
"He phoned me and said, 'I gotta tell you something,'
" Barry Mawn recalled. O'Neill told Mawn that the
briefcase contained some classified E-mails and one
highly sensitive document, the Annual Field Office
Report, which is an overview of every
counter-terrorist and counter-espionage case in New
York. Mawn reported the incident to Neil Gallagher,
the bureau's assistant director in charge of national
security. "John understood the seriousness of what he
had done, and if he were alive today he'd tell you he
made a stupid mistake," Gallagher told me. Even though
none of the information had been compromised, the
Justice Department ordered a criminal inquiry.
Mawn said that, as O'Neill's supervisor, he would have
recommended an oral reprimand or, at worst, a letter
of censure. Despite their competition for the top job
in New York, Mawn had become one of O'Neill's
staunchest defenders. "He demanded perfection, which
was a large part of why the New York office is so
terrific," Mawn said. "But underneath his manner, deep
down, he was very insecure."
On October 12, 2000, a small boat filled with C4
explosives motored alongside a U.S. destroyer, the
Cole, which was fuelling up off the coast of Yemen.
Two men aboard the small craft waved at the larger
vessel, then blew themselves to pieces. Seventeen
American sailors died, and thirty-nine others were
seriously wounded.
O'Neill knew that Yemen was going to be an extremely
difficult place in which to conduct an investigation.
In 1992, bin Laden's network had bombed a hotel in
Aden, hoping to kill a number of American soldiers.
The country was filled with spies and with jihadis and
was reeling from a 1994 civil war. "Yemen is a country
of eighteen million citizens and 50 million machine
guns," O'Neill reported. On the day the investigators
arrived in Yemen, O'Neill warned them, "This may be
the most hostile environment the F.B.I. has ever
operated in."
The American Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, saw
things differently. In her eyes, Yemen was the poor
and guileless cousin of the swaggering
petro-monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Unlike other
countries in the region, it was a constitutional
democracy—however fragile—in which women were allowed
to vote. Bodine had had extensive experience in Arab
countries. During the Iraqi invasion and occupation of
Kuwait, she had been the deputy chief of mission in
Kuwait City, and she had stayed through the
hundred-and-thirty-seven-day siege of the American
Embassy by Iraqi troops until all the Americans were
evacuated.
Bodine, who is on assignment from the State Department
as diplomat-in-residence at the University of
California at Santa Barbara, contends that she and
O'Neill had agreed that he would bring in a team of no
more than fifty. She was furious when three hundred
investigators, support staff, and marines arrived,
many carrying automatic weapons. "Try to imagine if a
military plane from another country landed in Des
Moines, and three hundred heavily armed people took
over," she told me recently. Bodine recalled that she
pleaded with O'Neill to consider the delicate
diplomatic environment he was entering. She quoted him
as responding, "We don't care about the environment.
We're just here to investigate a crime."
"There was the F.B.I. way, and that was it," she said
to me. "O'Neill wasn't unique. He was simply extreme."
According to Michael Sheehan, who was the State
Department's coördinator for counter-terrorism at the
time, such conflicts between ambassadors and the
bureau are not unusual, given their differing
perspectives; however, Bodine had been given clear
instructions from the outset of the investigation. "I
drafted a cable under [then Secretary of State]
Madeleine Albright's signature saying that there were
three guiding principles," Sheehan said. "The highest
priorities were the immediate safety of American
personnel and the investigation of the attack. No. 3
was maintaining a relationship with the government of
Yemen— but only to support those objectives."
O'Neill's investigators were billeted three or four to
a room in an Aden hotel. "Forty-five F.B.I. personnel
slept on mats on the ballroom floor," he later
reported. He set up a command post on the eighth
floor, which was surrounded by sandbags and protected
by a company of fifty marines.
O'Neill spent much of his time coaxing the Yemeni
authorities to coöperate. To build a case that would
hold up in American courts, he wanted his agents
present during interrogations by local authorities, in
part to insure that none of the suspects were
tortured. He also wanted to gather eyewitness
testimony from residents who had seen the explosion.
Both the Yemeni authorities and Bodine resisted these
requests. "You want a bunch of six-foot-two
Irish-Americans to go door-to-door?" Bodine remembers
saying to O'Neill. "And, excuse me, but how many of
your guys speak Arabic?"
There were only half a dozen Arabic speakers in the
F.B.I. contingent, and even O'Neill acknowledged that
their competence was sometimes in question. On one
occasion, he complained to a Yemeni intelligence
officer, "Getting information out of you is like
pulling teeth." When his comment was translated, the
Yemeni's eyes widened. The translator had told him,
"If you don't give me the information I want, I'm
going to pull out your teeth."
When O'Neill expressed his frustration to Washington,
President Clinton sent a note to President Ali
Abdullah Saleh. It had little effect. According to
agents on the scene, O'Neill's people were never given
the authority they needed for a proper investigation.
Much of their time was spent on board the Cole,
interviewing sailors, or lounging around the
sweltering hotel. Some of O'Neill's requests for
evidence mystified the Yemenis. They couldn't
understand, for instance, why he was demanding a hat
worn by one of the conspirators, which O'Neill wanted
to examine for DNA evidence. Even the harbor sludge,
which contained residue from the bomb, was off limits
until the bureau paid the Yemeni government a million
dollars to dredge it.
There were so many perceived threats that the agents
often slept in their clothes and with their guns at
their sides. Bodine thought that much of this fear was
overblown. "They were deeply suspicious of everyone,
including the hotel staff," she told me. She assured
O'Neill that gunfire outside the hotel was probably
not directed at the investigators but was simply the
noise of wedding celebrations. Still, she added that,
for the investigators' own safety, she wanted to lower
the bureau's profile by reducing the number of agents
and stripping them of heavy weapons. Upon receiving a
bomb threat, the investigators evacuated the hotel and
moved to an American vessel, the U.S.S. Duluth. After
that, they had to request permission just to come
ashore.
Relations between Bodine and O'Neill deteriorated to
the point that Barry Mawn flew to Yemen to assess the
situation. "She represented that John was insulting,
and not getting along well with the Yemenis," he
recalled. Mawn talked to members of the F.B.I. team
and American military officers, and he observed
O'Neill's interactions with Yemeni authorities. He
told O'Neill that he was doing "an outstanding job."
On Mawn's return, he reported favorably on O'Neill to
Freeh, adding that Bodine was his "only detractor."
An ambassador, however, has authority over which
Americans are allowed to stay in a foreign country. A
month after the investigation began, Assistant
Director Dale Watson told the Washington Post,
"Sustained cooperation" with the Yemenis "has enabled
the F.B.I. to further reduce its in-country presence.
. . . The F.B.I. will soon be able to bring home the
F.B.I.'s senior on-scene commander, John O'Neill." It
appeared to be a very public surrender. The same day,
the Yemeni Prime Minister told the Post that no link
had been discovered between the Cole bombers and Al
Qaeda.
The statement was premature, to say the least. In
fact, it is possible that some of the planning for the
Cole bombing and the September 11th attacks took place
simultaneously. It is now believed that at least two
of the suspected conspirators in the Cole bombing had
attended a meeting of alleged bin Laden associates in
Malaysia, in January, 2000. Under C.I.A. pressure,
Malaysian authorities had conducted a surveillance of
the gathering, turning up a number of faces but, in
the absence of wiretaps, nothing of what was said. "It
didn't seem like much at the time," a Clinton
Administration official told me. "None of the faces
showed up in our own files." Early last year, the
F.B.I. targeted the men who were present at the
Malaysia meeting as potential terrorists. Two of them
were subsequently identified as hijackers in the
September 11th attacks.
After two months in Yemen, O'Neill came home feeling
that he was fighting the counter-terrorism battle
without support from his own government. He had made
some progress in gaining access to evidence, but so
far the investigation had been a failure. Concerned
about continuing threats against the remaining F.B.I.
investigators, he tried to return in January of 2001.
Bodine denied his application to reënter the country.
She refuses to discuss that decision. "Too much is
being made of John O'Neill's being in Yemen or not,"
she told me. "John O'Neill did not discover Al Qaeda.
He did not discover Osama bin Laden. So the idea that
John or his people or the F.B.I. were somehow barred
from doing their job is insulting to the U.S.
government, which was working on Al Qaeda before John
ever showed up. This is all my embassy did for ten
months. The fact that not every single thing John
O'Neill asked for was appropriate or possible does not
mean that we did not support the investigation."
After O'Neill's departure, the remaining agents,
feeling increasingly vulnerable, retreated to the
American Embassy in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. In
June, the Yemeni authorities arrested eight men who
they said were part of a plot to blow up the Embassy.
New threats against the F.B.I. followed, and Freeh,
acting upon O'Neill's recommendation, withdrew the
team entirely. Its members were, he told me, "the
highest target during this period." Bodine calls the
pullout "unconscionable." In her opinion, there was
never a specific, credible threat against the bureau.
The American Embassy, Bodine points out, stayed open.
But within days American military forces in the Middle
East were put on top alert.
Few people in the bureau knew that O'Neill had a wife
and two children (John, Jr., and his younger sister,
Carol) in New Jersey, who did not join him when he
moved to Chicago, in 1991. In his New York office, the
most prominent pictures were not family photographs
but French Impressionist prints. On his coffee table
was a book about tulips, and his office was always
filled with flowers. He was a terrific dancer, and he
boasted that he had been on "American Bandstand" when
he was a teen-ager. Some women found him irresistibly
sexy. Others thought him a cad.
Shortly after he arrived in Chicago, O'Neill met
Valerie James, a fashion sales director, who was
divorced and was raising two children. Four years
later, when he transferred to headquarters, in
Washington, he also began seeing Anna DiBattista, who
worked for a travel agency. Then, when he moved to New
York, Valerie James joined him. In 1999, DiBattista
moved to New York to take a new job, complicating his
life considerably. His friends in Chicago and New York
knew Valerie, and his friends in Washington knew Anna.
If his friends happened to see him in the company of
the "wrong" woman, he pledged them to secrecy.
On holidays, O'Neill went home to New Jersey to visit
his parents and to see his children. Only John P.
O'Neill, Jr., who is a computer expert for the
credit-card company M.B.N.A., in Wilmington, Delaware,
agreed to speak to me about his father. His remarks
were guarded. He described a close relationship—"We
talked a few times a week"—but there are parts of his
father's past that he refuses to discuss. "My father
liked to keep his private life private," he said.
Both James and DiBattista remember how O'Neill would
beg for forgiveness and then promise better times.
James told me, "He'd say, 'I just want to be loved,
just love me,' but you couldn't really trust him, so
he never got the love he asked for."
The stress of O'Neill's tangled personal life began to
affect his professional behavior. One night, he left
his Palm Pilot in Yankee Stadium; it was filled with
his police contacts all around the world. On another
occasion, he left his cell phone in a cab. In the
summer of 1999, he and James were driving to the
Jersey shore when his Buick broke down near the
Meadowlands. As it happened, his bureau car was parked
nearby, at a secret office location, and O'Neill
switched cars. One of the most frequently violated
rules in the bureau is the use of an official vehicle
for personal reasons, and O'Neill's infraction might
have been overlooked had he not let James enter the
building to use the bathroom. "I had no idea what it
was," she told me. Still, when the F.B.I. learned
about the violation, apparently from an agent who had
been caught using the site as an auto-repair shop,
O'Neill was reprimanded and docked fifteen days' pay.
He regarded the bureau's action as part of a pattern.
"The last two years of his life, he got very
paranoid," James told me. "He was convinced there were
people out to get him."
In March, 2001, Richard Clarke asked the
national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, for a job
change; he wanted to concentrate on computer security.
"I was told, 'You've got to recommend somebody similar
to be your replacement,' " Clarke recalled. "I said,
'Well, there's only one person who would fit that
bill.' " For months, Clarke tried to persuade O'Neill
to become a candidate as his successor.
O'Neill had always harbored two aspirations—to become
a deputy director of the bureau in Washington or to
take over the New York office. Freeh was retiring in
June, so there were likely to be some vacancies at the
top, but the investigation into the briefcase incident
would likely block any promotion in the bureau.
O'Neill viewed Clarke's job as, in many ways, a
perfect fit for him. But he was financially pressed,
and Clarke's job paid no more than he was making at
the F.B.I. Throughout the summer, O'Neill refused to
commit himself to Clarke's offer. He talked about it
with a number of friends but became alarmed when he
thought that headquarters might hear of it. "He called
me in a worked-up state," Clarke recalled. "He said
that people in the C.I.A. and elsewhere know you are
considering recommending me for your job. You have to
tell them it's not true." Clarke dutifully called a
friend in the agency, even though O'Neill still wanted
to be a candidate for the position.
In July, O'Neill heard of a job opening in the private
sector which would pay more than twice his government
salary—that of chief of security for the World Trade
Center. Although the Justice Department dropped its
inquiry into the briefcase incident, the bureau was
conducting an internal investigation of its own.
O'Neill was aware that the Times was preparing a story
about the affair, and he learned that the reporters
also knew about the incident in New Jersey involving
James and had classified information that probably
came from the bureau's investigative files.The leak
seemed to be timed to destroy O'Neill's chance of
being confirmed for the N.S.C. job. He decided to
retire.
O'Neill suspected that the source of the information
was either Tom Pickard or Dale Watson. The antagonism
between him and Pickard was well known. "I've got a
pretty good Irish temper and so did John," Pickard,
who retired last November, told me. But he insisted
that their differences were professional, not
personal. The leak was "somebody being pretty vicious
to John," but Pickard maintained that he did not do
it. "I'd take a polygraph to it," he said. Watson told
me, "If you're asking me who leaks F.B.I. information,
I have no idea. I know I don't, and I know that Tom
Pickard doesn't, and I know that the director
doesn't." For all the talk about polygraphs, the
bureau ruled out an investigation into the source of
the leak, despite an official request by Barry Mawn,
in New York.
Meanwhile, intelligence had been streaming in
concerning a likely Al Qaeda attack. "It all came
together in the third week in June," Clarke said. "The
C.I.A.'s view was that a major terrorist attack was
coming in the next several weeks." On July 5th, Clarke
summoned all the domestic security agencies—the
Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard,
Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
and the F.B.I.—and told them to increase their
security in light of an impending attack.
On August 19th, the Times ran an article about the
briefcase incident and O'Neill's forthcoming
retirement, which was to take place three days later.
There was a little gathering for coffee as he packed
up his office.
When O'Neill told ABC's Isham of his decision to work
at the Trade Center, Isham had said jokingly, "At
least they're not going to bomb it again." O'Neill had
replied, "They'll probably try to finish the job." On
the day he started at the Trade Center—August 23rd—the
C.I.A. sent a cable to the F.B.I. saying that two
suspected Al Qaeda terrorists were already in the
country. The bureau tried to track them down, but the
addresses they had given when they entered the country
proved to be false, and the men were never located.
When he was growing up in Atlantic City, O'Neill was
an altar boy at St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church. On
September 28th, a week after his body was found in the
rubble of the World Trade Center, a thousand mourners
gathered at St. Nicholas to say farewell. Many of them
were agents and policemen and members of foreign
intelligence services who had followed O'Neill into
the war against terrorism long before it became a
rallying cry for the nation. The hierarchy of the
F.B.I. attended, including the now retired director
Louis Freeh. Richard Clarke, who says that he had not
shed a tear since September 11th, suddenly broke down
when the bagpipes played and the casket passed by.
O'Neill's last weeks had been happy ones. The moment
he left the F.B.I., his spirits had lifted. He talked
about getting a new Mercedes to replace his old Buick.
He told Anna that they could now afford to get
married. On the last Saturday night of his life, he
attended a wedding with Valerie, and they danced
nearly every number. He told a friend within Valerie's
hearing, "I'm gonna get her a ring."
On September 10th, O'Neill called Robert Tucker, a
friend and security-company executive, and arranged to
get together that evening to talk about security
issues at the Trade Center. Tucker met O'Neill in the
lobby of the north tower, and the two men rode the
elevator up to O'Neill's new office, on the
thirty-fourth floor. "He was incredibly proud of what
he was doing," Tucker told me. Then they went to a bar
at the top of the tower for a drink. Afterward, they
headed uptown to Elaine's, where they were joined by
their friend Jerry Hauer. Around midnight, the three
men dropped in on the China Club, a night spot in
midtown. "John made the statement that he thought
something big was going to happen," Hauer recalled.
Valerie James waited up for O'Neill. He didn't come in
until 2:30 A.M. "The next morning, I was frosty," she
recalled. "He came into my bathroom and put his arms
around me. He said, 'Please forgive me.' " He offered
to drive her to work, and dropped her off at
eight-thirteen in the flower district, where she had
an appointment, and headed to the Trade Center.
At 8:46 A.M., when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed
into the north tower, John P. O'Neill, Jr., was on a
train to New York, to install some computer equipment
and visit his father's new office. From the window of
the train he saw smoke coming from the Trade Center.
He called his father on his cell phone. "He said he
was O.K. He was on his way out to assess the damage,"
John, Jr., recalled.
Valerie James was arranging flowers in her office when
"the phones started ringing off the hook." A second
airliner had just hit the south tower. "At
nine-seventeen, John calls," James remembered. He
said, "Honey, I want you to know I'm O.K. My God, Val,
it's terrible. There are body parts everywhere. Are
you crying?" he asked. She was. Then he said, "Val, I
think my employers are dead. I can't lose this job."
"They're going to need you more than ever," she told
him.
At nine-twenty-five, Anna DiBattista, who was driving
to Philadelphia on business, received a call from
O'Neill. "The connection was good at the beginning,"
she recalled. "He was safe and outside. He said he was
O.K. I said, 'Are you sure you're out of the
building?' He told me he loved me. I knew he was going
to go back in."
Wesley Wong, an F.B.I. agent who had known O'Neill for
more than twenty years, raced over to the north tower
to help set up a command center. "John arrived on the
scene," Wong recalled. "He asked me if there was any
information I could divulge. I knew he was now
basically an outsider. One of the questions he asked
was 'Is it true the Pentagon has been hit?' I said,
'Gee, John, I don't know. Let me try to find out.' At
one point, he was on his cell phone and he was having
trouble with the reception and started walking away. I
said, 'I'll catch up with you later.' "
Wong last saw O'Neill walking toward the tunnel
leading to the second tower.
Was Tuesday, April 13, 2004 the last chance we had of
getting to the sordid truth? Here is Greg Palast's
piece run by the Guardian and the BBC in November of
2001. How could the 9/11 Commission hold public
hearings on the pre-9/11 actitivies of US DoJ, the FBI
and the CIA and not explore the story of John O'Neill?
What is happening in this country? The whole damn sham
could have been revealed on Tuesday, April 13, 2004?
Instead, John Ashcroft (R-Misery) slimed a 9/11
Commissioner and possibly perjured himself and then
the incredible shrinking _resident went on prime time
TV in a pretend press conference to tell us all that
the "Almighty" wants US soldiers to die for the
"freedom" of the Iraqis in the incredible shrinking
_resident's foolish military adventure...What is
happening in this country?
Greg Palast: They said the restrictions became worse
after the Bush administration took over this year. The
intelligence agencies had been told to "back off" from
investigations involving other members of the Bin
Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi
links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by
Pakistan.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.gregpalast.com/printerfriendly.cfm?artid=103
FBI AND US SPY AGENTS SAY BUSH SPIKED BIN LADEN PROBES BEFORE 11 SEPTEMBER
The Guardian (London)
Wednesday, November 7, 2001
Hmmm, in light of the President's "Press Conference"
this week, the award winning article below, from the
Guardian, details what George "Dubya" Bush knew and
when he forgot it!
---------------------------
2001 Project Censored Award Winner
Watch Greg Palast's Special Report for Newsnight
Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis before
September 11
by Greg Palast and David Pallister
FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington
say they were prevented for political reasons from
carrying out full investigations into members of the
Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist
attacks of September 11.
US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for
their wholesale failure to predict the catastrophe at
the World Trade Centre. But some are complaining that
their hands were tied.
FBI documents shown on BBC Newsnight last night and
obtained by the Guardian show that they had earlier
sought to investigate two of Osama bin Laden's
relatives in Washington and a Muslim organisation, the
World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), with which they
were linked.
The FBI file, marked Secret and coded 199, which means
a case involving national security, records that
Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in Washington, had
originally had a file opened on him "because of his
relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth -
a suspected terrorist organisation".
WAMY members deny they have been involved with
terrorist activities, and WAMY has not been placed on
the latest list of terrorist organisations whose
assets are being frozen.
Abdullah, who lived with his brother Omar at the time
in Falls Church, a town just outside Washington, was
the US director of WAMY, whose offices were in a
basement nearby.
But the FBI files were closed in 1996 apparently
before any conclusions could be reached on either the
Bin Laden brothers or the organisation itself.
High-placed intelligence sources in Washington told
the Guardian this week: "There were always constraints
on investigating the Saudis".
They said the restrictions became worse after the Bush
administration took over this year. The intelligence
agencies had been told to "back off" from
investigations involving other members of the Bin
Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi
links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by
Pakistan.
"There were particular investigations that were
effectively killed."
Only after the September 11 attacks was the stance of
political and commercial closeness reversed towards
the other members of the large Bin Laden clan, who
have classed Osama bin Laden as their "black sheep".
Yesterday, the head of the Saudi-based WAMY's London
office, Nouredine Miladi, said the charity was totally
against Bin Laden's violent methods. "We seek social
change through education and cooperation, not force."
He said Abdullah bin Laden had ceased to run WAMY's US
operation a year ago.
Neither Abdullah nor Omar bin Laden could be contacted
in Saudi Arabia for comment.
WAMY was founded in 1972 in a Saudi effort to prevent
the "corrupting" ideas of the west ern world
influencing young Muslims. With official backing it
grew to embrace 450 youth and student organisations
with 34 offices worldwide.
Its aim was to encourage "concerned Muslims to take up
the challenge by arming the youth with sound
understanding of Islam, guarding them against
destructive ideologies, and instilling in them
level-headed wisdom".
In Britain it has 20 associated organisations, many
highly respectable.
But as long as 10 years ago it was named as a discreet
channel for public and private Saudi donations to
hardline Islamic organisations. One of the recipients
of its largesse has been the militant Students Islamic
Movement of India, which has lent support to
Pakistani-backed terrorists in Kashmir and seeks to
set up an Islamic state in India.
Since September 11 WAMY has been investigated in the
US along with a number of other Muslim charities.
There have been several grand jury investigations but
no findings have been made against any of them.
Current FBI interest in WAMY is shown in their agents'
interrogation of a radiologist from San Antonio,
Texas, Dr Al Badr al-Hazmi, who was arrested on
September 12 and released without charge two weeks
later. He had the same surname as two of the plane
hijackers.
He was also questioned about his contacts with
Abdullah bin Laden at the US WAMY office.
Mr Al-Hazmi said that he had made phone calls to
Abdullah bin Laden in 1999 trying to obtain books and
videotapes about Islamic teachings for the Islamic
Centre of San Antonio.
To view the BBC television broadcast of the Palast
investigation, go to http://www.GregPalast.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,589168,00.html
Another US soldier has died today in Iraq. At least 89 US soldiers have died in the last two weeks. For what? The incredible shrinking _resident's performance in his prime time press conference last night was very disturbing. Even in that tightly scripted event the disconnect with reality was obvious. And the performance of the "White House press corp"? Oh, please...Three thousand innocent civilians died on 9/11 due in large part to gross incompetence, criminal negligence or worse at the White House. Almost 700 US soldiers have died so far in a foolish military adventure. Afghanistan has been left to sink deeper into anarchy. The US federal coffers have been looted. The EPA has been prostituted. Our role as the leader of a strong and vibrant Western alliance has been forfeited. How different the country might be this one morning if any one of those craven, hand-picked "journalists" had simply departed from the script and asked him a real, substantive and sharp-edged question about 9/11 or Iraq, and the next handpicked "journalist" had also departed from the script and asked a real, substantive and sharp-edged follow-up to the preceeding "journalist"? Too much to expect I guess...Perhaps we also expect too much from the 9/11 Commission. Its mysterious hands-off approach to the testimony of John Ashcroft (R-Misey) was also deeply disturbing. There is however some hope for the 9/11 Commission. They may be holding their fire. They may have escaped a trap yesterday. It is conceivable that they will lower the boom in their final report -- due in July. Indeed, it is inconceivable that they won't. If they don't, their own integrity must be challenged. The US electorate however is not going to kow-tow so easily, the US electorate is not going to be so genteel...There is an Uprising coming at the ballot box...if it is allowed to happen...Meanwhile, here is another name to be scrawled on the John O'Neill Wall of Heroes: Army Lt. Col. Antulio J. Echevarria of the U.S.
Army War College. Will you see him on SeeNotNews tonight? I doubt it. And why? You know the sad answer...It's the Media, Stupid.
David Wood, Newhouse News Service: In a broadside
fired at the conduct of the war in Iraq, a senior Army
strategist has accused the Bush administration of
seeking to win "quickly and on the cheap" while
ignoring the more critical strategic aim of creating a
stable, democratic nation. While the United States
easily won the initial battles that toppled Saddam
Hussein a year ago, the administration "either
misunderstood or, worse, wished away" the difficulties
of transforming that victory into the larger political
goal, Army Lt. Col. Antulio J. Echevarria of the U.S.
Army War College writes in a new paper...Many officers
still are rankled by the treatment of former Army
Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who last spring was
sharply criticized in public by Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for suggesting the occupation
would require significantly more troops than the
initial war.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0414-02.htm
Published on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 by the Newhouse
News Service
Army Strategist Criticizes Bush Administration Conduct of Iraq War
by David Wood
WASHINGTON -- In a broadside fired at the conduct of
the war in Iraq, a senior Army strategist has accused
the Bush administration of seeking to win "quickly and
on the cheap" while ignoring the more critical
strategic aim of creating a stable, democratic nation.
While the United States easily won the initial battles
that toppled Saddam Hussein a year ago, the
administration "either misunderstood or, worse, wished
away" the difficulties of transforming that victory
into the larger political goal, Army Lt. Col. Antulio
J. Echevarria of the U.S. Army War College writes in a
new paper.
President Bush and other senior officials have
consistently cited this larger context for intervening
in Iraq: establishing democracy there as a foothold to
transform the Middle East and win the global war on
terrorism.
Many officers still are rankled by the treatment of
former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who
last spring was sharply criticized in public by Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for suggesting the
occupation would require significantly more troops
than the initial war.
Yet the Pentagon's civilian leadership, centered in
the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
focused "on achieving rapid military victories" with a
force "equipped only to win battles, not wars,"
Echevarria, director of national security studies at
the War College's Strategic Studies Institute, writes
in the paper published in March.
The military force that invaded Iraq a year ago
"proved insufficient to provide the stabilization
necessary for political and economic reconstruction to
begin," he writes. As a result, "the successful
accomplishment of the administration's goal of
building a democratic government in Iraq, for example,
is still in question, with an insurgency growing
rapidly."
The White House National Security Council and the
Pentagon declined to comment.
The paper, posted on the Strategic Studies Institute's
Web site, carries the standard warning that the views
are Echevarria's own and "do not necessarily reflect
the official policy or position of the Department of
the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.
Government."
While the paper specifically criticizes the Bush
administration, Echevarria said in an interview that
he wrote about the administration's approach in a
broader context. "As a historian, I am looking at a
longer trend than just the immediate situation," he
said. Both the problem and potential solutions "go
beyond the Bush administration."
Col. John R. Martin, deputy director of the Strategic
Studies Institute, stressed that the study "covers
multiple administrations." By definition, he added,
strategic analysis focuses on problems -- not on
successes.
But the critique reflects frustration among some
active-duty and retired officers about how Rumsfeld
and his top advisers seized control of planning for
and execution of the invasion and occupation. Indeed,
Echevarria said the reaction to his paper from within
the Army "has been pretty positive."
Many officers still are rankled by the treatment of
former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who
last spring was sharply criticized in public by Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for suggesting the
occupation would require significantly more troops
than the initial war. At Rumsfeld's direction, the
number was whittled back, with Rumsfeld and other
senior officials arguing that "shock and awe" would
collapse any opposition and the Iraqi people, as Vice
President Dick Cheney said in a March 16, 2003
interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," would greet U.S.
troops "as liberators."
Military officers, by tradition and temperament, are
reluctant to criticize the civilian leadership,
especially in wartime.
"I know of the frustration of dealing with the
ideologues in the Pentagon," said retired Army Maj.
Gen. William L. Nash, a West Pointer who commanded an
armored brigade in Desert Storm and led U.S. troops
into Bosnia in 1996. "But these guys are very loyal
and they are not going to grumble."
Nash and others argue that the U.S. campaign in Iraq
has gotten off track by focusing on short-term
military problems.
For example, U.S. Marines won tactical battles in
Fallujah last week, systematically sweeping city
blocks of insurgents. But the battles inevitably cost
civilian lives and, judging by editorials in the Arab
press, eroded American legitimacy. At one point the
Web site of the popular Arab satellite television
station, Al-Jazeera, featured what it said were
photographs of children killed by American weapons.
Gen. John Abizaid, overall U.S. military commander in
the region, seemed to recognize the costs of negative
press when he complained Monday that Arab media were
portraying the Marines' actions "as purposefully
targeting civilians."
"They have not been truthful in their reporting,"
Abizaid said in a press briefing. "American forces are
doing their very best to protect civilians."
Echevarria, a West Point graduate with M.A. and Ph.D.
degrees in history from Princeton University, served
as operations officer of a cavalry squadron, among
other assignments, and has written widely on strategy.
Historically, the American military has tended to "shy
away" from the difficult process of turning military
battlefield triumphs into strategic successes, he
writes in his paper.
His words reflect the work of the late Army combat
officer and strategist Harry Summers Jr., who bitterly
observed to a North Vietnamese officer after the
Vietnam War that "you never defeated us on the
battlefield." That is so, the North Vietnamese
replied, "but it is also irrelevant."
As they struggled to understand the lessons of
Vietnam, Summers and others came to recognize that the
concentration on individual battles neglected the
building and defending of a progressive democratic
government in South Vietnam.
In both Afghanistan and Iraq, Echevarria writes, the
American effort has mistakenly "placed more emphasis
on destroying enemy forces than securing population
centers and critical infrastructure and maintaining
order."
During planning for Iraq, he writes, "senior military
officials argued that, while a small coalition force
moving rapidly and supported by adequate firepower
might well defeat the Iraqi army, a larger force would
still be necessary for the ensuing stability
operations." Yet Rumsfeld and other senior
administration officials "dismissed such arguments as
old-think or perceived them as foot-dragging by a
military perhaps grown too accustomed to resisting
civilian authority."
Fixing this long-term problem, Echevarria suggests,
requires rebalancing the roles of military
professionals and civilians in strategic
decision-making. Moreover, he writes, the United
States must develop a better capacity for
nation-building and stability alongside its
warfighting skills.
Echevarria does not spell out what needs to be done in
Iraq now.
Nash termed that "a hard question," adding, "it's real
easy to sit here in Washington and give counsel."
"But once you understand that the political objectives
are supreme, you understand that you have to broaden
the political coalition internationally, regionally
and locally" to support nation-building in Iraq, he
said.
"That's hard to do, and even harder if you have to
swallow your pride," Nash said.
© Copyright 2004 Newhouse News Service
###
Here is CONTEXT and CONTINUITY for the 8/6/01 PDB...from the 9/11 Commission and the Washington Post...that's how the system is supposed to work...Unfortunately, there is still a disturbing disconnect to the air waves. The Bush cabal is still controlling the horizontal and the vertical through the complicity and spinelessness of the network news organizations...It's the Media, Stupid...The LNS fears for the fate of the 9/11 Commission, it is becoming increasingly clear that they are trying to do the right thing, and it is increasingly clear that the Bush cabal is out to derail their attempt at national decency and integrity. Yesterday, they baited a trap for the Commission, that's why it let Ashcroft go without excoriating him on his obvious failures pre-9/11...Keep your eyes on the prize...There are two...Look for the 9/11 Commission's final report in July. Don't worry, even if the Bush cabal attempts to hold up its release until after the November election (i.e. for "vetting"), it will get leaked...Look forward to the election itself, it is nothing less than a referendum on the CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER of the incredible shrinking _resident to continue to occupy the office to which he was not elected in 2000.
Dana Priest, Washington Post: By the time a CIA
briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001,
President's Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin
Determined To Strike in US," the president had seen a
stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions.
So had Vice President Cheney and Bush's top national
security team, according to newly declassified
information released yesterday by the commission
investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Busg (again!)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9642-2004Apr13.html
washingtonpost.com
Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings, Reports Preceded August 2001 Memo
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01
By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug.
6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin
Determined To Strike in US," the president had seen a
stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions.
So had Vice President Cheney and Bush's top national
security team, according to newly declassified
information released yesterday by the commission
investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence
community headlined some of those reports "Bin Laden
planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's
plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real."
The intelligence included reports of a hostage plot
against Americans. It noted that operatives might
choose to hijack an aircraft or storm a U.S. embassy.
Without knowing when, where or how the terrorists
would strike, the CIA "consistently described the
upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level,
indicating that they would cause the world to be in
turmoil," according to one of two staff reports
released by the panel yesterday.
"Reports similar to these were made available to
President Bush in the morning meetings with [Director
of Central Intelligence George J.] Tenet," the
commission staff said.
The information offers the most detailed account to
date of the warnings the intelligence community gave
top Bush administration officials, and it provides the
context in which a CIA briefer put together a memo on
Osama bin Laden's activities in the Aug. 6 brief for
Bush.
The government moved on several fronts to counter the
threats. The CIA launched "disruption operations" in
20 countries. Tenet met or phoned 20 foreign
intelligence officials. Units of the 5th Fleet were
redeployed. Embassies went on alert. Cheney called
Crown Prince Adbullah of Saudi Arabia to ask for help.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice asked the
CIA to brief Attorney General John D. Ashcroft about
an "imminent" terrorist attack whose location was
unknown.
"The system was blinking red," Tenet told the
commission in private testimony, the panel's report
noted.
In this context, Bush "had occasionally asked his
briefers whether any of the threats pointed to the
United States," the report said. Or, as one U.S.
senior official more intimately involved in the summer
reporting paraphrased the president's question to the
CIA: "This guy going to strike here?"
A partial answer was contained in the very first
sentence of the Aug. 6 President's Daily Brief:
"Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports
indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct
terrorist attacks in the US."
The document ended with two paragraphs of
circumstantial evidence that al Qaeda operatives might
already be in the United States preparing "for
hijackings or other types of attacks" and said that
the FBI and the CIA were investigating a call to the
U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May
"saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in
the US planning attacks with explosives."
The commission also released new details showing how
the CIA and FBI failures to track the movements of two
hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, and
share information foiled what now appears to have been
the best chance to disrupt the terrorist attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The CIA knew Almihdhar had attended a meeting in Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000 where, officials
later learned, he had helped plan the October 2000
bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Aden, Yemen.
After the meeting, Almihdhar and others went to
Bangkok, but the CIA station in Malaysia did not
inform the CIA station in Bangkok in a timely manner.
Only two months later, in March, did the CIA learn
that Almihdhar had left Bangkok with a visa to the
United States.
In January 2001, two surveillance photographs from the
Kuala Lumpur meeting were shown to an informant who
was helping both the CIA and the FBI. He helped them
understand that Almihdhar was at the meeting with a
man identified as "Khallad" -- who by then was known
to have planned the Cole bombing. But "we found no
effort by the CIA to renew the long-abandoned search
for [Almihdhar] or his traveling companions," the
staff report noted.
Also, contrary to the previous testimony of Tenet, the
CIA did not tell the FBI about this discovery until
late August 2001, according to the report.
Almihdhar had left the United States in June 2000 but
had plans to return.
"It is possible that if, in January 2001, agencies had
resumed their search for him" or had placed him on a
terrorist watch list, "they might have found him"
before he applied for a new visa in June 2001, the
report said. "Or they might have been alerted to him
when he returned to the United States the following
month. We cannot know."
In mid-May 2001, during the height of threat
reporting, a CIA official went back through the
Almihdhar files and discovered that he had a U.S. visa
and that Alhazmi had come to Los Angeles on Jan. 15,
2000. The official concluded "something bad was
definitely up," the staff report said, but he did not
alert his FBI counterparts. "He was focused on
Malaysia."
But the report said he did ask an FBI analyst detailed
to the CIA to review the Kuala Lumpur material again
-- "in her free time." She began on July 24, 2001, and
learned from the Immigration and Naturalization
Service that the two might be in the country. She
drafted a cable asking that Almihdhar and Alhazmi be
put on a terrorist watch list. The FBI analyst,
meanwhile, "took responsibility for the search effort
inside the United States."
The analyst thought Almihdhar was in New York and
informed the FBI's New York field office. But she
labeled her first e-mail to the office "routine,"
which gave the FBI 30 days to respond.
"No one apparently felt they needed to inform higher
levels of management in either the FBI or CIA about
the case," the commission staff said.
The search was assigned to an FBI agent who had never
before handled a counterterrorism lead.
"Many witnesses have suggested that even if
[Almihdhar] had been found, there was nothing the
agents could have done except follow him onto the
planes," the report said. "We believe this is
incorrect.
"Both [Alhazmi] and [Almihdhar] could have been held
for immigration violations, or as material witnesses
in the Cole bombing case," the commission report said.
Interrogations "also may have yielded evidence of
connections to other participants in the 9/11 plot. In
any case, the opportunity did not arise."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Here is the 8/6/01 PDB in its proper CONTEXT, including a timeline of the incredible shrinking _resident's '01 vacation...Read it and weep...There is a LIVE PRIME TIME _residential press conference this evening. Will the "White House press corp" choose to serve the public good or their own comfort and self-interest? Will they challenge him? Will they defer to each other for follow-up questions? Will they dare to uphold the sacred duty guaranteed them in the US Constitution and the blood shed in its defense? Will they allow the FBI and the CIA to be scapegoated for 9/11? Will they let the _resident and his "National Security team" escape the judgement in the court of public opinion? It's the Media, Stupid.
Center for American Progress: Despite this clear warning, President Bush did nothing to increase the urgency of the government's efforts to stop al Qaeda. President Bush yesterday amazingly claimed that he did everything he could to fight domestic terrorism. Yet after the Aug. 6 memo, he stayed on vacation for two more weeks. He convened no high level meetings. And he did not bring the government to "battle stations" as Rice misleadingly stated last week.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=3456
'The Texas Try' on Terrorism
April 12, 2004
Saturday evening – the day before Easter – the White House conveniently released the Aug. 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S." But the clever timing of this release can not hide the Bush administration's failure to act decisively in attempting to thwart al Qaeda activities in the United States prior to 9/11. The administration was explicitly warned in this memo that something big was coming. How did President Bush react at the time? He stayed – uninterrupted – on one of the longest presidential vacations in history.*
Contrary to the sworn testimony of Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration was given explicit warning of impending al Qaeda attacks on the United States. The Aug. 6 PDB contained detailed warnings about al Qaeda plans in the United States including "preparations consistent with hijackings" and stated that 70 full field FBI investigations into al Qaeda were underway. The president did not need bin Laden's final blueprint to know that something more had to be done.
Despite this clear warning, President Bush did nothing to increase the urgency of the government's efforts to stop al Qaeda. President Bush yesterday amazingly claimed that he did everything he could to fight domestic terrorism. Yet after the Aug. 6 memo, he stayed on vacation for two more weeks. He convened no high level meetings. And he did not bring the government to "battle stations" as Rice misleadingly stated last week.
The Bush administration should stop the political games and come clean on its role pre-9/11. The nation's security should not be beholden to President Bush's desires for clean campaign scripts about how valiant the administration has acted on terrorism. Two and half years after 9/11, the public is just learning the not-so-pretty truth about the administration's actions. It's time for the administration to admit its mistakes and reassure the public that it has learned something from these errors.
*President Bush's Vacation Schedule starting Aug.6, 2001 – the day of the PDB warning about an impending al Qaeda attack in the U.S.
Monday, August 6
4-mile run, built nature walk in canyon, fishing.[1]
Tuesday, August 7
Golf.[2]
3-mile run.[3]
Fishing, cookout with Mel Martinez.[4]
Wednesday, August 8
Habitat for Humanity, Waco, TX (injured finger).[5]
Worked out with weights.[6]
Thursday, August 9
Jogging, fishing, announced stem cell decision (9pm EST).[7]
Sunday, August 12
Church near Crawford.[8]
Monday, August 13
Golf, signed agriculture bill with audience of farmers.[9]
Tuesday, August 14, 2001
Thinned brush and raised money at a picnic in Colorado.[10]
Talked to children at YMCA camp in Colorado.[11]
Wednesday, August 15, 2001
Talked to children in Albuquerque, opened job-training center, addressed Chamber of
Commerce, attended fundraiser for Sen. Domenici, Colorado Rockies v. Atlanta Braves.[12]
Saturday, August 18, 2001
Radio address re: faith-based initiatives.[13]
Monday, August 20, 2001
Addressed VFW Convention, toured Harley-Davidson plant, Milwaukee.[14]
Work out, dinner with friends.[15]
Tuesday, August 21, 2001
Truman High School, Independence, MO re: taxes.[16]
Wednesday, August 22, 2001
Ran, lifted weights.[17]
Thursday, August 23, 2001
Golf, Crawford Elementary School, met with horticulturalist re: trees on ranch.[18]
Friday, August 24, 2001
Press conference re: economy (1st press conference of vacation).[19]
Saturday, August 25, 2001
Ranch tour for the press (80 minutes).[20]
Sunday, August 26, 2001
Steel Plant in Pennsylvania, barbeque.[21]
Little League World Series Championship (Japan v. Florida).[22]
Wednesday, August 29, 2001
Spoke at an American Legion Convention re: military budget, tax cut.[23]
Dedicated a restored grist mill, San Antonio.[24]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] It's Not All Play, Bush Tells Media, Contra Costa Times, August 8, 2001
[2] Ibid.
[3] Bush Vacation: Keeping the Peace, Beating the Heat, The Hotline, August 8, 2001
[4] Presidential Retreat; Bush spends some of his time off defending his time off, John C. Henry, The Houston Chronicle, August 8, 2001
[5] Bush Lends a Hand to Build Texas Home, Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio), August 9, 2001
[6] Bush's Stem Cell Decision, Los Angeles Times, Edwin Chen, August 10, 2001
[7] Bush OKs Limited Stem Cell Funding, Scott Lindlaw, Associated Press, August 9, 2001
[8] President Attends Church Near Ranch, Scott Lindlaw, Associated Press, August 12, 2001
[9] Bush Presses Arafat On Quelling Terror; Egypt Asks Greater U.S. Involvement, Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, August 14, 2001
[10] Bush visits Colorado, Trims Brush, Boosts Campaign Funds, Scott Lindlaw, Chattanooga Times Free Press, August 15, 2001
[11] Bush Emphasizes Teaching of Values to Children, Frank Bruni , The New York Times, August 15, 2001
[12] Bush courts Hispanics in N.M., Associated Press, Deseret News (Salt Lake City), August 15, 2001
[13] Bush Urges Pressure to Pass Faith-Based Plan, Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2001
[14] Bush Pushes Defense, School Funding, Sandra Sobeiraj, Associated Press, August 20, 2001
[15] President keeps low profile on first day in KC, Steve Kraske, The Kansas City Star, August 21, 2001
[16] President's Words Were Familiar, Steve Kraske, Kansas City Star, August 26, 2001
[17] Bush set to select new military chief, Jeff Zeleny, Chicago Tribune, August 23, 2001
[18] Young Minds Want to Know, Mr. Bush, Edwin Chen, Los Angeles Times, August 24, 2001
[19] Bush Sees Good In Bad Times, Says Economic Slowdown Has Benefits, The Arizona Republic, August 25, 2001
[20] Bush Gives Press Tour Of Ranch, The Bulletin's Frontrunner, August 27, 2001
[21] In Remarks To Union Workers, Bush Declares Steel Production A National Security Priority, The Bulletin's Frontrunner, August 27, 2001
[22] President Concerned Over Slow Economy, Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee), August 27, 2001
[23] President Defends Tax-Cut Initiative, David Sanger, Chattanooga Times Free Press, August 30, 2001
[24] Bush Pitches Defense Spending Plan to Veterans, Robert W. Gee, Cox News Service, August 29, 2001
At least one more US soldier has died in Iraq this morning. At least 76 US soldiers have died in Iraq within the last month. For what? The incredible shrinking _resident's foolish military adventure is a disaster...MEANWHILE...John O'Neill, the FBI's counter-terrorism chief, resigned in disgust with the Bush cabal's refusal to allow him to pursue his post-Cole Al Qaeda invesitgation in Yemen. He went to work and die on 9/11 as security director for the Twin Towers. Will his story be examined today or tomorrow during the 9/11 Commission's hearings on law enforcement pre-9/11? The NYTwits, the WASHPs, the propunditgandists and the cable news networks have ignored it so far. O'Neill's story was first brought to light in the explosive 2001 book, Forbidden Truth, authored by French intelligence experts who were colleagues of O'Neill (published seven weeks after 9/11). Only a PBS Frontline documentary ("The Man Who Knew Too Much") and a long New Yorker piece about O'Neill have broken through the weird silence on this subject here in the Stepfordized USA. Of course, Richard Clark (R-Reality) dedicated his book, Against All Enemies, to John O'Neill in particular and to the victims of 9/11 in general. Will the name of John O'Neill even be mentioned? If not, what does it say about the nature of this entity?
Meanwhile, here is some CONTEXT and CONTINUITY on the 8/6/01 PDB for the incredible shrinking _resident's prime-time press conference tonight. Will the "White House press corp" overcome its fear of the Hatfield Factor and ask the _resident real questions about the PDB and what didn't happen after it was delivered to him?
Larry Johnson, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, www.tompaine.com: Remember the furious attacks against Richard Clarke during the past month? Now that we have seen the content of the PDB we know he was telling the truth when he said that President Bush and Condoleezza Rice did not make fighting Al Qaeda a priority prior to 9/11. At a minimum, the details in the 6 August PDB should have motivated Rice to convene a principals’ meeting. Such a meeting would have ensured that all members of the president’s national security team were aware of the information that had been shared with the president. George Bush should have directed the different department heads to report back within one week on any information relevant to the Al Qaeda threat. Had he done this there is a high probability that the FBI field agents concerns about Arabs taking flight training would have rung some bells. There is also a high probability that the operations folks at CIA would have shared the information they had in hand about the presence of Al Qaeda operators in the United States. While Condoleezza Rice is correct that there was no “silver bullet” in that PDB, she conveniently ignores the huge pieces of the puzzle that were in the hands of various members of the U.S. government. None of these steps were taken. Bush was on vacation and Condi—the smartest woman in Washington, we are told—was asleep at the switch.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10224
Decoding The PDB
Larry C. Johnson is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He served with the CIA from 1985 through 1989 and worked in the State Department's office of Counter Terrorism from 1989 through 1993. He also is a registered Republican who contributed financially to the Bush Campaign in 2000.
Are George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice really as clueless as they are claiming to be? Bush and Rice are both on the record misstating what was in the 6 August 2001 PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing). They both insist the information was only “historical” and “not actionable.” They apparently are not alone in their faux ignorance. Republican partisans and even some members of the media are busy bolstering the spin that this was “an historical memo.” Absolute nonsense!
I wrote about 40 PDB’s during my four-year tenure at the CIA. This particular PDB article was written in response to a presidential request. I am told that Bush’s request was a reaction to the intelligence warnings he was hearing during the daily CIA morning briefings. Something caught his attention and awakened his curiosity. He reportedly asked the CIA to come back with its assessment of Bin Laden’s intentions. The CIA answered the question—Bin Laden was targeting the United States.
The PDB article released Saturday is a classic CIA response to such a request. It lays out the historical and evidentiary antecedents that undergird the analyst’s belief about the nature of the threat and provides current intelligence indicators that reinforce the basic conclusion of the piece—i.e., Bin Laden was determined to attack the United States. It is true that the piece did not contain specific details about the plot that was launched subsequently on 9/11. However, the details that are included in the piece are so alarming that anyone familiar with the nature of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda should have asked, “What are they planning and what can we do to stop it?”
Remember the furious attacks against Richard Clarke during the past month? Now that we have seen the content of the PDB we know he was telling the truth when he said that President Bush and Condoleezza Rice did not make fighting Al Qaeda a priority prior to 9/11. At a minimum, the details in the 6 August PDB should have motivated Rice to convene a principals’ meeting. Such a meeting would have ensured that all members of the president’s national security team were aware of the information that had been shared with the president. George Bush should have directed the different department heads to report back within one week on any information relevant to the Al Qaeda threat. Had he done this there is a high probability that the FBI field agents concerns about Arabs taking flight training would have rung some bells. There is also a high probability that the operations folks at CIA would have shared the information they had in hand about the presence of Al Qaeda operators in the United States. While Condoleezza Rice is correct that there was no “silver bullet” in that PDB, she conveniently ignores the huge pieces of the puzzle that were in the hands of various members of the U.S. government.
None of these steps were taken. Bush was on vacation and Condi—the smartest woman in Washington, we are told—was asleep at the switch.
The PDB revealed another very fascinating item—the analyst who wrote the piece had access to details about FBI investigations. This is something I never had access to when I was writing PDBs. It was forbidden territory. In other words, Bill Clinton has opened some level of cooperation between the FBI and CIA. The FBI, in a break with tradition, was telling the CIA what it was doing in some measure. Unfortunately, with the benefit of hindsight, not enough was shared.
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Published: Apr 12 2004
At least seventy US soldiers have died in Iraq over the last two weeks. At least three more US marines since yesterday. For what? MEANWHILE...The incredible shrinking _resident's response to timid "White House press corp" queries on the 8/6/01 PDB was, of course, feeble.
CNN: "The (August 6, 2001, memo) was no indication of a terrorist threat," Bush said during an Easter Sunday visit to Fort Hood to decorate wounded soldiers. "There was not a time and place of an attack. It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to."
To CNN's credit, the story that carries the incredible shrinking _resident's denials also includes serious debunking (i.e. CONTEXT and CONTINUITY) by some heavy-hitters.
Gary Hart (D-Reality) provides CONTEXT and CONTINUITY for the incredible shrinking _resident's feeble remarks. CNN: "What this administration has done ... is to say that until someone tells us that 19 men are going to hijack four airplanes and fly them into the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon at 9 a.m. on September 11, we are not accountable," Hart said on CNN's "In the Money."
So does 9/11 commission member Richard Ben-Veniste (D-Truth and Reconciliation).
CNN: But a member of the independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks said Sunday the memo -- the president's daily briefing, or PDB -- should have alerted Bush to the strong possibility of such an attack.
Richard Ben-Veniste the memo and other reports and incidents made up a "substantial body of information" about Osama bin Laden's possible plans.
The briefing was headlined, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US."
"The CIA was reminding the president -- with the headline ... 'don't just look overseas for the possibility of this spectacular event that everyone was predicting,' " Ben-Veniste told reporters.
"It certainly updates the information that bin Laden was determined to strike within the United States," said Ben-Veniste, a former prosecutor who worked on the Watergate case in the 1970s.
"It talked about sleeper cells here. It talked about terrorists coming and going out of the United States. It talked about a support system for al Qaeda within the United States."
"[The August 6 briefing] talked about how [bin Laden] planned years in advance for his operations," Ben-Veniste said.
"So if you're talking about '98 and you're talking about in the context of the most extraordinary threat environment that we had ever experienced in the United States, then this is put into context."
Ben-Veniste also took issue with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the committee Thursday that the White House had no inkling al Qaeda would use planes as missiles.
Ben-Veniste said al Qaeda had a "history of using planes as weapons."
He said he would "be surprised if Dr. Rice didn't know" about a no-fly zone in place over Genoa, Italy, for the spring 2001 G8 meeting, spurred by fears terrorists could crash planes "into the buildings where the leaders were meeting."
"In fact, there was a specific 1999 National Intelligence Council report that proposed the possibility of jihadist, al Qaeda, suicide squad members crashing explosives-laden planes into the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House," Ben-Veniste said.
No, the 8/6/01 PDB is not going to go away. It is just one boldly colored thread in a whole tapestry of INCOMPETENCE (at best) stretching from pre-9/11 to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which have egregiously aggravated the threat to the US and seriously underminded our position in the world. Here is another boldly colored thread...Keep pulling at them, Mr. Ben-Veniste. It is unraveling like a cheap carpet...Gary Unger, author of "House of Bush/House of Saud" has some suggestions...
Gary Unger, Boston Globe: But when hearings resume on Tuesday, we may learn exactly how tough the commission is prepared to be. This time the stars will be Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, among others. When they testify -- especially Mueller -- we will see whether or not the commission has the stomach to address what may be the single most egregious security lapse related to the attacks: the evacuation of approximately 140 Saudis just two days after 9/11...The Commission should ask Mueller if the Saudis who were allowed to leave were involved in financing terrorism. How could the FBI be sure without seriously interrogating them?...In addition, I have obtained passenger lists for four of the Saudi evacuation flights. (The documents can be seen at my website, www.houseofbush.com.) Out of several dozen names on those lists, the most astonishing is that of the late Prince Ahmed bin Salman.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/04/11/unasked_questions?mode=PF
Unasked questions
The 9/11 commission should ask who authorized the evacuation of Saudi nationals in the days following the attacks
By Craig Unger, 4/11/2004
IN ITS TOUGH QUESTIONING of Richard Clarke and Condoleezza Rice, the 9/11 commission has already shown itself to be more resolute than some skeptics predicted. Many Americans now realize that multiple warnings of an Al Qaeda attack on American soil crossed the desks of Bush administration officials in the months leading up to 9/11. The administration's previously unchallenged narrative has begun to unravel.
But when hearings resume on Tuesday, we may learn exactly how tough the commission is prepared to be. This time the stars will be Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, among others. When they testify -- especially Mueller -- we will see whether or not the commission has the stomach to address what may be the single most egregious security lapse related to the attacks: the evacuation of approximately 140 Saudis just two days after 9/11.
This episode raises particularly sensitive questions for the administration. Never before in history has a president of the United States had such a close relationship with another foreign power as President Bush and his father have had with the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. I have traced more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts that went from the House of Saud over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent positions -- Harken Energy, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group among them. Is it possible that President Bush himself played a role in authorizing the evacuation of the Saudis after 9/11? What did he know and when did he know it?
Let's go back to Sept. 13, 2001, and look at several scenes that were taking place simultaneously. Three thousand people had just been killed. The toxic rubble of the World Trade Center was still ablaze. American airspace was locked down. Not even Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who were out of the country, were allowed to fly home. And a plane bearing a replacement heart for a desperately ill Seattle man was forced down short of its destination by military aircraft. Not since the days of the Wright Brothers had American skies been so empty.
But some people desperately wanted to fly out of the country. That same day, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States and a long-time friend of the Bush family, dropped by the White House. He and President George W. Bush went out to the Truman Balcony for a private conversation. We do not know everything they discussed, but the Saudis themselves say that Prince Bandar was trying to orchestrate the evacuation of scores of Saudis from the United States despite the lockdown on air travel.
Meanwhile, a small plane in Tampa, Fla. took off for Lexington, Ky. According to former Tampa cop Dan Grossi and former FBI agent Manny Perez, who were on the flight to provide security, the passengers included three young Saudis. Given the national security crisis, both Grossi and Perez were astonished that they were allowed to take off. The flight could not have taken place without White House approval.
The plane taking off from Tampa was the first of at least eight aircraft that began flying across the country, stopping in at least 12 American cities and carrying at least 140 passengers out of the country over the next week or so. The planes included a lavishly customized Boeing 727 airliner that was equipped with a master bedroom suite, huge flat-screen TVs, and a bathroom with gold-plated fixtures. Many of the passengers were high-ranking members of the royal House of Saud. About 24 of them were members of the bin Laden family, which owned the Saudi Binladin Group, a multibillion-dollar construction conglomerate.
All this occurred at a time when intelligence analysts knew that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, that Saudi money was one of the major forces behind Al Qaeda, and that the prime suspect -- Osama bin Laden -- was Saudi as well.
For its part, the Bush administration has erected the proverbial stone wall on the topic of the Saudi evacuation. The White House told me that it is "absolutely confident" the Sept. 13 flight from Tampa did not take place. The FBI said "unequivocally" it played no role in facilitating any flights. The Federal Aviation Administration said that the Tampa-to-Lexington flight was not in the logs and did not take place.
But they are all wrong.
. . .
How can I be sure? I have interviewed not only Dan Grossi and Manny Perez, but also sources who helped orchestrate the flights. I tracked down photos of the interior of one of the planes. Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke told me, and later the 9/11 commission, about discussions in the White House that allowed the flights to begin.
Clarke says his advice was that the Saudis should be able to leave only after they had been vetted by the FBI. A basic procedure in any crime investigation is to interview friends and relatives of the primary suspect. When I talked to FBI special agents who participated in the Saudi evacuation, however, they said that they identified the passengers boarding the flights but did not have lengthy interviews with them.
"Here you have an attack with substantial links to Saudi Arabia," says John L. Martin, a former Justice Department official who supervised investigation and prosecution of national security offenses for 18 years. "You would want to talk to people in the Saudi royal family and the Saudi government, particularly since they have pledged cooperation."
Robert Mueller had taken over at the FBI just one week before 9/11 and cannot be held responsible for the bureau's shortcomings before the attacks. But he should be asked about the departure of the Saudis. How is it possible that this could have happened? Did the White House order the evacuation -- and thereby interfere in an investigation into the murder of nearly 3,000 people?
If such interviews had taken place, investigators might have uncovered a trove of intelligence. During the summer of 2001, just a few months before 9/11, several of the bin Ladens attended the wedding of Osama's son in Afghanistan, where Osama himself was present. Carmen bin Laden, an estranged sister-in-law of the Al Qaeda leader, has said she suspects many family members have continued to aid and abet him. Could the bin Ladens have shed light on these assertions? Two relatives, Abdullah and Omar bin Laden, had been investigated by the FBI as recently as September 2001 for their ties to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which has allegedly funded terrorism. The 9/11 commission should ask Mueller if they were on board. I have also obtained documents showing that Abdullah and Omar were being investigated by the FBI in September 2001. Mueller should be asked about the status of that investigation.
The Clinton administration had attempted to crack down on the Saudi funding of Islamic charities that funneled money to terrorists. More recently we have since had one revelation after another about Saudi royals who "inadvertently" funded terrorists. The Commission should ask Mueller if the Saudis who were allowed to leave were involved in financing terrorism. How could the FBI be sure without seriously interrogating them?
In addition, I have obtained passenger lists for four of the Saudi evacuation flights. (The documents can be seen at my website, www.houseofbush.com.) Out of several dozen names on those lists, the most astonishing is that of the late Prince Ahmed bin Salman.
A prominent figure in the Saudi royal family, Prince Ahmed is best known in this country as the owner of War Emblem, winner of the 2002 Kentucky Derby. But his name is of interest for another reason. As reported last year by Gerald Posner in "Why America Slept," Prince Ahmed not only had alleged ties to Al Qaeda, but may also have known in advance that there would be attacks on 9/11. According to Posner, Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda operative who was part of Osama bin Laden's inner circle and was captured in 2002, made these assertions when he was interrogated by the CIA. The commission should ask Mueller about Zubaydah's interrogation. They should also ask whether the FBI interrogated Prince Ahmed before his departure.
But Prince Ahmed will never be able to answer any questions because not long after the CIA interrogation, he died of a heart attack at the age of 43. Yet we do know that he was on one of the flights.
. . .
That leaves the question of the White House's participation in expediting the departure of so many Saudis who may have been able to shed light on the greatest crime in American history.
Is it possible that the long relationship between President Bush's family and the House of Saud led Bush to turn a blind eye to the Saudi role in Islamic fundamentalist terrorism? Rather than aggressively seeking justice for the victims of 9/11, did the president instead authorize the departure of rich Saudi royals without even subjecting them to interrogation?
That may be the most difficult question of all for the commission to tackle. If the commission dares to confront this issue, it will undoubtedly be accused of politicizing the most important national security investigations in American history -- in an election year, no less. If it does not, it risks something far worse -- the betrayal of the thousands who lost their lives that day, and of the living who want answers.
Craig Unger, the former editor of Boston Magazine, is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties" (Scribner, March 2004).
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
NOTE TO SEN. JOHN F. KERRY (D-Mekong Delta): It is
imperative that Iraq and 9/11 be understood in the
same CONTEXT, and with CONTINUITY. Unfortunately,
CONTEXT and CONTINUITY are sorely lacking among the
propapunditgandists of the "US mainstream news media."
Richard Clark not only testified that the _resident
and his "national security team" blundered by ignoring
and downgrading the Al Qaeda threat prior to 9/11, he
also testified that their preoccupation with Iraq
*after* 9/11 seriously undermined the struggle to
crush Al Qaeda and indeed has contributed
significantly to the spread of Al Qaeda style
terrorism. Not only did the _resident fail the country
before 9/11, he has increased the danger to it
post-9/11...Now here is an excellent piece that
articulates another dimension to the disaster of
George W. Bush's _residendency. Consider this...They
had enough intelligence before 9/11 to know something
was coming and they did nothing. They also had enough
intelligence before going into Iraq to know what would
happen if we occupied it and they went in anyway.
Incredible...These two astounding failures of
leadership must be linked in the court of public
opinion...Do not let the _resident get off the mat,
John, do not let him get up off the mat. The election
in November is a national referendum on the
CREDIBILITY, CHARACTER and COMPETENCE of the
_resident. Nothing else...
Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer: It was fitting
that Condoleezza Rice testified to the 9/11 commission
on the day before the anniversary of the fall of
Baghdad. In both cases, information was available to
the White House that might have prevented disaster -
the attacks on the twin towers and Pentagon and the
postwar chaos. In both cases, the information wasn't
used. We need to know why...How, then, to explain
White House failure to act on information about what
was likely to happen in Iraq after a war? Those
dangers were not unimaginable. The CIA, the State
Department, legislators, a plethora of Iraq experts
foresaw the chaos that could follow The Day After. But
no one at the White House seems to have listened.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
Posted on Sun, Apr. 11, 2004
Worldview | Warnings on postwar chaos were ignored
By Trudy Rubin
It was fitting that Condoleezza Rice testified to the
9/11 commission on the day before the anniversary of
the fall of Baghdad. In both cases, information was
available to the White House that might have prevented
disaster - the attacks on the twin towers and Pentagon
and the postwar chaos. In both cases, the information
wasn't used. We need to know why.
Out in FBI field offices were details that might - or
might not - have prevented the attacks, such as
reports that would-be terrorists were training at
flight schools. We'll never know what might have been,
because trees weren't shaken, cabinet meetings on
al-Qaeda weren't held, the President wasn't briefed by
his counterterrorism adviser on the domestic threat.
There was no full focus on al-Qaeda at the top.
Some say this was a case of an administration so
fixated on building missile defenses against North
Korea and countering China that it failed to recognize
new threats. But let's give the White House the
benefit of the doubt. Let's say this was a case of a
new threat so inconceivable that imagination failed.
How, then, to explain White House failure to act on
information about what was likely to happen in Iraq
after a war? Those dangers were not unimaginable. The
CIA, the State Department, legislators, a plethora of
Iraq experts foresaw the chaos that could follow The
Day After. But no one at the White House seems to have
listened.
Army Secretary Eric Shinseki famously warned that
several hundred thousand troops would be required to
ensure postwar Iraq security. He was sharply rebuked
by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy
Paul Wolfowitz.
The State Department's Future of Iraq project detailed
how to reconstitute the Iraqi army to provide ready
security. But the project was junked by Pentagon
civilian officials who disbanded the Iraqi army. Most
Iraq experts had warned against such a step.
U.S. officials didn't train new Iraqi security forces
to confront an insurgency. I was told by a senior U.S.
official in Baghdad in October that U.S. special
forces could handle any insurgents so long as they had
good intelligence. Iraqi forces would serve merely as
adjuncts.
And so we watch as ill-equipped Iraqi police and
paramilitary forces scatter before the threat of
insurgent violence. And more U.S. troops are being
ordered up.
So we must ask why prewar warnings were so willfully
disregarded by Bush team. Based on my interviews with
administration officials and those of many
journalists, I believe top officials blocked out any
information they didn't want to hear.
Many of the Bush team had a vision of how postwar Iraq
would look, gleaned from a handful of secular Iraqi
exiles. Wolfowitz, the intellectual father of the Iraq
war, told me that the operative historical analogy for
postwar Iraq was post-World War II France. There, you
recall, the exiled Gen. Charles de Gaulle returned to
set up a democracy and the Americans went home.
Apparently, exile leader Ahmed Chalabi was supposed to
play a similar role. Pentagon officials ignored
warnings that Chalabi had no popular base in Iraq. A
recent State Department poll in Iraq showed him with a
65 percent unfavorable rating.
If you anticipate postwar France, however, you needn't
think seriously about administering postwar Iraq or
ensuring security after the war. So the Pentagon
didn't.
When looting and crime exploded in Baghdad after the
war, Rumsfeld famously said, "Freedom is messy," and
left it unchecked. Never mind that Iraq experts, and
the best U.S. military commanders, warned that first
impressions would be crucial. The early chaos in Iraq
set the tone for everything that followed.
Iraqis, schooled for decades to the order of
dictatorship, expected a new and better order. Its
lack - and U.S. inability to produce it - destroyed
trust and bred conspiracy theories about U.S.
intentions. These still haunt the occupation. And, of
course, instability has hurt efforts to rebuild the
country.
You say all this is history, and we must think about
Iraq's future. But the mistakes of the last year have
constricted future options. Iraqis were never going to
tolerate a long occupation, and time is running out.
If order is to be restored in Iraq, and a
representative government elected, it will require
that the White House look at facts without rose-
tinted glasses. Will any Pentagon officials be held to
account for their huge mistakes in postwar planning?
Will Ms. Rice tell us why she failed to effect
cooperation between State Department realists and
Pentagon fantasists?
If a year from now there is a 3/18/03 commission
looking into why the Bush team was so unprepared for
The Day After, what will she say? This was not a
failure of imagination. It was a willful rejection of
inconvenient facts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact columnist Trudy Rubin at 215-854-5823 or
trubin@phillynews.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources.
All Rights Reserved.
http://www.philly.com
Two more US soldiers died in Iraq in the last few hours. Sixteen US soldiers have died since Friday. At least fifty eight US soldiers have died in the last week. For what?
Robert Parry, www.consortiumnews.com: More and more
Americans are skeptical of Bush's "historic bet" and
are viewing him as a sort of gambling addict sliding
more and more chips onto the table while holding a
losing hand. As any experienced gambler knows, there
is a name for someone who doesn’t know when to fold a
bad hand and pull back from the table: sucker.
But Bush isn't just betting the kid’s college fund.
He’s risking the lives of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi
citizens. He’s also running the risk that his gamble
will increase U.S. vulnerability to terrorism, not
lessen it.
Like an amateur poker player in too deep, George W.
Bush can’t seem to see any alternative but to go in
deeper. In November, the American people will have to
decide whether to escort Bush from the table or to
give him a whole new pile of chips.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/040904.html
consortiumnews.com
Bush's Tet
By Robert Parry
April 9, 2004
George W. Bush’s defenders were still fuming over Sen.
Ted Kennedy labeling the Iraq War “Bush’s Vietnam”
when the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq suffered what
might be called “Bush’s Tet.”
Like the Vietcong-North Vietnamese offensive during
the Tet holiday in 1968, this April's Iraqi uprising
in both Sunni and Shiite regions has altered the
perception of the reality on the ground. Just as the
Tet offensive shattered the
“light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel” myth in Vietnam, the
Iraqi uprising has destroyed any realistic prospect
that the Bush administration’s wishful thinking about
Iraq might somehow come true.
The uprising – from the street-to-street fighting in
the Sunni city of Fallujah to the running battles with
Moktada al-Sadr’s militia forces in Shiite strongholds
in the south – means that the political side of the
Iraq War is lost and that means the war itself is
effectively lost. The only big questions left are how
many more soldiers and civilians will die – and how
many more angry young Islamic radicals will be driven
into the arms of al-Qaeda.
But the immediate question in Washington is whether
the Bush administration and its legions of defenders
will come to grips with this unpleasant reality on the
ground. As in Vietnam, the temptation is to deny the
reality and to continue the carnage rather than to
make the hard decisions that would reverse course,
save lives and minimize the strategic damage to the
United States.
War Hawks
The New York Times columnist William Safire is an
example of the pro-Bush war hawks who have chosen to
hunker down in the ideological rubble of Bush’s
strategy. “We should keep in mind our historic bet:
that given their freedom from a savage tyrant, the
three groups that make up Iraq could, with our help,
create a rudimentary democracy that would turn the
tide against terrorism,” Safire wrote in an April 7
column.
But that notion of a U.S.-nurtured “democracy” somehow
turning the tide against terrorism is among the
casualties of the Iraqi uprising. It should now be
obvious that the U.S.-led occupation is hated by too
many Iraqis, who are ready to fight and die, for Iraq
ever to submit to a U.S. formula for a future
government.
These Iraqis have made clear that the peaceful
conditions needed for electoral preparations don’t –
and won’t – exist while the occupation continues.
Imagine the fate of some poor U.S.-financed canvasser,
clipboard in hand, walking through the slums of Sadr
City trying to compile a voting list and asking for
everyone’s names and addresses.
Bush’s “historic bet” in Iraq assumed incorrectly that
the U.S.-led invasion would be broadly tolerated by
the Iraqi people. A little more than a year ago,
senior Bush administration officials, such as Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul
Wolfowitz, assured the American people that the U.S.
troops would be welcomed by thankful Iraqis with open
arms and flowers. The administration expected that
civic order would be quickly restored and U.S. troop
levels could be reduced to about 30,000 within months.
Less optimistic military experts, such as Gen. Eric
Shinseki who foresaw the need of several hundred
thousand soldiers, were ridiculed by the likes of
Wolfowitz, who said Shinseki’s estimate was “way off
the mark.” Today, a year after the invasion, U.S.
troop levels are about 135,000 and U.S. commanders are
considering a request for more soldiers.
Bush’s “historic bet” also held that with Saddam
Hussein gone, Iraqis would let the U.S. occupiers
elevate pro-U.S. Iraqis to leadership posts,
“privatize” Iraqi industries, sell oil rights to
international corporations, draft a constitution and
eventually hold elections intended to sanction the
post-invasion status quo.
Phase Two of this “historic bet” foresaw the U.S.
success in Iraq toppling the first of many
anti-American dominoes across the Middle East. More
pragmatic experts, such as former National Security
Adviser Brent Scowcroft, warned that these ambitious
goals reflected a naivete about the region and could
prove counterproductive.
Iraqi Resistance
Indeed, Bush’s scheme did go awry almost from the
start. After the invasion was launched on March 19,
2003, Iraqi resistance was fiercer than expected. Some
American supply columns were ambushed in towns like
Nasiriyah that were expected to be friendly. In some
battles, Iraqi troops charged into the face of
devastating American firepower and were mowed down.
Meanwhile, special U.S. units searching for weapons of
mass destruction didn’t find any, undercutting Bush’s
principal justification for war and further enflaming
Arab and world opinion. Even as U.S. troops progressed
toward Baghdad, some U.S. military experts were
voicing alarm at the Bush administration’s tendency to
mix wishful thinking with a flawed military strategy.
[For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bay of Pigs
Meets Black Hawk Down.”]
U.S. public optimism about the war was revived when
U.S. troops captured Baghdad and toppled Saddam
Hussein’s statue on April 9, 2003. But the
stretched-thin U.S. forces found themselves
confronting looting and chaos. In some restless
cities, such as Fallujah, U.S. troops fired into
crowds of demonstrators, killing civilians and stoking
the beginnings of a resistance.
Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1, 2003,
after donning a flight suit and landing on the
aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. But a
guerrilla war in Iraq was soon underway. Within
months, the number of U.S. soldiers killed during the
occupation exceeded the 138 killed during the
invasion. The number of U.S. dead is now over 600 and
climbing rapidly. [For more details about Bush's
flight-suit miscalculation, see Consortiumnews.com's
"Bush's Iraqi Albatross."]
On the political front, the hand-picked members of the
Iraqi “Governing Council” were widely viewed as
quislings who survived only under the protection of
the U.S. military. Meanwhile, terrorists slipped into
central Iraq and carried out suicide bombings,
including the destruction of the United Nations
headquarters in Baghdad.
Rather than see these setbacks as warning signs, the
Bush administration continued to believe its own P.R.
about progress. So, instead of using existing food
ration lists as voting rolls for quick elections of
Iraqi leaders who could claim some popular support,
U.S. officials dawdled, insisting on a better national
voting list, a fine-tuned interim constitution and
then elections.
The Sovereignty Scam
Those promises of Iraqi national elections now
continue to recede, even as Washington says it will
turn over “sovereignty” to Iraqis on June 30. Rather
than making progress on preparations for elections,
U.S. troops and coalition allies are battling Iraqi
insurgents in cities all over the country.
Even more troubling to U.S. policymakers, the
insurgency appears to have taken deeper root among the
population, with many Iraqis working as merchants or
laborers during the day with their guns ready to fight
the Americans. In addition, Sunnis and Shiites –
normally bitter rivals – have begun to cooperate in
attacks on coalition troops, according to recent press
reports. Even in Sunni towns, portraits of Shiite
cleric Sadr are popping up, the Arab media has
reported.
“The Sunnis and Shiites are now together,” Fatah
Abdel-Razzaq, 31, a falafel-stand owner in Sadr City,
told the Washington Post. “America came and destroyed
the country. … What’s America doing?” [Washington
Post, April 8, 2004]
While the Bush administration continues to insist that
the uprising reflects the discontent of only a small
number of Iraqis, U.S. intelligence has concluded
that, to the contrary, the Shiite uprising is
broad-based, the New York Times reported.
“Intelligence officials now say that there is evidence
that the insurgency goes beyond Mr. Sadr and his
militia, and that a much larger number of Shiites have
turned against the American-led occupation,”
correspondent James Risen wrote. [NYT, April 8, 2004]
The much-touted hand-over of “sovereignty” is also
certain to disappoint the Iraqis since very little
will change. Instead of getting orders from U.S.
political chief, Paul Bremer, the new Iraqi “leaders”
will get their instructions from a U.S. ambassador
housed in the largest U.S. embassy in the world. As
for their “sovereignty,” the Iraqis won’t even have
the power to order occupation troops out of the
country.
The June 30 ceremonies appear more targeted at U.S.
public opinion than the Iraqi people. But the
political risk to the Bush administration could grow
when Americans see continued U.S. casualties and begin
to understand that the hand-over of power in Iraq was
more a shell game than real.
The “sovereignty” shell game in Iraq also is sure to
have its counterpart in the United States. Team Bush
will keep shifting the arguments, sliding away some
claims that are disproved, replacing them with others,
all the while maintaining a steady patter of insults
against critics.
Safire: Vietnam to Iraq
The domestic propaganda strategy is another echo of
Vietnam, with columnist Safire personifying the common
tactics used on the home front of both wars.
As a White House speechwriter during the Nixon
administration, Safire crafted some of Vice President
Spiro Agnew’s classic slams against Vietnam War
critics, such as the phrase “nattering nabobs of
negativism.” Now Safire is doing the same from his
perch on the New York Times editorial page, accusing
anyone who differs with Bush’s war strategy of
effectively aiding and abetting the enemy.
“Do the apostles of retreat realize how their
defeatism, magnified by Arab media, bolsters the
morale of the insurgents and increases the nervousness
of the waverers?” Safire wrote on April 7. “Does our
coulda-woulda-shoulda crowd consider how it dismays
the majority of Iraqis wondering if they can count on
our continued presence as they feel their way to
freedom?”
Rather than applying a dose of realism to Bush’s
“historic bet,” Safire and other Bush defenders are
still trying to marginalize dissenters, a continuation
of a public relations strategy that has been employed
since the pre-war buildup in fall 2002. But the
harrowing pictures from Iraq and the growing list of
casualties are making Bush's P.R. strategy harder to
enforce.
More and more Americans are skeptical of Bush's
"historic bet" and are viewing him as a sort of
gambling addict sliding more and more chips onto the
table while holding a losing hand. As any experienced
gambler knows, there is a name for someone who doesn’t
know when to fold a bad hand and pull back from the
table: sucker.
But Bush isn't just betting the kid’s college fund.
He’s risking the lives of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi
citizens. He’s also running the risk that his gamble
will increase U.S. vulnerability to terrorism, not
lessen it.
Like an amateur poker player in too deep, George W.
Bush can’t seem to see any alternative but to go in
deeper. In November, the American people will have to
decide whether to escort Bush from the table or to
give him a whole new pile of chips.
At last...
Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, Washington Post: President Bush was warned a month before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that the FBI had information that terrorists might be preparing for a hijacking in the United States and photographing federal buildings in New York.
The information was included in a written Aug. 6, 2001, briefing to Bush that was declassified Saturday night by the White House in response to a request from the independent commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks.
The short document, titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.," also included information that the FBI had "70 full field investigations" underway in the United States that were believed related to Osama bin Laden, and that a caller to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 said a group of bin Laden supporters were in the United States planning attacks with explosives.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2368-2004Apr10?language=printer
washingtonpost.com
Bush Warned of Possible Al Qaeda Attacks Before 9/11
By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 10, 2004; 8:20 PM
CRAWFORD, Tex., April 10 -- President Bush was warned a month before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that the FBI had information that terrorists might be preparing for a hijacking in the United States and photographing federal buildings in New York.
The information was included in a written Aug. 6, 2001, briefing to Bush that was declassified Saturday night by the White House in response to a request from the independent commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks.
The short document, titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.," also included information that the FBI had "70 full field investigations" underway in the United States that were believed related to Osama bin Laden, and that a caller to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 said a group of bin Laden supporters were in the United States planning attacks with explosives.
The document, citing a foreign intelligence service whose identity was redacted, said bin Laden told followers he wanted to "retaliate in Washington" for the United States' 1998 missile attack on his facilities in Afghanistan.
In a conference call last night with reporters, administration officials who insisted on anonymity said there was no evidence that either the call to the U.S. Embassy in the UAE or the surveillance of federal buildings in New York by Yemenis were related to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The officials said the photographing of the federal buildings were later judged to be "tourist activity" but they did not say whether that judgment was made before or after the attacks.
The White House had originally resisted releasing the document, known as a President's Daily Brief, or PDB, citing the sensitivity of intelligence information. It characterized the document as a historical summary with little current information on which the president could have acted.
In her testimony to the commission on Thursday, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said "this was a historical memo. . . It was not based on new threat information."
While the two-page document does, in fact, include information dating to 1997, it also contained information that the government suspected al Qaeda was actively preparing for an attack in the United States. While it gives no information about specific targets or dates, the briefing warns that U.S. intelligence believed bin Laden had serious plans to hit the American homeland.
The PDB said U.S. intelligence could not confirm "some of the more sensational threat reporting," such as information from a foreign intelligence service in 1998 saying bin Laden "wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft" to gain the release of U.S.-held Muslim extremists. The identity of the foreign service was redacted.
"Nevertheless," it said, "FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
The brief continued: "The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."
The CIA author of the document wanted to make clear to the president that despite the many threats being centered abroad, the agency analysts believed that there was a real and continuing danger that bin laden was determined to attack the United States.
As one former administration official who has read the PDB said last week, "The agency doesn't write a headline like that if it doesn't want to get attention." In this case, the former official said, "the CIA did not believe Bush policymakers were taking the threat to the U.S. seriously."
The White House noted last night that the FAA and FBI issued several warnings between June and September, including specific warnings about the possibility of a hijacking to free al Qaeda members imprisoned in the United States.
The two White House officials who held the teleconference call said that they would not divulge whether Bush asked questions when given the Aug. 6 briefing, saying the president's response was "confidential." They also declined to say whether the president or others followed up on the warnings or sought more information other than to say the government spread the warning to various agencies about the call to the embassy in the UAE.
In a fact sheet released with the PDB, the White House asserted that the document "did not warn of the 9/11 attacks" and noted: "Although the PDB referred to the possibility of hijackings, it did not discuss the possible use of planes as weapons."
The White House also asserted that the PDB "was based largely on background information" and that "there is no information" that the call to the UAE embassy or the surveillance of buildings in New York "was related to the 9/11 attacks."
At the same time, the document indicated the government knew of widespread al Qaeda activity in the United States. "Al Qaeda members including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks," it noted. "A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks."
In its historical section, the document cites bin Laden's television interviews in 1997 and 1998 saying he would "bring the fighting to America," ironically telling his followers he would "follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef."
"After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington," the report said, redacting the name of the foreign intelligence service that supplied the information.
Also in 1998, the PDB said, an Egyptian Islamic Jihad operative told a foreign service, the identity of which was also redacted, that "bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike."
The PDB judged that the millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been a bin Laden attempt, noting that convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam said that he was encouraged by bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah in his plan to attack Los Angeles International Airport and that bin Laden was aware of the operation. Zubaydah was planning his own attack, Ressam told the FBI.
The PDB also said bin Laden "prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks" and it noted that the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania began with surveillance by bin Laden associates as early as 1993. The report also noted that two of those convicted in the embassy bombings were U.S. citizens.
PDBs have been released in the past, but the current CIA Director George J. Tenet has tried to put them in a non-releasable category.
The items in the PDB on the surveillance of New York buildings and the call to he UAE were obtained at the last minute by the CIA from the FBI in an effort to get new information, according to a U.S. government official. The CIA's intent was to sound sufficient alarm about bin Laden's potential.
The CIA analyst who prepared the article called an FBI analyst dealing with the subject who supplied the material relative to bin Laden threats for hijackings or other attacks in the U.S.
The FBI analyst did not make a survey within the bureau for information but rather provided a new incident that seemed relevant to the request, the interviewing of Yemeni tourists taking photographs of the Foley Square courthouse in downtown New York City where Sheik Umar Abdul Rahman and others had just been convicted.
There was other relevant information in the FBI bin Laden unit, including the now well-publicized Phoenix document from an agent in that city, written July 10, which raised questions about a bin Laden supporter taking flying lessons and suggesting a nationwide survey to see what else was going on.
On the call to the embassy in the UAE in May 2001, the White House officials said they responded within two days to get investigations started. But it was still unresolved on Aug. 6 when the item was provided to the president. On Saturday, officials said the matter was still not solved but they were able to determine it did not relate to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Pincus reported from Washington
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Gross incompetence? Criminal negligence? Or worse?
NBC: In the summer of 2001, career FBI official Tom
Pickard became acting director of the FBI. Because of
intelligence intercepts, concern about a terror attack
was high. In July, Pickard went to brief Ashcroft
about al-Qaida threats and other FBI matters.
NBC News has learned that Pickard now has told 9/11
commission investigators that Ashcroft was somewhat
dismissive of the latest information on al-Qaida. “It
wasn’t something he wanted to hear more about.
Ashcroft had other things on his mind,” sources say
Pickard told the commission...Sources say Pickard also
will testify that Ashcroft rejected a proposal by the
FBI to increase counterterrorism spending before 9/11.
A May 2001 memo signed by Ashcroft lists seven budget
priorities — terrorism is not even mentioned.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4702786/
Sources: Former FBI director to criticize Ashcroft terror focus at 9/11 hearings Ashcroft dismissive of al-Qaida information
at July 2001 briefing?
By Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 8:11 p.m. ET April 09, 2004
The 9/11 commission picks up again next week with more
high drama in store. NBC News has learned that a
former FBI director is expected to criticize his
former boss, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft,
along with Ashcroft’s focus on terrorism before 9/11.
In the summer of 2001, career FBI official Tom Pickard
became acting director of the FBI. Because of
intelligence intercepts, concern about a terror attack
was high.
In July, Pickard went to brief Ashcroft about al-Qaida
threats and other FBI matters.
NBC News has learned that Pickard now has told 9/11
commission investigators that Ashcroft was somewhat
dismissive of the latest information on al-Qaida.
“It wasn’t something he wanted to hear more about.
Ashcroft had other things on his mind,” sources say
Pickard told the commission.
Pickard testifies publicly before the 9/11 commission
Tuesday and would not comment to NBC.
Ashcroft’s spokesman strongly denies the charge. “I
think that Mr. Pickard’s recollection is just totally
off, you know. Frankly, the attorney general was
interested in counterterrorism from the day he took
office,” said Justice Department spokesman Mark
Corallo.
The allegation that Ashcroft was uninterested in
terrorism two months before the attack is potentially
explosive, because that same month, domestic agencies
— including the FBI — were called to the White House
and alerted to threats of an impending terror attack.
Other witnesses also have told the commission that
Ashcroft didn’t seem interested.
Roger Cressey, now an NBC News analyst, was Dick
Clarke’s deputy in the White House counterterrorism
office: “After our initial briefing, we saw no further
interest by the attorney general or his office in
learning more about the al-Qaida presence inside the
United States.”
Sources say Pickard also will testify that Ashcroft
rejected a proposal by the FBI to increase
counterterrorism spending before 9/11. A May 2001
memo signed by Ashcroft lists seven budget priorities
— terrorism is not even mentioned.
Still, Ashcroft insists his terror funding record is
solid. “I mean we put our money where our mouth was.
We were committed to counterterror,” Corallo added.
Though a reluctant witness, Pickard testifies right
before Ashcroft Tuesday and is expected to put his
former boss on the defensive.
Lisa Myers is NBC’s senior investigative
correspondent.
© 2004 MSNBC Interactive
This story is very significant. Not because of its
content. You probably knew the facts already. Many of
us have known for quite some time. No, the story is
very significant...because the NYTwits have finally
decided that the truth of it is unavoidable...
Eric Lichtblau and David E Sanger, New York Times:
President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.
The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's
repeated assertions that the briefing the president
received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in
nature and that the White House had little reason to
suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0410-02.htm
Published on Saturday, April 10, 2004 b the New York
Times
Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says
by Eric Lichtblau and David E Sanger
WASHINGTON — President Bush was told more than a month
before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters
of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United
States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes,
a government official said Friday.
The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's
repeated assertions that the briefing the president
received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in
nature and that the White House had little reason to
suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders.
The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush
received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6,
2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last
year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report"
that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda,
and the official confirmed an account by The
Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was
in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford.
The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's
repeated assertions that the briefing the president
received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in
nature and that the White House had little reason to
suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders.
Members of the independent commission investigating
the Sept. 11 attacks have asked the White House to
make the Aug. 6 briefing memorandum public. The A.P.
account of it was attributed to "several people who
have seen the memo." The White House has said that
nothing in it pointed specifically to the kind of
attacks that actually took place a month later.
The Congressional report last year, citing efforts by
Al Qaeda operatives beginning in 1997 to attack
American soil, said that operatives appeared to have a
support structure in the United States and that
intelligence officials had "uncorroborated
information" that Mr. bin Laden "wanted to hijack
airplanes" to gain the release of imprisoned
extremists. It also said that intelligence officials
received information in May 2001, three months
earlier, that indicated "a group of bin Laden
supporters was planning attacks in the United States
with explosives."
Also on Friday, the White House offered evidence that
the Federal Bureau of Investigation received
instructions more than two months before the Sept. 11
attacks to increase its scrutiny of terrorist suspects
inside the United States. But it is unclear what
action, if any, the bureau took in response.
The disclosure appeared to signal an effort by the
White House to distance itself from the F.B.I. in the
debate over whether the Bush administration did enough
in the summer of 2001 to deter a possible terrorist
attack in the United States in the face of increased
warnings.
A classified memorandum, sent around July 4, 2001, to
Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security
adviser, from the counterterrorism group run by
Richard A. Clarke, described a series of steps it said
the White House had taken to put the nation on
heightened terrorist alert. Among the steps, the
memorandum said, "all 56 F.B.I. field offices were
also tasked in late June to go to increased
surveillance and contact with informants related to
known or suspected terrorists in the United States."
Parts of the White House memorandum were provided to
The New York Times on Friday by a White House official
seeking to bolster the public account provided a day
before by Ms. Rice, who portrayed an administration
aggressively working to deter a domestic terror
attack.
But law enforcement officials said Friday that they
believed that Ms. Rice's testimony before the
commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks —
including her account of scores of F.B.I.
investigations under way that summer into suspected
Qaeda cells operating in the United States —
overstated the scope, thrust and intensity of
activities by the F.B.I. within American borders.
Agents at that time were focused mainly on the threat
of overseas attacks, law enforcement officials said.
The F.B.I. was investigating numerous cases that
involved international terrorism and may have had
tangential connections to Al Qaeda, but one official
said that despite Ms. Rice's account, the
investigations were focused more overseas and "were
not sleeper cell investigations."
The finger-pointing will probably increase next week
when numerous current and former senior law
enforcement officials, including Attorney General John
Ashcroft, testify before the Sept. 11 commission. In
an unusual pre-emptive strike, Mr. Ashcroft's chief
spokesman on Friday accused some Democrats on the
commission of having "political axes to grind" in
attacking the attorney general, who oversees the
F.B.I., and unfairly blaming him for law enforcement
failures.
A similar accusation against the commission was also
leveled by Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky
Republican with ties to the White House, in a speech
on the Senate floor Thursday.
"Sadly, the commission's public hearings have allowed
those with political axes to grind, like Richard
Clarke, to play shamelessly to the partisan gallery of
liberal special interests seeking to bring down the
president," Mr. McConnell said.
The charges and countercharges underscored the
political challenge that the investigation into the
Sept. 11 attacks has become for President Bush as he
mounts his re-election bid. The White House sought
this week to defuse the situation by allowing Ms. Rice
to testify before the Sept. 11 commission after months
of resistance. But her appearance served to raise new
questions about the administration's efforts to deter
an attack.
The White House on Friday put off a decision on
declassifying the document at the center of the debate
— the Aug. 6 briefing, titled "Bin Laden Determined to
Attack Inside the United States." But the
administration appeared ready to release at least
portions of the document publicly in the coming days.
The memo from Mr. Clarke's group in July 2001 about
F.B.I. activities adds another piece of evidence to
the document trail, but it is unlikely to resolve the
questions over whether the administration did enough
to deter an attack.
White House officials, who spent several weeks
attacking Mr. Clarke's credibility, said Friday that
they believed the memo from his counterterrorism group
was an accurate reflection of steps the White House
took to deter an attack. But they questioned whether
the F.B.I. executed the instructions to intensify its
scrutiny of terrorist suspects and contacts in the
United States.
In April 2001, the F.B.I. did send out a classified
memo to its field offices directing agents to "check
with their sources on any information they had
relative to terrorism," said a senior law enforcement
official who spoke on condition of anonymity. But with
the level of threat warnings increasing markedly over
the next several months, there is no indication that
any directive went out in the late June period that
was described in the memo from Mr. Clarke's office.
That summer saw a string of alerts by the F.B.I. and
other government agencies about the heightened
possibility of a terrorist attack, but most
counterterrorism officials believed an attack would
come in Saudi Arabia, Israel or elsewhere. Many also
were worried about a July 4 attack and were relieved
when that date passed uneventfully.
For months, the F.B.I. had been consumed by internal
problems of its own, including the arrest of an agent,
Robert P. Hanssen, on espionage charges, the
disappearance of documents in the Oklahoma City
bombing case and the fallout over the Wen Ho Lee spy
case. Moreover, the bureau was going through a
transition in leadership, with its longtime director,
Louis J. Freeh, retiring in June 2001. He was replaced
by an acting director, Thomas J. Pickard, until the
current director, Robert S. Mueller III, took over in
September, just days before the deadly hijackings. All
three men will testify at next week's commission
hearings and are expected to face sharp questioning
about whether the F.B.I. did enough to prevent an
attack in the weeks and months before Sept. 11.
At this week's appearance by Ms. Rice, several
commissioners sharply questioned whether the F.B.I.
and the Justice Department had done enough to act on
intelligence warnings about an attack.
"We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9/11
commission," said Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic
member of the panel. "We have gone through literally
millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have found
nobody — nobody at the F.B.I. who knows anything about
a tasking of field offices" to identify the domestic
threat.
The apparent miscommunication will probably be a
central focus of the commission's hearing next week.
Scrutiny is expected to focus in part on communication
breakdowns between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. that
allowed two of the 19 hijackers to live openly in San
Diego despite intelligence about their terrorist ties.
Another Democratic panel member, Jamie S. Gorelick,
said at Thursday's hearing that Mr. Ashcroft was
briefed in the summer of 2001 about terrorist threats
"but there is no evidence of any activity by him."
Such criticism led Mark Corallo, Mr. Ashcroft's chief
spokesman at the Justice Department, to say Friday
that "some people on the commission are seeking to
score political points" by unfairly attacking Mr.
Ashcroft's actions before Sept. 11.
"Some have political axes to grind" against Mr.
Ashcroft, Mr. Corallo said in an interview, naming Ms.
Gorelick, who was the deputy attorney general in the
Clinton administration; Mr. Roemer, a former
congressman from Indiana, and Richard Ben-Veniste, the
former Watergate prosecutor.
While insisting that he was not speaking personally
for Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Corallo said he was offended by
Ms. Gorelick's remarks in particular. Offering a
detailed preview of Mr. Ashcroft's testimony next
week, he said the attorney general was briefed
repeatedly by the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. on threats
posed by Al Qaeda and was told that the threats were
directed at targets overseas. "He was not briefed that
there was any threat to the United States," Mr.
Corallo said. "He kept asking if there was any action
he needed to take, and he was constantly told no,
you're doing everything you need to do."
Several commission officials denied in interviews that
there was any attempt to treat Mr. Ashcroft unfairly.
Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for panel, said that Mr.
Ashcroft would be warmly received.
Ms. Gorelick said she was surprised by Mr. Corallo's
comments and puzzled by assertions that the attorney
general had no knowledge of a domestic terrorist
threat in 2001.
"This appears to be a debate within the
administration," she said. "On the one hand, you have
Dr. Rice saying that the domestic threat was being
handled by the Justice Department and F.B.I., and on
the other hand, you have the Justice Department saying
that there did not appear to be a domestic threat to
address. And that is a difference in view that we have
to continue to explore."
The commission also heard testimony Friday morning
behind closed doors from former Vice President Al
Gore.
Former President Bill Clinton appeared before the
panel in closed session on Thursday, but a Democratic
commission member took issue Friday with Mr. Clinton's
assertion that that there was not enough intelligence
linking Al Qaeda to the 2000 bombing of the Navy
destroyer Cole to justify a military attack on the
terrorist organization.
"I think he did have enough proof to take action," Bob
Kerrey, the former senator from Nebraska, said on
ABC's `Good Morning America.'
Philip Shenon, Adam Nagourney and James Risen
contributed reporting for this article.
© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
###
2+2=4
Guardian Editorial: The idea that President Bush was
fully briefed about al-Qaida, and that the White House
understood that it "posed a serious threat to the
United States", simply does not ring true. That
feeling is supported by the fact that both the
administration and Dr Rice were more interested in
pushing for a pointless missile defense shield in the
months before September 11. To say that a memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States" did not warn of an impending attack, according to Dr Rice, suggests the administration has begun to lose touch with reality.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
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http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0409-06.htm
Published on Friday, April 9, 2004 by the Guardian /
United Kingdom
Losing Touch with Reality
Editorial
Shortly before being elected US president, George Bush
wasn't able to name the president of Pakistan when
asked in a televised interview. Yet, according to his
national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, in the
months leading up to September 11, President Bush was
fully briefed and supported a detailed plan to help
General Musharraf cut off support to al-Qaida in
Afghanistan. As Groucho Marx once asked: "Who do you
believe - me, or the evidence of your own eyes?"
Dr Rice was in a very difficult position in her
testimony yesterday to the September 11 commission
investigating the attacks. She had to steer very
carefully, between accusations of the administration
having done nothing to counter al-Qaida, and its
having been able to have stopped the hijackers on
September 11. The fact that Dr Rice was testifying at
all, after weeks of resistance to a public appearance
before the commission, was a recognition by the White
House of the danger it faces, with an election
looming, a resurgent Democrat party and several
telling charges from within the administration itself,
such as former terrorism advisor Richard Clarke.
Predictably, Dr Rice's first objective was to protect
the president from criticism. But she failed to
satisfy those watching her testimony that the received
image of the pre-9/11 White House - that it barely
feigned interest in foreign affairs - was inaccurate.
Her exchange with commission member Richard
Ben-Veniste was particularly revealing, over if she
had told President Bush there were al-Qaida cells in
the US, after that information had been passed to her
by Mr Clarke. To say - as Dr Rice did - "I really
don't remember whether I discussed this with the
president," should be called the Reagan defense, after
the former president repeatedly used the phrase "I
don't recall" in an inquiry into the Iran-Contra
scandal. What is questionable is whether that is a
credible defense from someone reputed to be the
smartest person in the White House.
The idea that President Bush was fully briefed about
al-Qaida, and that the White House understood that it
"posed a serious threat to the United States", simply
does not ring true. That feeling is supported by the
fact that both the administration and Dr Rice were
more interested in pushing for a pointless missile
defense shield in the months before September 11. To
say that a memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to
attack inside the United States" did not warn of an
impending attack, according to Dr Rice, suggests the
administration has begun to lose touch with reality.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
The Emperor has no uniform...
Patrick Sabatier, Liberation: Faced with uprisings
that multiply, grow, and harden, the "coalition of the
willing", that disembarked in Iraq in the wake of the
US Army with flowers in their rifles, is revealing
itself to be a "coalition of the irresolute." The
Ukrainians have beaten a retreat. Japanese and South
Koreans have gone to earth in their bases. Spaniards
and Kazakhs wait for promised withdrawal. The
Bulgarians cry for help. The Poles are asking
themselves why they stay. The Italians negotiate with
the enemy. All with the bitter certainty of having
been swindled by the United States about the risks of
the adventure as well as the reasons for embarking on
it. Hostage-taking risks precipitating a rout.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://truthout.org/docs_04/041004I.shtml
Rout
By Patrick Sabatier
Liberation
Friday 09 April 2004
Faced with uprisings that multiply, grow, and
harden, the "coalition of the willing", that
disembarked in Iraq in the wake of the US Army with
flowers in their rifles, is revealing itself to be a
"coalition of the irresolute." The Ukrainians have
beaten a retreat. Japanese and South Koreans have gone
to earth in their bases. Spaniards and Kazakhs wait
for promised withdrawal. The Bulgarians cry for help.
The Poles are asking themselves why they stay. The
Italians negotiate with the enemy. All with the bitter
certainty of having been swindled by the United States
about the risks of the adventure as well as the
reasons for embarking on it. Hostage-taking risks
precipitating a rout.
For the most part, the Americans are entrenched in
their four mega-bases from which they launch reprisal
raids. Their Iraqi auxiliaries have vanished into thin
air. One year after Saddam Hussein's fall, the
coalition, in fact, no longer controls very much in an
Iraq that has come to resemble Afghanistan during the
Soviet occupation. From a military point of view, the
collapse of "the coalition" changes nothing for the
United States. From a political perspective, it's a
heavy blow.
Bush is effectively counting on the UN (alas, too
late) to get him out of a bad situation by
legitimizing the Iraqi Authority to which some
simulacrum of power is supposed to be transferred June
30 and by organizing elections on the heels of that
transfer. He has begun to sound out the countries
whose opposition to the war he derided- including
France - to ask them to participate in a multinational
force that would protect the UN in Iraq. One may
imagine that these countries will think twice before
jumping in to pull Bush out of the trap he fell into
after having dug it himself.
The woods have come to the castle walls.
Associated Press: President Bush's August 2001 briefing on terrorism threats, described largely as a historical document, included information from three months earlier that al-Qaeda was trying to send operatives into the United States for an explosives attack, according to several people who have seen the memo...The sources said the presidential memo included a series of bullet items that brought Bush through a
history of mostly uncorroborated intelligence that
cited al-Qaeda's interest in hijacking planes to win
the release of Islamic extremists who had been
arrested in 1998 and 1999 as well as the travelings of
suspected al-Qaeda operatives, include some U.S.
citizens, in and out of the United States. It
suggested al-Qaeda might have a support system in
place on U.S. soil, the sources said...And the final
bullet told the president of a recent intelligence
report indicating al-Qaeda operatives were trying to
get inside the United States to carry out an attack
with explosives, the sources said. There was no
specifics about the timing or target, the sources
said. The sources said the briefing memo did not
provide the exact date of that intelligence but made
clear it was in the 2001 time frame, and that FBI and
other agencies were investigating it. The information
had been provided to intelligence and law enforcement
agencies well before Bush's briefing, the sources
said.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/09/bush.memo.ap/index.html
AP: Bush's al Qaeda memo included recent threats
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's August 2001
briefing on terrorism threats, described largely as a
historical document, included information from three
months earlier that al-Qaeda was trying to send
operatives into the United States for an explosives
attack, according to several people who have seen the
memo.
The so-called presidential daily briefing, or PDB,
delivered to Bush on August 6, 2001 -- a month before
the September 11 attacks -- said there were various
reports that Osama bin Laden had wanted to strike
inside the United States as early as 1997 and
continuing into the spring of 2001, the sources told
The Associated Press.
The same month as that briefing of Bush, U.S.
intelligence officials received two uncorroborated
reports suggesting terrorists might use airplanes,
including one that suggested al-Qaeda operatives were
considering flying a plane into a U.S. embassy,
current and former government officials said.
Those August 2001 reports -- among thousands of varied
and uncorroborated threats received by the government
each month -- weren't deemed credible enough to tell
the president or his national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice, the officials said. Neither involved
the eventual September 11 plot.
The sources who read the presidential memo would only
speak on condition of anonymity because the White
House has not yet declassified the highly sensitive
document, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike
Inside the United States."
That declassification process is expected to be
completed soon, allowing the Bush administration to
make the document public in a historic disclosure of
secret presidential intelligence briefing materials.
The sources said the presidential memo included a
series of bullet items that brought Bush through a
history of mostly uncorroborated intelligence that
cited al-Qaeda's interest in hijacking planes to win
the release of Islamic extremists who had been
arrested in 1998 and 1999 as well as the travelings of
suspected al-Qaeda operatives, include some U.S.
citizens, in and out of the United States. It
suggested al-Qaeda might have a support system in
place on U.S. soil, the sources said.
The document also included FBI analytical judgments
that some al-Qaeda activities were consistent with
preparation for airline hijackings or other types of
attacks, some members of the commission looking into
the September 11 attacks said earlier this week.
The second-to-last bullet told the president that
there were numerous -- at least 70 -- terror-related
investigations under way by the FBI in 2001 involving
matters or people on U.S. soil, the sources said.
And the final bullet told the president of a recent
intelligence report indicating al-Qaeda operatives
were trying to get inside the United States to carry
out an attack with explosives, the sources said. There
was no specifics about the timing or target, the
sources said.
The sources said the briefing memo did not provide the
exact date of that intelligence but made clear it was
in the 2001 time frame, and that FBI and other
agencies were investigating it. The information had
been provided to intelligence and law enforcement
agencies well before Bush's briefing, the sources
said.
They said final bullet in the presidential memo was
based on an intelligence report received in May 2001
that indicated bin Laden operatives were trying to
cross from Canada into the United States for an
attack.
A joint congressional inquiry report into the
September 11 failures first divulged the existence of
the May 2001 threat report last year but did not
reveal it was included in Bush's briefing. The
congressional inquiry described the intelligence this
way:
"In May 2001, the Intelligence Community obtained
information that supporters of Osama bin Laden were
reportedly planning to infiltrate the United States
via Canada in order to carry out a terrorist operation
using high explosives."
In her testimony Thursday to the September 11
commission, Rice described Bush's August 6 daily
briefing as including mostly "historical information"
and said most threat information in the summer of 2001
involved overseas targets.
Rice also testified that she did not recall seeing any
warnings before September 11 that a plane might be
used a terrorist weapon, though it was possible others
in the White House did.
Current and former government officials familiar with
terrorism intelligence told the AP that in the same
month Bush received his briefing, U.S. intelligence
received two uncorroborated reports -- among hundreds
-- suggesting terrorist might use planes but that
neither reached the president or Rice.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
said one report in August 2001 said there was
uncorroborated information that two bin Laden
operatives had met in October 2000 to discuss a plot
to attack the U.S. Embassy in Nairaobi using an
airplane.
That report stated the operative would either bomb the
embassy using the airplane or drive the airplane into
it, according to information provided congressional
investigators and cited in their report released last
year.
Separately, the CIA sent a warning to the Federal
Aviation Administration in August 2001 asking the
agency to advise commercial airliners that six
Pakistanis in Latin America, not connected to
al-Qaeda, were considering a hijacking, bombing or
sabotage of an airliner. That warning did not have
specifics on a time or location but said it could
involve Britain, Canada, Mexico, Malaysia, Cuba, among
others, according to information made public by the
congressional inquiry.
Rice stated emphatically on Thursday she did not see
any such reports about al-Qaeda using a plane as a
weapon until after September 11, suggesting the
intelligence may have reached someone lower in the
White House.
"To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Chairman, this kind
of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons
actually was never briefed to us," she said. "I cannot
tell you that there might not have been a report here
or a report there that reached somebody in our midst."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved.This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/09/bush.memo.ap/index.html
Those who lost the most that tragic morning are
leading this country...
Kelly Wallace & Paul Hirschkorn, CNN: Stephen Push, whose wife, Lisa, was killed on the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, was among those who wanted to know more. "I was disappointed she spent so much time trying to evade responsibility both for herself and the administration and so little time answering the questions that were asked of her," Push said. "She seemed to have selective amnesia. I personally wanted to see more candor."
"She spent a lot of time trying to push the blame off either on the previous administration or on Dick Clarke or on amorphous structural problems, and very little admitting to the fact that this happened on her watch and they failed," Push said.
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Some families criticize Rice's testimony
Others say she and Bush did the best they could
>From Kelly Wallace and Phil Hirschkorn
CNN
Thursday, April 8, 2004 Posted: 10:43 PM EDT (0243
GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- About 50 relatives of victims of
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks filled three
of the front rows of the hearing room on Capitol Hill
Thursday where Condoleezza Rice answered questions
under oath for three hours.
Many of them were under-whelmed by the national
security adviser's testimony before the independent
commission investigating the attacks.
Stephen Push, whose wife, Lisa, was killed on the
hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, was
among those who wanted to know more.
"I was disappointed she spent so much time trying to
evade responsibility both for herself and the
administration and so little time answering the
questions that were asked of her," Push said. "She
seemed to have selective amnesia. I personally wanted
to see more candor."
Push had advocated strongly for the 9/11 commission to
be created and personally testified before it last
year.
Like a number of family members, Push had hoped that
Rice would take some personal responsibility for the
security lapses that preceded the attacks, as former
White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke did
two weeks ago.
"She spent a lot of time trying to push the blame off
either on the previous administration or on Dick
Clarke or on amorphous structural problems, and very
little admitting to the fact that this happened on her
watch and they failed," Push said.
Bill Harvey also was disappointed. Harvey's wife of
one month, Sara, was killed after the first hijacked
plane crashed into the World Trade Center's north
tower.
"She's a very, very smart woman, but she was playing
rope-a-dope a little bit today with the commission,"
Harvey said.
"She tried to play semantical games in answering some
of their questions -- is something 'urgent' or is it a
'priority.' What's the difference?" Harvey asked.
Harvey questioned whether Clarke's January 2001 memo
recommending a more aggressive stance against al Qaeda
was "a 'think piece' or 'action plan?' What's the
distinction?"
Harvey was among a contingent of New York families
that attended the hearing, hoping to hear what the
Bush administration was doing to combat terrorism
during its first eight months in office.
Henry and Elaine Hughes wore large buttons bearing a
picture of their son, Chris, who worked on the 87th
floor of the trade center's south tower.
"She wasn't as forthright as she could have been,"
Henry Hughes said. "When something like this happens,
someone has to be able to stand up and say, 'You know
what? We didn't do the right thing here, and now we
are going to make it better.' "
"To say she's the new kid on the block, they are only
there 233 days, that's the poorest excuse I ever
heard," Elaine Hughes said.
At the end of the hearing, Elaine Hughes approached
Rice.
"Not to shake her hand -- to tell her that her
government wasn't doing enough, didn't do enough, and
she didn't have a response," she said.
Mary Fetchet, who also lost her son, Bradley, a
securities trader, in the New York attack, felt Rice
was not straightforward with the commission about the
information she passed on to President Bush.
"Of course, every government agency failed. What is
her job as national security adviser? My sense is it
is her responsibility to get information from all
these agencies that aren't communicating," Fetchet
said.
But Rice also had supporters, who found her answers
credible.
"It was evident that she truly was doing her best --
at least to me -- to tell the truth, be as thorough
and deal with the crisis our country is dealing with,"
said Hamilton Peterson, whose father, Don, and his
stepmother were aboard the plane that crashed in
Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
"I thanked her for coming, and I thought she did a
great job."
Peterson said he did not blame the Bush administration
for the attacks occurring under its watch.
"I think that's unfair, I think President Bush was in
office a very brief period of time. I think he has
been extremely aggressive," Peterson said.
Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles, piloted the
plane that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon,
said it didn't matter who was in the White House on
September 11.
"Those guys were already in place. The men that were
on my brother's airplane entered this country in
January of 2000," she said, referring to hijackers
Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
"I blame 19 men who boarded airplanes with the intent
of killing as many Americans as they could, and I
blame the sponsor of those 19 men," she said,
referring to al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden,
who remains at large.
The Emperor has no uniform...Do any of the "US mainstream news media" propapunditgandists have the conscience or the integrity or the clarity of mind or the courage to speak this truth? Here it is from the free press of France via WWW.TRUTHOUT.ORG, a bastion of the Information Rebellion...
Patrick Sabatier, Liberation: For his allies, the dilemma is now formidable. How can you help an elephant drowning in a swamp without drowning along with it? The risk of regional escalation is real, as is that of a civil war in Iraq in the case of withdrawal. It's probably already too late to hope that the UN could stabilize a situation at the edge of the abyss. The worst is not certain. However, what is sure is that Bush has no solution to the Iraqi problem. He is the problem.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://truthout.org/docs_04/040904H.shtml
The Worst Scenario
By Patrick Sabatier
Liberation
Thursday, April 08, 2004
The question now is not whether the United States is stuck in a quagmire-the answer is yes- but rather whether it can still get out of it, and, above all, how. One year after taking Baghdad, George W. Bush can hammer out his determination to change nothing about his policy as much as he likes, he nonetheless sees the worst scenario taking place right before his eyes, the scenario against which he had been warned by those of his allies unwilling to follow him with their eyes shut. The Sunni guerilla war continues, some of the Shi'ia are in rebellion, the Provisional Iraqi Authority is powerless, the country's reconstruction compromised by the lack of security, and GIs coming home in sinister body bags are ever more numerous. They are no longer even pretending to try to win "the hearts and minds" of a populace that Bush was supposed to want to liberate, and they have allowed themselves to be dragged into a true guerilla war.
Iraq is not yet "Bush's Vietnam". However, it is already, as Vietnam was, the chronicle of a predicted disaster.
Bush has imprisoned himself in a fearsome chess game by fixing June 30 for the transfer of power to a phantom Iraqi government. In order to get himself reelected in November as a "War President", haloed by a fraudulent success in Iraq, he took the risk of dragging his countrymen into a true debacle, his allies along with them. This is no Roosevelt.
For his allies, the dilemma is now formidable. How can you help an elephant drowning in a swamp without drowning along with it? The risk of regional escalation is real, as is that of a civil war in Iraq in the case of withdrawal. It's probably already too late to hope that the UN could stabilize a situation at the edge of the abyss.
The worst is not certain. However, what is sure is that Bush has no solution to the Iraqi problem. He is the problem.
-------
Jump to TO Features for Friday April 9, 2004
The extent of the Bush Cabal's SHAMELESS cover-up
concerning the depth of their pre-9/11 failures (gross
incompetence? criminal negligence? worse?) became
painfully apparent during Condescendia Rice's 9/11
Commission "testimony.". BUT the "US Mainstream News
Media" refuses to acknowledge the signifigance of her
"testimony." It's the Media, Stupid.
John Podesta, Center for American Progress: Two and a
half years after 9/11, the American public learned
that President Bush received a memo on August 6, 2001,
entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the
United States." It contained explicit warnings that
Osama bin Laden was planning to attack the United
States – including what the FBI called suspicious
activities "consistent with preparations for
hijacking." Yet, there was no domestic follow-up by
the Bush Administration. No high level meetings. No
sense of urgency...Dr. Rice claimed the Administration was waiting for more "actionable" intelligence before doing anything and that there was "no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks." But given what we learned today, the Administration has no excuse for not loading the gun.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=44951
Statement of John Podesta
Regarding the Testimony of Condoleezza Rice Before the
9/11 Commission
April 8, 2004
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony
before the 9/11 Commission today established new and
important facts.
Two and a half years after 9/11, the American public
learned that President Bush received a memo on August
6, 2001, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack
Inside the United States." It contained explicit
warnings that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack
the United States – including what the FBI called
suspicious activities "consistent with preparations
for hijacking." Yet, there was no domestic follow-up
by the Bush Administration. No high level meetings. No
sense of urgency.
Dr. Rice's claim today that the FBI sent warnings to
field offices was directly disputed by Commissioners
who said they had conducted thousands of interviews
and reviewed thousands of documents.
Their conclusion: no one at the FBI can recall such
orders.
In order to help clarify what the President knew and
what he did in response, the White House needs to
immediately declassify the August 6 briefing as
requested today by all 10 members of the bipartisan
Commission.
Dr. Rice claimed the Administration was waiting for
more "actionable" intelligence before doing anything
and that there was "no silver bullet that could have
prevented the 9/11 attacks." But given what we learned
today, the Administration has no excuse for not
loading the gun.
John Podesta is the president and chief executive
officer of the Center for American Progress. He served
as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.
"Out, out damn spot!"
Center for American Progress: We now know why the Bush administration has been hiding the Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence briefing for the president, called "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."
All of the 9/11 Commission members – Republicans and
Democrats – have asked the Bush administration to
declassify this document. There are precedents for
releasing presidential daily briefings and the
American public deserves to know what President Bush
knew and when.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=44925
August 6, 2001: Bush Administration Warned 'Bin Laden
Determined to Attack Inside the United States'
April 8, 2004
Two and a half years after 9/11, the American public
learned today that President Bush received explicit
warnings that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack
the United States – including activities "consistent
with preparations for hijacking." Yet, there was no
domestic follow-up by the Bush administration. No high
level meetings. No sense of urgency. No warnings to
FBI agents across the country.
We now know why the Bush administration has been
hiding the Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence briefing for the
president, called "Bin Laden Determined to Attack
Inside the United States." All of the 9/11 Commission
members – Republicans and Democrats – have asked the
Bush administration to declassify this document. There
are precedents for releasing presidential daily
briefings and the American public deserves to know
what President Bush knew and when.
We also learned that there appears to have been no
response to explicit and repeated warnings about al
Qaeda attacks. National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice's claim that the FBI sent warnings to field
offices was directly disputed by commissioners who
said they had conducted thousands of interviews and
reviewed thousands of documents. Their conclusion: no
one at the FBI can recall such orders.
Today's hearing also confirmed evidence that the
administration had done little or nothing to combat
the terrorist threat between Jan. 20, 2001, and Sept.
10, 2001. Rice repeatedly used the claim that the
administration was developing a "strategic approach"
as an excuse for not acting. There was no response to
the bombing of the USS Cole that claimed 17 American
lives and the administration tried to cut
counterterrorism funding.
Daily Talking Points is a product of the Center for
American Progress, a non-partisan research and
educational institute committed to progressive
principles for a strong, just and free America.
Did Condescendia Rice (R-Chevron) commit perjury in
her "testimony" to the 9/11 Commission? There are
numerous possible instances. John Podesta's Center for
America Progress has compiled contradictions between
her testimony and the facts...Whether she perjured
herself or not, it was a DESPICABLE display of
arrogance and deceit...
Center for American Progress: Claim vs. Fact: Rice's
Q&A Testimony Before the 9/11 Commission
August 6 PDB
CLAIM: There was "nothing about the threat of attack
in the U.S." in the Presidential Daily Briefing the
President received on August 6th. [responding to Ben
Veniste]
FACT: Rice herself confirmed that "the title [of the
PDB] was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the
United States.'" [Source: Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04]
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=44918
Published on Thursday, April 8, 2004 by the Center for
American Progress
Claim vs. Fact: Rice's Q&A Testimony Before the 9/11 Commission
Planes as Weapons
CLAIM: "I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of
strategic warning, that planes might be used as
weapons." [responding to Kean]
FACT: Condoleezza Rice was the top National Security
official with President Bush at the July 2001 G-8
summit in Genoa. There, "U.S. officials were warned
that Islamic terrorists might attempt to crash an
airliner" into the summit, prompting officials to
"close the airspace over Genoa and station
antiaircraft guns at the city's airport." [Sources:
Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01; White House release,
7/22/01]
CLAIM: "I was certainly not aware of [intelligence
reports about planes as missiles] at the time that I
spoke" in 2002. [responding to Kean]
FACT: While Rice may not have been aware of the 12
separate and explicit warnings about terrorists using
planes as weapons when she made her denial in 2002,
she did know about them when she wrote her March 22,
2004 Washington Post op-ed. In that piece, she once
again repeated the claim there was no indication "that
terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using
airplanes as missiles." [Source: Washington Post,
3/22/04]
August 6 PDB
CLAIM: There was "nothing about the threat of attack
in the U.S." in the Presidential Daily Briefing the
President received on August 6th. [responding to Ben
Veniste]
FACT: Rice herself confirmed that "the title [of the
PDB] was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the
United States.'" [Source: Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04]
Domestic Threat
CLAIM: "One of the problems was there was really
nothing that look like was going to happen inside the
United States...Almost all of the reports focused on
al-Qaida activities outside the United States,
especially in the Middle East and North Africa...We
did not have...threat information that was in any way
specific enough to suggest something was coming in the
United States." [responding to Gorelick]
FACT: Page 204 of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into
9/11 noted that "In May 2001, the intelligence
community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters
were planning to infiltrate the United States" to
"carry out a terrorist operation using high
explosives." The report "was included in an
intelligence report for senior government officials in
August [2001]." In the same month, the Pentagon
"acquired and shared with other elements of the
Intelligence Community information suggesting that
seven persons associated with Bin Laden had departed
various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and
the United States." [Sources: Joint Congressional
Report, 12/02]
CLAIM: "If we had known an attack was coming against
the United States...we would have moved heaven and
earth to stop it." [responding to Roemer]
FACT: Rice admits that she was told that "an attack
was coming." She said, "Let me read you some of the
actual chatter that was picked up in that spring and
summer: Unbelievable news coming in weeks, said one.
Big event -- there will be a very, very, very, very
big uproar. There will be attacks in the near future."
[Source: Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04]
Cheney Counterterrorism Task Force
CLAIM: "The Vice President was, a little later in, I
think, in May, tasked by the President to put together
a group to look at all of the recommendations that had
been made about domestic preparedness and all of the
questions associated with that." [responding to
Fielding]
FACT: The Vice President's task force never once
convened a meeting. In the same time period, the Vice
President convened at least 10 meetings of his energy
task force, and six meetings with Enron executives.
[Source: Washington Post, 1/20/02; GAO Report, 8/03]
Principals Meetings
CLAIM: "The CSG (Counterterrorism Security Group) was
made up of not junior people, but the top level of
counterterrorism experts. Now, they were in contact
with their principals." [responding to Fielding]
FACT: "Many of the other people at the CSG-level, and
the people who were brought to the table from the
domestic agencies, were not telling their principals.
Secretary Mineta, the secretary of transportation, had
no idea of the threat. The administrator of the FAA,
responsible for security on our airlines, had no
idea." [Source: 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick,
4/8/04]
Previous Administration
CLAIM: "The decision that we made was to, first of
all, have no drop-off in what the Clinton
administration was doing, because clearly they had
done a lot of work to deal with this very important
priority." [responding to Kean]
FACT: Internal government documents show that while
the Clinton Administration officially prioritized
counterterrorism as a "Tier One" priority, but when
the Bush Administration took office, top officials
downgraded counterterrorism. As the Washington Post
reported, these documents show that before Sept. 11
the Bush Administration "did not give terrorism top
billing." Rice admitted that "we decided to take a
different track" than the Clinton Administration in
protecting America. [Source: Internal government
documents, 1998-2001; Washington Post, 3/22/04; Rice
testimony, 4/8/04]
FBI
CLAIM: The Bush Administration has been committed to
the "transformation of the FBI into an agency
dedicated to fighting terror." [responding to Kean]
FACT: Before 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft
de-emphasized counterterrorism at the FBI, in favor of
more traditional law enforcement. And according to the
Washington Post, "in the early days after the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly
two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism
funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget
document shows." And according to a new report by the
Congressional Research Service, "numerous confidential
law enforcement and intelligence sources who challenge
the FBI's claim that it has successfully retooled
itself to gather critical intelligence on terrorists
as well as fight crime." [Source: Washington Post,
3/22/04; Congressional Quarterly, 4/6/04]
CLAIM: "The FBI issued at least three nationwide
warnings to federal, state and law enforcement
agencies and specifically stated that, although the
vast majority of the information indicated overseas
targets, attacks against the homeland could not be
ruled out. The FBI tasked all 56 of its U.S. field
offices to increase surveillance of known suspects of
terrorists and to reach out to known informants who
might have information on terrorist activities."
[responding to Gorelick]
FACT: The warnings are "feckless. They don't tell
anybody anything. They don't bring anyone to battle
stations." [Source: 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick,
4/8/04]
Homeland Security
CLAIM: "I think that having a Homeland Security
Department that can bring together the FAA and the INS
and Customs and all of the various agencies is a very
important step." [responding to Hamilton]
FACT: The White House vehemently opposed the creation
of the Department of Homeland security. Its opposition
to the concept delayed the creation of the department
by months.
CLAIM: "We have created a threat terrorism information
center, the TTIC, which does bring together all of the
sources of information from all of the intelligence
agencies -- the FBI and the Department of Homeland
Security and the INS and the CIA and the DIA -- so
that there's one place where all of this is coming
together." [responding to Fielding]
FACT: "Knowledgeable sources complain that the
president's new Terrorist Threat Integration Center,
which reports to CIA Director George Tenet rather than
to Ridge, has created more of a moat than a bridge.
The ability to spot the nation's weakest points was
going to make Homeland Security different, recalled
one person involved in the decision to set up TTIC.
But now, the person said, 'that whole effort has been
gutted by the White House creation of TTIC, [which]
has served little more than to give the appearance of
progress.'" [Source: National Journal, 3/6/04]
IRAQ-9/11
CLAIM: "There was a discussion of Iraq. I think it was
raised by Don Rumsfeld. It was pressed a bit by Paul
Wolfowitz."
FACT: Rice's statement confirms previous proof that
the Administration was focusing on Iraq immediately
after 9/11, despite having no proof that Iraq was
involved in the attack. Rice's statement also
contradicts her previous denials in which she claimed
"Iraq was to the side" immediately after 9/11. She
made this denial despite the President signing "a
2-and-a-half-page document marked 'TOP SECRET'" six
days after 9/11 that "directed the Pentagon to begin
planning military options for an invasion of Iraq."
[Source: Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04, 3/22/04;
Washington Post, 1/12/03]
CLAIM: "Given that this was a global war on terror,
should we look not just at Afghanistan but should we
look at doing something against Iraq?"
FACT: The Administration has not produced one shred of
evidence that Iraq had an operational relationship
with Al Qaeda, or that Iraq had anything to do with
the 9/11 attacks on America. In fact, a U.S. Army War
College report said that the war in Iraq has been a
diversion that has drained key resources from the more
imminent War on Terror. Just this week, USA Today
reported that "in 2002, troops from the 5th Special
Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were
pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in
Afghanistan to prepare for their next assignment:
Iraq." Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) confirmed this, noting
in February of 2002, a senior military commander told
him "We are moving military and intelligence personnel
and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a
future war in Iraq." [Sources: CNN, 1/13/04; USA
Today, 3/28/04; Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), 3/26/04]
War on Terror
CLAIM: After 9/11, "the President put states on notice
if they were sponsoring terrorists."
FACT: The President continues to say Saudi Arabia is
"our friend" despite their potential ties to
terrorists. As the LA Times reported, "the 27
classified pages of a congressional report about Sept.
11 depict a Saudi government that not only provided
significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but
also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of
dollars to flow to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups
through suspect charities and other fronts." Just this
week, Newsweek reported "within weeks of the September
11 terror attacks, security officers at the Fleet
National Bank in Boston had identified 'suspicious'
wire transfers from the Saudi Embassy in Washington
that eventually led to the discovery of an active Al
Qaeda 'sleeper cell' that may have been planning
follow-up attacks inside the United States." [Source:
LA Times, 8/2/03; CNN, 11/23/02; Newsweek, 4/7/04]
###
It is not just Richard Clark (R-Reality)...
Caroline Drees, Reuters: Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism...Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1/2 years since the attacks.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
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http://www.forbes.com/iraq/newswire/2004/04/07/rtr1326389.html
U.S. terrorism policy spawns steady staff exodus
Reuters, 04.07.04, 3:52 PM ET
By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the
Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of
counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a
preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S.
fight against terrorism.
Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a
dozen have left the White House Office for Combating
Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2
1/2 years since the attacks.
Some also left because they felt President Bush had
sidelined his counterterrorism experts and paid almost
exclusive heed to the vice president, the defense
secretary and other Cabinet members in planning the
"war on terror," former counterterrorism officials
said.
"I'm kind of hoping for regime change," one official
who quit told Reuters.
The administration's handling of the battle against
terrorism is a key issue for the presidency, and could
be key to Bush's re-election effort.
Similar charges were made by Bush's former
counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who told the
independent commission investigating the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks that the administration ignored the al
Qaeda threat beforehand and was fixated on Iraq
afterward. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice
testifies before the 9/11 panel Thursday.
"Iraq has been a distraction from the whole
counterterrorism effort," said the former official,
adding the policy had frustrated many in the White
House anti-terrorism office, about two-thids of whom
have left and been replaced since Sept. 11.
The administration vehemently denies the accusations,
and says it is making strong progress in the global
war on terror.
HIGH TURNOVER
Roger Cressey, who served under Clarke in the White
House counterterrorism office, said: "Dick accurately
reflects the frustration of many in the
counterterrorism community in getting the new
administration to take the al Qaeda issue seriously."
Cressey left the office in November 2001, when he
became chief of staff of the White House's
cybersecurity office until September 2002.
The attrition among all levels of the Office for
Combating Terrorism began shortly after the attacks
and continued into this year. At least eight officials
in the office -- which numbers a dozen people -- have
left and been replaced since 9/11. Several of the
officials were contacted by Reuters.
The office has been run by four different people since
the attacks, and at least three have held the No. 2
slot.
"There has been excessively high turnover in the
Office for Combating Terrorism," said Flynt Leverett,
who served on the White House National Security
Council for about a year until March 2003 and is now a
fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.
"If you take the (White House) counterterrorism and
Middle East offices, you've got about a dozen people
... who came to this administration wanting to work on
these important issues and left after a year or often
less because they just don't think that this
administration is dealing seriously with the issues
that matter," he said.
Rand Beers, a former No. 2 in the office who quit last
year over the administration's handling of the war on
terrorism, told Reuters the turnover had been
"unusually high" since the hijacked airliner attacks
in New York and Washington.
"And one of the reasons is frustration with the way
counterterrorism policy has been conducted, including
the focus on Iraq," said Beers, who now serves as a
foreign policy adviser for Democratic presidential
candidate John Kerry, who hopes to unseat Bush in
November.
The White House denied there had been unusually high
turnover, saying staff tended to be on limited
assignments from other federal agencies. A senior
administration official said it was "absolutely
untrue" Iraq was diverting attention from overall
counterterrorism efforts.
Another official said it was wrong to link all the
numerous departures to policy concerns over Iraq.
Several current and former officials said burn out
from job stress also contributed to high turnover in
the office, as did frustration among some staff about
the limits of their influence over policymaking in
general. Many National Security Council staffers only
stay 18 months to two years.
One current counterterrorism official said while the
Iraq campaign had been a "huge resource drain," this
held true for all major events that compete for scarce
resources.
"There's a problem of too few counterterrorism
staffers to begin with ... and with the focus on any
big issue like Iraq, it is a distraction from the
overall counterterrorism effort," the official said.
Copyright 2004, Reuters News Service
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Will the 9/11 Commission ignore this story?
Julian Borger, Guardian: A senior terrorism expert said yesterday that he had delivered a final desperate warning of an inevitable terrorist attack to Condoleezza Rice five days before al-Qaida struck New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington. On the eve of the national security
adviser's public appearance today to defend the Bush
administration's record before the commission studying
the September 11 attacks, Gary Hart, a former
Democratic presidential candidate who co-chaired an
earlier three-year public study of the threats to US
security in the 21st century, told the Guardian his
warning had been ignored.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1188133,00.html
Rice faces accusation on eve of testimony
Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday April 8, 2004
The Guardian
A senior terrorism expert said yesterday that he had
delivered a final desperate warning of an inevitable
terrorist attack to Condoleezza Rice five days before
al-Qaida struck New York's World Trade Centre and the
Pentagon in Washington.
On the eve of the national security adviser's public
appearance today to defend the Bush administration's
record before the commission studying the September 11
attacks, Gary Hart, a former Democratic presidential
candidate who co-chaired an earlier three-year public
study of the threats to US security in the 21st
century, told the Guardian his warning had been
ignored.
"She [Rice] said: 'I'll discuss it with the
vice-president'," Mr Hart said; but he felt the
response was a brush-off.
"All I can say is she didn't feel the degree of
urgency I thought was necessary," he said. He said he
has known Ms Rice for 20 years, since she had
volunteered to work on his Colorado Senate campaign.
Ms Rice will speak under oath for more than two hours
to the national commission examining whether more
could have been done to prevent the September 11
attacks. She is expected to make a detailed rebuttal
of the allegations by Richard Clarke, a former White
House chief counter- terrorist adviser, that the Bush
team virtually ignored the al-Qaida threat because of
its fixations on Iraq and strategic missile defence.
Mr Hart's comments add weight to Mr Clarke's argument
and make Ms Rice's task even harder.
Together with Warren Rudman, a veteran Republican
politician, Mr Hart chaired the US commission on
national security/21st century, which was established
by President Bill Clinton in October 1998 and told to
report to the incoming president in early 2001.
That report predicted: "America will become
increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our
homeland [and] Americans will likely die on American
soil, possibly in large numbers."
It recommended a national homeland security agency.
To the surprise of the 14 commissioners, Mr Hart said,
the recommendations were ignored. The post of homeland
security adviser was established in the White House
only after the September 11 attacks.
"We were not just another federal commission. This was
supposed to be - and was - the most comprehensive
review of US national security since 1947," Mr Hart
said in Denver, where he now works for an
international law firm.
He said that in the first week of February 2001 he and
other commissioners briefed Ms Rice, the secretary of
defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and the secretary of state,
Colin Powell, to convey their fears personally.
"They were respectful and attentive, interested in
what we were saying" - but nothing was done .
In early May 2001, when Congress was contemplating
legislation to establish a homeland security agency,
President Bush publicly called on it to shelve the
issue while it was considered by Mr Cheney.
But the senior White House national security officials
did not meet to discuss the terrorist threat until the
first week of September.
"Imagine eight months before Pearl Harbor, an
officially designated group of 14 Americans had told
Roosevelt that the Japanese would attack some place
somewhere and Roosevelt did nothing," Mr Hart said.
He complained that the September 11 commission had not
asked him or his former colleagues to testify.
But Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the commission,
said it had read the Hart-Rudman report, its staff had
talked to some of Mr Hart's fellow commissioners, and
might talk to Mr Hart himself.
It's the Media, Stupid.
Danny Shecter, www.mediachannel.com: For the most
part, the US media, even while reporting on the
deterioration of the situation in Iraq, continues to
mimic the government's desired media message. That
view puts all the blame for the violence largely onto
the actions of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has
been described as an unrepresentative, mentally
unbalanced mullah bent on violence. He is depicted as
a hot head, an outlaw and a terrorist. This
demonization rarely has been backed up with
documentation or detailed analysis.
Break the Bush Cabal's Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert171.shtml
Misreporting the Uprising in Iraq: How Media Misses the Story
By Danny Schechter
MediaChannel.org
NEW YORK, April 7, 2004 -- It's the oldest story in
the world: what goes up, comes down. All the bluster,
PR, "positive" press, bullying, distortion, deception,
and military tough-guyism cannot keep a flawed policy
afloat. The invasion of Iraq, sold as the "liberation
of the Iraqi people," was always a movie with a bad
script, flawed characters, and no third act.
Despite all the Bremer ballast served up about how
only a handful of Saddam-worshipping, al-Sadr-loving,
Al-Qaeda-following fanatics stand in the way of a
US-imposed democratic paradise, the reality on the
ground suggests otherwise. A Sunni-Shia opposition
movement is emerging, and gathering steam.
The body count climbs with every passing hour. As of
April 7, more than 30 US soldiers have been killed and
24 wounded. At least 160 Iraqis are dead reportedly.
For the most part, the US media, even while reporting
on the deterioration of the situation in Iraq,
continues to mimic the government's desired media
message. That view puts all the blame for the violence
largely onto the actions of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr, who has been described as an
unrepresentative, mentally unbalanced mullah bent on
violence. He is depicted as a hot head, an outlaw and
a terrorist. This demonization rarely has been backed
up with documentation or detailed analysis.
Behind the details of the various fire fights and
clashes, behind the coverage of a US missile that
struck a mosque or even the barbaric images of
American military contractors or mercenaries killed
and hung on a bridge is a context that most of our
media has missed.
Most US media has not had access to the battlefield.
There was only one embedded reporter, Tony Perry from
The Los Angeles Times present in Falluja?. Some
network reporters have acknowledged that "it is not
safe" to leave their offices. Reports on Iraq are now
coming out of Pentagon press offices.
Rahul Mahajan, author of several books on Iraq, says:
"We're being told a convenient and self-serving [story
about] a few barbaric 'isolated extremists' from the
'Saddamist stronghold' of Falluja who killed four
contractors."
"The truth is rather different," Mahajan told me.
"Falluja, although heavily Sunni Arab, was hardly in
Saddam's pocket. Its imams got into trouble for
refusing to obey his orders to praise him personally
during prayers." According to the author, Falluja
became a hotbed of resistance on April 28, 2003, when
U.S. troops opened fire on a group of 100 to 200
peaceful protesters. Fifteen protesters were killed.
"They claimed they were returning gunfire, but Human
Rights Watch investigated and found that the bullet
holes in the area were inconsistent with that story --
and, furthermore, every Iraqi witness maintained that
the crowd was unarmed. Two days later, another three
protesters were killed," reported Mahajan.
So, looked at from a middle-eastern perspective, this
uprising was seen in defensive terms, not offensive.
It was triggered by US military actions, which were
perceived by Iraqis as acts of war against them.
Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force Colonel and teacher
at the National War College, shared this view on
events in Falluja with me:
"We have to remember that this was not spontaneous. We
started it. It began when the CPA decided to exert a
degree of greater control. Moves were made against
Moqtada al-Sadr, then into Falluja. With al-Sadr, the
sequence was first his newspaper, then the arrest of a
deputy."
The significant conclusion, however, has to be that we
did not have control of the country, Gardiner said.
This type of perspective is all too often missing in
media coverage.
"We are seeing fighting of a new character. In Ramadi,
it was an attack of around 100 against a Marine
position. That's new. In Falluja, we've seen the bad
guys fight to hold defensive positions. That's new."
Colonel Gardiner is not optimistic about the odds for
coalition forces to cope with this new style of
combat:
"We have to keep in mind that the military and
political leadership in the United States have been
terrible at assessing the situation in Iraq, going
back to when the plan for the invasion was put
together. I've not heard any good assessment of what's
going on now."
If the reporting on the US military campaign is
fundamentally flawed, its meaning is often obscured,
wrote Robert Fisk of The Independent in London:
"The grim truth, however, is that the occupying powers
are now facing insurrection of various strengths in
almost every big city in Iraq. Yet they are still not
confronting that truth," writes Fisk.
For the past nine nights, Fisk reports, the main US
base close to Baghdad airport -- and the area around
the terminals -- has come under mortar fire. "But the
occupying powers have kept this secret."
They would prefer to tell us that the US occupation is
working, that democracy is right around the corner.
Dahr Jamail, who writes for the website Electronic
Iraq, blames US media coverage for reinforcing a
government propaganda view that distorts what is going
on. "[T]here is a horrendous disparity between what is
really occurring on the ground and what the Western
corporate media chooses to report," he wrote last
week.
Jamail recently spent nine weeks in Iraq working as a
freelance independent journalist. In many of his
dispatches he tells of Western media either
mis-reporting or not reporting stories as they arose.
"The signs were glaring -- from the parking lot full
of parked white SUV's in the middle of the day,
supposedly used by the CNN and Fox news crews, to the
absence of ABC, NBC, or CBS media crews at any of the
sites of the news stories I was covering. Even stories
that were on the front pages stateside are regularly
being covered from the press room and not the field"
But now, reality is fast intruding on the military and
the media. The 'we-are-winning-the-war-for democracy'
news frame is no longer credible.
As the Tet Offensive negatively affected perceptions
of a US victory in Vietnam, this uprising in Iraq is
having the same effect around the world.
Confidence in the US mission is being shattered with
every firefight and civilian and GI casualty.
The American people have been watching all of this in
horror from afar, but not being told what's really
going on. As the casualties continue to climb, the
truth may be harder to miss.
-- New Dissector Danny Schechter writes a daily blog
on Mediachannel.org. His latest book, "Embedded:
Weapons of Mass Deception" (Prometheus Books),
examines media coverage of the war on Iraq.
© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.
At least thirty US soldiers (there are unconfirmed reports that the number is much higher) have died in the last seventy-two hours in Iraq. For what? The _resident's foolish military adventure and the neo-con wet dream that inspired it should destroy him politically, but many more lives will be lost in his unraveling? MEANWHILE, the LNS often highlights the "US mainstream news media" failure to provide the US electorate with CONSISTENCY and CONTINUITY on the life and death stories of I9/11, Iraq, the Bush Cabal's real agenda, etc. Here is a stunning example...Richard Clark (R-Reality) has charged that the _resident, the VICE _resident and the White House au pair wrongly dimissed his preoccupation with Al Qaeda and took the nation's National Security focus away from that imminent threat and turned it instead on to Missile Defense and Iraq...There are many kinds of evidence to corroborate Clark's sworn testimony...Here is a very powerful example...from a very articulate and experienced US statesman...that's why you won't see him interviewed on the Sunday morning propapunditgandist "news" shows...that's why the "US mainstream news media" won't remind you about how the Bush Cabal's blew off the Hart-Rudman report just like it blew off the Clinton-Gore National Security team's view that Al Qaeda was the no. 1 threat, nor will the "US mainstream news media" remind you about how the Bush Cabal resisted the establishment of a Homeland Security Dept. -- even after 9/11 (just as it fought the establishment of a 9/11 commission) until it had no other political choice...It's the Media, Stupid...The coming election is a national referendum on the CREDIBILITY, CHARACTER and COMPETENCE of the _resident...Here is another very important piece of information to share with your fellow citizens...
Gary Hart (D-Reality), Salon: The U.S. Commission on
National Security/21st Century, co-chaired by former
Sen. Warren Rudman and myself, reported to President
George W. Bush and his new administration in January
2001 that terrorists were surely going to attack the
United States and that our country was woefully
unprepared. We documented the lack of intelligence
coordination against this threat and the lack of
preparation of up to two dozen federal agencies, as
well as state and local governments, to prevent such
attacks or respond to them when they did occur. Though
we had no ability to forecast specific times, places
and methods for such attacks, we were united in our
certainty that they were bound to occur. In our first
report we said: "America will become increasingly
vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland [and]
Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly
in large numbers." In our final report we urged the
new Bush administration to create a national homeland
security agency to prevent terrorist attacks.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/04/06/commission/index.html
A Paul Revere no one wants to hear from
I co-chaired a national security panel that warned the Bush administration the terrorists were coming. Why hasn't the 9/11 commission called any of us to testify?
Editor's note: The U.S. Commission on National
Security/21st Century was created by President Bill
Clinton in October 1998, with the approval of the
congressional leadership. It was a bipartisan
commission with a three-year life and a mandate to
review threats to national security and opportunities
to avoid those threats and to report to the next
president of the United States in early 2001. It
completed the most comprehensive review of U.S.
national security since 1947.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Gary Hart
April 6, 2004 | Suppose that in March or April 1941,
14 Americans with lengthy backgrounds in national
security affairs had reported to President Franklin
Roosevelt that the United States was going to be
attacked somewhere, sometime, somehow by the Japanese,
that this attack would result in large numbers of
American casualties, and these officially appointed
Americans had strongly recommended to the Roosevelt
administration that it take urgent steps to help
prevent such an attack. Further suppose that Roosevelt
had done little if anything in response to this
warning, and that almost eight months later, as it
happened, the Japanese attacked American facilities at
Pearl Harbor, and almost 2,000 Americans died. Suppose
after this attack official inquiries were launched, as
it also happened, as to why there was a failure of
intelligence, what actions were or were not taken
based on what intelligence there was, and what could
be done to prevent such catastrophic surprises in the
future. And finally suppose that the official
commission created to investigate the tragedy of Pearl
Harbor failed to call upon the original 14 Americans
who forecast the attack and forewarned against it.
Now move this supposed scenario forward to 2004 and
you have virtually a perfect fit and an actual set of
circumstances. The U.S. Commission on National
Security/21st Century, co-chaired by former Sen.
Warren Rudman and myself, reported to President George
W. Bush and his new administration in January 2001
that terrorists were surely going to attack the United
States and that our country was woefully unprepared.
We documented the lack of intelligence coordination
against this threat and the lack of preparation of up
to two dozen federal agencies, as well as state and
local governments, to prevent such attacks or respond
to them when they did occur. Though we had no ability
to forecast specific times, places and methods for
such attacks, we were united in our certainty that
they were bound to occur. In our first report we said:
"America will become increasingly vulnerable to
hostile attack on our homeland [and] Americans will
likely die on American soil, possibly in large
numbers." In our final report we urged the new Bush
administration to create a national homeland security
agency to prevent terrorist attacks.
Now that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States -- the so-called 9/11
commission -- is moving toward completion of its
deliberations and preparation of its final report, I
am increasingly asked what information our earlier
commission, the U.S. Commission on National
Security/21st Century, has provided the 9/11
commission and why that information has not been made
public. When told that the 9/11 commission has not
asked for any public testimony from us, most people
are incredulous. If the 9/11 commission is really
trying to find out what was known and when it was
known, they ask, why would your national security
commission's warnings and recommendations not be of
direct relevance and urgent interest? Didn't you
publicly and privately warn the new Bush
administration of your concerns about terrorism?
Didn't you specifically recommend a new national
homeland security agency? Why wouldn't all this be of
central importance to the work of the 9/11 commission?
The simple answer to all these questions is: I don't
know why we have not been asked to testify.
Since the U.S. Commission on National Security
officially ceased to exist as of the summer of 2001, I
cannot speak for the other 13 commissioners. But I
have been waiting for many months to hear from the
9/11 commission, fully expecting a request for public
testimony from members of our earlier commission, and
have heard nothing.
To my knowledge, few if any members of the media have
asked the 9/11 commission these questions either. Why
would a commission investigating the events leading up
to 9/11 not want to know what an earlier commission
learned about potential terrorist attacks and what
recommendations it gave to the new administration?
This would seem to any reasonable person to be of
intense interest to the press and the public the media
serves. Apparently not. Apparently the politics of
whether National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice
will testify under oath and the drama of personal
assaults on chief terrorism advisor Richard Clarke
exhaust media attention. It is difficult to know, or
to understand, why this is so.
In this connection it is important to note that the
U.S. Commission on National Security based its
conclusions about the inevitability of terrorist
attacks in part on testimony from Clarke, and fully
briefed Rice and other senior Bush administration
officials regarding the urgency of its conclusions.
Sixty years after Pearl Harbor, books are still being
written about whether the Roosevelt administration had
any warnings of potential Japanese attacks. There
certainly was no U.S. Commission on National Security
in 1941 to issue such warnings. Only lonely Billy
Mitchell, prophet of aerial warfare, some 18 years
before. Now the 9/11 commission has the great burden
of creating as complete a public record as possible of
all the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks for the
rest of history, to try to lay to rest theories of
conspiracy and behind-the-scenes manipulation and
maneuver, and to exhaustively examine all relevant
information.
This cannot be done until the U.S. Commission on
National Security/21st Century is officially and
publicly heard from.
"Out, out damn spot!"
Paul Sperry, www.worldnetdaily.com: When he watched the planes hit the Twin Towers on 9-11, former FBI translator Behrooz Sarshar says he "immediately" remembered a tip about an al-Qaida plot the bureau got from an informant more than four months before the terror group attacked America. Though he won't divulge details of the tip or discuss the sources and methods behind it, arguing they are still highly classified, Sarshar confirmed in an exclusive interview that he recently briefed three 9-11 Commission investigators about it, as WorldNetDaily first reported March
28...Sources familiar with the briefing say the FBI informant told two FBI agents from the Washington field office in April 2001 that his sources in Afghanistan had heard of an al-Qaida plot to attack America in a suicide mission involving planes. Sarshar, fluent in Farsi, acted as an interpreter at the meeting, held at a Washington-area residence.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
DAY OF INFAMY 2001
9-11 panel to probe FBI informant's tip: Man who translated lead on al-Qaida plot confirms meeting with 3 investigators
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: April 6, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Paul Sperry
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON -- When he watched the planes hit the Twin
Towers on 9-11, former FBI translator Behrooz Sarshar
says he "immediately" remembered a tip about an
al-Qaida plot the bureau got from an informant more
than four months before the terror group attacked
America.
Though he won't divulge details of the tip or discuss
the sources and methods behind it, arguing they are
still highly classified, Sarshar confirmed in an
exclusive interview that he recently briefed three
9-11 Commission investigators about it, as
WorldNetDaily first reported March 28.
He says he met Feb. 12 with Lance Cole, Chris Healey
and one other commission investigator in a secure room
here on K Street. During the more than two-hour
classified meeting, he says he told them the name of
the informant.
Part of the independent panel's mandate is to
investigate leads U.S. law enforcement may have missed
before the terrorist attacks, which killed 2,745
Americans.
The 66-year-old Sarshar, who had Top Secret clearance
when he left the bureau in November 2002, also briefed
congressional investigators in the Senate Hart
Building on Feb. 13. That meeting was not classified.
Sources familiar with the briefing say the FBI
informant told two FBI agents from the Washington
field office in April 2001 that his sources in
Afghanistan had heard of an al-Qaida plot to attack
America in a suicide mission involving planes.
Sarshar, fluent in Farsi, acted as an interpreter at
the meeting, held at a Washington-area residence.
The asset, an Iranian immigrant who worked in the
shah's intelligence services, had been on the FBI's
payroll for at least a decade, and was considered
reliable. He travels abroad and is said to maintain
good Afghan contacts. Iran shares its eastern border
with Afghanistan.
Both FBI agents took notes, and the case agent who
worked with Sarshar filed a report with his squad
supervisor, Thomas Frields. It's not clear if the
information was teletyped to headquarters, however.
Frields, now retired from the bureau, says the case is
too "sensitive" to discuss.
"It involves very sensitive matters that took place
while I was an on-duty agent, and I have absolutely
nothing to say," said Frields, reached at his
Washington-area consulting office.
Two former colleagues described Frields as "solid" and
"meticulous," and said they have no doubt he would
have notified headquarters if he thought the
information was credible.
The headquarters official in charge of
counterterrorism at the time was FBI assistant
director Dale Watson, also retired and now working for
the same consulting firm as Frields. He did not return
phone calls.
Former FBI directors Thomas Pickard and Louis Freeh
are scheduled to testify next week before the 9-11
Commission. Pickard replaced Freeh as acting director
in June 2001.
On 9-11, as soon as the shock of the attacks wore off,
Sarshar's mind raced back to the meeting with the
informant.
"I immediately remembered the source," he said last
week during an interview at a Northern Virginia coffee
shop.
"But I didn't discuss it [with the two agents],
because I was sure they also were kind of surprised
this had happened," he said. "And I didn't want to
discuss it because I was sure that they had done their
job."
However, he says he spoke with other linguists at the
Washington field office about the informant's tip,
which in hindsight had been very hot.
Some familiar with Sarshar's briefings last month say
the tip cited major cities with skyscrapers, including
Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
But a veteran FBI source says the tip at the time was
not that specific, and has been sensationalized since
9-11. He says the information did not include cities.
Nor was there any indication when the attacks might
occur.
"At the time it sounded unbelievable," he said.
"People in Afghanistan being trained to fly jumbo jets
to attack America just seemed unbelievable. Camels,
maybe. But not planes."
America, as well as Europe, were mentioned as targets
by the informant, however, knowledgeable sources
confirm. And he suggested that al-Qaida agents,
already in place inside America, were being trained as
pilots.
Before the suicide plane attacks, the FBI failed to
act on other clues that al-Qaida was planning
aviation-related terrorism inside America.
In July 2001, for example, an FBI agent in Phoenix
warned headquarters that an "inordinate number" of
Middle Eastern men sympathetic to al-Qaida were taking
local flying lessons. And in August, a FBI supervisor
in Minneapolis told headquarters that he worried a
foreign flight student he had in custody on visa
violations -- Zacarias Moussaoui -- might be part of a
plot to "take control of a plane and fly it into the
World Trade Center."
If those two pieces of information had been combined
with the broader informant's tip, the FBI might have
been able to see the outline of the plot, a source
familiar with Sarshar's briefings said.
"Those three pieces together make a big piece" of the
puzzle, he said.
White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
has maintained the administration could not have
predicted al-Qaida terrorists "would try to use an
airplane as a missile." She is said to have recently
revised her statement in private talks with the 9-11
Commission, however. She testifies publicly Thursday.
Watson, for his part, has argued that the FBI has been
unfairly blamed for dropping the ball on 9-11. He
compared the bureau to a soccer goalie who blocks 99
shots out of a 100 and only gets credit for the miss.
Such explanations don't satisfy families of 9-11
victims -- and they shouldn't, says FBI
counterintelligence veteran I.C. Smith, who left the
bureau in 1998. He thinks 9-11 could have been
stopped.
"They've all said there's nothing we could have done
anyway," he said. "Well, that is wrong, wrong, wrong."
"If FBI agents had been allowed to interview those
Middle Eastern students at the flight schools, there
is no doubt in my mind they could have disrupted
them," Smith explained. "We would have found them
overstaying their visas and booted them out of the
country."
In his July memo, the Phoenix agent had asked
headquarters for "authority to obtain visa information
on persons seeking to attend flight schools." But
supervisors there had closed the matter the next month
without taking action.
Told of the 9-11 plot tip, Smith said, "I'm convinced
there's more information in the FBI." He's writing a
soon-to-be-published book that takes the bureau, and
Watson in particular, to task for counterterrorism
failures.
Another FBI veteran said the informant's lead likely
joined the thousands of others buried and never
investigated at the "Federal Bureau of Information."
Sarshar, who worked more than seven years for the FBI,
says he asked the Senate Judiciary Committee for
immunity to testify about the informant's tip and
other FBI matters. He says the FBI warned him: "If you
talk about these things, you'll be locked up."
Republican staffer John Drake and Democratic counsel
Tara Magner told him they would look into it after he
met with them, he says.
Tracy Schmaler, a Judiciary spokeswoman, confirmed the
meeting took place, but stopped short of specifics.
Also attending the Feb. 13 meeting on the Hill, which
lasted about two-and-a-half hours, were Kristen
Breitweiser, who lost her husband in the World Trade
Center attacks, and Sibel Dinez Edmonds, a former
contract linguist for the FBI, who was hired after
9-11.
Edmonds, who translated Farsi, Turkish and Azerbaijani
recordings and documents at the Washington field
office, has told both congressional and 9-11
investigators that many terror-related intercepts have
not been translated accurately because of
anti-American bias and incompetence among some Middle
Eastern translators. Sources say she was asked to
retranslate a 9-11-related document that also may have
held clues to the plot.
It was Edmonds who coaxed Sarshar to brief the 9-11
Commission. He met with investigators the day after
she did. Her Feb. 11 classified briefing took place in
a SCIF, or sensitive compartmented-information
facility, set up in commission offices on D Street.
Commission Chairman Thomas Kean confirmed the panel's
meeting with Edmonds. "We've had all her testimony and
it's under investigation," he said Sunday on NBC's
"Meet the Press."
Also, Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton appeared to confirm
the panel's meeting with Sarshar the following day.
"We've talked to people she's identified," he said on
the same show.
Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg would neither
confirm nor deny his briefing. "It's our policy that
we cannot talk about people we interview," he said.
Sarshar says the commission has not contacted him
since his briefing. He says investigators indicated
they'd call him back to testify with the informant.
The FBI source cautioned that Edmonds sued the bureau
after it fired her in 2002 for undisclosed reasons.
But the FBI terminated her contract only after she
filed internal complaints against a supervisor in the
language unit, Edmonds asserted. And senior FBI
officials have nonetheless confirmed some of her
charges in private hearings on the Hill, according to
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking member of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Charles Grassley,
R-Iowa, also a Judiciary member.
Grassley, moreover, has called Edmonds "very
credible."
A former Grassley investigator says he found Sarshar
credible, too.
"We thought he was a pretty credible guy," said former
Senate Judiciary Committee investigator Kris Kolesnik,
who interviewed Sarshar nearly two years ago as an
investigator for a Washington public-interest law firm
handling federal whistleblower cases.
Sarshar, a political refugee from Iran who joined the
FBI in 1995, says he has testified seven times in
federal court against FBI suspects, more than any
other translator on the Farsi board. He says his life
was threatened once after testimony he gave sealed a
drug conviction. He also has worked on terrorism cases
related to Mujahedin el-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian
dissident group that has killed Americans.
In Iran, he was a colonel in the national police force
under the shah, as well as president of Iran's judo
federation, until the 1979 revolution, when he was
forced to flee the country.
The FBI insider, however, cautioned that Sarshar was
placed on administrative leave just before he
resigned. He says the department's Office of
Professional Responsibility had been investigating him
since 2000.
Sarshar, a level GS-12 employee, acknowledged that the
bureau notified him in October 2002 it was putting him
on leave, but he says that it was with pay. He decided
at that point to resign anyway. He declined to
elaborate.
But he says he pleaded his case to the Justice
Department inspector general. He says he met with an
official there in January. The meeting lasted
four-and-a-half hours, he says, and covered classified
information that included the informant's tip about
9-11.
Despite pre-9-11 slips, Sarshar insists the FBI "is
still the best law enforcement agency in the world."
Edmonds, 33, also took her case to the inspector
general. That was two years ago, she complains. The
IG's office still hasn't released any findings from
its investigation.
Previous stories:
FBI informant revealed 9-11 plot in April 2001
Senator demands hearings on FBI translator crisis
Backlog of untranslated Arabic swamps FBI
FBI mandates Muslim-sensitivity training for agents
FBI whistleblower: Arab translators cheered 9-11
Jews need not apply to fight terror at FBI
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for
WorldNetDaily and author of "Crude Politics."
"Out, out damn spot!"
Agence France Press: The chairman of an independent commission looking into US counterterrorism activities prior to the September 11 attacks said he could not guarantee that the panel's report will be released before the November presidential election because of a protracted White House vetting process. Former Republican New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean said he was "surprised" by the situation, but saw no way around it.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://truthout.org/docs_04/040704B.shtml
White House Vetting Could Delay
9/11 Report Until After Election
Agence France Presse
Tuesday 06 April 2004
The chairman of an independent commission looking
into US counterterrorism activities prior to the
September 11 attacks said he could not guarantee that
the panel's report will be released before the
November presidential election because of a protracted
White House vetting process. Former Republican New
Jersey Governor Thomas Kean said he was "surprised" by
the situation, but saw no way around it.
The probe, which President George W. Bush initially
opposed but later agreed to under pressure, has turned
in to a political hot potato after former White House
counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke accused Bush of
doing a "terrible job" of fighting terrorism prior to
the strikes on New York and Washington in September
2001.
In a new book and public testimony before the
commission, Clarke, who left his White House job last
year, said the administration did not treat terrorism
as an urgent matter before the attacks.
The accusation has sparked a fierce round of finger
pointing and propelled counterterrorism to the
forefront of the US political campaign.
Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" television
program, Kean said White House vetters will go over
his report "line by line to find out if there's
anything in there which could harm American interests
in the area of intelligence."
A special clearance team led by White House Chief of
Staff Andrew Card and made up of top US intelligence
and counterterrorism officials has already been set
up, he said.
But the report, expected to contain hundreds of
pages of findings and testimony, is unlikely to be
finished before July, according to congressional
officials.
That will leave the vetting team only three to four
months to complete its work, if American are to see
the document before they go to the polls on November
2.
Asked if American will be able to see the report
before the election, Kean answered, "I have no
guarantees."
It took the White House close to seven months to
clear a congressional report on US intelligence in the
lead-up to the attacks, which killed all the occupants
of four passenger jets, destroyed the twin towers of
the World Trade Center in New York and severely
damaged the Pentagon building in Washington, leaving
some 3,000 people dead in all.
Moreover, the congressional account emerged from
that vetting last July with dozens of blacked-out
pages, which experts later said contained sensitive
information about an alleged Saudi role in financing
al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic networks.
Democratic commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton
assured on the same show that the panel will not put
up with any political editing of the document, saying,
"We're not going to let them distort our report."
Hamilton also expressed confidence White House
vetters will focus on protecting intelligence sources
and information collection methods rather than on the
panel's substantive findings.
But reacting to the controversy surrounding the
probe, the John Kerry election campaign released a
compendium of press reports showing the president's
lack of enthusiasm for the commission and its work
since its inception.
"Bush opposed the commission entirely, he initially
didn't include funding they requested after they were
established, he still has not provided documents the
commission has said are necessary for their work,"
said the campaign of the presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee.
-------
"Out, out damn spot!"
Joe Conason, Salon: The 9/11 widows' worries about Zelikow's impartiality were underlined by news that the Bush White House had withheld up to 80 percent of the relevant Clinton-era documents from the commission's investigators. Back in February, the commission learned from Clinton attorney Bruce Lindsey, who handles archival issues for the former president, that Bush officials were in fact holding back some 9,000 pages. Yet Zelikow appears to have done little to break the documents loose from the White House -- which has withheld some of them since last summer -- until Lindsey went public with his complaint last week. On Friday, after a day of bad publicity, the White House suddenly agreed to let the commission examine the withheld documents. Although Zelikow said that he had been "negotiating" with the
White House over the withheld Clinton documents since
February, he didn't tell commission members about the
ongoing dispute. At least two Democratic commission
members told the New York Times that they had been
"surprised" to learn about the withheld documents last
week.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/04/06/commission/index.html
Widows' watch Part II: If 9/11 commission director Philip Zelikow is impartial, why did he allow the Bush White House to sit on 9,000 pages of Clinton documents?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason
April 6, 2004 | From the very beginning, the
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the
United States, known as the 9/11 commission, has
differed from the White House over funding, documents,
witnesses and secrecy. But as National Security
Advisor Condoleezza Rice prepares to testify publicly
on Thursday, the commission and the administration
agreed on at least one key issue: Both defended Philip
Zelikow, the Rice friend and colleague who serves as
the commission's executive director, from critics
concerned about his apparent conflicts of interest.
Those critics -- including the four World Trade Center
widows whose political activism spurred the
commission's creation -- have become increasingly
disturbed as they've discovered more about Zelikow's
close and continuing connections with Rice and the
Bush administration. They point to the Republican
academic's intense work on the Bush national security
transition team; his role in restructuring the
National Security Council; his 2001 appointment to the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; his
drafting of the president's National Security Strategy
in 2002; and his continuing contacts with White House
officials, including political strategist Karl Rove.
Asked about criticism of their top staffer by "Meet
the Press" host Tim Russert April 3, commission
co-chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton defended him
strongly. Kean, a former Republican governor of New
Jersey, lauded Zelikow as "one of the best experts on
terrorism in the whole area of intelligence in the
entire country" and "the best possible person we could
have found for the job," and insisted, "We haven't
found ... any evidence to indicate in any way that
he's partial to anybody or anything. In fact, he's
been much tougher, I think, than a lot of people would
have liked him to be." Hamilton, a retired Democratic
congressman from Indiana, agreed, adding that he saw
"no evidence of a conflict of interest of any kind."
Zelikow, they added, has "recused himself" from any
portion of the investigation that might reflect on his
work in the Bush White House.
Appearing immediately after Kean and Hamilton to
promote her new book, celebrated Bush advisor and
confidante Karen Hughes echoed their defense of
Zelikow, describing him in rather extravagant terms as
"one of the foremost experts in the world on
al-Qaida." In a virtuoso bit of spin, Hughes insisted
that Zelikow's role in the transition was in fact a
"refutation" of former counterterrorism chief Richard
Clarke, who says the Bush team minimized the Islamist
terror threat. "We were concerned enough that we
recruited one of the foremost experts to brief the new
administration about the threat of al-Qaida," Hughes
told Russert.
A brief examination of Zelikow's résumé reveals that
those endorsements of his expertise are exaggerated,
to put it politely.
Certainly he is a capable and experienced foreign
policy expert, administrator and author, respected by
both Democrats and Republicans. His interests have
ranged widely. His academic career focused on Cold War
issues, from the Cuban missile crisis to the fall of
the Soviet Union, and he isn't a partisan ideologue.
But the long list of his writings includes only one
article focused on terrorism, which he co-authored
with former CIA director John Deutsch. He is certainly
not among the world's "foremost experts" on al-Qaida,
a topic on which he appears to have written nothing,
and he is very unlikely to have briefed the new
administration on that threat. In fact, Zelikow was
present at the meeting where Clarke briefed Rice about
the Islamist terror network.
The 9/11 widows' worries about Zelikow's impartiality
were underlined by news that the Bush White House had
withheld up to 80 percent of the relevant Clinton-era
documents from the commission's investigators. Back in
February, the commission learned from Clinton attorney
Bruce Lindsey, who handles archival issues for the
former president, that Bush officials were in fact
holding back some 9,000 pages. Yet Zelikow appears to
have done little to break the documents loose from the
White House -- which has withheld some of them since
last summer -- until Lindsey went public with his
complaint last week. On Friday, after a day of bad
publicity, the White House suddenly agreed to let the
commission examine the withheld documents.
Although Zelikow said that he had been "negotiating"
with the White House over the withheld Clinton
documents since February, he didn't tell commission
members about the ongoing dispute. At least two
Democratic commission members told the New York Times
that they had been "surprised" to learn about the
withheld documents last week.
Why would Zelikow have failed to tell members of the
commission that the White House was holding back
potentially critical documents from the Clinton
archive? It's worth noting that he has repeatedly
betrayed contempt for the Clinton administration's
foreign policy record -- and expressed strong support
for Bush policies, including the invasion of Iraq --
in articles for conservative and mainstream
publications.
>From the White House perspective, those may be his
most important qualifications to oversee this
potentially devastating investigation. What's harder
to understand is why Kean and Hamilton are defending
Zelikow with superlatives about his status as a
terrorism expert. Hamilton went so far as to say he
doesn't think Zelikow's White House ties "will taint
the [commission's] report. Indeed, I think it'll let
him improve the report."
That's hard to imagine. Admittedly, both co-chairs are
in a politically difficult position as they try to
coax or coerce greater cooperation from the White
House, and perhaps going easy on Zelikow lets them
play rough in other areas. But echoing Karen Hughes
and touting his alleged terror expertise experience
costs them credibility with the victims' families --
and with the wider American public as the damning
details of what led to 9/11 become public.
Eight more US soldiers have died in Iraq. That's
twenty US soldiers that have been killed since the
weekend. For what? Not to fight terrorism. The
_resident's foolish military adventure is only
fomenting more terrorism. Not to seize WMD. There were
none. Not to bring Western-style democracy to Iraq.
They don't want it. Iraq is a disaster. Tragically,
the Mega-Mogadishu that the LNS predicated is at hand.
The Emperor has no uniform...
Lolita C. Baldor, Guardian/UK: Iraq has become
``George Bush's Vietnam,'' Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said
Monday, calling the president deceitful and for the
first time comparing him to former President Nixon,
who resigned in disgrace. Saying that truth has
become the biggest casualty of the Bush
administration, Kennedy said Bush misled the public
about the war, the economy, health care and education,
eroding the nation's reputation at home and abroad.
``As a result, this president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon,'' Kennedy said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. ``He has broken the basic bond of trust with the American people.''
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3943673,00.html
Kennedy Compares Bush to Richard Nixon
Monday April 5, 2004 9:31 PM
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq has become ``George Bush's
Vietnam,'' Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said Monday, calling
the president deceitful and for the first time
comparing him to former President Nixon, who resigned
in disgrace.
Saying that truth has become the biggest casualty of
the Bush administration, Kennedy said Bush misled the
public about the war, the economy, health care and
education, eroding the nation's reputation at home and
abroad.
``As a result, this president has now created the
largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon,'' Kennedy
said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a think
tank. ``He has broken the basic bond of trust with the
American people.''
The senator said the government has cut unemployment
benefits, failed to pay for education overhaul and is
spending $134 billion more than expected on a Medicare
plan.
Kennedy is a strong supporter of John Kerry, the
Massachusetts senator who is the presumptive
Democratic nominee for president.
The criticism of the administration's domestic agenda
comes after several high-profile speeches in which
Kennedy called the war in Iraq a fraud and said the
plan to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was devised
to help Republicans in the 2002 and 2004 elections.
Bush ``is the problem, not the solution. Iraq is
George Bush's Vietnam, and this country needs a new
president,'' Kennedy said.
He said the military campaign also diverted attention
from ``the administration's deceptions here at home.''
An administration pattern of deception and efforts to
dismiss any critics, he said, have polarized and
paralyzed Congress and are undermining the public's
trust in government.
``Saying whatever it takes to prevail has become
standard operating procedure in the Bush White
House,'' said Kennedy. ``In this administration, truth
is the first casualty of policy.''
^---
On the Net:
Brookings Institution: http://www.brookings.edu/
Someone should remind Hannity, Limbaugh and the rest
of the "vast reich-wing conspiracy" Little Goebbels
air men that in the documents seized in Spain reveal
that it is Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) that Al
Qaeda fears, not the _resident. (Search the LNS database for the story.)
They want the _resident. Why not? He has poured gasoline on the
trash heap and set it on fire. He has fulfilled the
paranoid fantasies of the Islamic fundamentalists and
exalted Osama bin Laden in the process. Iraq has
slipped into chaos. Over sixty hundred US soldiers
have died. No WMD were found. The Taliban and Al Qaeda
have been allowed to regroup in Afghanistan. The US
economy is going sideways at best. Three million jobs
have been lost. There is a seven trillion dollar
national debt and a federal budget deficit of over
five hundred billion dollars. The hot white light of
former national security council official Richard
Clarke's sworn testimony has revealed the disturbing
dimensions of the Bush cabal's pre-9/11 incompetence
and post-9/11 cover-up. The _resident's CREDIBILITY is
NIL. The _resident's numbers are cratering, even in
the cooked polls of the Corporatist "US mainstream
news media."
Yes, beware the Franks Factor...
Maureen Farrel, www.buzzflash.com: In Nov. 2003, you
might recall, Gen. Tommy Franks told Cigar Aficionado
magazine that a major terrorist attack (even one that
occurred elsewhere in the Western world), would likely
result in a suspension of the U.S. Constitution and
the installation of a military form of government.
"[A] terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event
somewhere in the Western world -- it may be in the
United States of America -- [would cause] our
population to question our own Constitution and to
begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a
repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event," he
said. [NewsMax.com]
Sean Hannity twisted things further. "If we are attacked before our election like Spain was, I am not so sure that we should go ahead with the election," he reportedly said. "We had better make plans now because it’s going to happen."
Restore the Timeline, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/04/far04011.html
April 6, 2004
Will the 2004 Election Be Called Off? Why Three Out of Four Experts Predict a Terrorist Attack by November
by Maureen Farrell
On Dec. 31, 2003, New York Times columnist and former
Nixon speech writer William Safire offered his
standard New Year’s predictions. This time, however,
one item stood out. In addition to speculating on
everything from which country would next "feel the
force of U.S. liberation" to who would win the best
picture Oscar, Safire predicted that "the 'October
surprise' affecting the U.S. election" would be "a
major terror attack in the United States." [Salt Lake
Tribune]
While such speculation is hardly worth a trip to the
duct tape store, when combined with repeated assaults
to our democratic process and troublesome assertions
from noteworthy sources, it warrants further
investigation.
In Nov. 2003, you might recall, Gen. Tommy Franks told
Cigar Aficionado magazine that a major terrorist
attack (even one that occurred elsewhere in the
Western world), would likely result in a suspension of
the U.S. Constitution and the installation of a
military form of government. "[A] terrorist, massive,
casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western
world -- it may be in the United States of America --
[would cause] our population to question our own
Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in
order to avoid a repeat of another mass,
casualty-producing event," he said. [NewsMax.com]
Right around the same time, former Clinton
administration official David Rothkopf made similarly
distressing observations. In a Washington Post op-ed
entitled, "Terrorist Logic: Disrupt the 2004
Election," he described a meeting in which nearly 75
percent of the professional participants
(characterized as "serious people, not prone to
hysteria or panic") also foresaw another terrorist
attack occurring on American soil before the next
election. "Recently, I co-chaired a meeting hosted by
CNBC of more than 200 senior business and government
executives, many of whom are specialists in security
and terrorism related issues," he wrote. "Almost
three-quarters of them said it was likely the United
States would see a major terrorist strike before the
end of 2004." [Washington Post]
Saying that "history suggests that striking during
major elections is an effective tool for terrorist
groups," Rothkopf explained why terrorists will most
likely target us soon. And though he and Safire made
these observations months before terrorists changed
Spain’s political landscape, they were not alone in
thinking along such lines. "Even before the bombings
in Madrid, White House officials were worrying that
terrorists might strike the United States before the
November elections," USA Today reported, before
commenting on how terrorists could "try the same
tactics in the United States to create fear and
chaos." [USA Today]
The New York Times also reported on the possibility
that Al Qaeda would try to "influence the outcome of
the election" by striking U.S. oil refineries. "The
Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned the Texas
oil industry of potential attacks by Al Qaeda on
pipelines and refineries near the time of the November
presidential election," the Times reported. [New York
Times]
MSNBC, CNN and other news organizations also chimed
in, raising concerns about this summer's political
conventions. "In the wake of what happened in Madrid,
we have to be concerned about the possibility of
terrorists attempting to influence elections in the
United States by committing a terrorist act," FBI
Director Robert Mueller told CNN. "Quite clearly,
there will be substantial preparations for each of the
conventions." [CNN]
Right-wing columnists and pundits have since
(surprise, surprise) tried to capitalize on such
fears. "If a terrorist group attacked the U.S. three
days before an election, does anyone doubt that the
American electorate would rally behind the president
or at least the most aggressively antiterror party?"
David Brooks opined in the New York Times on March 16,
[Libertypost.org] before Richard Clarke revealed that
the Clinton administration was actually more
"aggressively anti-terror" than the bumbling Bushes.
(Could that be why the Bush administration refuses to
turn over thousands of pages of the nearly 11,000
files on the Clinton administration’s antiterrorism
efforts?)
Sean Hannity twisted things further. "If we are
attacked before our election like Spain was, I am not
so sure that we should go ahead with the election," he
reportedly said. "We had better make plans now because
it’s going to happen."
And, of course, what usurpation of democracy would be
complete without Rush Limbaugh weighing in? "Do [the
terrorists] bide their time and wait, or do they try
to replicate their success in Spain here in America
before our election?" Limbaugh asked, before revealing
how "titans of industry," and "international business
people (who do not outsource, by the way)" were "very,
very, very concerned" that one true party forever rule
the Fatherland.
"They all were seeking from me reassurance that the
White House was safe this year, that John Kerry would
not win," Limbaugh said. "Who do you think the
terrorists would rather have in office in this country
-- socialists like those in Spain as personified by
John Kerry and his friends in the Democratic Party, or
George W. Bush?"
Saying that a pre-election terrorist attack is not a
question of "if" but "when," Limbaugh concluded that
should anyone but Bush occupy the White House, the
terrorists will have won. [RushLimbaugh.com]
Given the bizarre mind-melding between the government
and media and the Soviet-style propagandizing that's
been taking place, one has to wonder: Is there is any
significance in the fact that Rush Limbaugh, Sean
Hannity and David Brooks are all beating the same
tom-tom? As former White House insider Richard Clarke
recently told Jon Stewart, "[There are] dozens of
people, in the White House. . . writing talking
points, calling up conservative columnists, calling up
talk radio hosts, telling them what to say. It’s
interesting. All the talk radio people, the right wing
talk radio people across the country, saying the exact
same thing, exactly the same words."
Stewart noted that a 24-hour news network was also
making observations that were "remarkably similar to
what the White House was saying."
Even though Andrew Card admitted that "from a
marketing point of view, you don't introduce new
products in August," in May, 2002, Wayne Madsen and
John Stanton revealed that the government’s marketing
preparations for the war were already underway, with
U.S. Air Force scientists consulting with CNN "to
figure out how to gather and disseminate information."
[CounterPunch.org]
In an article entitled, "When the War Hits Home: U.S.
Plans for Martial Law, Tele-Governance and the
Suspension of Elections," Madsen and Stanton delved
into the more frightening aspects of what might be in
store. "One incident, one aircraft hijacked, a 'dirty
nuke' set off in a small town, may well prompt the
Bush regime, let's say during the election campaign of
2003-2004, to suspend national elections for a year
while his government ensures stability," they wrote.
"Many closed door meetings have been held on these
subjects and the notices for these meetings have been
closely monitored by the definitive www.cryptome.org."
To make matters worse, if martial law is imposed, Air
Force General Ralph E. Eberhart will be able to blast
through Posse Comitatus and deploy troops to America’s
streets. Gen. Eberhart, you might recall, is the
former Commander of NORAD, which was in charge of
protecting America’s skies on Sept. 11. But instead of
being scrutinized for NORAD’s massive failures, he was
promoted and now heads the Pentagon's Northern
Command. And, as military analyst William M. Arkin
explained, "It is only in the case of 'extraordinary'
domestic operations that would enable Gen. Eberhart to
bring in "intelligence collectors, special operators
and even full combat troops" to bear. What kind of
situation would have to occur to grant Eberhart "the
far-reaching authority that goes with 'extraordinary
operations’"? Nothing. He already has that authority.
[Los Angeles Times]
Which brings us to the inevitable (and most important)
question. How primed is the American public to accept
suspended elections, martial law, or whatever else the
White House decides to "market"?
Consider, for a moment, what an invaluable propaganda
conduit the media was during the lead up to war in
Iraq -- and just how weird things have become since.
Howard Stern insists he was targeted by Clear Channel
and the FCC after speaking out against George Bush
[BuzzFlash.com]; former White House Aide Anna Perez
(who worked under Condoleezza Rice and served as
former first lady Barbara Bush’s press secretary) is
slated to become chief communications executive for
NBC; and MSNBC featured a story entitled, "White
House: Bush Misstated Report on Iraq" on its Web site
only to have it disappear down the Memory Hole in the
course of a few hours. [TheMemoryHole.org]
Moreover, last year’s Clear Channel sponsorship of
pro-war/pro-Bush rallies was so Orwellian, that former
Federal Communications Commissioner Glen Robinson
remarked, "I can't say that this violates any of a
broadcaster's obligations, but it sounds like
borderline manufacturing of the news." [Chicago
Tribune] Meanwhile, the mysterious Karen Ryan (of "In
Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting" fakery fame
[Journalism.NYU.edu]) was featured in the New York
Times. "Federal investigators are scrutinizing
television segments in which the Bush administration
paid people to pose as journalists, praising the
benefits of the new Medicare law. . . , " the Times
reported.
Need more proof that something is amiss? As of Feb. 5,
2004, CBS News was still reporting that one of the
hijackers' passports was "found on the street minutes
after the plane he was aboard crashed into the north
tower of the World Trade Center," [CBS] and for far
too long, pundits have taken to spreading White House
rumors without checking facts --while denying any
White House connection once these rumors prove false.
And most baffling of all, whenever anyone does tell
the truth, a bevy of Stepford Citizens reveal that
they’d rather hear lies. After Richard Clarke spilled
the Bush beans on 60 Minutes, for example, the mail
was overwhelmingly negative -- with some writing that
Clarke should be tried for treason and others asking
CBS, "Why can’t you be 'fair and balanced’ like FOX?"
(Perhaps those viewers are denizens of the Free
Republic Web site, where posters actually pondered the
question: "Should the US have elections if attacked?"
[FreeRepublic.com])
The most bizarre example of the White House’s
dysfunctional domination of the media, however,
occurred last week -- with the surreal controversy
involving David Letterman and CNN. In case you missed
it, on Monday, Letterman showed a video clip which
featured a bored, fidgety kid standing behind George
W. Bush, who was giving a speech in Orlando. The next
day, CNN also ran that clip, but anchor Daryn Kagan
returned from commercial break to inform viewers,
"We're being told by the White House that the kid, as
funny as he was, was edited into that video." Later, a
second CNN anchor said that the boy was at the rally,
but wasn't necessarily standing behind George W. Bush.
"That is an out and out 100 percent absolute lie. The
kid absolutely was there, and he absolutely was doing
everything we pictured via the videotape," Letterman
said on Tuesday.
"Explanations continued through Wednesday and
Thursday, with Letterman referring to "indisputable"
and "very high-placed source" who told him that the
White House had, in fact, called CNN. "This is where
it gets a little hinky," Letterman said on Thursday,
rehashing the back and forth nonsense that played like
a bad SNL sketch. "We were told that the White House
didn’t call CNN. That was the development the other
day. So I’m upset because I smell a conspiracy. I
think something’s gone haywire. I see this as the end
of democracy as we know it; another one of them
Watergate kind of deals. And so, I’m shooting my mouth
off and right in the middle of the show, I’m handed a
note that says 'No no no no, the White House did not
contact CNN. The White House did NOT call CNN.’ So now
I feel like "Oh, I guess I’m gonna do heavy time.’
"Ok, so now it gets a little confusing. So, the next
day I’m told, 'Oh, No. The White House DID contact
CNN. . . . They WERE contacted by the White House.
They were trying to SHUT CNN up because they didn’t
want to make these people look ridiculous because they
were big Republican fund raisers and you know, I’m
going to disappear mysteriously. In about eight
months, they’ll find my body in the trunk of a rental
car.
"So now, we’re told, despite what everyone says. . .
that this high-ranking, high placed unidentified
source says, "No No The White House did call them."
Although he displayed his customary wit and joked
throughout his explanation, unless Letterman's acting
skills extend far beyond those displayed in Cabin Boy,
there's no doubt that Letterman was serious when he
asserted that "despite what everyone says" the White
House was involved in this fiasco.
Meanwhile, CNN apologized and accepted the blame,
letting the White House off the hook.
While the Letterman episode is a lesson in abject
absurdity, nearly two years ago, Madsen and Stanton
warned that following a major terrorist attack,
seditious web sites would be blocked (something that
is already happening to howardstern.com) and "the
broadcast media would similarly be required to air
only that which has been approved by government
censors." (How will we know the difference?)
Though it seems surreal that people are actually
wagering that another terrorist attack will occur on
our soil by November (and it’s even more bizarre that
on-air personalities are calling for the suspension of
elections), the fact that this un-elected gang who
barreled into power and forever changed the course of
a nation, is so completely untrustworthy makes the
situation even more disturbing. On Sept 11, 2003,
William Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News asked,
"Why don’t we have the answers to these 9/11
questions?" [The Philadelphia Daily News] before
addressing a variety of concerns, which, thanks to the
9/11 commission, are finally making their way into our
national consciousness. And now that another whistle
blower, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, has come
forward, saying, "'I saw papers that show US knew
al-Qaeda would attack cities with airplanes," [The
Independent] it’s clear we’ve been under attack for
quite some time. [BuzzFlash.com]
But before the Madrid bombings; before Richard
Clarke’s revelations; before more whistleblowers
peeked out from under the muck, David Rothkopf made
everything oh-so-clear. Writing about the "military
officers, policymakers, scientists, researchers and
others who have studied [terrorism] for a long time,"
he explained how the majority of experts he spoke to
not only predicted that the pre-election assaults
would "be greater than those of 9/11," but that any
act of terrorism would work in the President's favor.
"It was the sense of the group that such an attack was
likely to generate additional support for President
Bush," he wrote.
Citing how "assaults before major votes have
[traditionally] benefited candidates who were seen as
tougher on terrorists," Rothkopf catalogued events in
Israel, Russia, Turkey and Sri Lanka before explaining
the symbiotic relationship between terrorists and
hardliners. "So why would [terrorists] want to help
[hardliners] win?" he asked. "Perhaps because
terrorists see the attacks as a win-win. They can lash
out against their perceived enemies and empower the
hard-liners, who in turn empower them as terrorists.
How? Hard-liners strike back more broadly, making it
easier for terrorists as they attempt to justify their
causes and their methods."
William Safire’s and David Rothkopf's and three out of
four experts' speculations aside, there are those who
believe that the Bible predicts the ultimate battle
between good and evil and that George Bush is doing
God’s work. But then again, the Bible also says that
"the truth will make you free."
And according to Bible Code author Michael Drosnin,
there is another, more mystical way to look at
Biblical text, and he contends that the Bible also
predicts, you guessed it, that there will be another
terrorist attack in America in 2004.
Personally, I don’t give much credence to predictions,
but when this many people peer into the crystal ball
and see Al Qaeda gearing up for our presidential
election, I take note -- especially given what’s
transpired since the last stolen election.
[EricBlumrich.com]
So, what the heck. If others can do it, I can, too. So
I’ll go out on a limb a make a prediction of my own:
If the truth continues to seep out about the way the
Bush administration has failed us, suspending the
election may be the only way Bush can win.
My darkest fear is that G.W.'s handlers believe this,
too.
* * *
BuzzFlash Note: We're not sure what to make of this,
but a BuzzFlash Reader who works for the U.S.
Government recently sent us this note: "When I
attempted to purchase a [BuzzFlash] premium on-line, I
have received the message from our 'computer police'
that this site is considered a HATE site and I am not
allowed to purchase this material online using
government computers." Go figure. If anyone can verify
this information, we'd be exceptionally grateful.
BACK TO TOP
Maureen Farrell is a writer and media consultant who
specializes in helping other writers get television
and radio exposure.
© Copyright 2003, Maureen Farrell
NOTE to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): Those who say you must define yourself before Bush defines you are WRONG. It won't be allowed. You must define Bush as a failure before he defines you, and in doing so, you will define yourself -- as a warrior, a prosecutor, and a vessel of hope and restoration. Attack, attack, attack on Iraq (a foolish military adventure), the Economy (i.e., hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal Deficit, trillions of dollars in National Debt, millions of jobs lost), Medifraud, the Environment and yes, 9/11. This election is a national referendum on the _resident's fitness to lead this nation. He has failed on every count: CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER. Define yourself, John, by defining him relentlessly, bravely and adroitly...
It's the Media, Stupid.
Daily Howler: A script can be totally trivial:
Clarke’s book concerns matters of life and death—the
sorts of things your “press corps” avoids. Your press
corps adores the Totally Trivial, and Rice-knew-al-Qaeda clearly qualifies. Clarke devotes one sentence to the matter. Absolutely nothing turns
on it. Despite that, a long string of “journalists” have flogged the topic. Pointlessness can’t stop a script.
A script can be totally wrong: Plainly, Rice’s
interview doesn’t show that she knew the term “al
Qaeda.” A schoolchild could see that quite well.
Despite this, a string of scribes have stood in line
to pretend that the interview does show such
knowledge. As far as we know, no one has yet turned up
a case in which Rice did use the term “al Qaeda.” But
so what? The Washington press corps’ greatest scripts are almost always factually bogus! The concept of accuracy is no longer part of your press corps’ dysfunctional culture.
Everybody has to say it: A script can be trivial—and a
script can be wrong. But everybody has to recite it!
In the case of Rice-knew-al-Qaeda, the script began
with hapless Sean Hannity, a pundit for whom no claim
is too stupid. But Hannity was only the first of many
to voice this inaccurate script. Comically, Myers
included the script in a “Truth Squad” segment. Evan
Thomas put the script right at the top of his Newsweek
report. Michiko Kakutani repeated the tale in a New
York Times book review. What’s the sign that everyone
said it? Bill Kristol even voiced the script, on last
weekend’s Fox News Sunday. Kristol always thinks for
himself. Just how vital was this script? Even Kristol
was willing to mouth it.
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh040204.shtml
SCRIPT WITHOUT END, AMEN! What do we mean when we talk about scripts? This week, the “press corps” showed you:
FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2004
SCRIPT WITHOUT END, AMEN: For years, we’ve said that
the press corps works from “scripts.” There has never
been a better time to nail down this seminal concept.
We refer to this week’s most widely-typed tale—the
script about Condi Rice and al Qaeda. In his book,
Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke makes a naughty
suggestion. He describes the briefing given to Rice in
January 2001. “As I briefed Rice on al Qaeda,” he
writes, “her facial expression gave me the impression
that she had never heard the term before.” Result? A
string of scribes have stood in line to insist that
Clarke’s impression was wrong. Their evidence? An
October 2000 radio interview in which Rice mentioned
Osama bin Laden, but didn’t use the term “al Qaeda.”
For the record, Clarke says it wasn’t just Condi.
“Most senior officials in the administration did not
know the term when we briefed them,” he writes in his
book.
Did Condi know the term “al Qaeda?” Here at THE
HOWLER, we don’t have a clue. But this utterly trivial
topic has produced the press corps’
script-of-the-week. Eager scribes have stood in line
to recite the refutation-of-Clarke. To see Lisa Myers
recite the script, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/31/04.
But what exactly is a “script?” Rice-knew-al-Qaeda
helps explain it. Let’s nail three crucial points:
A script can be totally trivial: Clarke’s book
concerns matters of life and death—the sorts of things
your “press corps” avoids. Your press corps adores the
Totally Trivial, and Rice-knew-al-Qaeda clearly
qualifies. Clarke devotes one sentence to the matter.
Absolutely nothing turns on it. Despite that, a long
string of “journalists” have flogged the topic.
Pointlessness can’t stop a script.
A script can be totally wrong: Plainly, Rice’s
interview doesn’t show that she knew the term “al
Qaeda.” A schoolchild could see that quite well.
Despite this, a string of scribes have stood in line
to pretend that the interview does show such
knowledge. As far as we know, no one has yet turned up
a case in which Rice did use the term “al Qaeda.” But
so what? The Washington press corps’ greatest scripts
are almost always factually bogus! The concept of
accuracy is no longer part of your press corps’
dysfunctional culture.
Everybody has to say it: A script can be trivial—and a
script can be wrong. But everybody has to recite it!
In the case of Rice-knew-al-Qaeda, the script began
with hapless Sean Hannity, a pundit for whom no claim
is too stupid. But Hannity was only the first of many
to voice this inaccurate script. Comically, Myers
included the script in a “Truth Squad” segment. Evan
Thomas put the script right at the top of his Newsweek
report. Michiko Kakutani repeated the tale in a New
York Times book review. What’s the sign that everyone
said it? Bill Kristol even voiced the script, on last
weekend’s Fox News Sunday. Kristol always thinks for
himself. Just how vital was this script? Even Kristol
was willing to mouth it.
The topic was trivial. The claim was wrong. Despite
that, everyone lined up to say it! The script
expressed Conventional Wisdom—Darling Condi can’t be
wrong. The press reached this judgment a long time
ago, and they have no current plan to rethink it. So
this week, they insulted your intelligence, again and
again, reciting a tale that is patently bogus. We’ve
tried to tell you, for many years, about your press
corps’ blatant dysfunction. This week, they had a
better idea. They decided to show you themselves.
File under:
Al Gore said he invented the Internet
Al Gore said he discovered Love Canal
Al Gore said he inspired Love Story
Al Gore lied about doing farm chores
Al Gore grew up in a fancy hotel
Al Gore said his mom sang him union lullabies
Al Gore lied about doggy-pills
And, of course, with no hint of irony:
Al Gore will do and say anything!!
SCRIPTS EVERLASTING, AMEN: Everybody had to recite it!
Indeed, how ubiquitous was the al Qaeda script? On
Tuesday night, Chris Matthews featured Myers on
Hardball. And, as we noted in Wednesday’s HOWLER, he
seemed to mock her recitation of this fatuous script.
Flawlessly, Myers played the pointless-but-mandated
tape. Then Matthews offered this comment:
MATTHEWS (3/30/04): Well, it’s clear [Rice] knew what
the basic substance was. I guess the only question,
Lisa, is, Was she familiar with the term, al
Qaeda—“the base” in Arabic?
To all appearances, Matthews knew that the tape didn’t
speak to the actual question at hand. But so what? The
next night, Clarke played a bit of Hardball himself.
And Matthews pimped the very script he seemed to mock
one night earlier:
MATTHEWS (3/31/04): Let’s talk about something very
critical. You said in your book that “as I briefed
Condoleezza Rice on al Qaeda”—this is in January of
2001, a month, almost a year before 9/11—“her facial
expression gave me the impression that she had never
heard the term before.”
Subsequent to that, your book coming out, NBC’s Lisa
Myers has gone back and found a radio interview where
Rice gave the year before, and here’s what she said on
the radio. This is the year before that conversation.
Let’s listen.
RICE (on audiotape): We don’t want to wake up one day
and find out that Osama bin Laden has been successful
on our own territory.
MATTHEWS: That’s a contradiction. You said she wasn’t
familiar with al Qaeda, and here she is the year
before talking about bin Laden’s operation maybe
hitting us here in America.
Seeing is almost believing. On Tuesday, Matthews
seemed to mock Myers for her clowning. But by
Wednesday, her script was “very critical,” involving a
troubling “contradiction.” Remember this very crucial
point: When the press corps settles on a script,
everybody has to recite it! Even scribes who know it’s
false will line up to vote with the guild.
WIDOW-BREAKER: The Washington Post—and op-ed chief
Fred Hiatt—should be ashamed of Charles Krauthammer’s
column this morning. The sliming of Richard Clarke
continues, with Krauthammer reciting a Standard
Script—Clarke made a phony apology. Remember the key
idea in this: We must never respond to Clarke’s claims
on the merits. We must always misdirect the public—to
his motives, his profiteering, his alleged sordid
character, and of course, to his weird private life.
How nasty is Krauthammer’s column? Today, the snarling
scribe extends his pique to the wives of those who
died on 9/11. Let’s face it: There is nothing so nasty
that this fellow won’t say it. Go ahead and read this
piece to see where his small mind has been.
So yes, Charles Krauthammer’s column is nasty, but
readers can easily see that. Unfortunately, readers
can’t see the way the scribe misleads them about basic
facts. After saying how fake Richard Clarke really
is—and just before stooping to trash those fake
widows—Krauthammer baldly spins the facts. “The most
telling remark Clarke made in the entire [9/11]
hearing was one that did not make the cover of
Newsweek,” he whines. Then he quotes from Clarke’s
appearance. Try to believe this got printed:
KRAUTHAMMER: Former senator Slade Gorton: “Assuming
that the recommendations that you made on January 25th
of 2001…had all been adopted say on January 26th, year
2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have
prevented 9/11?”
Clarke: “No.”
Thus, doing everything demanded by the most hawkish,
most prescient, most brilliant, most heroic, most
swaggering anti-terrorism chief in American
history—i.e. Clarke, in his own mind—would not have
prevented Sept. 11. Why, then, should the
administration apologize?
What exactly was the failure? What was Bush supposed
to do to prevent Sept. 11?
What was Bush supposed to do? Obviously, Krauthammer
and Hiatt know what Clarke has said; they know that
Clarke has repeatedly said that something might have
stopped 9/11. Consider his session on 60 Minutes, a
program the pair surely watched. By July 2001, George
Tenet was telling George Bush that “a major al-Qaeda
attack is going to happen against the United States
somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead,”
Clarke said. But Bush “never thought it was important
enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject,” he
continued, “or for him to order his national security
advisor to hold a cabinet-level meeting.” (In 1999,
Clinton conducted such meetings for weeks when a
similar threat-level existed, Clarke said.) Might such
meetings have made a difference? In a voice-over,
Lesley Stahl noted that “the FBI and the CIA knew that
two al-Qaeda operatives, both among the 9/11
hijackers, had been living in the United States since
2000, yet neither agency [had] passed that information
up the chain of command.” According to Clarke, if Bush
had convened daily meetings of his principals, they
might have shaken this information loose from the
bureaucracy’s lower levels. Could that have stopped
9/11? We don’t have the slightest idea. But here was
Clarke’s assessment:
CLARKE: Lesley, if we had put their picture on the CBS
Evening News, if we had put their picture on Dan
Rather, on USA Today, we could have caught those guys,
and then we might have been able to pull that thread
and—and get more of the conspiracy. I’m not saying we
could have stopped 9/11, but we could have at least
had a chance.
What was Bush supposed to do? Clarke has answered that
again and again. But Krauthammer pretends he doesn’t
know, and Hiatt lets him fool the Post’s readers. Do
we ever get tired of men like this making such a joke
of our lives?
According to Clarke, his plan could not have stopped
9/11—but tree-shaking meetings that summer just might
have. But Charles didn’t want you to know about that.
So Fred Hiatt said, “Trash the wives.”
WHEN PUNDITS APOLOGIZE: Of course, if Krauthammer
wanted to take on “phony apologies,” we know of two
real ones he could have selected. How bizarre has
CNN’s conduct been? Read Paul Krugman’s column to see.
On Tuesday, Wolf Blitzer offered a puzzling “apology”
in which he plainly slimed Krugman himself (see THE
DAILY HOWLER, 4/1/04). And then there was Daryn
Kagan’s “apology,” served up yesterday morning. Kagan
tried to explain why CNN accused David Letterman of
doctoring videotape—tape which poked some fun at Bush.
For a summary of this strange case, see the
aforementioned Krugman column. But to get a good look
at a “phony apology,” read what Kagan said:
KAGAN: We need to clear up something from a couple
days ago. You might recall that we had some fun with
some tape that we took from the Letterman show. It’s
of a kid who had trouble staying alert during a
presidential speech in Orlando last month.
So we aired it on this show and then after we did,
they had me come on here and tell you that the White
House called and told us it was faked.
Well, it turns out due to a, what we might say, a
misunderstanding among the folks who are usually so
fantastic behind me here in the newsrooms, it turns
out that was not true. The White House, it turns out,
I guess never did call us about the tape. The
Letterman show, if you’ve been watching at night,
strongly denies it was fake. Boy, do they strongly
deny that! And we’ve been looking through our tapes
and apparently we now see no evidence that it was
faked.
So, Dave, we apologize for the error. I hope that
makes things good with us.
Now that’s a “phony apology!” Let’s state the obvious;
like everyone else on the face of the earth, Kagan
knows the tape wasn’t fake. Despite that, she suggests
that CNN still isn’t sure; we’ve been looking through
the tape, she says, and apparently the network sees no
evidence that Letterman’s actually lying. Well—they
see no evidence now. Gee, thanks for that gracious
concession! Beyond that, Kagan plays dumb about this
whole bizarre incident. She “guesses” the White House
wasn’t involved, and says that someone referred to as
“they” told her she should say otherwise. Readers, why
in the world is this goof on the air? Oh, we
forgot—she’s good looking.
Phony apologies? CNN has ’em! They also have a growing
track record in which they seem to spread White House
smears. Richard Clarke has a strange private life!
David Letterman is faking tapes! And the “apologies”
never make sense. What on earth is going on at this
floundering network?
P.S. For the record, it’s always possible that the
White House didn’t make that call.
Annals of book learnin’
JOURNALS OF WOODWARD AND CLARKE (PART 2): Yep! When
Dick Clarke published his troubling book, the pundit
corps leapt into action. Major pundits were deeply
disturbed by Clarke’s controversial claims. Could his
troubling statements be true? Major pundits fought
back tears as they read the scribe’s strange
allegations.
But in fact, many of Clarke’s “controversial” claims
have been supported elsewhere. Kakutani noted this
obvious fact in yesterday’s Times review:
KAKUTANI: Given the howling political firestorm over
Richard A. Clarke’s new book, “Against All Enemies,”
it is surprising how familiar many of his assertions
sound, his recitation of pre-9/11 antiterrorism
missteps by the Bush and Clinton administrations
echoing earlier books and old newspaper and magazine
articles…Many of its most debated charges about the
Bush administration’s handling of the war on terrorism
have been leveled before. Some have been corroborated
or openly acknowledged by other members of the
administration.
Truer words were never spoken. Pundits who staged this
“howling storm” were dumb-or-playing-dumb again.
Indeed, many of Clarke’s “controversial” claims were
supported by a book pundits loved—Woodward’s majestic
Bush at War. But because they were
dumb-or-playing-dumb, your pundits refused to take
notice.
Here are four of Clarke’s “controversial” charges,
along with the supporting material from Woodward’s
much-loved book:
Rummy’s targets: Pundits found it hard to believe that
Rummy really said it! On September 12, Clarke alleged,
the wise old owl was prowling the White House, looking
for someone to bomb:
CLARKE (page 31): Later in the day, Secretary Rumsfeld
complained that there were no decent targets for
bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider
bombing Iraq, which, he said, had better targets. At
first I thought Rumsfeld was joking. But he was
serious and the President did not reject out of hand
the idea of attacking Iraq.
Pundits wondered if this could be true. They should
have studied their Woodward—for example, his account
of Camp David on 9/15:
WOODWARD (page 84): When the group reconvened,
Rumsfeld asked, Is this the time to attack Iraq? He
noted that there would be a big build-up of forces in
the region, and he was still deeply worried about the
availability of good targets in Afghanistan.
In Bush at War, a string of advisers note that Iraq
would provide better targets. (Hence the word “still”
in the passage above.) Last weekend, Rumsfeld was
asked about Clarke’s troubling claim by Chris Wallace
of Fox News Sunday. Rummy gave two rambling replies;
in the course of his non-answer answers, he never
denied making the statement which Clarke records in
his book.
Rummy and Wolfie’s designs on Iraq: Say what? One of
Clarke’s controversial claims concerned alleged
designs on Iraq. Scribes were shocked by Clarke’s
account of life on September 12:
CLARKE (page 30): I expected to go back to a round of
meetings examining what the next attacks [against
America] could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what
we could do about them in the short term. Instead, I
walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At
first I was incredulous that we were talking about
something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realized
with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and
Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this
national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.
What a controversial statement! Unless you read
Woodward—same day:
WOODWARD (page 49): Rumsfeld raised the question of
Iraq. Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just al
Qaeda? he asked. Rumsfeld was speaking not only for
himself when he raised the question. His deputy, Paul
D. Wolfowitz, was committed to a policy that would
make Iraq a principal target in the first round of the
war on terrorism.
Not that there was anything wrong with it, but that’s
what Woodward records! Indeed, Woodward shows Cheney
voicing a similar view:
WOODWARD (page 43): “To the extent we define our task
broadly,” Cheney said [at a 9/12 NSC meeting],
“including those who support terrorism, then we get at
states. And it’s easier to find them than it is to
find bin Laden.”
Again, rumination on easier targets.
Bush’s testes: Did Bush have a jones for linking
Saddam to 9/11? That was Clarke’s controversial
impression on September 12. Everyone knew how shocking
it was when the profiteer dared to say this:
CLARKE (page 32): “Look into Iraq, Saddam,” the
President said testily and left us. Lisa
Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth hanging
open.
Everyone knew it was controversial when Clarke
recorded this troubling notion—the notion that Bush
was eager to link Saddam to 9/11. Maybe they should
have read their Woodward. He records Bush’s view on
September 17:
WOODWARD (page 98): Bush said he wanted a plan to
stabilize Pakistan and protect it against the
consequences of supporting the U.S.
As for Saddam Hussein, the president ended the debate.
“I believe Iraq was involved, but I’m not going to
strike them now. I don’t have the evidence at this
point.”
In fact, he didn’t have the evidence, but according to
Woodward, he asserted belief. For the record, it’s odd
that Bush would have reached this judgment. Earlier,
Woodward records the views of Wolfowitz, the most
anti-Saddam Bush adviser:
WOODWARD (page 83): [Wolfowitz] worried about 100,000
American troops bogged down in mountain fighting in
Afghanistan six months from then. In contrast, Iraq
was a brittle, oppressive regime that might break
easily. It was doable. He estimated that there was a
10 to 50 percent chance Saddam was involved in the
September 11 terrorist attacks.
Even Wolfie was only at 10 to 50 percent. By the way,
this passage provides another bit of “easier target”
thinking.
Not that urgent: According to Clarke, the threat of
terror wasn’t “urgent” for the Bush Admin before 9/11.
In this case, Clarke himself told scribes where to go.
Yep! He sent them straight to this passage in
Woodward:
WOODWARD (page 39): [Bush] acknowledged that bin Laden
was not his focus or that of his national security
team. “There was a significant difference in my
attitude after September 11. I was not on point…I
didn’t have that sense of urgency, and my blood was
not nearly as boiling.”
Oof! The White House would love to get that one back!
Of course, the pundits would have missed it too. But
Clarke just keeps bringing it up.
Why is Krauthammer sliming Clarke’s motives? Because,
as Kakutani notes, his basic claims are widely
supported. Indeed, they’re widely supported in Bush at
War, a book your pundits simply loved. By the
way—Woodward said, when his book appeared, that it was
full of solid reporting. Pundits hailed its
Bush-loving tone. But now, the reporting has come home
to roost, and pundits have tried not to notice.
The Emperor has no uniform...
Suzanne Goldberg, Guardian: The Guardian has uncovered more than a dozen instances in which ill or injured soldiers were sent to war by a US military whose resources have been stretched near to breaking point by the simultaneous fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In
its investigation, the Guardian learned of soldiers
who were deployed with almost wilful disregard to
their medical histories, and with the most cursory
physical examinations. Soldiers went to war with
chronic illnesses such as coronary disease, mental
illness, arthritis, diabetes and the nervous
condition, Tourette's syndrome, or after undergoing
recent surgery.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.truthout.com/docs_04/040504C.shtml
Broken U.S. Troops Face Bigger Enemy at Home
By Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian
Saturday 03 April 2004
A stretched Pentagon is sending unfit soldiers back to
Iraq long before they are ready to serve again.
All Jason Gunn ever wanted was to be a soldier. He
put on the uniform three days after high school
graduation, and served six years with distinction. But
in the last real conversation he had with his mother
he swore he would never go back to Iraq.
The army specialist came within inches of death last
November 15, when the Humvee he was driving hit a
roadside bomb, killing his sergeant. The entire left
side of Gunn's body was splattered with shrapnel, his
elbow was shattered and, as he lay in the US military
hospital bed in Germany, he was tortured by
nightmares.
Late on March 23, Gunn told his mother, Pat, that
his commanders were putting pressure on him to return
to Iraq, but there was no way he was getting on that
plane. A few hours later, he was airborne. This week,
Gunn's distraught mother, who is herself a navy
veteran, received a first official response to her
demands to know why a soldier, who was being treated
by military doctors for combat stress, was sent back
to the war.
The note, which acknowledged Gunn suffered
post-traumatic stress, said: "After discussion of his
case it was determined ... this may be in his best
interest mentally to overcome his fear by facing it.
Therefore, he has been cleared for redeployment."
Gunn is not the only broken soldier being sent to
battle. The Guardian has uncovered more than a dozen
instances in which ill or injured soldiers were sent
to war by a US military whose resources have been
stretched near to breaking point by the simultaneous
fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In its investigation,
the Guardian learned of soldiers who were deployed
with almost wilful disregard to their medical
histories, and with the most cursory physical
examinations. Soldiers went to war with chronic
illnesses such as coronary disease, mental illness,
arthritis, diabetes and the nervous condition,
Tourette's syndrome, or after undergoing recent
surgery.
One sergeant major was shipped out two months after
neck surgery, despite orders from his military doctor
for six months' rest. "The nurse told me to put my
hands above my head and said you are good to go," he
told the Guardian. A female supply sergeant said she
was sent to Kuwait under medical advice not to walk
more than half a mile at a time, or carry more than
50lb. Both had to be medically evacuated within weeks;
the sergeant major required surgery on his return.
In some cases, the wounded were recycled with
alarming speed. A mechanic, who suffered brain damage
last June when his vehicle was hit by a suicide bus,
was sent back to Iraq in October despite reported
blurred vision and memory loss. He returned with his
unit last month, and medical evaluations showed he had
continued bleeding from the original head injury.
In Gunn's case, the determination to return him to
battle is puzzling. His unit, the 1-37 Armoured
Division, is due to return from Iraq in May. "They are
sending an injured soldier back there for seven weeks.
I can't for the life of me imagine why," says Ms Gunn.
"They say they want him to go back and face his fears,
but I just keep thinking what this whole thing will do
to a person. What are they going to send home to us?
Someone who is going to be on disability for the rest
of their lives?"
All of the injured or ill soldiers knew of other
unfit troops who were sent to Iraq last year, or have
recently been redeployed. Some, who like Gunn suffered
combat stress after sustaining serious injury, came
under enormous pressure from their commanders to
return to Iraq. Equally disturbing, a number of
returning soldiers declared unfit for service told the
Guardian the military had tried to force through their
discharge to take them off the benefit rolls.
Such soldiers are almost never seen or heard from in
a war now entering its second year, but their numbers
are growing. The Pentagon's senior health official
told Congress this week that the military had carried
out 18,000 evacuations from Iraq of wounded or ill
soldiers.
Disability Claims
Meanwhile, 15,000 soldiers who fought in Iraq and
Afghanistan have filed for disability claims. Some
12,000 have sought medical treatment from facilities
run by the department of veterans affairs. About 4,600
have sought psychological counselling. That demand
threatens to overwhelm a veterans' healthcare system
that has received no new funding since the Iraq war
began.
The drain on combat-ready soldiers - and the costs
of carrying those damaged by this war - are becoming
logistical nightmares for military planners. The
Pentagon has already been forced to extraordinary
measures. Last year, it locked up the service
contracts of National Guard members and army
reservists, preventing them from leaving the military
when their time is up.
Gunn's commanders seem adamant on keeping him. On
Wednesday, Ms Gunn was forwarded a statement from her
son. "It is my wish to be redeployed with my unit to
finish my tour of duty with my unit here in Iraq," the
statement said. "I feel that I am able to complete my
mission here as well as any other duties assigned to
me while on current deployment." It also said he had
discontinued his prescription. Ms Gunn is convinced
the statement was coerced.
Veterans' advocates say Gunn's saga reflects a
pattern in the Pentagon's dealings with casualties of
the war: send them back to battle fast or get them off
the military's books before their ailments drive costs
up. "This is a particularly stressful time for the
military because they have been committed far far
beyond their capability, and that is the reason there
is such pressure," says Stan Goff, a veterans'
activist and writer. "The numbers are becoming more
and more important. They have got to keep more bodies
in theatre."
Battle readiness barely registers. Veronica Torres,
a supply sergeant with 27 years service, was sent to
Kuwait four months after toe surgery, and with
previous injuries that restricted her movement. "Could
I run? No. Could I jump in and out of trucks? No.
Could I march a mile or two? No," she says.
She was there less than a week before reporting to
sick bay. After being medically evacuated last July,
she was diagnosed with diabetes and fibromyalgia.
Others who were evacuated for injury or illness say
their real war started on their return - with the
military bureaucracy.
Gerry Mosley, 49, a first sergeant in a
transportation unit, was injured jumping off a truck
that came under fire. By the time he was medically
retired on March 17, he was taking 56 pills a day for
shoulder, back and spinal conditions, post-traumatic
stress disorder, and Parkinson's which was not
diagnosed when he was shipped out.
Mosley also developed an abiding anger against an
institution he served for 31 years, accusing the army
of trying to shirk responsibility for his condition
now he was surplus to requirements.
"I went to Iraq and fought the enemy, not knowing I
was going to come back to the United States and fight
a bigger enemy," he says.
-------
How much have you heard in the "US mainstream news
media" about the summer of 2001? Not much. Will it
rise to the challenge between now and the November
election? Unlikely. Will the 9/11 Commission tell the
truth without pulling its punches? Unlikely. It is up
to you...Here is the truth from Robert Parry, whose
www.consortiumnews.com site is one of the great
resources made available through the Internet-based
Information Rebellion...Share it with others...
Robert Parry, www.consortiumnews.com: Recent examinations of the Bush administration’s pre-Sept. 11 actions also show that Bush’s vacation and his concentration on stem-cell ethics coincided with his administration losing focus on terrorism. The New York Times reported that “the White House’s impulse to deal more forcefully with terrorist threats within the United States peaked July 5 and then leveled off until Sept. 11.” The administration also had other priorities. On Sept. 6, for example, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld threatened a presidential veto of a proposal by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., to transfer money from strategic missile defense to counter-terrorism. [NYT, April 4, 2004]
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2004/040504.html
consortiumnews.com
Never Having to Say 'Sorry'
By Robert Parry
April 5, 2004
One could argue there is stiff competition for the
most-incredible-comment-from-the-mouth-of-Condoleezza-Rice
award, but the winner may be her assertion that she
can think of nothing more that the Bush administration
could have done to prevent the terrorist attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001.
Normal people simply don’t say such things. When
something goes wrong on their watch, most people think
of what they could have done better and the honest
ones admit that in hindsight they missed some
opportunities. With an event as momentous as a
coordinated enemy assault on three prominent U.S.
landmarks and the deaths of 3,000 people, it is hard
to imagine that the national security coordinator
can’t think of anything she, her boss or his
administration could have done better in the preceding
eight months.
But Condoleezza Rice seems to have adopted George W.
Bush’s lifetime attitude of never having to say
“Sorry.”
“I would like very much to know what more could have
been done given that it was an urgent problem,” Rice
told Ed Bradley of CBS News’s “60 Minutes” in a March
28 broadcast. “I don’t know, Ed, how, after coming
into office, inheriting policies that had been in
place for at least three of the eight years of the
Clinton administration, we could have done more than
to continue those polices while we developed more
robust policies.”
Well, like maybe, Rice could have urged her boss to
cut short his month-long August vacation. Perhaps,
after hearing CIA Director George Tenet’s repeated
warnings about an imminent al-Qaeda attack, possibly
on U.S. soil and possibly involving airplanes, Bush
could have demanded that all agencies redouble their
search for clues, which we now know did exist in the
bowels of federal agencies.
Stem-Cell Research
Instead, George W. Bush cleared brush at the ranch,
went fishing and devoted his attentions to
philosophical deliberations over stem-cell research.
After weeks of soul-searching, he gave a nationally
televised speech, delivering his judgment that
existing cells from fetuses could be used but not new
ones. Some in the U.S. national news media hailed
Bush’s decision as “Solomon-like” and proof that he
had greater gravitas than his critics would
acknowledge.
The next month, Bush and his administration were
caught flat-footed by attacks that killed 3,000
people, leveled the two World Trade Center towers and
knocked down part of the Pentagon.
Recent examinations of the Bush administration’s
pre-Sept. 11 actions also show that Bush’s vacation
and his concentration on stem-cell ethics coincided
with his administration losing focus on terrorism. The
New York Times reported that “the White House’s
impulse to deal more forcefully with terrorist threats
within the United States peaked July 5 and then
leveled off until Sept. 11.” The administration also
had other priorities. On Sept. 6, for example, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld threatened a presidential
veto of a proposal by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., to
transfer money from strategic missile defense to
counter-terrorism. [NYT, April 4, 2004]
While Rice says she can’t think of anything she might
have done differently, former counter-terrorism
coordinator Richard Clarke has offered a detailed set
of actions that should have been undertaken, including
“shaking the tree” by having high-level officials from
the FBI, CIA, Customs and other federal agencies go
back to their bureaucracies and demand any information
about the terrorist threat.
Indeed, after Sept. 11, 2001, FBI officials did come
forward with evidence they had about suspicious
training on aircraft and the fact that two known
al-Qaeda operatives had entered the United States
although the CIA was not alerted. Either of those bits
of evidence combined with other clues might have
enabled U.S. authorities to break up the Sept. 11
plot, much as smart police work headed off the
al-Qaeda bombings planned for the Millennium
celebration at the start of 2000.
In Against All Enemies, Clarke contrasts President
Bill Clinton’s urgency over the intelligence warnings
that preceded the Millennium events with the
lackadaisical approach of Bush and his national
security team. Clarke’s account of the success in
stopping the Millennium attacks makes for painful
reading with the thought that similar determination
might have thwarted the Sept. 11 attacks.
During an appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live" on
March 24, Clarke also compared the two cases. "In
December 1999, we received intelligence reports that
there were going to be major al-Qaeda attacks," Clarke
said. "President Clinton asked his national security
adviser Sandy Berger to hold daily meetings with the
attorney general, the FBI director, the CIA director
and stop the attacks.
"Every day they went back from the White House to the
FBI, to the Justice Department, to the CIA and they
shook the trees to find out if there was any
information. You know, when you know the United States
is going to be attacked, the top people in the United
States government ought to be working hands-on to
prevent it and working together.
"Now, contrast that with what happened in the summer
of 2001, when we even had more clear indications that
there was going to be an attack. Did the president ask
for daily meetings of his team to try to stop the
attack? Did Condi Rice hold meetings of her
counterparts to try to stop the attack? No."
The 9/11 commission is also reviewing these missed
opportunities. The chairman and vice chairman, New
Jersey's former Republican Gov. Thomas Kean and former
Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., said on NBC's "Meet the
Press" on April 4 that their panel will conclude that
the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable. "The whole
story might have been different," Kean said, citing a
string of law-enforcement blunders including the "lack
of coordination within the FBI" and the FBI's failure
to understand the significance of suspected hijacker
Zacarias Moussaoui's arrest in August while training
to fly passenger jets.
In his book, Clarke offers other examples of pre-Sept.
11 mistakes by the Bush administration, including a
downgrading in importance of the counter-terrorism
office, a shifting of budget priorities, an obsession
with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and an emphasis on
conservative ideological issues, such as Ronald
Reagan’s Star Wars missile defense program. A more
hierarchical White House structure also insulated Bush
from direct contact with mid-level national security
officials who had specialized on the al-Qaeda issue.
Bush Myth
Clearly, any honest post-mortem by Rice would include
a recognition that more could have been done and
should have been done. But instead of an admission
that mistakes were made, the Bush administration has
sought to airbrush the failures of executive
leadership from the minds of the American people.
The pre-Sept. 11 reality has been replaced by the
reassuring myth of Bush as the infallible leader who
instinctively makes the right calls. That was the
theme of The Right Man, a book by former Bush
speechwriter David Frum. In this view, Bush is sort of
an idiot savant who grasps the essence of complex
issues even though he may be ignorant of the details
and oblivious of the nuances.
Even Bush apparently has bought into this view,
calling himself a “gut player” who relies on his
“instincts.” According to author Bob Woodward, in Bush
at War, “it’s pretty clear that Bush’s role as
politician, president and commander in chief is driven
by a secular faith in his instincts – his natural and
spontaneous conclusions and judgments. His instincts
are almost his second religion.”
This Bush infallibility myth was widely disseminated
by both conservative and mainstream media outlets in
the months after Sept. 11, with prominent journalists,
such as NBC’s Tim Russert, even posing questions about
whether God had chosen Bush to lead the United States
during the crisis. [For details, see
Consortiumnews.com’s "Missed Opportunities of Sept.
11."]
A year ago, Bush’s overwhelming faith in his “gut”
judgments contributed to his determination to invade
Iraq, brushing aside opposition from the United
Nations, key allies and tens of millions of protesters
around the world. That decision has since left more
than 600 U.S. soldiers and uncounted thousands of
Iraqi civilians dead with no end of the bloodshed in
sight.
According to senior U.S. counter-terrorism officials,
such as the State Department’s Cofer Black, the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq also has sped up the spread
of Osama bin Laden’s anti-American ideology.
Bin Laden’s “virulent anti-American rhetoric … has
been picked up by a number of Islamic extremist
movements which exist around the globe,” Black, former
head of the CIA’s Counter-terrorism Center, said in
House testimony. “These jihadists view Iraq as a new
training ground to build their extremist credentials
and hone the skills of the terrorist.” [Washington
Post, April 4, 2004]
The views of Black and other counter-terrorism
officials bolster another argument made by Clarke –
that Bush’s Iraq adventure distracted the U.S.
military from its pursuit of bin Laden and al-Qaeda
while fueling the fury of a new generation of radical
young Arabs. But again, neither Bush nor Rice will
acknowledge their mistake in ignoring more pragmatic
advice on Iraq from seasoned experts, including Brent
Scowcroft, the elder George Bush’s national security
adviser. Instead, this new Bush Team went with George
W.’s “gut.”
Alerting the People
The chief significance of Clarke’s Against All Enemies
is less what the former counter-terrorism coordinator
discloses – since much of it was known to those who
have followed the issue – than the fact that it has
brought Bush’s pre-Sept. 11 inattention to the looming
crisis to the attention of the broader American
public.
The ferocity of the administration’s attacks on Clarke
also demonstrates Team Bush’s awareness that its
carefully crafted myth of the Great Leader is in
jeopardy.
Possibly the most virulent reactions to Clarke have
surrounded his apology to the families who lost loved
ones in the Sept. 11 attacks. “Your government failed
you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you,
and I failed you,” Clarke said at a hearing of the
9/11 commission.
Clarke’s apology underscored two key points: first,
that the Sept. 11 attacks were not an unavoidable act
of nature but a complex crime that could have been
stopped, and second, that no one in the Bush
administration had taken responsibility for the
catastrophe. Indeed, after possibly the worst
intelligence/law enforcement failure in U.S. history,
no government official was held accountable. Bush has
even made his handling of the disaster a centerpiece
of his election campaign.
To counter Clarke, White House allies have engaged in
a smear campaign that has tried to whip up Bush’s
followers, in part, by portraying Clarke's apology as
a ploy by a clever cynic who only feigned remorse.
“One has to admire it,” wrote neoconservative
columnist Charles Krauthammer. “The most cynical and
brilliantly delivered apology in recent memory.”
Ignoring Clarke’s public remarks about the actions not
taken that might have rolled up the Sept. 11
conspirators, Krauthammer insisted there was nothing
Bush could have done to prevent the attacks and thus
he had no reason to apologize to the families of the
victims. “They were all victims of al-Qaeda and
al-Qaeda alone,” Krauthammer wrote.
Changing course in the same column, however,
Krauthammer went on to suggest that if any American is
responsible, it is Richard Clarke, “who for 12 years
was the U.S. government official most responsible for
preventing a Sept. 11.” [Washington Post, April 2,
2004]
But the ugliness of the anti-Clarke attacks from
Krauthammer and other Bush defenders underscores
another point: Bush’s lifetime experience of avoiding
blame. This pattern can be traced back to his early
adulthood when he epitomized the phrase “failing up”
and rejected his father’s efforts to impose discipline
even for outrageous personal conduct.
In one famous incident, a 26-year-old George W. Bush
had taken his younger brother Marvin out drinking
during a holiday visit to his parent’s house in the
Washington area. After getting intoxicated, George
careened his car homeward through the residential
neighborhood.
“Drunk and driving erratically, George W. barreled the
car into a neighbor’s garbage can, and the thing
affixed itself to the car wheel,” wrote his biographer
Bill Minutaglio in First Son. “He drove down the
street with the metal garbage can noisily banging and
slapping on the pavement right up until he made the
turn and finally started rolling up and onto the
driveway of his parents’ home in the pleasant,
family-oriented neighborhood they had just moved
into.”
When George H.W. Bush demanded to talk with his son,
George W. was neither contrite nor apologetic. Instead
he threatened his father. “I hear you’re looking for
me,” said George W. “You wanna go mano a mano right
here?”
After a life of never admitting mistakes, Bush still
sees no reason to say he’s sorry.
Beyond the failure the protect the nation from the
Sept. 11 attacks, neither Bush nor his top aides have
apologized for repeated false and misleading
statements about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
and its government’s supposed ties to al-Qaeda. Rice
famously warned the American people about the
potential for “a mushroom cloud” and Bush repeatedly
left the impression in speeches that Saddam Hussein
was behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
While a few of the administration's bogus claims have
been retracted, Bush and his advisers have never
expressed regret for misleading the American people.
To the shock of many families of American soldiers who
have died in Iraq, Bush went so far as to make the
failed search for WMD the topic of jokes at a
black-tie dinner with the Washington press corps in
March 2004.
Bush’s unapologetic behavior has continued in his
treatment of the 9/11 commission. Bush’s White House
counsel has repeatedly set restrictive conditions that
the commissioners must accept before Bush will deign
to speak with them. The latest list of conditions
includes no public testimony, no sworn testimony, no
one-on-one testimony (Vice President Dick Cheney must
be there, too), and no follow-up testimony for himself
or any other White House official.
But it’s also true that Bush and his national security
team are not the only ones who owe the American people
an apology. All of us who have participated in the
nation’s political life – especially those of us in
Washington – should shoulder a share of the blame.
Indeed, every pundit or politician who mocked
President Clinton’s 1998 attack on al-Qaeda sites as a
“wag the dog” ploy – and thereby made it harder to
follow up – should beg the forgiveness of the Sept. 11
families. If we lived in a world where accountability
mattered, every one of those smirking pundits and
opportunistic pols would be called on to resign or be
fired. None, of course, has.
Those editorialists and activists who thought not much
was at stake in Election 2000, that there was no
difference between a well-qualified public servant
like Al Gore and a n’er-do-well neophyte like George
W. Bush, also should acknowledge their misjudgment and
its consequences. Thousands of innocent people have
died – and thousands more will die.
Even those of us who have raised our voices about the
lies and the distortions must admit that we haven’t
done so loudly enough. As Clarke said in his apology
to the families, simply trying hard doesn’t cut it.
The bottom line is we didn’t challenge the lies and
the goofy sideshows nearly as aggressively as we
should have. As participants in a democracy, all
Americans must take responsibility for what the
government does and we all need to do more.
To start with, the American people should demand a
full and truthful account of the important events that
preceded the Sept. 11 attacks. There's also a
desperate need for an honest recounting of many
historical events from the last quarter century --
especially about U.S. policies in the Middle East --
that have been hidden from the public.
Another worthwhile step toward accountability would be
to wrest admissions from those who have played a part
in this ongoing tragedy – and most especially
Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush – that there were
plenty of missed opportunities and plenty of reasons
to say, “Sorry.”
If the "US mainstream news media" told even half the
truth about the Bush cabal's business relationships
with the Bin Laden family and other Saudi
power-brokers, providing the CONTEXT and CONTINUTITY
required, there would be large, angry mobs of US
citizens mulling around outside the White House...Here
is the Buzzflash interview with Gary Unger, author of
House of Saud, House of Bush...Did John O'Neill die in
vain? The decision is in your hands...You cannot rely
on the "US mainstream news media" to get the facts
out. You cannot rely on the 9/11 Commission
either...Afterall, it was revealed today that the
White House will be allowed to "vett" every line of
the final report -- before you ever see it...
Buzzflash interviws Gary Unger:
BuzzFlash: Certainly in your book one of the complex
set of factors is the Saudi government, and perhaps
actually one of the causes of terrorism may be the
Saudi government and their relationship with the Bush
family. Is that accurate to say?
Craig Unger: Yes. This is a relationship that goes
back 30 years, and never before in history has a
President of the United States had such a close
relationship with another foreign power. In this case,
it’s not just another Western democracy. It’s an
Islamic theocracy that’s been the biggest force in
breeding terrorism of any country in the world. So I
try to put together the corroborating details.
I think there are very elemental, logical questions
here that America has to confront. One is: What was
the Saudi role – and I think it’s a very large one –
in 9/11? Without the Saudis, you really have no 9/11.
It’s not just that 15 of the hijackers were Saudis.
The Saudis have played a huge role in funding
terrorism over the last 20 years. Two: Isn’t it
amazing that the Bush family has had a close
relationship with them for nearly 30 years? And you
don’t know the exact number, but we know that it’s at
least $1.4 billion that has gone from the House of
Saud to companies in which the Bushes and their allies
have prominent positions. That’s more than 20,000
times as much money as was involved in the Whitewater
scandal, by the way.
I think this has been sometimes dismissed as a
conspiracy theory and confined to the margins, and you
see a lot of it in the Internet, due to the nature of
the Internet. But the fact of the matter is this is
not conspiracy, it’s business. This is the oil business, and the defense business. And one of the cardinal rules of business is you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and we know the extent now to which the Bushes have been fed by the Saudis.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/04/int04018.html
April 5, 2004
Bush's Kid Glove Treatment of Saudi Arabia, the Chief Financiers of Al-Qaeda Terrorism, Proves that Bush Family Business Relationships Trump National Security: A BuzzFlash Interview with Craig Unger, Author of "House of Bush, House of Saud"
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
The con artist who suckers people into a shell game
counts on his ability to divert the eye of the bettor
in order to win.
So it is that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have
launched a sham war on terror without targeting the
chief financier and backer of terrorism, Saudi Arabia.
In his book, "House of Bush, House of Saud,"
journalist Craig Unger lays out a compelling case that
the Bush family is so inextricably bound up with the
Saudi royal family that it could not hold them
responsible for the role that many Saudi Arabians
played in the 9/11 day of terror.
The shell game Bush played meant diverting the
American public's attention to Iraq, which had no
apparent role in 9/11. Although 15 of the 19 hijackers
were Saudi, bin Laden is a member of one of the
wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis
financed bin Laden, Bush managed to convince most
Americans that the majority of 9/11 hijackers were
Iraqi and that Saddam Hussein played a key role in the
attack. That's how a political shell game works. Only
in this case, thousands of lives were lost in a con
job in which the American people were played for
suckers by their own leadership.
Unger begins his book with an incident that Greg
Palast first uncovered in late 2001. Why did the Bush
Cartel allow 140 Saudi citizens, including members of
the bin Laden family, to be flown out of the United
States, without questioning, at a time when U.S.
airspace was closed and when they might have had
information useful in unraveling the crime of 9/11?
It's a good question, and the answers are shocking.
In essence, the Bush Cartel has sold Americans a bill
of goods. They have diverted our attention from the
major nation state supporting Al-Qaeda because they
don't want to attack their own business partners,
including the Saudi who bailed Harken Oil out. He's
the same guy that was deeply involved with BCCI, the
corrupt bank that Poppy Bush and many of his cohorts
were associated with. There are plenty more like him.
Just read Unger's book.
It is hard to put your arms around the gravity of
Bush's betrayal of our nation. Americans just don't
want to believe that anyone sitting in the Oval
Office, even if unelected, could be a traitor to the
interests of his own country.
But, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, the Bush family's
business interests and personal relationships take
precedence over our interests as a nation.
Remember, the Bush Cartel censored 28 pages in
Congress's 9/11 reports. The subject of those 28 pages
was reportedly the Saudi financing of terrorist front
organizations and "charities."
Unger, a respected journalist, concludes that Bush
must believe that "the billionaire Saudi royals are
somehow more worthy of the government's concern than
are the victims of 9/11."
* * *
BuzzFlash: In "House of Bush, House of Saud," you
write about the special relationship between the Bush
family and the Saudi Royal Family -- one that has
protected the Saudis from any blame for involvement in
terrorism -- which was also the subject of an article
you did in Vanity Fair. It is a topic that floats
around out there, and it’s sort of like the elephant
in the room that the mainstream press doesn’t want to
look at. The Bush administration has been able to keep
it from coming to the forefront, in large part by
distracting attention on the Iraq War.
Craig Unger: Right.
BuzzFlash: Or by focusing in on individuals -- such as
Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein -- as the source of
terrorism, rather than a complex set of factors.
Certainly in your book one of the complex set of
factors is the Saudi government, and perhaps actually
one of the causes of terrorism may be the Saudi
government and their relationship with the Bush
family. Is that accurate to say?
Craig Unger: Yes. This is a relationship that goes
back 30 years, and never before in history has a
President of the United States had such a close
relationship with another foreign power. In this case,
it’s not just another Western democracy. It’s an
Islamic theocracy that’s been the biggest force in
breeding terrorism of any country in the world. So I
try to put together the corroborating details.
I think there are very elemental, logical questions
here that America has to confront. One is: What was
the Saudi role – and I think it’s a very large one –
in 9/11? Without the Saudis, you really have no 9/11.
It’s not just that 15 of the hijackers were Saudis.
The Saudis have played a huge role in funding
terrorism over the last 20 years. Two: Isn’t it
amazing that the Bush family has had a close
relationship with them for nearly 30 years? And you
don’t know the exact number, but we know that it’s at
least $1.4 billion that has gone from the House of
Saud to companies in which the Bushes and their allies
have prominent positions. That’s more than 20,000
times as much money as was involved in the Whitewater
scandal, by the way.
I think this has been sometimes dismissed as a
conspiracy theory and confined to the margins, and you
see a lot of it in the Internet, due to the nature of
the Internet. But the fact of the matter is this is
not conspiracy, it’s business. This is the oil
business, and the defense business. And one of the
cardinal rules of business is you don’t bite the hand
that feeds you, and we know the extent now to which
the Bushes have been fed by the Saudis.
BuzzFlash: Your book begins with an incident that Greg
Palast first reported on shortly after it happened.
And again, the mainstream press, for the most part,
has still completely ignored this, although there have
been a couple articles that have come up here and
there.
In the wake of September 11th, when basically America
was a no-fly zone, the Bush administration allowed
Saudi planes to come and extract from the United
States members of the bin Laden family and extended
members of the bin Laden family. This just seems
phenomenal, and it’s never really been explained by
the Bush administration. It’s basically accepted, I
think, as fact now that this occurred. There were many
eyewitnesses. There was a story in a Florida paper, a
little news feature about a retired police officer who
accompanied a bin Laden family young man who was a
student at a Florida university. He was flown by
private jet to Kentucky, where many of the family
members were then assembled and picked up by a Saudi
airline jet and flown to Saudi Arabia. This, in and of
itself, seems a remarkable incident when you figure
that it would be the priority of the United States of
America, however innocent many of the bin Laden
extended family members may or may not be, to at least
question them before they left the country. But
apparently that wasn’t the case. What was this all
about?
Craig Unger: As you say, air space was completely
restricted up through 9/13. And on that day, the first
flight took off from Tampa, Fl., to Lexington. I found
at least eight airplanes that stopped in 12 American
cities. This was a massive operation. They picked up
roughly 140 Saudis, roughly two dozen members of the
bin Laden family, and they simply were not
interrogated or interviewed seriously. One of the
basic rules in any criminal investigation is that even
in the most commonplace murder, you interview the
friends and relatives of the perpetrator. That doesn’t
mean they’re guilty, of course. It’s just to acquire
information. In this case, flying required White House
approval. And we know they got White House approval
because nothing could fly then. In addition, Richard
Clarke told me so. He was the counter-terrorism czar
in the situation room at the White House, and he said
that he was party to these conversations. He said that
it was OK so long as they were vetted by the FBI.
The problem is that they were not vetted by the FBI.
There was no serious investigation. I was able to
obtain the passenger list for four of the planes. We
have to presume innocence on the part of most people
on the planes, but we do know that one person in
particular is highly suspicious, and that is Prince
Ahmed bin Salman, who was a very high-ranking member
of the royal family and was said to have been a link
between the royal family and al-Qaeda who may have had
foreknowledge of 9/11.
BuzzFlash: From my perspective, when you talk about
criminal procedure, we would argue that what you’ve
just described is the Bush administration, in as far
as solving the crime of 9/11, committed a dereliction
of duty. They did not follow normal criminal
procedure, whether there are any guilty parties on
those Saudi planes or not, in trying to get the most
information they could from people who possibly had
information about 9/11.
Craig Unger: Right. Well, it’s not just dereliction of
duty. Within five hours of 9/11, they were going after
Saddam Hussein, who, of course, had nothing to do with
9/11. At the same time, on September 13th, President
Bush was meeting with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the
Saudi ambassador. And we don’t know exactly what was
discussed, but this great escape was already underway.
BuzzFlash: Let me go back to this figure which we’ve
brought up many times on BuzzFlash, and which you just
mentioned: 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. Yet, in
the buildup to the Iraq War, more than 70 percent of
Americans thought that Saddam Hussein was directly
related to 9/11. And more than a majority of
Americans, because of mirroring language that the Bush
administration used in speeches, thought that most of
the hijackers were from Iraq. If we accept that Osama
bin Laden masterminded this, the mastermind was Saudi.
The money that financed Osama bin Laden was largely
Saudi. As an American who’s concerned about my family,
my friends, and the life and safety of Americans, this
amounts to close to treachery and betrayal. Don’t we
want to really get the people responsible? Or is this
just a show?
Craig Unger: We’ve had this extraordinarily
complicated relationship with Saudi Arabia, but it’s
full of astounding contradictions. On the one hand,
we’re the guardian of Israel. On the other hand, we’ve
been the guarantor of security to Wahhabi Islam. This
has gone on for more than 30 years. It’s particularly
interesting when you look at the Bush role in all
this. There are always two factors when you look at
American policy in the Middle East, and particularly
the Saudis. Those factors are oil and Israel. And we
had this relationship that was so full of
contradictions for so many years. In some ways, it was
spectacularly successful; that is, if you look at it
in terms of getting cheap oil to fill the tanks of
American cars. But at a certain point, that
relationship becomes quite questionable.
One of its tenets was that we would turn a blind eye
to what was really going on in Saudi Arabia. And that
may have been fine up to a point, but that point
changed when the Saudis started killing Americans. And
what is particularly distressing is that the Bushes
appear to have turned a blind eye again and again to
this. It dates back before the time when Bush got into
office. In the 90s, George Bush, Sr., James Baker --
people that I see as part of the House of Bush -- Dick
Cheney and Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, were
investing and making very, very lucrative deals with
Saudis. So they had very close business relationships.
You have to wonder, given those relationships, did
they dare ask the tough questions of the Saudis about
their role in financing terrorism?
They were making business deals with people who have
at least indirectly been involved in terrorism. For
example, if you look at Prince Bandar, it’s
astonishing that he and his wife helped finance
indirectly two of the hijackers who were in San Diego.
But there was no investigation into that. And he
dropped by the White House afterwards and had dinner
with President Bush. Why was there no outcry? Instead,
former President Bush called the Bandar family and
expressed his condolences.
BuzzFlash: Condolences about what?
Craig Unger: That he was being investigated for this
by Newsweek.
BuzzFlash: My recollection was Newsweek investigated,
but either the State Department or an unidentified
White House spokesperson said: This is not really
significant. She was just helping out a poor student.
She had no idea.
Craig Unger: Right. That has been the excuse you’ve
heard from the Saudis for years. But the fact is, if
you go back through the 90s when the Saudi terrorism
started, the Clinton Administration began looking into
it. And it’s important to understand, I think, that
Saudi Arabia is an Islamic fundamentalist state where
the state religion is Wahhabism. In its most
puritanical and militant form, you end up with Osama
bin Laden. So even though the Saudis have stated that
they are the victims of terrorists themselves, that
they are at war with the militants, in fact, the
militant clergy is part of the government. There is no
separation between church and state. They have not
been able to afford politically to crack down on
militant Wahhabism because it’s part of the state.
Through it, you have a religious police, and the whole
educational system -- the madrassas fosters this kind
of terrorism. So they have not really cracked down.
There were attempts to do that during the Clinton
administration, with mixed success. And you saw the
Clinton administration, for example, crack down on the
National Commercial Bank, and got the Saudis to
investigate it, because Clinton’s counter-terrorism
analysts saw the bank as potentially having funded
terrorist activities.
BuzzFlash: Isn’t James Baker, or his law firm,
defending the Saudi government in a lawsuit that some
of the relatives of 9/11 victims have filed?
Craig Unger: Baker-Botts represents the Carlyle Group
and has represented some of the Saudis in the suit by
the relatives of the 9/11 victims. It represents many
of the major oil companies who have deals with Saudi
Arabia. So the Saudi oil family and its allies, the
wealthy merchant elite, are very, very close to the
House of Bushes, as I call it, which means James
Baker, the firm of Baker-Botts, the Carlyle Group,
former President Bush, and other people who were in
the Carlyle Group.
BuzzFlash: To me this seems, in its starkest sense, a
betrayal of American people. We know our government
knows -- meaning the Bush administration -- that the
Saudi government is probably the chief financier, at
least, of Wahhabi-connected terrorism through the
Osama bin Laden branch.
BuzzFlash doesn’t think that terrorism begins and ends
with Osama bin Laden, but the Bush administration has
made that out to be the case. And let’s just talk
about that line of terrorism. In fact in the bombing,
when some Americans and British were killed a few
months back, there were initial reports that some
senior officials in Saudi Arabia had to be involved, I
think, in the security forces. And then that was sort
of dropped from the press, and the American government
said no one in the Saudi Arabian government is
involved. It just sort of evaporated because no
journalist could prove one thing one way or another.
We know how deeply the Saudis are involved, and yet
the Bush administration keeps focusing elsewhere.
Craig Unger: It’s an incredibly delicate relationship.
The best argument for being soft on the Saudis is that
if the House of Saud were to fall, virtually anyone
who replaced them would likely be far more
anti-American. And I think that’s absolutely true, by
the way. We keep saying we want democracy in the
Middle East, well, if there were an election there,
you would have very, very militant Wahhabi people in
charge, much closer to bin Laden himself. So the best
argument for being soft on the Saudis is that this is
the best we’re going to get, and we need oil, and we
need a strategic ally in that part of the world. At
the same time, there’s got to be a line at which you
say: If they’re killing Americans, what kind of allies
are they? That’s unacceptable. And this atrocious act
of terrorism, killing 3,000 people on 9/11 -- we’ve
been directing all our energy elsewhere against Saddam
Hussein. The Bush administration has not really
focused on the root cause of it at all.
BuzzFlash: Paul Wolfowitz admitted that one of the
reasons to invade Iraq was to -- he didn’t quite say
it this way -- but, in essence, to satisfy Osama bin
Laden’s demand we remove our bases from Saudi Arabia.
And that would take away one of his basic demands,
which was removing the U.S. military presence from
Saudi Arabia.
Craig Unger: Well, inadvertently it may have satisfied
still another of Osama bin Laden’s objectives. If you
go back more than 20 years to the war in Afghanistan
where we supported Osama bin Laden against the
Soviets, that was considered one of the great
successes in American policy because we lured the
Soviets into Afghanistan, and it helped lead to the
end of the Soviet Union. Now, I fear, the United
States may have fallen into exactly the same trap by
going into Iraq itself. Now that we have 130,000
troops in the Middle East, that may be a huge
strategic blunder.
BuzzFlash: There is a book by a British author, Jason
Burke, called "al-Qaeda." He shows that it’s foolhardy
for the Bush administration to try to portray al-Qaeda
as something where, if we lop off the head of bin
Laden, then we end terrorism, or at least dramatically
reduce it. And his point is al-Qaeda, and terrorism,
such as it exists, is actually much more decentralized
than it might appear. Therefore, you need a very
different strategy to deal with it than the Bush
administration’s obsessiveness with Osama bin Laden.
Even if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed, in
other words, that’s not going to end Islamic
terrorism. What are your thoughts about that?
Craig Unger: I think the administration may have
squandered an awful lot of resources going after Iraq,
which has nothing to do with 9/11 whatsoever. The Bush
administration has made a number of blunders. I think
these are real questions that the 9/11 commission has
to address. If you go back to the end of the Clinton
era, the last election took place just after Osama bin
Laden bombed the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 Americans, I
believe it was. It was definitively pinned on bin
Laden just as the Bush administration began taking
office.
Richard Clarke had drawn up a very aggressive attack
plan to go after them. Yet it stayed on Bush’s desk
for month after month after month. Why did he not act
then? On August 6, 2001, there was a Presidential
daily briefing, at which President Bush was advised
that bin Laden and al-Qaeda might well attack the
United States very, very soon. What exactly was said
during that briefing? Why didn’t he act then? I think
you’ve got an awful lot of questions about how Bush
addressed the question of terrorism, and why he didn’t
act more aggressively. And it’s especially ironic from
an administration that prides itself on being so tough
on terrorism.
BuzzFlash: They also had the Hart/Rudman report, which
they ignored. We consistently bring up the fact that
just before Bush went for a month’s vacation at his
Crawford ranch in 2001, he was warned of potential
al-Qaeda attacks, along with Condoleezza Rice. And
Condoleezza Rice’s response to the fact that they were
warned of hijackings was: Well, we weren’t warned that
they would fly the planes into buildings. BuzzFlash
has noted on several occasions that the way you
prevent a hijacking of a plane that’s flown into a
building is the same way you prevent a hijacking. So
Bush failed to prevent the hijackings that led to
planes being flown into buildings, because they didn’t
do anything to try to prevent hijackings, even though
they were warned of them.
On top of that, the Bush administration knew of
efforts to fly planes into buildings because there had
been plans like that that had come to attention of
administrations prior to them. Also, when he had gone
to the G8 Summit in Italy, he was put in a room on a
boat for the very reason that they wanted some
maneuvering room because they were warned of possible
air attacks into buildings. But in any case, I guess
sometimes when the truth is out there and staring you
in the face for the mainstream press, they just can’t
pick up on it.
I wanted to ask you a question about something we find
confusing, and it takes a specialist of Saudi Arabia
to explain. We know there are many Saudi members of
the royal family who don’t give money to extremist
fundamentalist learning centers, mosques, or to the
terrorist organizations. Is some of the money given
because there are people in the Saudi royal family, in
the security apparatus, who actually secretly support
the anti-U.S. terrorist efforts and are anti-American
because of their fundamentalist beliefs? Is there also
a group that is just more cynical about this? They’re
basically Westerners but they consider this hush
money?
Craig Unger: There’s a spectrum of complicity. At one
end of the spectrum, you have people who are
completely innocent, who may give to charity because
it’s one of the fundamental pillars of Islam. It’s
called zakat. Charity is a part of the religion, and
that’s part of your daily life. They don’t know
exactly where the money ends up because it ends up
being decentralized. At another stage, you have people
who may be doing it with a bit of a wink, thinking
they’re buying favoritism from terrorists. The Saudis
have had relationships with both Hamas and Hezbollah
in which they fairly openly fund Hamas and Hezbollah,
and documents have surfaced again and again. The deal
seems to be that they say: We’ll help finance you,
just don’t do your terrorism on Saudi soil.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have people who
actually favor it, and you have members of the royal
family, like Prince Nayef, who is the Minister of the
Interior, and whose power base is allied with the
militant clergy in Saudi Arabia. And he has blamed
9/11 on Zionist Jews, and basically said that this was
something Zionists are responsible for. It’s important
to remember that he’s still a real powerful figure in
Saudi Arabia, and he has a real base. And even if
there are sort of good Saudis who are very much
against him, they have to recognize that that is a
powerful base there, and they’re limited in the degree
to which they can crack down without it totally
alienating part of their power base. There’s sort of a
low-level civil war going on in Saudi Arabia.
BuzzFlash: Here’s the million-dollar question. I think
you would agree -- and correct me if I’m wrong -- that
this administration has failed publicly to hold Saudi
Arabia accountable, let alone all the other factual
details that you bring up in your book about what
they’ve not pressed Saudi Arabia about. But playing
the devil’s advocate with ourselves and with you, you
said that one of the challenges here is if you press
too hard and it leads to the collapse of the monarchy
there, you’re going to end up with a radical regime.
It’s the kind of basic problem that the Bush
administration can’t seem to answer anywhere in some
of the extremist Islamic countries, which is to say if
you have a truly open election in Iraq, you’re going
to end up with a fundamentalist majority, and perhaps
a radical one. The Palestinians had an election --
they elected Arafat. In other words, beware of what
you wish for sometimes. Given that with Saudi Arabia,
what can you do?
Craig Unger: I’m not a policymaker, but I think if
they’re true allies, you don’t kill Americans. That’s
rule number one in any political alliance. And it’s up
to the Saudis to enforce that. The relationship has
been founded on contradictions that in the end may not
hold. It may be untenable. But right now, it seems to
me we have the worst of both worlds; that is, we’re
not getting justice through to the Saudis with regard
to 9/11, and now we’ve started to alienate them in
terms of getting their oil. They just made all these
natural gas deals with Russia, with China, and so on.
So you need to have a policy where, it shouldn’t be
too much to ask, to tell them not to kill Americans.
BuzzFlash: You’re not claiming that the Saudi
government kills Americans, but there are Saudi
nationals that are funded with Saudi support that kill
Americans.
Craig Unger: Yes, but some of that support comes from
the House of Saud. Some of it comes from the merchant
elite. The Saudis have been uncooperative when
Americans have been killed there. They’ve beheaded
people before letting the FBI interview them. They
have blocked inquires into Saudi role in funding
terrorism. I think, by the way, that things may have
started to change with the May of 2003 bombing in
Saudi Arabia in which, for the first time, it looks
like the House of Saud is really being attacked
itself. Before that point, one could argue that most
of the bombings by al-Qaeda were really directed
against Westerners. Now the Saudis have clearly
started to feel the pressure themselves from al-Qaeda.
BuzzFlash: Despite your book, despite, again, other
journalists who have brought this issue up, there is
still the 800-pound elephant in the room that the Bush
administration just doesn’t want to talk about. You
never hear them voluntarily bring up Saudi Arabia. Is
that likely to change in an election year? Are the
Democrats likely to make it an issue? Or are we just
going to go through this election with Saudi Arabia
again being like the relative you don’t want to talk
about?
Craig Unger: It absolutely should be an issue. And you
have the 9/11 Commission which I think has to address
many of these questions. You have the Kerry campaign,
which I believe should raise some of these questions.
It’s an elemental question in American foreign policy
-– how do you deal with this? If we’re going to have a
serious war on terror, President Bush -– and this may
be one place where I really agree with him -– has said
how he responded to 9/11 should be an issue in the
campaign. I agree with him absolutely on that. We
might disagree on how well he’s done, but the Saudi
role in all this is very, very important.
I would like to redirect attention back to, if I may,
to what I call the great escape -- the evacuation of
Saudis. The Bush administration clearly played a role.
They clearly authorized that. Why did they do that?
How could they possibly have done it? They were
already arresting people in Guantanamo and detaining
them for months and months and months. But Saudis who
may have had knowledge of this were whisked out of the
country in the dead of night.
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Get your copy of "House of Bush, House of Saud" from
BuzzFlash.com
NOTE to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): Do not be
afraid to play the Planet card. The US electorate
understands it better and resonantes with it more than
"conventional wisdom" gives them credit for...Play
"Global Warming" as another CREDIBILITY issue (THEY
LIE ABOUT THE SCIENCE), and play it also as another
SECURITY issue (Ask, "Are you safer today than four
years ago?") Yes, Clinton-Gore understood both
terrorism and global warming. But the _resident took
us backward to Iraq and Big Oil and we have lost four years we
could not afford to lose...Your proposal to transition 20% of the US's energy consumption to renewable resources by 2020 is a laudable beginning, but do not miss this opportunity to define the _resident as once again failing the CREDIBILITY test and also as weak on science.
Antony Barnett, Observer: Among the memo's assertions
are 'global warming is not a fact', 'links between air
quality and asthma in children remain cloudy', and the
US Environment Protection Agency is exaggerating when
it says that at least 40 per cent of streams, rivers
and lakes are too polluted for drinking, fishing or
swimming.
Save the Environment, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0404-01.htm
Published on Sunday, April 4, 2004 by the Observer/UK
Bush Attacks Environment 'Scare Stories': Secret email gives advice on denying climate change
by Antony Barnett in New York
George W. Bush's campaign workers have hit on an
age-old political tactic to deal with the tricky
subject of global warming - deny, and deny
aggressively.
The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to
the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen
advising them what to say when questioned on the
environment in the run-up to November's election. The
advice: tell them everything's rosy.
It tells them how global warming has not been proved,
air quality is 'getting better', the world's forests
are 'spreading, not deadening', oil reserves are
'increasing, not decreasing', and the 'world's water
is cleaner and reaching more people'.
The email - sent on 4 February - warns that Democrats
will 'hit us hard' on the environment. 'In an effort
to help your members fight back, as well as be
aggressive on the issue, we have prepared the
following set of talking points on where the
environment really stands today,' it states.
The memo - headed 'From medi-scare to air-scare' -
goes on: 'From the heated debate on global warming to
the hot air on forests; from the muddled talk on our
nation's waters to the convolution on air pollution,
we are fighting a battle of fact against fiction on
the environment - Republicans can't stress enough that
extremists are screaming "Doomsday!" when the
environment is actually seeing a new and better day.'
Among the memo's assertions are 'global warming is not
a fact', 'links between air quality and asthma in
children remain cloudy', and the US Environment
Protection Agency is exaggerating when it says that at
least 40 per cent of streams, rivers and lakes are too
polluted for drinking, fishing or swimming.
It gives a list of alleged facts taken from
contentious sources. For instance, to back its claim
that air quality is improving it cites a report from
Pacific Research Institute - an organization that has
received $130,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998.
The memo also lifts details from the controversial
book The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg.
On the Republicans' claims that deforestation is not a
problem, it states: 'About a third of the world is
still covered with forests, a level not changed much
since World War II. The world's demand for paper can
be permanently satisfied by the growth of trees in
just five per cent of the world's forests.'
The memo's main source for the denial of global
warming is Richard Lindzen, a climate-skeptic
scientist who has consistently taken money from the
fossil fuel industry. His opinion differs
substantially from most climate scientists, who say
that climate change is happening.
But probably the most influential voice behind the
memo is Frank Luntz, a Republican Party strategist. In
a leaked 2002 memo, Luntz said: 'The scientific debate
is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is
still a window of opportunity to challenge the
science.'
Luntz has been roundly criticized in Europe. Last
month Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, Sir David
King, attacked him for being too close to Exxon.
Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace condemned the messages
given in the Republican email. He said: 'Bush's spin
doctors have been taking their brief from dodgy
scientists with an Alice in Wonderland view of the
world's environment. They want us to think the air is
getting cleaner and that global warming is a myth.
This memo shows it is Exxon Mobil driving US policy,
when it should be sound science.'
The memo has met some resistance from Republican
moderates.
Republican Mike Castle, who heads a group of 69
moderate House members, senators and governors, says
the strategy doesn't address the fact that pollution
continues to be a health threat. 'If I tried to follow
these talking points at a town hall meeting with my
constituents, I'd be booed.'
Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords, who left the Republican
Party in 2001 to become an independent partly over its
anti-green agenda, called the memo 'outlandish' and an
attempt to deceive voters.
'They have a head-in-the-sand approach to it. They're
just sloughing off the human health impacts - the
premature deaths and asthma attacks caused by power
plant pollution,' Jeffords said.
Republican House Conference director Greg Cist, who
sent the email, said: 'It's up to our members if they
want to use it or not. We're not stuffing it down
their throats.'
He said the memo was spurred by concerns that
environmental groups were using myths to try to make
the Republicans look bad.
'We wanted to show how the environment has been
improving,' Cist said. 'We wanted to provide the other
side of the story.'
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
###
At least 10 US soldiers died in Iraq this weekend. For what? The _resident's foolish military adventure is a debacle. There were no WMDs. Hans Blix and Scott Ritter were right. Over six hundred US soldiers have died (and counting) have died for almost nothing. Iraq is in chaos. And with US resources being drained away in Iraq, terrorism has been given a big boost. The Al Qaeda leadership has been given a pass, and the ranks of Al Qaeda style extremists are swelling with recruits to kill the infidels...The Emperor has no uniform...The Mega-Mogadishu that the LNS has been predicting is at hand... Incredibly, and with this tragic tableu as a backdrop, NotBeSeen is hiring Condi Rice's communications director, who boasts of having no experience, as Executive VP of Communications. Doesn't this hire strike you as obscene? Condi Rice should have been driven from office in disgrace while the smoke still rose from the ruins of the Twin Towers. Even if she were not at the center of a rapidly evolving scandal that could lead to revelations of criminal negligence or worse, it would be an inappropriate hire. It's the Media, Stupid.
New York Times: Anna Perez, who recently directed communications at the National Security Council, will become chief communications executive for NBC, the network announced yesterday...She left the White House in December, where her titles included counselor for communications to President's Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Ms. Perez also worked in the White House for the first President Bush, as Barbara Bush's press secretary..."I love the television business," Ms. Perez said. "I have no expertise in it so I will have a bit of learning curve. But I can't remember the last time I didn't have a learning curve when I took a new job.''
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
Former White House Aide to Take Post at NBC
Published: April 2, 2004
Anna Perez, who recently directed communications at the National Security Council, will become chief communications executive for NBC, the network announced yesterday.
Ms. Perez will take up the post of executive vice president for communications, but her duties will expand when NBC becomes NBC-Universal after the expected completion of the network's merger with entertainment units of Vivendi Universal.
The deal is expected to be approved by June. Ms. Perez will start at NBC on May 1.
She left the White House in December, where her titles included counselor for communications to President's Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Ms. Perez also worked in the White House for the first President Bush, as Barbara Bush's press secretary.
In the mid-1990's she was head of communications at the Creative Artists Agency in Hollywood, when it was led by Michael S. Ovitz and Ron Meyer. Mr. Meyer is now the head of Universal Studios, a job he is expected to retain after the NBC merger.
"I love the television business," Ms. Perez said. "I have no expertise in it so I will have a bit of learning curve. But I can't remember the last time I didn't have a learning curve when I took a new job.''
Another astounding episode in Tales of the Incredible
Shrinking _resident...The Emperor has no uniform...
CNN: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says it's baffling and embarrassing that President Bush is appearing before the September 11 commission with Vice President Dick Cheney at his side instead of by himself.
"I think it speaks to the lack of confidence
that the administration has in the president going
forth alone, period," Pelosi, D-California, said
Friday. "It's embarrassing to the president of the
United States that they won't let him go in without
holding the hand of the vice president of the United
States."
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Cabal, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/02/911.pelosi.ap/index.html
Pelosi critical of joint Bush-Cheney appearance before
9/11 panel
Democratic leader: 'It's embarrassing'
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
says it's baffling and embarrassing that President
Bush is appearing before the September 11 commission
with Vice President Dick Cheney at his side instead of
by himself. "I think it speaks to the lack of
confidence that the administration has in the
president going forth alone, period," Pelosi,
D-California, said Friday. "It's embarrassing to the
president of the United States that they won't let him
go in without holding the hand of the vice president
of the United States."
"I think it reinforces the idea that the president
cannot go it alone," she said. "The president should
stand tall, walk in the room himself and answer the
questions."
White House spokesman Ken Lisaius dismissed Pelosi's
comments and said the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States, had expressed
appreciation for Bush and Cheney's planned appearance.
"This has been a development that the commission
welcomes and said so in their own statement; so it
certainly sets the minority leader apart from the
commission," Lisaius said.
Bush and Cheney agreed this week to a single joint
private session with all 10 commissioners
investigating the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks. Previously, the administration was offering
only private interviews of Bush and Cheney with the
commission chairman and vice chairman. The commission
agreed to the new plan.
Pelosi made her comments during a discussion with
several reporters. She also said it was unfortunate
that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice is
giving her commission testimony next Thursday, when
the House won't be in session.
"I think it should've happened much sooner," she said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved.This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/02/911.pelosi.ap/index.html
Two more US soldiers have died in Iraq. For what?
The Emperor has no uniform...
John Bonifaz and Bob Fertik, www.tompaine.com: This nation is at a crossroads. These are not simply issues to be debated in a presidential election. These are "high crimes" in the most profound meaning of the phrase, and they require the most serious of legal responses...Where is the political accountability? Where is the constitutional consistency? Where are the voices of our nation's leaders calling for the investigation of impeachable offenses?
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10176
Impeachable Offenses
John Bonifaz is an attorney in Boston and the author of Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush (NationBooks-NY, January 2004). Bob Fertik is the co-founder of democrats.com, an independent community of Democratic activists.
President George W. Bush—whose own election was dubious—has seized monarchical powers in sending this nation into war without any legitimate congressional declaration of war or equivalent congressional action. He has lied to the United States Congress and to the American people about the rationale for the war. He has imprisoned American citizens without charges and denied them access to lawyers and the courts. He has thus trampled on the United States Constitution and he has violated his oath of office.
This nation is at a crossroads. These are not simply issues to be debated in a presidential election. These are "high crimes" in the most profound meaning of the phrase, and they require the most serious of legal responses.
Our Constitution lays out a specific process for addressing high crimes committed by a president: impeachment. The time has come for Congress to investigate these crimes and begin impeachment proceedings. Our loyalty to our Constitution requires nothing less.
Marches, like those held on March 20, 2004, which drew hundreds of thousands of protesters, are important, but they are not enough. Petitions, like those initiated by MoveOn.org and its allies, calling for censure of the president are important, but they are not enough. Voter mobilization campaigns focused on defeating George W. Bush on Election Day are important, but they are not enough.
Impeachment is essential because George W. Bush should be labeled for who he is: A president who has gone beyond the bounds of the Constitution, who has defied the rule of law, and who therefore deserves the ultimate constitutional punishment.
Former President Bill Clinton was impeached on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. But no one died as a result of the Monica Lewinsky affair. President Bush has sent this nation into an illegal war based on lies, resulting in the deaths thus far of more than 575 United States soldiers and thousands of Iraqi civilians. This war has no end in sight, and officials warn that U.S. troops could be there, fighting and dying, for 10 years or more.
Where is the political accountability? Where is the constitutional consistency? Where are the voices of our nation's leaders calling for the investigation of impeachable offenses?
If we believe in the Constitution and its timeless vision of democracy, we must now stand up and call for impeachment. History will judge us for how we responded when faced with a president who would be king. Did we rely on the badly flawed election process to set us free? Or did we demand, as the Constitution provides, the removal of that president from power? Did we speak the truth and charge that president with the highest of crimes?
Some will argue that we are too close to an election to make the call for impeachment. But we cannot afford to provide immunity for presidential high crimes so long as they are committed (or fully revealed) close to an election cycle. We must hold the president accountable for high crimes at any point in his or her term.
Moreover, we would be foolish to assume that the 2004 election will be a fair one. Millions of Americans still believe George W. Bush stole the 2000 election, thanks to the Supreme Court's controversial and partisan 5-4 decision which threw out 175,000 Florida votes that had never been counted. None of the documented crimes of 2000—including the deliberate disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of voters through a fraudulent purge of "felons" by Katherine Harris—have been prosecuted. Worse yet, many of the infamous punch card machines have been replaced with even more controversial electronic voting machines that make a recount impossible.
No president in our history has presented a greater threat to our Constitution and our democracy than George W. Bush. If we fail to place the proper charges of high crimes on this president, we invite him to engage in further lawlessness, further illegal war-making, further lies and further unnecessary bloodshed—now, or even more so in a second term. If we fail to protect the Constitution today, we invite its shredding tomorrow by an administration with even less regard for the Constitution than the present one.
Is lying to the United States Congress and the American people about the reasons for sending the nation into war an impeachable offense? Is violating the War Powers Clause of the Constitution by launching a unilateral first-strike invasion of another nation without congressional authorization an impeachable offense? Congress must debate these questions now. Congress may be in Republican hands, but all of its members swore to uphold the Constitution when taking office.
There are two roads in front of us. One takes us toward tyranny behind the mask of wartime necessity. The other returns us to our basic democratic principles where the Constitution is supreme and where no one, not even the president, is above the law.
We call upon Americans of all political persuasions to join the call for impeachment. We ask you to call or write your Member of Congress to urge him or her to introduce articles of impeachment. We also encourage you to sign a petition at www.impeachcentral.com, to send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, and to forward this article to all of your friends. Raise your voice now, at this critical moment.
Let us take the road back to democracy. Let us demand our country back from a lawless and unaccountable administration. Let us honor the oath this president has betrayed: to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10176
Published: Mar 31 2004
"Out, out damn spot!"
CBS News: The Sept. 11 commission wants an explanation as to why President Bush has refused to allow the panel's investigators to examine thousands of pages of classified and counterterrorism documents generated during the Clinton administration. Bruce Lindsey, former President Clinton's legal representative for records and a longtime confidant, told The Associated Press that the commission's attempt to get a full picture of Mr. Clinton's terrorism policies has been hampered because the Bush administration won't forward all of Mr. Clinton's records to the panel.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/21/terror/printable607659.shtml
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dispute Over Clinton 9/11 Papers
WASHINGTON, April 2, 2004
The Sept. 11 commission wants an explanation as to why President Bush has refused to allow the panel's investigators to examine thousands of pages of classified and counterterrorism documents generated during the Clinton administration. Bruce Lindsey, former President Clinton's legal representative for records and a longtime confidant, told The Associated Press that the commission's attempt to get a full picture of Mr. Clinton's terrorism policies has been hampered because the Bush administration won't forward all of Mr. Clinton's records to the panel.
Lindsey said Mr. Clinton had approved the documents' transfer, but the White House has final authority on what is handed over. He said the White House has turned over only 25 percent of the 11,000 records requested by the commission.
The White House says it has fully met the panel's information requests.
According to the New York Times, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said some of the documents that have been withheld were "unrelated," while others were "highly sensitive."
"We are providing the commission with access to all the information they need to do their job," he said, according to The Times.
A spokesman for the commission told The Times the panel had sought an explanation from the White House, and was still waiting for one.
"If it did happen, it's an unintentional mistake or it's another intentional act of the White House that will backfire," commission member Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator, told the newspaper.
The Clinton administration's counterterrorism policy is at the heart of a dispute over whether the Bush administration ignored the threat of al Qaeda or inherited an inadequate policy from the Clinton team.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify in public before the commission next Thursday, CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts reports.
The questioning is likely to focus on what outgoing Clinton officials told Rice about the al Qaeda threat and her response afterward.
"She's obviously a very important witness who will be able to share the facts that pertain to the counterterrorism policy in the Bush administration, particularly in its earliest months," commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said. "The commission looks forward to hearing from her."
Rice had resisted testifying publicly in favor of meeting privately with the commission, citing legal concerns. But after mounting pressure, the White House this week agreed to let her appear before the panel after getting commission and congressional assurances that the move would not be seen as legal precedent that could force other presidential advisers before congressional panels.
Rice's testimony could have enormous implications for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, which rests significantly on his national security credentials.
Mr. Bush's former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, testified last week that the administration prior to Sept. 11 did not consider al Qaeda an urgent threat despite his repeated warnings.
Since Clarke's appearance, attention has turned to public statements the president and top aides made in the months before the terrorist attacks.
A CBS News review of speeches and public remarks by Mr. Bush suggests he did not mention al Qaeda once before Sept. 11, although he did send a letter to Congress extending sanctions against the Taliban for harboring al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that on Sept. 11, 2001, Rice was due to make remarks that discussed national security threats, but never mentioned al Qaeda or bin Laden. Instead, the remarks focused on the need for missile defense.
The White House denied that the speech reflected a blind eye toward terrorism.
McClelland said, "this administration doesn't measure commitment based on one speech or one conference call or one meeting. We look at the sum total of the strong actions that we take."
On Thursday, the White House released portions of a top-secret document, finalized Sept. 4, 2001, that directed the Pentagon to draw up plans for attacking al Qaeda and Afghanistan's ruling Taliban. Any such action was seen as the last step in a three-to-five year plan, The Times reported.
Separately, Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., each sent letters to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales asking him to explain why calls were placed to two Republicans on the Sept. 11 commission during Clarke's testimony.
The commissioners — Fred Fielding, a former White House counsel under President Reagan, and James Thompson, a former Illinois governor — questioned whether Clarke had political motives and pointed to earlier instances in which he praised the Bush administration's policies.
McClellan dismissed the notion that Gonzales provided the Republican commissioners with information about Clarke. "Judge Gonzales and the counsel's office is in contact with the commission all the time to make sure they have the information they need to do their job," he said.
©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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How does Wolf Bluster of SeeNotNews sleep at night? It's the Media, Stupid.
Paul Krugman, New York Times: And administration officials shouldn't be able to spread stories without making themselves accountable. If an administration official is willing to say something on the record, that's a story, because he pays a price if his claims are false. But if unnamed "administration officials" spread rumors about administration critics, reporters have an obligation to check the facts before giving those rumors national exposure. And there's no excuse for disseminating unchecked rumors because they come from "the White House," then denying the White House connection when the rumors prove false. That's simply giving the administration a license to smear with impunity.
Break the Bush Cabal's Stranglehold on the "US Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/02/opinion/02KRUG.html
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Smear Without Fear
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 2, 2004
A funny thing happened to David Letterman this week. Actually, it only started out funny. And the unfunny ending fits into a disturbing pattern.
On Monday, Mr. Letterman ran a video clip of a boy yawning and fidgeting during a speech by George Bush. It was harmless stuff; a White House that thinks it's cute to have Mr. Bush make jokes about missing W.M.D. should be able to handle a little ribbing about boring speeches.
CNN ran the Letterman clip on Tuesday, just before a commercial. Then the CNN anchor Daryn Kagan came back to inform viewers that the clip was a fake: "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video." Later in the day, another anchor amended that: the boy was at the rally, but not where he was shown in the video.
On his Tuesday night show, Mr. Letterman was not amused: "That is an out and out 100 percent absolute lie. The kid absolutely was there, and he absolutely was doing everything we pictured via the videotape."
But here's the really interesting part: CNN backed down, but it told Mr. Letterman that Ms. Kagan "misspoke," that the White House was not the source of the false claim. (So who was? And if the claim didn't come from the White House, why did CNN run with it without checking?)
In short, CNN passed along a smear that it attributed to the White House. When the smear backfired, it declared its previous statements inoperative and said the White House wasn't responsible. Sound familiar?
On Tuesday, I mentioned remarks by CNN's Wolf Blitzer; here's a fuller quote, just to remove any ambiguity: "What administration officials have been saying since the weekend, basically, that Richard Clarke from their vantage point was a disgruntled former government official, angry because he didn't get a certain promotion. He's got a hot new book out now that he wants to promote. He wants to make a few bucks, and that his own personal life, they're also suggesting there are some weird aspects in his life."
Stung by my column, Mr. Blitzer sought to justify his words, saying that his statement was actually a question, and also saying that "I was not referring to anything charged by so-called unnamed White House officials as alleged today." Silly me: I "alleged" that Mr. Blitzer said something because he actually said it, and described "so-called unnamed" officials as unnamed because he didn't name them.
Mr. Blitzer now says he was talking about remarks made on his own program by a National Security Council spokesman, Jim Wilkinson. But Mr. Wilkinson's remarks are hard to construe as raising questions about Mr. Clarke's personal life.
Instead, Mr. Wilkinson seems to have questioned Mr. Clarke's sanity, saying: "He sits back and visualizes chanting by bin Laden, and bin Laden has a mystical mind control over U.S. officials. This is sort of `X-Files' stuff." Really?
On Page 246 of "Against All Enemies," Mr. Clarke bemoans the way the invasion of Iraq, in his view, played right into the hands of Al Qaeda: "Bush handed that enemy precisely what it wanted and needed. . . . It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush." That's not " `X-Files' stuff": it's a literary device, meant to emphasize just how ill conceived our policy is. Mr. Blitzer should be telling Mr. Wilkinson to apologize, not rerunning those comments in his own defense.
Look, I understand why major news organizations must act respectfully toward government officials. But officials shouldn't be sure — as Mr. Wilkinson obviously was — that they can make wild accusations without any fear that they will be challenged on the spot or held accountable later.
And administration officials shouldn't be able to spread stories without making themselves accountable. If an administration official is willing to say something on the record, that's a story, because he pays a price if his claims are false. But if unnamed "administration officials" spread rumors about administration critics, reporters have an obligation to check the facts before giving those rumors national exposure. And there's no excuse for disseminating unchecked rumors because they come from "the White House," then denying the White House connection when the rumors prove false. That's simply giving the administration a license to smear with impunity.
Break the Bush Cabal's Stranglehold on the "US Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Smear Without Fear
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 2, 2004
A funny thing happened to David Letterman this week. Actually, it only started out funny. And the unfunny ending fits into a disturbing pattern.
On Monday, Mr. Letterman ran a video clip of a boy yawning and fidgeting during a speech by George Bush. It was harmless stuff; a White House that thinks it's cute to have Mr. Bush make jokes about missing W.M.D. should be able to handle a little ribbing about boring speeches.
CNN ran the Letterman clip on Tuesday, just before a commercial. Then the CNN anchor Daryn Kagan came back to inform viewers that the clip was a fake: "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video." Later in the day, another anchor amended that: the boy was at the rally, but not where he was shown in the video.
On his Tuesday night show, Mr. Letterman was not amused: "That is an out and out 100 percent absolute lie. The kid absolutely was there, and he absolutely was doing everything we pictured via the videotape."
But here's the really interesting part: CNN backed down, but it told Mr. Letterman that Ms. Kagan "misspoke," that the White House was not the source of the false claim. (So who was? And if the claim didn't come from the White House, why did CNN run with it without checking?)
In short, CNN passed along a smear that it attributed to the White House. When the smear backfired, it declared its previous statements inoperative and said the White House wasn't responsible. Sound familiar?
On Tuesday, I mentioned remarks by CNN's Wolf Blitzer; here's a fuller quote, just to remove any ambiguity: "What administration officials have been saying since the weekend, basically, that Richard Clarke from their vantage point was a disgruntled former government official, angry because he didn't get a certain promotion. He's got a hot new book out now that he wants to promote. He wants to make a few bucks, and that his own personal life, they're also suggesting there are some weird aspects in his life."
Stung by my column, Mr. Blitzer sought to justify his words, saying that his statement was actually a question, and also saying that "I was not referring to anything charged by so-called unnamed White House officials as alleged today." Silly me: I "alleged" that Mr. Blitzer said something because he actually said it, and described "so-called unnamed" officials as unnamed because he didn't name them.
Mr. Blitzer now says he was talking about remarks made on his own program by a National Security Council spokesman, Jim Wilkinson. But Mr. Wilkinson's remarks are hard to construe as raising questions about Mr. Clarke's personal life.
Instead, Mr. Wilkinson seems to have questioned Mr. Clarke's sanity, saying: "He sits back and visualizes chanting by bin Laden, and bin Laden has a mystical mind control over U.S. officials. This is sort of `X-Files' stuff." Really?
On Page 246 of "Against All Enemies," Mr. Clarke bemoans the way the invasion of Iraq, in his view, played right into the hands of Al Qaeda: "Bush handed that enemy precisely what it wanted and needed. . . . It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush." That's not " `X-Files' stuff": it's a literary device, meant to emphasize just how ill conceived our policy is. Mr. Blitzer should be telling Mr. Wilkinson to apologize, not rerunning those comments in his own defense.
Look, I understand why major news organizations must act respectfully toward government officials. But officials shouldn't be sure — as Mr. Wilkinson obviously was — that they can make wild accusations without any fear that they will be challenged on the spot or held accountable later.
And administration officials shouldn't be able to spread stories without making themselves accountable. If an administration official is willing to say something on the record, that's a story, because he pays a price if his claims are false. But if unnamed "administration officials" spread rumors about administration critics, reporters have an obligation to check the facts before giving those rumors national exposure. And there's no excuse for disseminating unchecked rumors because they come from "the White House," then denying the White House connection when the rumors prove false. That's simply giving the administration a license to smear with impunity.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
It's the Media, Stupid...and yet, despite the
complicity, timidity and moral directionlessness of
the "US mainstream news media," there is an electoral
uprising coming in November...if we have an
election...
Sidney Blumenthal: This selective declassification
signaled to professionals in government that anything
they said to reporters could be held against them if
they ever in the future contradicted the Bush line.
Yet not one news organization tried to uphold the old
rule by threatening to reveal sources of
off-the-record briefings unless the White House
reverted to the accepted convention that makes
informed journalism possible. ...The Clarke episode is
symptomatic of a systematic abuse of power. Reality is
raw and dangerous to report - better to laugh along.
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0401-06.htm
Published on Thursday, April 1, 2004 by the
Guardian/UK
The White House has the Last Laugh: Bush's Latest Abuse of Power Fails to Rouse the Washington Media
by Sidney Blumenthal
Within hours of the testimony of Richard Clarke, the
former counterterrorism chief, before the 9/11
commission, where Clarke discussed how resources spent
on the Iraq war undermined the war on terrorism,
President Bush acknowledged that Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction - the rationale for the
war - remained absent. Bush's admission took the form
of a comic monologue before about 1,000 black-tied
members of the Radio and TV Correspondents'
Association gathered for its annual dinner. The lights
dimmed and Bush presented a slide show of himself
peering out of windows and looking under furniture in
the Oval Office. "Those weapons of mass destruction
have got to be somewhere ... nope, no weapons over
there ... maybe under here?"
With each gag the press corps roared. Bush was acting
as the college fraternity house president he once was
and the journalists as pledges eager for acceptance by
the Big Man on Campus. "I'm the commander - see, I
don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I
say things," Bush told Bob Woodward in 'Bush at War'.
"That's the interesting thing about being president."
Through its laughter the press corps didn't grasp that
the joke was on them. The problem is not that Bush's
jest was inappropriate and tasteless - the widow of
David Bloom, the NBC reporter who died in Iraq, had
tearfully preceded Bush on the platform. It is not
that much of the media, including elements of the
quality press, had been complicit in the choreographed
disinformation campaign in the rush to war. Rather, it
is that the press is accepting of Bush's radical
undermining of the long-established arrangements of
Washington, including the demotion of the press's own
role by breaking the off-the-record rule in order to
have a weapon to use against Clarke. The implicit deal
that the press thought it had with the Bush White
House, as with previous White Houses, has been
broken-unilaterally, like other policies.
The new rules of the game are that there are no rules
of the game. In the preface of his book' Against All
Enemies', Clarke wrote that he expected an assault on
his reputation from the "Bush White House leadership"
that was "adept at revenge".
Clarke had observed the politics of intimidation
become standard operating procedure. The former
ambassador Joseph Wilson, who, at the administration's
behest, looked into the claim that Saddam was seeking
uranium in Niger and concluded it was bogus, was
subjected to a sustained attack that included outing
the identity of his wife, a covert CIA operative. Paul
O'Neill, a former secretary of the treasury, had
revealed that an invasion of Iraq was being pushed
from the earliest days of the administration, and he
instantly became the target for personal vituperation.
Richard Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services, was threatened that if
he told Congress the actual cost of Bush's Medicare
bill while it was being considered, he would be fired.
So Clarke knew the new rules.
Throughout the long day that ended with the
president's WMD joke, the White House directed strikes
on Clarke's integrity. It declassified an
off-the-record background briefing given by Clarke in
2002, when he had been ordered to put a "positive
spin", as he put it, on Bush's pre-September 11
terrorism record in response to a critical report in
Time magazine. The White House press secretary read
out portions of the briefing out of context.
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser whose
neglect of terrorism was among Clarke's revelations,
summoned reporters to her office to point to the
background briefing and call his story "scurrilous".
While she was putting a stiletto into Clarke, the
background briefing paper was shuffled by her press
office to Fox News to broadcast as Clarke testified.
Republican members of the 9/11 commission waved the
paper at him, and much time was taken up by his
explanation of how, as a staffer, he had been acting
properly, like a lawyer representing a client, and why
his briefing was not at odds with his information now.
This selective declassification signaled to
professionals in government that anything they said to
reporters could be held against them if they ever in
the future contradicted the Bush line. Yet not one
news organization tried to uphold the old rule by
threatening to reveal sources of off-the-record
briefings unless the White House reverted to the
accepted convention that makes informed journalism
possible.
The Clarke episode is symptomatic of a systematic
abuse of power. Reality is raw and dangerous to report
- better to laugh along.
· Sidney Blumenthal was senior adviser to President
Clinton and is Washington bureau chief of Salon.com
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
###
"Out, out damn spot!"
DAVID JOHNSTON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON, New York
Times: Prosecutors investigating whether someone in
the Bush administration improperly disclosed the
identity of a C.I.A. officer have expanded their
inquiry to examine whether White House officials lied
to investigators or mishandled classified information
related to the case, lawyers involved in the case and
government officials say.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
April 2, 2004
Prosecutors Are Said to Have Expanded Inquiry Into Leak of C.I.A. Officer's Name
By DAVID JOHNSTON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
ASHINGTON, April 1 — Prosecutors investigating whether
someone in the Bush administration improperly
disclosed the identity of a C.I.A. officer have
expanded their inquiry to examine whether White House
officials lied to investigators or mishandled
classified information related to the case, lawyers
involved in the case and government officials say.
In looking at violations beyond the original focus of
the inquiry, which centered on a rarely used statute
that makes it a felony to disclose the identity of an
undercover intelligence officer intentionally,
prosecutors have widened the range of conduct under
scrutiny and for the first time raised the possibility
of bringing charges peripheral to the leak itself.
The expansion of the inquiry's scope comes at a time
when prosecutors, after a hiatus of about a month,
appear to be preparing to seek additional testimony
before a federal grand jury, lawyers with clients in
the case said. It is not clear whether the renewed
grand jury activity represents a concluding session or
a prelude to an indictment.
The broadened scope is a potentially significant
development that represents exactly what allies of the
Bush White House feared when Attorney General John
Ashcroft removed himself from the case last December
and turned it over to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the
United States attorney in Chicago.
Republican lawyers worried that the leak case, in the
hands of an aggressive prosecutor, might grow into an
unwieldy, time-consuming and politically charged
inquiry, like the sprawling independent counsel
inquiries of the 1990's, which distracted and damaged
the Clinton administration.
Mr. Fitzgerald is said by lawyers involved in the case
and government officials to be examining possible
discrepancies between documents he has gathered and
statements made by current or former White House
officials during a three-month preliminary
investigation last fall by the F.B.I. and the Justice
Department. Some officials spoke to F.B.I. agents with
their lawyers present; others met informally with
agents in their offices and even at bars near the
White House.
The White House took the unusual step last year of
specifically denying any involvement in the leak on
the part of several top administration officials,
including Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser,
and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief
of staff. The White House press secretary, Scott
McClellan, has repeatedly said no one wants to get to
the bottom of the case more than Mr. Bush.
But Mr. Bush himself has said he does not know if
investigators will ever be able to determine who
disclosed the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie
Plame, to Robert Novak, who wrote in his syndicated
column last July that Ms. Plame, the wife of former
Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was a C.I.A. employee.
Mr. Wilson was a critic of the administration's Iraq
policies. Democrats have accused the White House of
leaking his wife's name in retaliation because Mr.
Wilson, in a July 6, 2003, Op-Ed commentary in The New
York Times, disputed Mr. Bush's statement in his State
of the Union address that January that Iraq was trying
to develop a nuclear bomb and had sought to buy
uranium in Africa.
The suspicion that someone may have lied to
investigators is based on contradictions between
statements by various witnesses in F.B.I. interviews,
the lawyers and officials said. The conflicts are said
to be buttressed by documents, including memos, e-mail
messages and phone records turned over by the White
House.
At the same time, Mr. Fitzgerald is said to be
investigating whether the disclosure of Ms. Plame's
identity came after someone discovered her name among
classified documents circulating at the upper echelons
of the White House. It could be a crime to disclose
information from such a document, although such
violations are rarely prosecuted.
Mr. Bush's advisers have repeatedly urged White House
employees to cooperate with the inquiry, and it is
unclear whether Mr. Fitzgerald has made any decisions
about whether to go forward or drop the case. On
Thursday, Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr.
Fitzgerald in Chicago, declined to discuss the case.
Mr. McClellan said the White House was fully
cooperating with the investigation, but he declined to
comment on the latest developments.
Mr. Fitzgerald, who has been in charge of the case for
three months, has said he is nearing completion of the
inquiry, the lawyers said. Some of them have suggested
that he may be facing a problem if he declines to
prosecute.
Prosecutors almost never make public the details of
cases in which they investigate, but bring no charges.
Federal law bars prosecutors from disclosing
information obtained through a grand jury, the legal
vehicle Mr. Fitzgerald has used to conduct his
inquiry.
But in this case, being investigated in the heat of a
closely fought presidential election, Democrats have
been watching carefully for any sign that the
prosecutor has favored the administration. Should Mr.
Fitzgerald bring the case to a close with no
indictments and no public explanation of his decision
not to prosecute, he would almost certainly be subject
to intense criticism from Democrats.
Several lawyers said Mr. Fitzgerald could ask a judge
to allow him to issue a report. Or, they said, he
could seek to employ a rarely used provision of the
Justice Department's guidelines for prosecutors
allowing grand juries to issue reports. But those
sections of the prosecutor's manual appear to relate
to public officials in organized crime cases.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home |
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Top
"Out, out damn spot!"
Andrew Buncombe, Independent (UK): Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".
Mrs Edmonds, 33, says she gave her evidence to the commission in a specially constructed "secure" room at its offices in Washington on 11 February. She was hired as a translator for the FBI's Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa'ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=507514
'I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes' Whistleblower the White House wants to silence speaks to The Independent
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
02 April 2004
A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.
She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".
Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".
She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily."
She added: "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers."
The accusations from Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who speaks Azerbaijani, Farsi, Turkish and English, will reignite the controversy over whether the administration ignored warnings about al-Qa'ida. That controversy was sparked most recently by Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism official, who has accused the administration of ignoring his warnings.
The issue what the administration knew and when is central to the investigation by the 9/11 Commission, which has been hearing testimony in public and private from government officials, intelligence officials and secret sources. Earlier this week, the White House made a U-turn when it said that Ms Rice would appear in public before the commission to answer questions. Mr Bush and his deputy, Dick Cheney, will also be questioned in a closed-door session.
Mrs Edmonds, 33, says she gave her evidence to the commission in a specially constructed "secure" room at its offices in Washington on 11 February. She was hired as a translator for the FBI's Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa'ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps.
She said said it was clear there was sufficient information during the spring and summer of 2001 to indicate terrorists were planning an attack. "Most of what I told the commission 90 per cent of it related to the investigations that I was involved in or just from working in the department. Two hundred translators side by side, you get to see and hear a lot of other things as well."
"President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said. There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away.
To try to refute Mr Clarke's accusations, Ms Rice said the administration did take steps to counter al-Qa'ida. But in an opinion piece in The Washington Post on 22 March, Ms Rice wrote: "Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack planes to try and free US-held terrorists."
Mrs Edmonds said that by using the word "we", Ms Rice told an "outrageous lie". She said: "Rice says 'we' not 'I'. That would include all people from the FBI, the CIA and DIA [Defence Intelligence Agency]. I am saying that is impossible."
It is impossible at this stage to verify Mrs Edmonds' claims. However, some senior US senators testified to her credibility in 2002 when she went public with separate allegations relating to alleged incompetence and corruption within the FBI's translation department.
1 April 2004 20:09
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Printable Story
Read it and weep? No. Read it and get angry, VERY
ANGRY, and then channel that ANGER into your own
personal voter registration, voter education and voter turnout drive. The "US mainstream news media" which made Linda Tripp famous cannot even bring it self to mention Karen Kwiatowski or Sibel Edmonds.
Here is another DISGRACE for the "US mainstream news media," which is almost wholly abdicated the sacred trust that the US Constitution and its Amendments deliver to it, and in defense of which so many have sacrficied their lives these two hundred + years...Amy Goodman, of course, is one of the FEW US journalists who have their names scrawled on the John O'Neill Wall of Heroes. Hopefully, before it is too late (and as Buzzflash has said, it is
"MIDNIGHT IN AMERICA" now) there will be a few more...
SIBEL EDMONDS interviewed by DEMOCRACY NOW! host AMY GOODMAN: We are talking with a former F.B.I. Wiretap Translator with top secret security clearance. She was hired just after September 11 to go back and retranslate, or sometimes translate for the first time, documents and conversations from before September 11. Republican Senator Charles Grassley
called her very credible, said that she recently testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, saying that the F.B.I.
had detailed information prior to September 11, 2001, that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted. Now, Sibel Edmonds, to call Condoleezza
Rice's claim that the White House had no specific information on domestic threat or one involving planes an outrageous lie is very strong. Can you repeat again or fill out the information that you have to substantiate that? She's going to be going before the 9-11 Commission herself.
SIBEL EDMONDS: Right. Well, Amy, I really wish I could comment, I could have given you some specific information. I'm hoping that these authorities, being Director Mueller, during his testimony, or the report that was expected to be out by Inspector General's Office to come out, actually, instead of being sealed, and shoved under this blanket of secrecy so that you would see these specific informations, because I don't know if you are aware of it or not, but Attorney
General Ashcroft on October 18, 2002, personally asserted State Secret Privilege in my case. I would read two sentences here: “To prevent disclosure of certain classified and sensitive national security information, Attorney General Ashcroft today asserted the State Secret Privilege in Sibel Edmonds' case. This assertion was made at the request of the F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller,” in papers filed today, and they are citing the reason that because this case would create substantial risks of disclosing classified and sensitive national security information that could cause serious damage to our country's security. They are citing that this privilege is very rare and is asserted to prevent certain information getting -- becoming public or hurting diplomatic relations. I would underline this phrase, diplomatic relations several times.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/31/1616221
Wednesday, March 31st, 2004
Fmr. FBI Translator: White House Had Intel On Possible Airplane Attack Pre-9/11
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We speak with former FBI translator, Sibel Edmonds,
who was hired shortly after Sept. 11 to translate
intelligence gathered over the previous year related
to the 9/11 attacks. She says the FBI had information
that an attack using airplanes was being planned
before Sept. 11 and calls Condoleezza Rice's claim the
White House had no specific information on a domestic
threat or one involving planes "an outrageous lie."
[includes rush transcript]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
President Bush yesterday finally agreed to allow
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice to testify
publicly and under oath before the independent
commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
President Bush, White House Press Briefing, March 30,
2004.
Bush did not take questions and left the room after
his statement.
For weeks, the White House has insisted for weeks that
Rice not testifying was a matter of constitutional
principle and would set a dangerous precedent.
On 60 Minutes this weekend Rice said, "It is a
longstanding principle that sitting national security
advisers do not testify before the Congress."
It is unclear what "longstanding principle" Rice was
referring to since President Clinton allowed his
national security adviser, Sandy Berger, to testify in
public before the House Governmental Affairs Committee
only 8 years ago and Zbigniew Brzezinski was allowed
under President Carter.
In return for Rice testifying, the commission agreed
to strict conditions that ruled out any further public
testimony from White House officials, including Rice
herself. So after Rice's appearance before the panel,
public testimony from various aides who might be in a
position to confirm or deny her claims is not an
option.
The commission also promised that Rice's testimony
won't set a precedent.
Bush also agreed to meet privately with all 10
commissioners for an undetermined time limit, backing
off his previous demand to meet only with the Chairman
and Vice Chairman for just one hour.
But again, the apparent retreat by the president came
with conditions. In return, the commission agreed that
Bush will not be under oath and can have Vice
President Dick Cheney appear with him by his side.
Rice has outright denied having specific information
of an imminent domestic threat involving hijacking
airplanes, but she might have a particularly hard time
convincing the 9/11 Commission of this fact.
A former FBI translator with top-secret clearance has
called Rice's claims "an outrageous lie." She says she
testified before the 9/11 Commission that the FBI had
information that an attack using airplanes was being
planned before September 11.
Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator who was hired
shortly after Sept. 11 to translate intelligence
gathered over the previous year related to the 9/11
attacks. She speaks fluent Farsi, Arabic and Turkish.
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AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Sibel Edmonds. Welcome to
Democracy Now!
SIBEL EDMONDS: Thank you. Good morning, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Well, what
about this claim that both President Bush has made and
Condoleezza Rice has made saying that they had no
information about an imminent domestic threat
involving airplanes?
SIBEL EDMONDS: Well, Amy, for the past two years I
have testified several times before the Department of
Justice Inspector General, for the Senate Judiciary
Committee, and a few months ago I testified behind
closed doors for the 9-11 Commission, and as I stated
before, to just come out and say -- and state that we
had no specific information whatsoever, that would be
an outrageous lie. President Bush, I guess, he made a
smart move, because he also added that they did not
have any specific information stating that the attack
was going to occur on September 11. But Ms. Rice's
statement that we had no specific information is
inaccurate.
AMY GOODMAN: Looking specifically at the Op-Ed piece
that Condoleezza Rice wrote in the "Washington Post"
on March 22nd, she said, “Despite what some have
suggested we received no intelligence that terrorists
were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes
as missiles.” Though, some analysts speculated that
the terrorists might hijack airlines to try to free
U.S.-held terrorists. The F.A.A. even issued a warning
to airlines and aviation security personnel that,
quote, “The potential for a terrorist operation such
as an airline hijacking to free terrorists
incarcerated in the United States remains a concern.”
SIBEL EDMONDS: Well, I would say not only that we had
specific information, we had several specific
information as early as April, 2001. And many of this
information has been public already. I mean, you look
at what Agent Rowley provided, you look at the Phoenix
Memo, the investigations that I worked on after 9-11,
retranslating certain documents related to certain
investigations, that is the reason I'm saying this is
absolutely inaccurate. We had not one, but we had many
specific informations, and this information was not
maybe investigated under counter-terrorism because
it's very difficult to separate these issues when you
have criminal investigation, and money laundering
investigation, drug related investigations that
actually have major information regarding 9-11
incidents. To say that they would be mostly under
counter-terrorism would be a wrong assumption, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Sibel Edmonds, can you explain exactly
why you have come to these conclusions? What exactly
was your job?
SIBEL EDMONDS: My job was translating documents and
various documents, audio and also interviews that had
to do with various investigations. Again, not only
counter-terrorism, but counter-intelligence and
criminal investigations. During this short tenure that
I had over there, I became aware of several
investigations that were ongoing investigation dating
back to a year or -- some of them actually years
before 9-11 that contained significant amount of
information about various activities. I would like to
emphasize again, we are talking about money laundering
activities directed toward these terrorist activities.
We are looking at counter-intelligence activities, so,
as I said it, is not categorized under
counter-terrorism. This information was pouring in
dating back as early as 2000.
AMY GOODMAN: Sibel Edmonds, can you explain what
exactly you did? I mean, you took a job on was it
September 20, 2001?
SIBEL EDMONDS: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: And where did you work? SYBIL EDMONDS: I
worked for Washington Field Office, F.B.I.'s
Washington Field Office Translation Department, and
they had the largest translation department in the
country. So, because we were the largest, we received
information again in various formats from all over the
country.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, when you say you received
information, what is it that you were handed --
transcripts of wiretapped phone conversations, what?
SIBEL EDMONDS: Well, I cannot specifically answer this
question. As you're aware, I'm under a gag order,
however, as I said, in various forms -- and as I said,
again, it -- I did interviews, I did documents, I did
audios, and this is as specific as I'm allowed to get
in terms of the format with this information.
AMY GOODMAN: You translated them?
SIBEL EDMONDS: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: Into English.
SIBEL EDMONDS: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: Had some of them been translated before?
SIBEL EDMONDS: Yes. Many of them, actually.
AMY GOODMAN: By who?
SIBEL EDMONDS: Oh, by various translators previously,
and agents from different field offices felt like that
these information was either inaccurate or it was not
precise, so they felt that they needed to send these
documents or other formats back and have them get to
be retranslated because after 9-11, they were
suspicious that the information that they received was
not really accurate, and there was more. And in fact,
in some cases, there were more.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
SIBEL EDMONDS: Well, let's say you had certain
investigations, and you sent certain either documents,
audio or whatever to be translated, and certain
translator translated it in let's say summary format,
and basically that this information is not that
pertinent. After 9-11, the agent is saying, you know
what, I want this thing to be retranslated again,
because considering 9-11 and considering this target
under this investigation, we believe there was more in
this, let’s say, document or audio. And after
translating this -- let's say, particular document,
verbatim, and sending back, then that is when you
would see the information and say -- shake your head
and say how could we have missed this information
before.
AMY GOODMAN: Sibil Edmonds, what do you think would
have happened if anything that you translated after
September 11 had been translated fully before? And
accurately?
SIBEL EDMONDS: I cannot confidently answer this
question because in fact there were information that
were translated very precisely and accurately before.
And somehow having that information did not achieve
anything, either. So, unfortunately, I cannot say if
these documents were translated more precisely
previously, something would have been done. My
question is how about the ones that we had before? How
about the information we had before that were pretty
specific and they were pretty accurate, and they came
from real reliable sources assets. What happened to
that information? That is my question, and I'm hoping
that through this investigation by the 9-11
Commission, we will get to hear these questions being
asked specifically and directly.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to break, but when we come back,
Sibel Edmonds, I want to ask you why there is a gag
order on you.
SIBEL EDMONDS: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Sibel Edmonds, a former
F.B.I. Wiretap Translator. Senator Charles Grassley,
the Republican from Iowa, has told “salon.com” she
recently testified before the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, and called
her very credible. We'll be back in a minute.
AMY GOODMAN: We are talking with a former F.B.I.
Wiretap Translator with top secret security clearance.
She was hired just after September 11 to go back and
retranslate, or sometimes translate for the first
time, documents and conversations from before
September 11. Republican Senator Charles Grassley
called her very credible, said that she recently
testified before the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States, saying that the F.B.I.
had detailed information prior to September 11, 2001,
that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being
plotted. Now, Sibel Edmonds, to call Condoleezza
Rice's claim that the White House had no specific
information on domestic threat or one involving planes
an outrageous lie is very strong. Can you repeat again
or fill out the information that you have to
substantiate that? She's going to be going before the
9-11 Commission herself.
SIBEL EDMONDS: Right. Well, Amy, I really wish I could
comment, I could have given you some specific
information. I'm hoping that these authorities, being
Director Mueller, during his testimony, or the report
that was expected to be out by Inspector General's
Office to come out, actually, instead of being sealed,
and shoved under this blanket of secrecy so that you
would see these specific informations, because I don't
know if you are aware of it or not, but Attorney
General Ashcroft on October 18, 2002, personally
asserted State Secret Privilege in my case. I would
read two sentences here: “To prevent disclosure of
certain classified and sensitive national security
information, Attorney General Ashcroft today asserted
the State Secret Privilege in Sibel Edmonds' case.
This assertion was made at the request of the F.B.I.
Director Robert Mueller,” in papers filed today, and
they are citing the reason that because this case
would create substantial risks of disclosing
classified and sensitive national security information
that could cause serious damage to our country's
security. They are citing that this privilege is very
rare and is asserted to prevent certain information
getting -- becoming public or hurting diplomatic
relations. I would underline this phrase, diplomatic
relations several times.
AMY GOODMAN: And what has been the response of the
federal authorities to you speaking out right now?
SIBEL EDMONDS: They have -- during their meetings with
Senator Grassley and Senator Leahy's office, these
authorities have confirmed all of my reports and
allegations and have denied none. However, as I said,
Inspector General's Office’s report was supposed to be
out in October, 2002. Here we are sitting in March
2004, and my sources are telling me they are going to
seal this report, and it will be never made public.
Now, to protect certain diplomatic relations? -- that
is the question. What diplomatic relations? To this
date, I have been waiting to see this information to
be available, and become available and be out there,
but it's not getting there. And there's so much that
the public just simply doesn't know. About what went
wrong, what we had, and my last hope right now is this
Commission. 9-11 Commission is my last hope because I
have pursued all possible authority channels that I
could have pursued. I have gone to the Senate. I have
provided testimony to the Inspector General's Office
and the F.B.I. They have confirmed these allegations,
however, this information is being prevented from
becoming public. It needs to be public because first
we have to acknowledge the facts before we go about
fixing these problems. If they don't want to admit to
these facts and they want to -- they don't want to
acknowledge it, then we have no chance of really
addressing the serious issue of national security and
terrorism that they are citing.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Sibel Edmonds, a former
F.B.I. Wiretap Translator, hired just after September
11, ultimately was fired. I want to ask about Senator
Grassley on "60 Minutes" saying you're credible.
Quote, “She's credible, and the reason I feel she's
very credible is because people within the F.B.I. have
corroborated a lot of her story.” I want to ask you
about why you were fired, and the reports you have
made of serious misconduct, security lapses and gross
incompetence in the F.B.I. Translations Unit,
including supervisors who told translators to work
slowly during the crucial post-9-11 investigations to
get more funds as well as other issues of harassment
of you, as you started to make these charges.
SIBEL EDMONDS: Yes. Senator Grassley, I have a lot of
respect for Senator Grassley. After they investigated
this case, he said basically, publicly, on CBS "60
Minutes" that these departments need to be turned
upside-down. I took that very literally, and I have
been expecting for past two years for these
departments and the issues within these departments to
be addressed. You see, after September 11, these
people -- people from the F.B.I., came forward and
they blamed everything on shortage of budgets and
shortage of personnel. And they said, we failed, and
these were the major causes. These were the reasons.
That is not accurate. We were told during the time
that these people were going on TV and they were
begging for people to apply for translation positions
because we had this shortage, what was going on behind
the scenes was exactly opposite. We were being asked
not to do these translations, and let the documents
pile up, because within a month or so, they were
scheduled to go in front of the Senate and Congress
and ask for increased budgets. In doing so, they
needed to give numbers of pages, numbers of documents
and audios that they were not translated due to the
shortage, and needed to be translated, and that they
were urgent, and in order to do so, we had to increase
that number, the number of pages and the number of
audio.
AMY GOODMAN: It's interesting, Sibel Edmonds, I
remember doing a piece on the translators who were gay
and lesbian, who were fired at a time when there was a
serious lack of translators.
SIBEL EDMONDS: Again, this contradicts what they have
been stating. I performed translations for three
languages, and they had so many active cases under
those languages. They are not even admitting that they
had fired me. This is how they are putting it: “She
was terminated purely for the convenience of the
government.” Now, you can translate that in any way
you want, but it is the vague statement -- that she
was not fired, she was terminated purely for the
government's convenience. Now, what is that? What is
that?
AMY GOODMAN: Now, you have sued?
SIBEL EDMONDS: Yes. And first of all, I applied for --
information that I could, under Freedom of Information
Act, receive, and I wanted to get some of these
documents. I know what those documents are, and -- but
I wanted to get them out and make it public. They did
not comply, as they are required under the Freedom of
Information Act, so we had to pursue the court option.
And again, for this court case, we never even had a
chance to go in front of this particular judge because
they went in camera, and they told the judge, due to
national security and the State Secret Privilege,
these documents, all 1,500 of them, are top secret,
classified documents, therefore, none of them can be
released to the public, and again, without any
hearings, we never went in front of any judge, the
judge ruled in favor of the F.B.I. And she said,
“Well, who am I to argue with the government? If they
are saying it's going to compromise our national
security I have to take their word for that,” and
therefore, they ruled against us, and now we are
appealing that case.
AMY GOODMAN: Sibel Edmonds, you testified before the
9-11 Commission. You also held a news conference right
outside the hearings, right before Richard Clarke
testified. What has been the media response?
SIBEL EDMONDS: First of all this issue has been out
there for almost two years. Every few months, there
has been an article here or an article there, and
first of all, if -- major news sources don't perceive
it as a news item because it's not news, it's an
issue. It cannot be news because specifics are
withheld and by this real, real strong State Secret
Privilege. So how many specifics and evidence can be
given to the media, and how much of this information
can be provided? It is very limited. News sources such
as yourself are the ones who actually have been paying
attention to these issues and have been pursuing it
and calling the Senate and calling the Inspector
General's Office and following up on that, but I have
not seen major activities within the larger mass media
sources. I don't know why. I don't know why, really,
to be honest with you, I don't know.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you expect of this 9-11
Commission hearing?
SIBEL EDMONDS: I am still holding onto my optimism.
I'm expecting on this April 13 and April 14 during the
hearings with Director Mueller, I'm expecting them to
ask the real questions. Now, I am expecting that their
report will be different than the report that was
issued by this Joint Intelligence Inquiry that they
had which was basically nothing. And so far, I have
been very disappointed, because the real issues, the
specifics get to the address behind closed doors under
this blanket of security and secrecy. Most likely from
their reports, the real issues are going to be
redacted because they're going to be citing
classifications, and then what good is that report
going to do, or what use is this hearing going to
have? That's the question. I'm hoping that from these
attentions that we have been receiving from the press
in terms of the issues that have been raised by,
again, Agent Rowley, Clarke, Mr. Clarke's testimony,
people would raise their expectations and expect to
hear the real questions being asked from Director
Mueller during this hearing. This is what I expect,
and this is what I'm hoping. Another issue is to
actually see the Senate exercising their oversight
authority that has been given to them by the public.
Because to this date, what I have been hearing
repeatedly is that, in quotes, “Our hands are tied.
You see the climate. Our hands are tied.” Well, in a
way, that is not acceptable. Because they have been
given the responsibility and authority to execute this
oversight, and so far to this date, it hasn't been
exercised. I'm hoping that at least through these
issues becoming more public and the 9-11 Commission
will be followed by some real Senate activities in
terms of addressing these issues. Because American
public, you know, they have the right to know. They
need to know these facts.
AMY GOODMAN: Sibel Edmonds, I want to thank you very
much for being with us.
SIBEL EDMONDS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Sibel Edmonds, who was an F.B.I. Wiretap
Translator, and we will continue to follow up on your
story. I want to thank you for being here.
SIBEL EDMONDS: Thank you, Amy.
The Emperor has no uniform...
While the "US mainstream news media" twists and turns
stilting and filtering, as it stumbles through
revelations that you read six months ago or one year
ago or even two years ago in the world press or on
Information Rebellion sites or through the LNS, we
must stay focused on the whole truth, we must provide
the CONTEXT and CONTINUITY that the "US Mainstream
News Media" and its propapunditgandists refuse to
provide...
Daniel Benjamin, LA Times: The most damaging remarks came from Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001. Shelton told us that in the Bush administration terrorism had moved "farther to the back burner." He also recounted how the Joint Chiefs of Staff, frustrated at the lack of progress in dealing with Al Qaeda, had begun a disinformation program in the last year of the Clinton administration to create dissent within the Taliban. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz shut it down. Counterterrorism, the new leadership felt, was not a military mission.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=20331
March 30, 2004
COMMENTARY
Voices in the Wilderness Are Turning Into a Chorus
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-benjamin30mar30,1,5099504.story
By Daniel Benjamin, co-author of "The Age of Sacred
Terror" (Random House, 2002), was on the National
Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999.
In its effort to discredit Richard Clarke, the White
House and its allies claim that what the former
counterterrorism chief has said in his book and before
the 9/11 commission is inconsistent with his past
remarks. National security advisor Condoleezza Rice
has said his book is "180 degrees from everything else
that he said."
Perhaps. I haven't seen everything Clarke said or
wrote when he was in the administration. But I do know
that the judgments Clarke has offered in "Against All
Enemies" and his public testimony comport precisely
with what he told me in early 2002.
As director for counterterrorism on the National
Security Council staff, I worked for Clarke in 1998 to
1999, and I stayed in touch with him after I left. In
meetings in his Old Executive Office Building suite,
at his home and over meals, he described for me his
deep disappointment at the failure to stop the 9/11
attackers and his conviction that the Bush
administration had not viewed the threat of jihadist
terror with sufficient urgency. No amount of
bureaucratic badgering, he felt, could get them to
recognize Al Qaeda as the preeminent threat facing the
U.S.
In reporting for our book, "The Age of Sacred Terror,"
Steven Simon and I found that Clarke was not alone.
Several top U.S. government officials agreed in
interviews that the new administration had been
unwilling to revise its understanding of America's
security position and too slow to recognize the danger
of Al Qaeda.
Brian Sheridan, President Clinton's outgoing assistant
secretary of Defense for special operations and low
intensity conflict, was astonished when his offers
during the transition to bring the new Pentagon
leadership up to speed on terrorism were brushed
aside. "I offered to brief anyone, any time on any
topic. Never took it up."
Even if one dismisses Sheridan's remarks as those of a
political appointee, the same cannot be done for Don
Kerrick. A three-star general, Kerrick had served at
the end of the Clinton administration as deputy
national security advisor, and he spent the final four
months of his military career in the Bush White House.
He sent a memo to the NSC's new leadership on "things
you need to pay attention to." He wrote about Al
Qaeda: "We are going to be struck again."
But he never heard back. "I don't think it was above
the waterline. They were gambling nothing would
happen," he said.
The most damaging remarks came from Gen. Henry H.
Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until
Oct. 1, 2001. Shelton told us that in the Bush
administration terrorism had moved "farther to the
back burner." He also recounted how the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, frustrated at the lack of progress in
dealing with Al Qaeda, had begun a disinformation
program in the last year of the Clinton administration
to create dissent within the Taliban. But Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz shut it down.
Counterterrorism, the new leadership felt, was not a
military mission.
Shelton added, "The squeaky wheel was Dick Clarke, but
he wasn't at the top of their priority list, so the
lights went out for a few months." Shelton summed up
Rumsfeld's attitude as being "this terrorism thing was
out there, but it didn't happen today, so maybe it
belonged lower on the list."
Is the White House going to vilify these men too?