SECTION ONE
sm
COLUMN
NINETY-ONE,
MAY 15, 2003
(Copyright © 2003 The Blacklisted Journalist)
ACCORDING
TO NEWSWEEK:
BUSHIES
KNEW MORE ABOUT COMING 9/11 ATTACKS THAN WHITE HOUSE WANTS
TO TELL
[Even in the face of accusations that the Boy Emperor had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and just callously let the planes plow into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, America's unelected President insists on rendering himself further suspect by trying to thwart an impartial inquiry into the 9/11 events.
It's already been documented that George W. Bush represents Big Oil, that Big Oil wanted a pipeline through Afghanistan, that when the Taliban pissed on the Bushies' sweet talk about the pipeline, the Bushies needed a provocation to get rid of the Taliban. As we've said time and again, secrets are the tools of tyranny. And now the Boy Emperor tries to keep secret the facts of 9/11. Why does Bush want to keep pointing the finger at himself like this? Is it that he just doesn't know what he's doing?]
Subject: Secrets of Sept 11
Date: Sat, 03 May 2003 22:16:35 -0400
From: portsideMod@netscape.net
Reply-To: portside@yahoogroups.com
To: portside@yahoogroups.com
Newsweek April 30, 2003
The Secrets of September 11
By Michael Isikoff and Mark
Hosenball
The White House is battling
to keep a report on the terror attacks secret. Does the 2004 election have
anything to do with it?
Even as White House
political aides plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the emotions
and issues raised by the September 11 terror attacks, administration officials
are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key
events relating to the attacks.
At the center of the
dispute is a more-than-800-page secret report prepared by a joint congressional
inquiry detailing the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded
the attacks---including provocative, if unheeded warnings, given President Bush
and his top advisers during the summer of 2001.
The report was completed
last December; only a bare-bones list of "findings " with virtually no
details was made public. But nearly six months later, a "working
group" of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to review the
document has taken a hard line against further public disclosure. By refusing to
declassify many of its most significant conclusions, the administration has
essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of
this month, congressional and administration sources tell
Graham is
"increasingly frustrated" by the administration's " unwillingness
to release what he regards as important information the public should have about
9-11," a spokesman said. In Graham's view, the Bush administration isn't
protecting legitimate issues of national security but information that could be
a political "embarrassment," the aide said. Graham, who last year
served as Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, recently told NEWSWEEK:
"There has been a cover-up of this."
Graham's stand may not be
terribly surprising, given that the Florida Democrat is running for president
and is seeking to use the issue himself politically. But he has found a strong
ally in House Intelligence Committee Chairman Goss, a staunch Republican (and
former
"I find this process
horrendously frustrating," Goss said in an interview. He was particularly
piqued that the administration was refusing to declassify material that top
intelligence officials had already testified about. "Senior intelligence
officials said things in public hearings that they [administration officials]
don't want us to put in the report," said Goss. "That's not something
I can rationally accept without further public explanation."
Unlike Graham, Goss insists
there are no political "gotchas" in the report, only a large volume of
important information about the performance and shortcomings of U.S.
intelligence and law-enforcement agencies prior to September 11.
And even congressional
staffers close to the process say it is unclear whether the administration's
resistance to public disclosure reflects fear of political damage or simply an
ingrained "culture of secrecy" that permeates the intelligence
community---and has strong proponents at the highest levels of the White House.
The mammoth report reflects nearly 10 months of investigative work by a special staff hired jointly by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and overseen by Eleanor Hill, a former federal prosecutor and Pentagon inspector general. Hill's team got access to hundreds of thousands of
Secrets
are the
tools of tyranny
pages of classified
documents from the CIA, FBI, National
More than two months later,
the working group came back with its decisions---and some members were
flabbergasted. Entire portions remained classified. Some of the
report---including some dealing with matters that had been extensively aired in
public, such as the now famous FBI "Phoenix memo" of July 2001
reporting that Middle Eastern nationals might be enrolling in U.S. flight
schools---were "reclassified." Hill has since submitted proposed changes
to the working group, pointing out the illogic of trying to pull back material
that was already in the public domain. But officials have indicated the
"review" process is likely to drag on for months---with no guarantees
that the "working group" will be any more amenable to public
disclosure.
A U.S. intelligence
official cited international distractions as at least one reason for the delays.
"In case you hadn't noticed, there have been two wars going on," the
official said. The official added: "We're working this [report] to try to
get it out without putting lives at risk and without endangering sources and
methods." Asked why the working group was refusing to permit disclosure of
material that had already been made public, the official said: "Just
because something had been inadvertently released, doesn't make it
unclassified."
The administration's tough
stand, some sources say, doesn't augur well for the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks---which is conducting its own investigation into the events of
9-11. Already, flaps have developed on that front, as well. When one
commissioner, former congressman Tim Roemer, last week sought to review
transcripts of some of the joint inquiry's closed-door hearings, he was denied
access--- because the commission staff had agreed to a White House request to
allow its lawyers to first review the material to determine if the president
wants to invoke executive privilege to keep the material out of the panel's
hands.
"I think it's
outrageous," says Roemer, who plans to raise the matter at a commission
hearing this week. But a commission staffer says he expected the White House
review to be finished by the end of the week, and it was unclear whether the
president's lawyers would try to invoke executive privilege---a stand that would
almost certainly provoke a major legal battle with the panel.
The tensions over the
release of 9-11 related material seems especially relevant---if not ironic---in
light of recent reports that the president's political advisers have devised an
unusual re-election strategy that essentially uses the story of September 11 as
the liftoff for his campaign. The White House is delaying the Republican
nominating convention, scheduled for New York City, until the first week in
September 2004---the latest in the party's history. That would allow Bush's
acceptance speech, now slated for Sept. 2, to
Some sources who have read
the still-secret congressional report say some sections would not play quite so
neatly into White House plans. One portion deals extensively with the stream of
U.S. intelligence- agency reports in the summer of 2001 suggesting that Al Qaeda
was planning an upcoming attack against the United States---and implicitly
raises questions about how Bush and his top aides responded. One such CIA
briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and prophetic. It predicted
that Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist strike "in the coming
weeks," the congressional investigators found. The intelligence briefing
went on to say: "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict
mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations
The substance of that
intelligence report was first disclosed at a public hearing last September by
staff director Hill. But at the last minute, Hill was blocked from saying
precisely who within the Bush White House got the briefing when CIA director
Tenet classified the names of the recipients. (One source says the recipients of
the briefing included Bush himself.) As a result, Hill was only able to say the
briefing was given to "senior government officials."
That issue is now being refought in the context over the full report. The report names names, gives dates and provides a body of new information about the handling of many other crucial intelligence briefings---including one in early August 2001 given to national-security adviser Rice that discussed Al Qaeda operations within the United States and the possibility that the group's members might seek to hijack airplanes. The administration "working group" is still refusing to declassify information about the briefings, sources said, and has even expressed regret that some of the material was ever provided to congressional investigators in the first place. ##
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