Politics > Politics-USA > What was Bush's role in 9/11? We'll never know, folks. We'll just never know.
| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
07 Aug 2003 05:09:10 PM |
| Object: |
What was Bush's role in 9/11? We'll never know, folks. We'll just never know. |
From New York Newsday, 8/7/03:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpcoc073404676aug07,0,4849578.column
U.S. Clamps Secrecy on Warnings Before 9/11
By Marie Cocco
It's not just the Saudi secret that's being kept.
The recent report of the joint congressional committee that probed
intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon reveals what the Bush administration doesn't
want Americans to know about the American government.
You would not know this from media accounts about this report.
They have dwelled on what the Bush administration doesn't want us to
know about the Saudi government.
This is the famous 28-page chapter, a series of blank lines across
page after page, that the president refuses to declassify despite the
pleadings of the bipartisan group of lawmakers and the Saudi
government itself.
The dustup over Saudi secrets is exquisitely convenient.
It obscures George W. Bush's relentless hold on U.S. secrets and on
information he maintains should be secret, though it has not
necessarily been before now.
The report's appendix hints at what these secrets are, and why they
are kept.
"Access Limitations Encountered by the Joint Inquiry," the section is
titled.
The White House refused to provide contents of the president's daily
brief.
This would clear up questions about how much specific information
President Bush received about an impending attack during the spring
and summer of 2001 - a period in which the intelligence community was
reporting with alarm that a "spectacular" attack against the United
States involving "mass casualties" was in the works.
"Ultimately, this bar was extended to the point where CIA personnel
were not allowed to be interviewed regarding the simple process by
which the (brief) is prepared," the panel said.
The committee managed, "inadvertently," it says, to get some contents
of a key briefing Bush received in August 2001.
It included "FBI judgments about patterns of activity consistent with
preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks; as well as
information acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of Bin Ladin
(sic) supporters was planning attacks in the United States with
explosives."
In an extraordinary footnote, the panel cites public statements by
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that characterized the
August briefing as general and having provided historical perspective
on Osama bin Laden's methods of terror.
The lawmakers, though, were barred from interviewing Rice.
They sought to "obtain a better understanding of the development of
counterterrorism policy in the Bush administration before September
11, 2001."
The panel was forced to submit written questions to a deputy.
Lawmakers also were barred from getting information on an intelligence
reform commission chaired by former National Security Adviser Brent
Scowcroft.
The Scowcroft commission's findings already had been widely reported
in the press.
The administration blocked the congressional investigators from
obtaining information showing how intelligence agency funding requests
were handled by the White House budget office, dating back to the
Reagan administration.
The lawmakers were kept from interviewing an FBI informant who had
contact with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were living in
San Diego.
Not once, but twice, the panel was forced to tangle in court with the
Justice Department over information about its handling of Zacarias
Moussaoui.
Moussaoui was detained nearly a month before the attack and now is
charged as the "20th hijacker."
The Justice Department argued, to no avail, that Congress is covered
by a local rule in Virginia, where the Moussaoui case is being heard,
that bars prosecutors and defense lawyers from making out-of-court
statements.
The rule contains explicit language stating that it doesn't cover
"hearings or the lawful issuance of reports" by legislative or
investigative bodies.
The inquiry's report devotes 15 pages to describing a pattern of Bush
administration denials and delaying tactics that prevented a fuller
account of national failure before the attack.
Last month the independent 9/11 commission still probing the attack
issued a similar compendium of complaint.
Worry, if you will, about those 28 pages involving the Saudi sheiks.
But a deeper, darker problem is our own government's refusal to fill
in the blanks about itself.
________________________________________________________
The right-wing coup that brought this unelected individual to power
has also undermined our government and stolen it from its people. We
are being ruled, and I *do* mean ruled, by a band of criminals.
Harry
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| User: "Jimmy Changa" |
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| Title: Re: What was Bush's role in 9/11? We'll never know, folks. We'll just never know. |
07 Aug 2003 10:47:11 PM |
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On Thu, 07 Aug 2003 22:09:10 GMT, Harry Hope <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com>
wrote:
The right-wing coup that brought this unelected individual to power
has also undermined our government and stolen it from its people. We
are being ruled, and I *do* mean ruled, by a band of criminals.
True.
.
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