APFN
9-11 ATTACKS and COVER-UP - Report Raises More Questions
Sat Aug 2 21:14:32 2003
64.140.158.25

9-11 ATTACKS and COVER-UP
GO HERE FOR LINKS:
http://www.crisispapers.org/topics/9-11.htm

NEW David Corn: [Congressional] Report Raises More Questions About 9/11, The Nation: August 4, 2003
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030804&s=dcorn

"Several news outfits noted that the report contained 'no smoking guns' and concluded, as the Associated Press put it, that 'no evidence surfaced in the probe...to show that the government could have prevented the attacks.' Those reports were wrong...In the report's first finding, the committees note that the intelligence community did not have information on the 'time, place and specific nature' of the 9/11 attacks, but that it had 'amassed a great deal of valuable intelligence regarding Osama bin Laden and his terrorist activities,' and that this information could have been used to thwart the assault...The Administration will not allow the committees to say what information reached Bush. The Administration argued, according to a Congressional source, that to declassify 'any description of the president's knowledge' of intelligence reports -- even when the content of those reports have been declassified -- would be a risk to national security...The White House also refused to release to the committees the contents of an August 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief (PDB) that contained information on bin Laden. In May 2002 National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed this PDB only included information about bin Laden's methods of operation from a historical perspective and contained no specific warnings. But the joint inquiry appears to have managed to find a source in the intelligence community who informed it that 'a closely held intelligence report' for 'senior government officials' in August 2001 (read: the PDB prepared for Bush) said that bin Laden was seeking to conduct attacks within the United States." (See also Agence France-Press's "Findings on Saudis Blacked Out," Thomas Ferraro's "Democrats Question Blank Pages in 9/11 Report") (7/28)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=PQ5NULJJ0E03OCRBAELCFEY?type=politicsNews&storyID=3156257
NEW Paul Sperry: Secret Report Undercuts Iraq Connection to WTC, World Net Daily: July 23, 2003

"U.S. intelligence services unanimously agreed last fall that 'no specific intelligence information' tied Iraq to U.S. terrorist attacks, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Their findings were presented to the president Oct. 2 in a still-secret report on Iraq. The summary, or 'key judgments' section, of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate was declassified Friday. WorldNetDaily obtained a copy from the National Security Council. (The report is different from the unclassified 25-page white paper the CIA made public on its website last October.) Page 4 of the report states: '... [W]e have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against U.S. territory.' The statement would appear to undercut a popular theory among Iraq hawks that Baghdad conspired with al-Qaida operatives to try to blow up New York's Twin Towers in 1993, and possibly sponsored the repeat attack on them in 2001." (7/28)
NEW Michael Isikoff: The 9-11 Report: Slamming the FBI, Newsweek: July 28, 2003

The 900-page Congressional report focuses on the figures lower-down and doesn't really get into the higher-ups in the White House and what they knew from their own diplomatic and foreign sources about the impending terrorist attacks. Instead, we get summaries like: "The FBI blew repeated chances to uncover the 9-11 plot because it failed to aggressively investigate evidence...The report is sure to reignite questions about whether some Saudi officials were secretly monitoring the hijackers — or even facilitating their conduct.. A 28-page section of the report dealing with the Saudis and other foreign governments will be deleted. 'They are protecting a foreign government,' charged Sen. Bob Graham, who oversaw the inquiry." (7/25)
Frederick Sweet: Bush Obstructs Investigation Into 9/11 Attack, Intervention Magazine: July 16, 2003

"President George W. Bush is obstructing the investigation of the 9-11 terrorist attack against the United States. Ever since the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also called the 9-11 Commission, had been set up to investigate the biggest crime of the twenty-first century, Bush and his administration have kept getting in its way." Sweet documents the stonewalling and obstructions set up by the Bush Administration. (7/17)
Thomas Kean/Lee Hamilton: First Interim Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Scoop: July 8, 2003

Read between the lines: the commission is frustrated by being stonewalled by the Bush Administration for the documents it needs to get the full picture of what happened prior to 9/11: "The Department of Justice has assisted the White House in resolving issues that have arisen in agency responses to our requests. But records requested from DOJ are overdue, and the Department has not yet been able to resolve important issues related to the Moussaoui case. We also disagree with the Administration's general insistence on having agency representatives present during interviews of serving officials, and this matter is still under discussion...The CIA has been slower in producing the internal documents that we have requested on management and resource choices in the pre-9/11 war on terrorism." (7/14)
Frank Davies: U.S. Report on 9/11 to be 'Explosive', The Miami Herald, July 10, 2003

A long-awaited final report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will be released in the next two weeks, containing new information about U.S. government mistakes and Saudi financing of terrorists. Former Rep. Tim Roemer, who served on the House Intelligence Committee and who has read the report, said it will be ''highly explosive'' when it becomes public." (7/14)
Julian Borger: 9/11 Inquiry Allege Witness Intimidation, Guardian (U.K.): July 10, 2003

"The inquiry's chairman, Thomas Kean, criticised the Justice Department for insisting intelligence officials giving testimony should be accompanied by 'minders' from their agency. 'I think the commission feels unanimously that it's some intimidation to have somebody sitting behind you all the time who you either work for or works for your agency,' he said." (7/14)
Editorial: Wrestling for the Truth of 9/11, New York Times: July 9, 2003

"The Bush administration, long allergic to the idea of investigating the government's failure to prevent the Sept. 11 terror attacks, is now doing its best to bury the national commission that was created to review Washington's conduct. That was made plain yesterday in a muted way by Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey governor, and Lee Hamilton, the former congressman, who are directing the inquiry. When these seasoned, mild-mannered men start complaining that the administration is trying to intimidate the commission, the country had better take notice. In a status report on its work, the commission said various agencies -- particularly the Pentagon and the Justice Department -- were blocking requests for vital information and resources. Acting more like the Soviet Kremlin than the American government, the administration has insisted that monitors from various agencies attend debriefings of key officials by investigators. Mr. Kean is quite correct in objecting to this as a thinly veiled attempt at intimidation." (7/10)
Eric Boehlert: Bush's 9/11 coverup?, Salon, June 18, 2003

"Family members of victims of the terror attacks say the White House has smothered every attempt to get to the bottom of the outrageous intelligence failures that took place on its watch. For family members of those who died on Sept. 11, last week brought a rare chance to meet face-to-face with a man who has become a symbol of their dissatisfaction -- FBI director Robert Mueller. The bureau had quietly invited several dozen family members to Washington to hear a presentation on the war on terrorism, but for the small band of husbands, wives and parents who successfully lobbied Congress last year for an independent 9/11 commission to investigate the attacks, it was a chance to ask some of the troubling questions they have about that day... Family advocates also wanted to know why the government -- and specifically the Bush administration -- has been so reluctant to find answers to any of the obvious questions about what went wrong that day, why so little has been fixed, and why virtually nobody has accepted any responsibility for the glaring failures." (6/23)
Tom Flocco: Bush May Invoke 9/11 Executive Privilege and Secrecy, TomFlocco.com, May 3, 2003

"Proof of prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks is continuing to trickle out of the purportedly 'leak-proof' White House, as more corroborative chickens of 9/11 are coming home to roost -- even as President Bush is considering invoking executive privilege to keep the clamps on evidence that could alter the political landscape for the nation’s conquering 'top-gun.' However, for those still concerned about the mysteries of September 11, such issues as: 1) poorly documented visas -- issued fraudulently by immigration officials failing to follow the law, 2) restrained U.S. military air defense protocols, 3) millions of dollars in suspicious pre-attack stock market insider trading profits as yet unclaimed and unrevealed within a still-unpublicized Securities Exchange Commission 9/11 'Control List,' 4) redacted presidential intelligence documents, plus other unanswered questions directly related to prior knowledge of the attacks all seem fair game -- given the explosive evidence." (6/23)
Thomas Frank: FAA Delay in Reporting 9/11 Hijackings, Newsday: May 23, 2003

"[Richard] Ben-Veniste, former Watergate prosecutor, provided the emotional highlight [of the 9/11 Commission hearing] when he [said] that the FAA had learned at 8:55 a.m. that Flight 77 was off course and headed for the Pentagon -- after it had already declared Flight 11 and Flight 175 hijacked. But, Ben-Veniste said, recounting previously known information, it wasn't until 9:24 a.m. that the FAA alerted the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which defends against aerospace threats." (5/26)
Bush to America: Can you handle the truth? American Reporter, May 19, 2003

"The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks was given a paltry $12 million to run its investigation - or four times less than was spent by the Republicans to investigate Bill Clinton's sex life. It's very clear that the Bush administration is determined to make sure the American people find out as little as possible about the events that led up to the 9/11 attacks. According to Newsweek, the White House has blocked the release of a more-than-800-page secret report by a joint congressional inquiry that detailed the various failures by intelligence and law enforcement agencies. They've even tried to classify items that have already appeared in public." (5/23)
Michele Landsberg: Barbs aside, 9/11 questions aren't going away, Toronto Star, May 18, 2003

"Why did the U.S. military, with the most powerful arsenal in world history, fail to prevent or at least try to stop a series of hijackings and crashes that went on for nearly two hours? Where was the Air Force? If President Bush and his cabinet were not, at this very moment, still trying to censor, suppress and delay the publication of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, if there had been honest disclosure and straight stories from the beginning, perhaps all these "dark questions" ... would never have arisen. The great majority of people, sickened and overwhelmed by the horror of the attacks, unquestioningly accepts the White House version. Many thousands, however, are patiently stitching together the documented evidence and noting the huge holes in the fabric of that official story." (See also, Landsberg, Conspiracy Crusader Doubts Official 9/11 Version, Toronto Star: May 11, 2003 ). (5/19)
Memory Hole: Documents from Congress' Joint Inquiry Into 9/11, Memory Hole: Current

Here is the testimony from a wide variety of witnesses before the Joint Intelligence Committees of the U.S. Senate and House, the hearings conducted from June to October 2002. You need PDF to log onto the individual files, but even if you don't have that capabiltiy, you can see the list of what's there to be checked out elsewhere. (5/16)
Allan Wood and Paul Thompson: An Interesting Day: President Bush's Movements and Actions on 9/11, Cooperative Research:
May 9, 2003

Here is an extremely detailed, updated compilation of all that is known about the activities of George W. Bush and various governmental agencies on that fateful date of September 11, 2001. The facts and inconsistencies in the official version of events raises numerous unsettling questions. (5/12)
Brian E. Crowley: Graham Alleges Bush "Cover-Up", Palm Beach Post: May11, 2003

Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, says the Bush Administration for five months has refused to release the Congress' report on 9/11 to the blue-ribbon 9/11 Commission. "We do not have the information so that we can hold the administration accountable," said Graham. "I call that a cover up." After the television appearance, Graham said the administration is worried about the Congressional report because, "We have connected the dots." (5/12)
William Rivers Pitt: The silence about September 11, Truthout, April 21, 2003

"I have been giving a lot of talks lately at colleges and for organizations about the Iraq war. Always in my remarks I ask the same question. "It has been almost 20 months since the attacks of September 11. It has been over 570 days since the Towers fell. The 9/11 attacks are the principle reason, according to the Bush administration, which justifies the war. Can anyone tell me why those attacks happened? Has anyone in the Bush administration or the media come forth with a reasonable explanation besides 'Evildoers who hate our freedom?'" Every time I get blank stares, and always a few sets of widened eyes, as if my question caused them to suddenly realize that no such explanation has ever been put forward." (4/28)
Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball, The Secrets of September 11, Newsweek Online, April 30, 2003

"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." (5/5)
Mindy Kleinberg: Statement to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 9-11 Commission:
March 31, 2003

"Is it luck that aberrant stock trades were not monitored? Is it luck when 15 visas are awarded based on incomplete forms? Is it luck when Airline Security screenings allow hijackers to board planes with box cutters and pepper spray? Is it luck when Emergency FAA and NORAD protocols are not followed? Is it luck when a national emergency is not reported to top government officials on a timely basis? To me luck is something that happens once. When you have this repeated pattern of broken protocols, broken laws, broken communication, one cannot still call it luck. If at some point we don't look to hold the individuals accountable for not doing their jobs properly then how can we ever expect for terrorists not to get lucky again?" (4/25)
Greg Palast: See No Evil -- What Bush Didn't (Want To) Know About 9/11, TomPaine.com, February 27, 2003

"This article is excerpted from the updated American edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy... Did our President spike the investigation of Bin Laden... If U.S. intelligence agencies did not see the attack coming it was because they were told not to look. Why? From inside the agencies were obtained statements and documents



Main Page - Sunday, 08/03/03

Message Board by American Patriot Friends Network [APFN]

APFN MESSAGEBOARD ARCHIVES

messageboard.gif (4314 bytes)