Saturday, April 03, 2004
WHITE HOUSE FLUNKY SEZ SCIENCE EGGHEADS ARE A BUNCH OF NERVOUS NELLIES
Science Not Being Distorted, White House Aide Says
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
President Bush's chief science adviser fired back yesterday at a scientists' advocacy group that had accused the administration of distorting facts to support a conservative political agenda.
In a statement released with a 17-page, point-by-point rebuttal, John H. Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the response aimed to "correct errors, distortions and misunderstandings" in the Feb. 18 report of the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
"The accusations in the document are inaccurate," Marburger wrote in the letter, which he sent with the report to several members of Congress. "In this administration, science strongly informs policy."
Marburger's rebuttal was issued at a time of increasing scrutiny of the Bush administration's relationship with science. The administration has for many months been under fire from critics alleging that officials have ignored certain scientific findings, changed Web sites, revised or eliminated wording in reports, and altered the makeup of advisory committees in ways that bowed to political priorities.
Most recently, President Bush's Council on Bioethics came under fire from several science groups after two members supportive of human embryo research were dismissed, a move the administration denied was political.
The UCS report gained extra attention because its release was accompanied by a supporting letter signed by more than 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates. Although Marburger initially dismissed it as "a collection of more or less disconnected cases" -- and suggested that some scientists had simply had "their feathers ruffled" -- he also promised the detailed response that came yesterday.
As with the UCS document, Marburger's rebuttal is a blend of footnoted scientific documentation and personal assertions. Together, the two documents offer a reminder that science is a mix of fact and interpretation -- and that at times it can be difficult to tease the two apart.
For example, Marburger's rebuttal repeatedly refers to a recent National Academies assessment of the administration's plan to deal with global warming -- a report, Marburger writes, that "heartily endorsed" the Bush plan.
Although it is true that the National Academies praised many aspects of the plan, they also expressed deep concerns about whether and how the plan would be implemented, and confessed to concern that it would not be adequately insulated from political pressure.
Other UCS accusations and their matched White House responses are equally open to interpretation:
• The UCS said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had removed from its Web site a fact sheet about condoms and replaced it with a document emphasizing condom failure and the effectiveness of abstinence. Marburger responded that the CDC "routinely takes information off its Web site and replaces it with more up to date information," and that this change, based on new data from the National Institutes of Health, was simply an example of that.
• The UCS alleged that the National Cancer Institute kept posted on its Web site information suggesting a link between abortion and breast cancer even after the science behind that link had been debunked, and only removed the page after a public outcry. Marburger replied that NCI removed the fact sheet "when it became clear that there was conflicting information in the published literature."
• The UCS said that the administration has been trying to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Marburger responded that the current situation dates to the Clinton administration.
• The UCS said that the White House Office of Management and Budget's recent effort to centralize much of the federal scientific peer review process is part of a plan to gain political control over scientific information that might be used to justify new regulations unwelcome to industry. Marburger countered that the OMB proposal aims to strengthen the influence of science, not weaken it, and has been open to comment and is being revised.
Marburger conceded that the government erred when it lifted several paragraphs from a document prepared by energy industry lawyers and used them in a regulation the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed for power plants. But even there, Marburger noted, the language went into the preamble, not the rule. "The UCS's implication that industry is writing government regulations is wrong," he wrote.
With regard to the allegation that scientific advisory committee members must pass a political litmus test, Marburger wrote: "I can say from personal experience that the accusation . . . is preposterous. After all, President Bush sought me out to be his science adviser . . . and I am a lifelong Democrat."
Kurt Gottfried, a professor emeritus of physics at Cornell University and chairman of the UCS, said he had read only part of the rebuttal but was so far unconvinced.
For example, he said, the administration has sometimes said or written scientifically defensible things about climate change. "But have they ever acted in any way but to knock down the idea that climate change is a priority?"
Many of the scientists who signed the UCS statement "have served in many administrations, so when we say this is a new situation, there's some credibility to that," Gottfried said. "We're not just getting out of grad school."
© 2004 The Washington Post CompanySaturday, April 03, 2004
THE HOUSE OF CARDS CONTINUES TO FALL
Powell Not Sure Iraq Trailers Were Labs
BY BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell conceded Friday evidence he presented to the United Nations that two trailers in Iraq were used for weapons of mass destruction may have been wrong.
In an airborne news conference on the way home from NATO talks in Brussels, Belgium, Powell said he had been given solid information about the trailers that he told the Security Council in February 2003 were designed for making biological weapons.
But now, Powell said, "it appears not to be the case that it was that solid."
He said he hoped the intelligence commission appointed by President Bush to investigate prewar intelligence on Iraq "will look into these matters to see whether or not the intelligence agency had a basis for the confidence that they placed in the intelligence at that time."
Powell's dramatic case to the Security Council that Iraq had secret arsenals of weapons of mass destruction failed to persuade the council to directly back the U.S.-led war that deposed the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. But it helped mobilize sentiment among the American people for going to war.
As it turned out, U.N. inspectors were unable to uncover the weapons, but administration officials have insisted they still might be uncovered.
David Kay, who led the hunt for the weapons, showed off a pair of trailers for news cameras last summer and argued that the two metal flatbeds were designed for making biological weapons.
But faced with mounting challenges to that theory, Kay conceded in October he could have been wrong. He said he did not know whether Iraq ever had a mobile weapons program.
Powell told reporters that as he worked on the Bush administration's case against Iraq U.S. intelligence "indicated to me" that the intelligence was solid.
"I'm not the intelligence community, but I probed and I made sure, as I said in my presentation, these are multi-sourced" allegations, Powell said.
The trailers were the most dramatic claims, "and I made sure that it was multi-sourced," he said.
"Now, if the sources fell apart we need to find out how we've gotten ourselves in that position," he said.
"I have discussions with the CIA about it," Powell said, without providing further details.
The trailers were the only discovery the administration had cited as evidence of an illicit Iraqi weapons program.
In six months of searches, no biological, chemical or nuclear weapons were found to bolster the administration's central case for going to war: to disarm Saddam of suspected weapons of mass destruction.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
CALLING THE MEDIA ON THEIR BUSHIT
Mis-Covering Clarke
By Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org
Please raise your hand if the name Richard Clarke rang a bell for you three weeks ago. How many of us knew who he was or what he did? And who among us can cite examples of TV stories or news commentators discussing in any detail his contention that the War on Iraq undermined the war on terror?
Yes, there were discussions of the problems with the Iraq war and the lack of priority paid to the search for Al Qaeda, but not of the direct relationship between the two as framed by Clarke.
The question now is whether any one is going to raise the issue of the media's failure to discuss these issues in detail before Richard Clarke pointed to intelligence failures and apologized to the victims' families for the government's inability to prevent the attack. More importantly, who in our media will have the courage to apologize for giving the Bush administration a soft sell and a big pass?
Insiders Only
It takes a silver haired, hawkish hardliner and Washington insider and Securo-crat to finally put some, if not all, of the 9/11 issues on the agenda. Clarke is hardly a dove. He wanted Clinton to bomb more often. His analysis of the roots of what he calls Islamic radicalism was superficial. He even expressed a wish that Fidel Castro be taken out.
More liberal critics or people who reject the Washington cold war foreign policy consensus are rarely heard or taken seriously. This is not new. It is only defectors from the right – such as Treasury Secretary O'Neil – that seem to be heard. Even Daniel Ellsberg, who gave us the Pentagon Papers, was seen as credible by the Beltway crowd because he'd worked for the Pentagon and Rand Corporation.
Before Clarke came forth, questions were being raised on hundreds of websites and by independent investigators and groups of 9/11 families, who were marginalized and for the most part ignored. (Take a look at 911 Citizen Watch for a sampling.) You have to be in "the club" to be taken seriously.
The irony, of course is that the hearings only took place because of the persistence of a handful of outsiders – for example, the activist wives of 9-11 victims who lobbied for the investigation but later walked out in disgust when many of their questions were sidelined.
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has refused to testify in front of the commission because of a bogus separation of powers "principle." She made the same claim in an all too friendly interview on 60 Minutes on Sunday. Surprisingly, neither correspondent Ed Bradley nor other commentators have pointed out to her that this commission was appointed by the President, and not by Congress. It merely happens to hold hearings in a room on the Hill. The reference to testifying before Congress is misplaced.
Rice did offer one valid insight during the interview when she alluded to the kind of context and background that is missing in most of the media coverage. "You have to go back into the 70's and 80's," she said, to understand the challenge of terrorism. While her reading of that history is very selective, it is precisely what the 9-11 investigation and the media coverage need to consider.
Air Time for Attack Dogs
Ever since Clarke testified, the administration has cleverly changed the subject from the issues he raised to that of his own credibility. Is he a partisan? Did he write different things in a press release he issued for the White House when he worked for President Bush than in his book, which challenges the President? Tim Russert threw every criticism that has been raised at him on "Meet the Press" this weekend. Clarke held his ground.
It was like a game of ping pong, better known as 'they said/you said."
This politicizing of his testimony was aided and abetted by virtually every show on the air. He has been on 15 or more news programs and on most of them, the questions were the same, as commentator Harry Browne notes on HarryBrowne.org:
"Providing their usual support for big government, TV and press reporters repeated and discussed statements Clarke made in 2001 and 2002 – statements that seemed to back up the charge that Clarke was an opportunistic hypocrite.
"But did you notice that every reporter showed us exactly the same statements from Clarke? Some of the apparent 'statements' weren't even complete sentences. Why did everyone who commented on Clarke's apparent flip-flop focus on exactly the same fragments?
"They did so because those were the only fragments they had to work with. The quotes were all provided by the Bush administration – and they're the only quotes available. If the reporters had possessed the original documents, some of them would have picked out other statements or fragments from those documents.
Media programs bent over backward to provide a platform for administration officials to respond to Clarke's claims – but to build some heat for ratings rather than shed light on the issues; to "balance" the debate rather than advance it. These interviews aimed to provide Bush supporters with ammunition, not information.
Browne notes, "Top administration officials have already appeared on numerous national news shows. Condoleezza Rice showed up on all five national morning shows (on NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and CNN). The attack dogs said very little about the actual charges, preferring to attack Clarke personally as a hypocrite who previously praised President Bush's response to terrorism."
The coverage of Clarke is typical of a pattern where controversial issues that challenge those in power invariably are personalized and narrowed when they should be broadened and deepened.
Why the Media Cop-Out?
Why has the media establishment been unwilling or unable to take on the political establishment? What accounts for the lack of bravery and determination to seek the truth?
Some newspapers have done a good job, and independent muckrakers like Greg Palast have dug up some dirt. But far too many TV reporters have opted to become semi-official stenographers with American flags in their lapel. No one explicitly censored the news, but the post-9/11 political climate, dominated by an administration that saw the world in terms of "you are with us or against us," led to corporate timidity and self-censorship. With Fox News functioning as "bully boys," to use Christiane Amanpour's phrase, many networks muzzled themselves.
War correspondent Peter Arnett sees a psychological reason for this timidity: "Don't forget the American media is based in NYC, and every reporter in NYC saw the World Trade Towers collapse and they took it personally. There was a sense of revenge and fear, which was reflected in the coverage of Afghanistan and the War on Terror. As we moved into Iraq, a more pre-emptive strike, the media maintained this sort of romance, you might say with government."
CBS's Dan Rather embodied the kind of personal schizophrenia that 9/11 produced in many journalists. Just after the attacks, he went on the Letterman show to profess his patriotism. He said: "I would willingly die for my country at a moment's notice and on the command of my president."
The following spring in May 2002 he went on BBC's Newsnight, their version of "Nightline," and revealed the ways he pulled his punches because of personal fears. Invoking the memory of black South Africans "necklacing" informers with burning tires, he explained: "In some ways, the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough questions so often. Again, I'm humbled to say I do not except myself from this criticism."
In England, it was considered big news that an anchor of Rather's prominence would confess to not asking tough questions. Almost every newspaper in London put the story on its front page.
In the U.S., the interview was mostly ignored, and certainly so on Rather's own network. The only reference to it I saw was a quote in The Los Angeles Times' Calendar Section
In short, it was buried – just like any serious discussion of the 9/11 attacks.
9/11 is not just about intelligence failures or mismanagement in the White House, but also about deeper political failures on both sides of the aisle.
As you watch the "Get Clarke" brigades do their thing on television, remember that the same media outlets that did such a good job covering the details of what happened on 9/11, have done little to explain why it happened.
----
Danny Schechter writes the News Dissector Blog on Mediachannel.org. His book "Media Wars" discusses gaps in the media coverage of the 9/11 attack and news at a time of terror.Wednesday, March 31, 2004
LYING LIARS AND THE LIES THEY TELL
The following was compiled by the Compassion Awareness Site at www.compassiongate.com:
| # | Pres. Bush or his representative's statement | Some Uncompassionate Facts |
| 1 | Rice
for Bush
"...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 airplanes to try to free U.S.-held terrorists...." |
Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post): "...Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed this week that Rice had asked, in her private meetings with the commission, to revise a statement she made publicly that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." Rice told the commission that she misspoke; the commission has received information that prior to Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies and Clarke had talked about terrorists using airplanes as missiles. .." Atrios: Eric
Boehlert (Salon.com): |
| 2 | Bush
"...Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people..." |
Geraldine
Sealey (Salon.com): "...CAP quickly found previous reports that the president was told of the possibility that al-Qaida was exploring the use of airliners as terror weapons, including against U.S. targets: FACT: On August 6, 2001, President Bush personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." -- Dateline NBC, 9/10/02 (Transcript in Nexis) FACT: U.S. and Italian officials were warned in July 2001 that Islamic terrorists had considered "crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit of industrialized nations." -- LA Times, 9/27/01. FACT: A 1999 report prepared by the Library of Congress for the National Intelligence Council "warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon." The report specifically said, "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives … into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House." -- CBS News, 5/17/02. CAP also found this nugget, showing that the State Department under Bush downplayed the importance of the threat of Osama bin Laden in its annual terrorism report in early 2001. "The State Department officially released its annual terrorism report just a little more than an hour ago, but unlike last year, there's no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. A senior State Department official tells CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden and 'personalizing terrorism.'" -- CNN, 4/30/2001..." |
| 3 | Rice
for Bush
"...[Rice] said administration officials felt, as a precaution, they could not rule out an attack in the United States, but that if Clarke had any specific information suggesting attacks in the United States, "he never communicated that to anyone."..." |
Center
for American Progress: "...For instance, the President received a CIA warning on August 6th, 2001, headlined, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." noting the "plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane."..." |
| 4 | Hadley for Bush
"...All the chatter [before 9/11] was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas..." |
Center
for American Progress: "...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." [Joint Congressional Report, 12/02]..." |
| 5 | Rice
for Bush
"...In response to my request for a presidential initiative, the counterterrorism team, which we had held over from the Clinton administration, suggested several ideas...We adopted several of these ideas. We committed more funding to counterterrorism and intelligence efforts..." Rice for Bush "...on NBC Nightly News, [claimed] that the "the president increased counterterrorism funding several-fold" before 9/11..." |
Center
for American Progress: "...But the real story is far different, as the following internal Department of Justice (DoJ) documents obtained by the Center for American Progress demonstrate. The Bush Administration actually reversed the Clinton Administration's strong emphasis on counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Attorney General John Ashcroft not only moved aggressively to reduce DoJ's anti-terrorist budget but also shift DoJ's mission in spirit to emphasize its role as a domestic police force and anti-drug force. These changes in mission were just as critical as the budget changes, with Ashcroft, in effect, guiding the day to day decisions made by field officers and agents. And all of this while the Administration was receiving repeated warnings about potential terrorist attacks..." [Read the entire post to see how anti-terrorism budgets were proposed to be cut before and after 9/11, among other things.] Rice
for Bush on NBC: Center
for American Progress: Center
for American Progress: |
| 6 | Rice for Bush
"...In the same article, Rice belittled Clarke's proposals by writing: "The president wanted more than a laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or 'roll back' the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al Qaeda network." Rice asserted that while Clarke and others provided ideas, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." That same day, she said most of Clarke's ideas "had been already tried or rejected in the Clinton administration."..." |
Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post): "...But in her interview with NBC two days later, Rice appeared to take a different view of Clarke's proposals. "He sent us a set of ideas that would perhaps help to roll back al Qaeda over a three- to five-year period; we acted on those ideas very quickly. And what's very interesting is that . . . Dick Clarke now says that we ignored his ideas or we didn't follow them up." ..." Center
for American Progress: |
| 7 | Rice for Bush
"...Dick Clarke was counterterrorism czar for a long time with a lot of attacks on the United States. What he was doing was--what they were doing apparently was not working. We wanted to do something different..." |
Ryan
Lizza (TNR): "...She didn't get a chance to explain how this statement comports with Hadley's insistence that "one of the decisions we made was to keep Mr. Clarke and his counter-terrorism group intact" because "we wanted an experienced team to try and identify the risk, take actions to disrupt the terrorists."..." Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post): Rice
for Bush: Talkingpointsmemo: |
| 8 | Wilkinson for
Bush
"...I want to make a very point here, that all of his ideas he presented were not a strategy. This is a president who wanted a comprehensive strategy to go after al Qaeda where it lives, where it hides, where it plots, where it raises money. All the ideas that -- except for one -- that Dick Clarke submitted, this administration did..." |
Talkingpointsmemo: "...On a more substantive note compare Wilkinson's description of Clarke's pitiful proposal to this one from an August 4th, 2002 article in Time. Note particularly the comment from the "senior Bush administration official" at the end ... Berger had left the room by the time Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. A senior Bush Administration official denies being handed a formal plan to take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and says Clarke's materials merely dealt with whether the new Administration should take "a more active approach" to the terrorist group. (Rice declined to comment, but through a spokeswoman said she recalled no briefing at which Berger was present.) Other senior officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda. In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Qaeda was causing trouble-Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Yemen-would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary" where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a nation that had been driven by bloody feuds between ethnic warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a substantial increase in American support for the Northern Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done since 9/11."..." |
| 9 | Rice for Bush
"...what's very interesting is that, of course, Dick Clarke was the counterterrorism czar in 1998 when the embassies were bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar in 2000 when the Cole was bombed. He was the counterterrorism czar for a period of the '90s when al Qaeda was strengthening and when the plots that ended up in September 11 were being hatched..." |
Center
for American Progress: "...Vice President Cheney echoed the very same criticism on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Rice and Cheney conveniently ignored the President's own "buck stops here" declaration and desire for a "culture of personal responsibility": Both refused to mention that they were Clarke's bosses in the lead up to 9/11, and that they ignored Clarke's repeated efforts to get the Administration to take terrorism more seriously. They also failed to elucidate why, if Clarke's record was so terrible, they called him an "outstanding public servant" and decided to keep him on board at the White House...." |
| 10 | Cheney
for Bush
"...As I say, he was the head of counterterrorism for several years there in the '90s, and I didn't notice that they had any great success dealing with the terrorist threat..." |
Clarke
on Salon.com: "...It's possible that the vice president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn't know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States, through military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States, through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert action program against al-Qaida; it also launched military strikes against al-Qaida. Maybe the vice president was so busy running Halliburton at the time that he didn't notice..." Clarke
on CNN: |
| 11 | Cheney for Bush
"...[Bush] wanted a far more effective policy for trying to deal with [terrorism], and that process was in motion throughout the spring..." |
Center
for American Progress: "...Bush said [in May of 2001] that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and 'I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.' Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took place." By comparison, Cheney in 2001 formally convened his Energy Task Force at least 10 separate times, meeting at least 6 times with Enron energy executives. – Washington Post, 1/20/02 , GAO Report, 8/22/03, AP, 1/8/02..." Michael
Isikoff and Mark Hosenball (Newsweek): Talkingpointsmemo: Talkingpointsmemo: |
| 12 | Rice
for Bush
"...Through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda -- which was expected to take years. Our strategy marshaled all elements of national power to take down the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures. Our plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived...." |
Spencer
Ackerman (TNR): "...Rice has refused to testify publicly before the 9/11 Commission. In her stead yesterday, the White House sent the gregarious Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage. Gorelick confronted him with the difference between what Rice described in her op-ed and NSPD-9: GORELICK: So I would ask you whether it is true, as Dr. Rice said in The Washington Post, "Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets, taking the fight to the enemy, where he lived" ? Was that part of the plan as prior to 9/11? ARMITAGE: No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11..." |
| 13 | McClellan for
Bush
"..."Dr. Rice, early on in the administration started holding daily briefings with the senior directors of the National Security Council, of which he was one. But he refused to attend those meetings, and he was later asked to attend those meetings and he continued to refuse to attend those meetings."...." |
Brad
Delong: "...Rice: "To somehow suggest that the attack on 9/11 could have been prevented by a series of meetings--I have to tell you that during the period of time we were at battle stations," Rice said yesterday. McClellan added, "He's been out there talking about whether or not he was participating in certain meetings. So it appears to be more about the process than the actual actions we have taken."..." Brad
Delong: Atrios: Atrios: |
| 14 | Rice for Bush
"...Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to..." |
Center
for American Progress: "...Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked "urgent" asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending Al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says "principals did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat." No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11. – White House Press Release, 3/21/04..." Kansas
City Star: |
| 15 | Rice
for Bush
[asserted] "...that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats..." |
Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post): "...At the same time, some of Rice's rebuttals of Clarke's broadside against Bush, which she delivered in a flurry of media interviews and statements rather than in testimony, contradicted other administration officials and her own previous statements. ...the CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats..." Dan
Eggen and Walter Pincus (Washington Post): |
| 16 | Rice
for Bush
"...KING: Clarke says Mr. Bush pressured
him the day after the 9/11 attacks to find evidence blaming Iraq
and that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other senior officials
also wanted to blame Saddam Hussein. White House aides say Mr.
Bush and others did initially suspect Iraq but that in the end
they followed the evidence. "...Not a single National Security Council principal at that meeting recommended to the president going after Iraq. The president thought about it. The next day he told me Iraq is to the side..." |
Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post): "...Rice's assertion this week that Bush told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq. .." Center
for American Progress: Center
for American Progress: |
| 17 | Rice for Bush
"...The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11..." |
Center
for American Progress: "...If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against "nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11." Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that "It is not surprising that people make that connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said "we don't know" if there is a connection...." |
| 18 | Rice
for Bush
"...I don't know what a sense of urgency any greater than the one we had would have caused us to do anything differently. I don't know how...we could have done more. I would like very much to know what more could have been done?..." |
Center
for American Progress: "...There are many more things that could have been done: first and foremost, the Administration could have desisted from de-emphasizing and cutting funding for counterterrorism in the months before 9/11. It could have held more meetings of top principals to get the directors of the CIA and FBI to share information, especially considering the major intelligence spike occurring in the summer of 2001. As 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick said on ABC this morning, the lack of focus and meetings meant agencies were not talking to each other, and key evidence was overlooked. For instance, with better focus and more urgency, the FBI's discovery of Islamic radicals training at flight schools might have raised red flags. Similarly, the fact that "months before Sept. 11, the CIA knew two of the al-Qaeda hijackers were in the United States" could have spurred a nationwide manhunt. But because there was no focus or urgency, "No nationwide manhunt was undertaken," said Gorelick. "The State Department watch list was not given to the FAA. If you brought people together, perhaps key connections could have been made."..." Gail
Sheehy (New York Observer): Center
for American Progress: |
| 19 | Rice for Bush
"...The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11..." |
Center
for American Progress: "...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. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks." – Washington Post, 3/22/04..." |
| 20 | Tenet for Bush
"...denied that Mr Bush had under-estimated the threat. "Clearly there was no lack of care or focus in the face of one of the greatest dangers our country has ever faced," he said...." |
Brad
Delong: "...From Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, p. 13: Dale Watson, counterterrorism chief at FBI, was waving at the camera.... "And, Dick, call me in SIOC when you can."... Dale had something he did not want to share with everyone.... Frank Miller took over... I stepped out and called Watson on a secure line. "We got the passenger manifests from the airlines. We recognize some names, Dick. They're Al Qaeda." I was stunned, not that the attack was Al Qaeda but that there were Al Qaeda operatives on board aircraft using names that the FBI knew were Al Qaeda. "How the fuck did they get on board then?" I demanded. "Hey, don't shoot the messenger, friend. CIA forgot to tell us about them." Dale Watson was one of the good guys at FBI. He had been trying hard to get the Bureau to go after Al Qaeda in the United States with limited success..." Michael
Isikoff and Mark Hosenball (Newsweek): Talkingpointsmemo: Center
for American Progress: Also see TAPPED |
| 21 | Rice for Bush
"...so far has refused to provide testimony under oath to the commission that could possibly resolve the contradictions. On Wednesday night, she told reporters, "I would like nothing better in a sense than to be able to go up and do this, but I have a responsibility to maintain what is a long-standing constitutional separation between the executive and the legislative branch." ..." "...Nothing would be better from my point of view than to be able to testify, but there is an important principle involved here it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisors do not testify before the Congress..." |
Compassiongate: There are 5 problems with Rice's statements. (a) The 9/11 Commission is appointed by the President and is not Congress. So, separation of powers is not an issue. (b) She changed her story from advisers to national security advisers over a period of days (c) She is willing to talk to every media outlet she has time for, in effect making public statements (not under oath) which the 9/11 Commission can note and use as information (d) If she is willing to testify in private, then that breaks the so-called separation of powers principle anyway (e) There is enough history of Presidential advisers testifying before Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post): DailyKos: Center
for American Progress: Center
for American Progress: Talkingpointsmemo: Matthew
Yglesias (TAPPED): |
| 22 | Cheney for Bush
"..."[Clarke] was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cybersecurity side of things. That is, he was given the new assignment at some point there. I don't recall the exact time frame..." |
Talkingpointsmemo: "...Cheney frequently gets a pass for what his aides later portray as unintentional misstatements of fact. But there are two or three levels of dishonesty involved in this response. The key one is timing. It's convenient that Cheney doesn't "recall the exact time frame" since the time frame puts the lie to his entire point. Clarke was put in charge of cyberterrorism (a pet interest of his); but that was after 9/11. He's saying that Clarke wasn't really so central to the terrorism big picture prior to 9/11 because he was tasked with dealing with cyberterrorism (which Cheney describes as something like a glorified version of Norton AntiVirus). But, as noted, this happened after 9/11. That's after the period in which Clarke claims the White House wasn't paying attention to the terrorism issue. If there's any question that's the period Cheney is talking about it becomes more clear as the conversation continues..." Ryan
Lizza (TNR):
Center
for American Progress: Fred
Kaplan (MSN/Slate) via Atrios: Clarke
on Salon.com: |
| 23 | Cheney for Bush
"...Well, [Clarke] wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff..." |
Walter
Pincus and Dana Milbank (Washington Post): "...Rice, in turn, has contradicted Vice President Cheney's assertion that Clarke was "out of the loop" and his intimation that Clarke had been demoted..." Brad
Delong: Brad
Delong: Talkingpointsmemo: Center
for American Progress: Center
for American Progress: Moe
Blues at Bad Attitudes via Atrios: Ryan
Lizza (TNR): Fred
Kaplan (MSN/Slate) via Atrios: |
| 24 | Wilkinson for
Bush
"...it was this president who expedited the deployment of the armed Predator..." "...We pushed hard to arm the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle so we could target terrorists with greater precision. But the Predator was designed to conduct surveillance, not carry weapons. Arming it presented many technical challenges and required extensive testing. Military and intelligence officials agreed that the armed Predator was simply not ready for deployment before the fall of 2001..." |
Center
for American Progress: "...But according to Newsweek, it was the Bush Administration which "elected not to relaunch the Predator" and threatened to veto the defense bill if it "diverted $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism" programs like the Predator. As a result, AP reports, "though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months." While "the military successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001," the Bush Administration failed to resolve a bureaucratic "debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate" the system, and it did not get off the ground before 9/11..." Barton
Gellman (Washington Post) via Avedon
Carol via Road
to Surfdom: |
| 25 | McClellan for
Bush
"...[Clarke's] right that in October --
in October of 2001, when the President signed this directive,
the President was directing the Pentagon to prepare plans for
the invasion of Iraq? |
Atrios: "...From the WaPo, over a year ago: On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2½-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism. Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said. The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants. Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism. (thanks to Phelix)..." Center
for American Progress: |
| 26 | Rice for Bush
"...During the transition, President-elect Bush's national security team was briefed on the Clinton administration's efforts to deal with al Qaeda. The seriousness of the threat was well understood by the president and his national security principals..." "...The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11..." |
Atrios: "...From Woodward's book, page 39. "Until September 11, however, Bush had not put that thinking [that Clinton's response to al Qaeda emboldened bin Laden] into practice, nor had he pressed the issue of bin Laden. Though Rice and others were developing a plan to eliminate al Qaeda, no formal recommendations had ever been presented to the president. "I know there was a plan in the works. . . . I don't know how mature the plan was," Bush recalled. . . .He 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 [before that date], but I knew he was a menace, and I knew he was a problem." (thanks to reader t)..." Talkingpointsmemo: Clarke
on CNN: Center
for American Progress: Center
for American Progress: Also see: Misleader.org |
| 27 | McClellan
for Bush
"...It's important to keep in context we're in the heat of a presidential campaign and all of a sudden he comes out with a book that he is seeking to promote ... and he is making charges that simply did not happen..." |
Al
Kamen (Washington Post): "...the Bush folks are acting as if they just heard last weekend that he had a book coming out. Which is just about true, although the book was physically in the White House months ago. Clarke, bound by the usual pre-publication review agreement, shipped it to the National Security Council on Nov. 4 for a review that lasted at least a couple of months, the White House said. Not once, apparently, did the NSC reviewers mention to the communications or political people that they had an election bomb on their hands. Buzz is that the NSC types apparently felt it would have been inappropriate to do so. What? Once again the Bush White House stubbornly refuses to use the levers of power for political purposes? So maybe there is some legal, moral or ethical constraint. This is Washington, for crying out loud. Had the political people gotten their hands on the book, they might have rushed the vetting so the book could have come out in December. (This in turn would have strengthened the argument that Clarke put it out now only for sales and political purposes.) Or they could have tried an extended rope-a-dope to delay publication until after the election..." Clarke
on CNN: Jennifer
Loven (AP) via Talkingpointsmemo: Jeanne
D'Arc via Road
to Surfdom: |
| 28 | Roehrkasse/Ridge
for Bush
"...In an interview Sunday night, Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the department, denied that Ridge was against the creation of the [Homeland Security] department..." |
Billmon: "...The problem, of course, is that [it]...is an audacious lie. Creation of the DHS was originally opposed both by Ridge and by the Bush adminstration -- as even a cursory Googling reveals. And, as you may recall, even after the Bushies nominally agreed to the idea, they threatened to veto legislation creating the department unless it stripped employees of their collective bargaining rights and civil service protections. (The second part of Roehrkasse's statement very well may also be a lie, but I'm too busy this morning to run it down.)..." Also see Talkingpointsmemo |
| 29 | McClellan for
Bush
"...The White
House, seeking to cool criticism from a former top anti-terror
adviser, said Tuesday that Richard Clarke's resignation letter
praised President Bush's "courage, determination, calm and
leadership" on Sept. 11, 2001."It has been an enormous
privilege to serve you these last 24 months," said the Jan.
20, 2003, letter from Clarke to Bush. "I will always
remember the courage, determination, calm, and leadership you
demonstrated on September 11th."... |
Jennifer
Loven (AP) via Talkingpointsmemo: "...But the letter contains no praise of Bush's anti-terror actions before or after the attacks — only on the day of..." Ryan
Lizza (TNR): |
| 30 | McClellan
for Bush
"...his assertion that there was something we could have done to prevent the September 11th attacks from happening is deeply irresponsible, it's offensive, and it's flat-out false..." |
Clarke
on Salon.com: "...I didn't say it. I said we'll never know, and I've said that over and over again. We will never know. There were certainly some steps that, had they been taken, would have perhaps resulted in the arrest of two of the hijackers. But we'll never know whether that would have led to the arrests of the others..." CBS
News: |
| 31 | McClellan
for Bush
"...There's no record of the President
being in the Situation Room on that day that it was alleged to
have happened, on the day of September the 12th... "...We can not find evidence that this [Situation Room] conversation [about links between Al Qaeda and Iraq] between Mr. Clarke and the President [on September 12, 2001] ever occurred..." |
Brad
Delong: "...White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer -- text and audio. "I'm not here to dispute that there wasn't a conversation and the fact that President Bush didn't ask questions about Iraq, I'm sure he did and I'm glad he did..." HADLEY: But the point I think we're missing in this is of course the President wanted to know [on September 12] if there was any evidence linking Iraq to 9/11..." Daily
Kos: |
| 32 | Wilkinson for
Bush
"...Dick Clarke, on another interview he gave to PBS "Frontline," said that, right after 9/11, all his options were open. He wasn't sure who did it. So, again, we see Mr. Clarke on three sides of a two-sided issue...." |
Talkingpointsmemo: "...Next from Wilkinson, misstate Clarke's statements and then accuse him of Iraq double-talk by again mischaracterizing another statement... Here's the Frontline passage Wilkinson is referring to... Question: Because one of the things that surprises a lot of the public, I think, is that immediately after Sept. 11, the administration knew exactly who had done it. Was that why? Clarke: No. On the day of Sept. 11, then the day or two following, we had a very open mind. CIA and FBI were asked, "See if it's Hezbollah. See if it's Hamas. Don't assume it's Al Qaeda. Don't just assume it's Al Qaeda." Frankly, there was absolutely not a shred of evidence that it was anybody else. The evidence that it was Al Qaeda began just to be massive within days after the attack. Question: Somebody's quoted as saying that they walked into your office and almost immediately afterwards, the first words out of your mouth was "Al Qaeda." Clarke: Well, I assumed it was Al Qaeda. No one else had the intention of doing that. No one else that I knew of had the capability of doing that. So yes, as soon as it happened, I assumed it was Al Qaeda..." |
| 33 | McClellan
for Bush
"...Dr. Rice asked for the ideas that Dick Clarke had in mind, or the previous policies of the previous administration. But we wanted to go beyond that. We didn't feel it was sufficient to simply roll back al Qaeda; we pursued a policy to eliminate al Qaeda...." |
Ryan
Lizza (TNR): "...This is an odd statement since Clarke for several years had been calling unambiguously for the complete destruction of bin Laden's organization. In fact, it was Clarke himself who was tasked with writing the new administration plan to deal with Al Qaeda. He pulled out his plan from the Clinton years, and presented it at a deputies meeting. It was the Bushies who flinched at the plan's aggressiveness. Several deputies thought the goal to "eliminate al Qaeda" went too far. They wanted the document to say "significantly erode al Qaeda." Clarke won but it hardly mattered. September 11 happened before Bush ever signed the plan..." Spencer
Ackerman (TNR): Also see Brad Delong |
| 34 | Wolfowitz
for Bush
"...According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said, "Who cares about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?" The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam. In the meeting, says Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie Mylroie, a controversial academic who had written a book advancing an elaborate conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Clarke says he tried to refute Wolfowitz. "We've investigated that five ways to Friday, and nobody [in the government] believes that," Clarke recalls saying. "It was Al Qaeda. It wasn't Saddam." A spokesman for Wolfowitz described Clarke's account as a "fabrication." Wolfowitz always regarded Al Qaeda as "a major threat," said this official...." |
Matthew
Yglesias (TAPPED): "...Now I wasn't there, so I don't know what happened, but these defenses of Wolfowitz don't seem very plausible to me. Josh Marshall did a little Nexis work and found precisely zero instances of Wolfowitz stating that al-Qaeda was an important threat. He did find time to contribute to a 1997 book called The Future of Iraq. According to the Foreign Affairs review: Nine authors handle the usual subjects, including the impact of sanctions, oil and general economic prospects, and Iraq's regional policies in the 1990s, plus they give descriptions of Iraqi political culture with an eye to what the future might hold. As for U.S. policy recommendations, Paul Wolfowitz prefers getting rid of the Iraqi regime using not just military pressure but "a political strategy that makes clear not only our opposition to Saddam, but also our willingness to support an alternative." Back in 1994 he penned a 5,800 word essay for Foreign Affairs on the Clinton foreign policy where, like every other Bush official I can find, he does not so much as mention terrorism. Here's his description of threats to American security: The dangers do not come from Somalia or Haiti, but rather, in the near to medium term, they come from what National Security Adviser Anthony Lake has called "backlash states" like Iran and Iraq, particularly if those states acquire nuclear weapons. In the longer term, much greater threats could emerge if the United States fails to maintain the broad peace and stability that has been achieved in the great power centers of Europe and Asia. This is consistent with everything we know about the rest of the Bush national security team: Their priorities were on removing Saddam Hussein from power, constructing a national missile defense system, and managing great power relations with Russia and China -- terrorism simply wasn't on the agenda. It seems particularly noteworthy to me that Wolfowitz's spokesman offered this non-denial denial of the charge that he was hyping Laurie Mylroie's theory that Saddam was behind anti-American terrorism. Here's what Peter Bergen had to say on the subject in his Mylroie profile for The Washington Monthly: And it appears that Paul Wolfowitz himself was instrumental in the genesis of Study of Revenge: His then-wife is credited with having "fundamentally shaped the book," while of Wolfowitz, she says: "At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult." . . . According to Bob Woodward's book Bush at War, immediately after 9/11 Wolfowitz told the cabinet: "There was a 10 to 50 per cent chance Saddam was involved." A few days later, President Bush told his top aides: "I believe that Iraq was involved, but I'm not going to strike them now." However, the most comprehensive criminal investigation in history--involving chasing down 500,000 leads and interviewing 175,000 people--has turned up no evidence of Iraq's involvement, while the occupation of Iraq by a substantial American army has also uncovered no such link. . . . Wolfowitz gushingly blurbed Study of Revenge: "[Her] provocative and disturbing book argues that…Ramzi Yousef, was in fact an agent of Iraqi intelligence. If so, what would that tell us about the extent of Saddam Hussein's ambitions? How would it change our view of Iraq's continuing efforts to retain weapons of mass destruction and to acquire new ones? How would it affect our judgments about the collapse of U.S. policy toward Iraq and the need for a fundamentally new policy?" Digby has more on Mylroie and her connections to Bush administration figures. The administration's defenders are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, they want to rebut assertions that they ignored al-Qaeda in favor of Iraq. On the other hand, the reason they ignored al-Qaeda in favor of Iraq is that they genuinely believed Iraq was a more pressing threat and they want to defend that assessment, too. But it's either one or the other..." Also see: Digby, Digby, Kevin Drum (Washington Monthly) |
| 35 | Frist
for Bush
"...Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath..." |
Pandagon: "...Of course, he apparently told reporters a different story: Frist disclosed the effort to declassify Clarke's testimony in remarks on the Senate floor, then talked with reporter. He said he personally didn't know whether there were any discrepancies between Clarke's two appearances. Yes, the man accusing someone else of telling two different stories told two different stories in the process. Amazing." |
| 36 | Frist
for Bush
"...I am troubled that someone would sell a book, trading on their service as a government insider with access to our nation's most valuable intelligence, in order to profit from the suffering that this nation endured on Sept. 11, 2001..." |
Joe
Conason (Salon.com): "...Frist displayed no such qualms when he published his own little tome on bioterrorism in March 2002, titled "When Every Moment Counts: What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism From the Senate's Only Doctor." During the anthrax mail attacks that followed Sept. 11, he showed up almost daily on television news programs to discuss the threat. That allowed him to reap further publicity and royalties from public fears by tapping out the "essential manual" that promised to save the lives of readers and their families in the event of a bioterror assault (for only $29.90 retail). Perhaps the government ought to inform and protect citizens against bioterror, but Frist immediately recognized a promising privatization opportunity. Republicans like Frist certainly aren't complaining about Karen Hughes, the once and future Bush advisor and ghostwriter whose new book, "Ten Minutes from Normal," will debut tonight on ABC's "20/20."... Were Frist truly concerned about profiteering from government service and wartime agony, he might have raised his smooth voice about those former Bush administration officials now seeking their fortunes in Iraq. The best-known is Joe Allbaugh, who managed the Bush-Cheney campaign four years ago, served as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a few years, and then abruptly quit to form a new company in March 2003, just as our troops were speeding toward Baghdad. New Bridges, his Houston-based firm, is blatantly oriented toward exploiting Allbaugh's crony connections to help "companies engaging the U.S. Government process to develop post war opportunities." In plain English, that means obtaining a chunk of those billions in federal contracts, for a nice fat fee..." Also see Counterspin |
| 37 | Wolfowitz
for Bush
"...By the way, I know of at least one other instance of Mr. Clark's creative memory. Shortly after September 11th, as part of his assertion that he had vigorously pursued the possibility of Iraqi involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he wrote in a memo that, and I am quoting here, "When the bombing happened, he focused on Iraq as the possible culprit because of Iraqi involvement in the attempted assassination of President Bush in Kuwait the same month," unquote. In fact, the attempted assassination of President Bush happened two months later. It just seems to be another instance where Mr. Clarke's memory is playing tricks..." |
Spencer
Ackerman (TNR): "...The second point he made is demonstrably untrue. Wolfowitz attempted to cast doubt on Clarke's credibility by saying that Clarke, in the aftermath of the 1993 Trade Center bombing, himself believed the theory that Iraq was responsible, because Iraq had tried to assassinate the first President Bush. Well, Wolfowitz smugly noted, the assassination attempt occurred a few months after the bombing. So, he implied--and the implication hung in the air--Clarke can't even get his story straight. Only that's not even close to what Clarke wrote. Clarke never bought the theory of Iraqi responsibility for the 1993 bombing, nor does he ever suggest that he does. The closest that he comes is in this sentence, on page 96: "More than anyone, I wanted the World Trade Center attack to be an Iraqi operation so we could justify reopening the war with Iraq--but there was no good evidence leading to Baghdad's culpability." And he never, ever writes that he contemporaneously connected the World Trade Center bombing with Saddam due to the attempted hit on Bush 41. He writes clearly that bombing took place in February 1993 ("Within two weeks of the bombing ... Muhammad Salahme was arrested while seeking his deposit at the Ryder office on March 4," p.78) and that "one Sunday in April" [p.80, my emphasis] Clarke took note of a report of the attempted assassination. He never for a moment suggests that the latter event influenced his thinking on the former..." |
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
YOU MEAN BEING TOTAL ASSHOLES COULD BACKFIRE? *GASP!*
Newsview: Cross Bush, Face Payback
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - President Bush is playing supercharged hardball in going after his own former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke. It's a risky strategy that shows the single-mindedness of Bush and his re-election team in trying to deflect politically damaging criticism.
Loyalty is a hallmark of Bush's administration, with the president and his top lieutenants quick to turn on those who stray from the fold.
A week after a broadside that questioned Democratic rival John Kerry 's commitment to U.S. troops and fitness to be president — standard operating procedure for the general election campaign — Bush's re-election machine unleashed a shock and awe campaign designed to discredit Clarke.
Bush's leadership after the Sept. 11 attacks is the guiding theme of his re-election campaign, intended to suggest the nation is safer with him as president. Clarke's claim that Bush ignored the threat from Osama bin Laden and waged a pointless war against Iraq 's Saddam Hussein directly challenges that argument.
In his book "Against All Enemies," Clarke predicted retribution from a White House "adept at revenge."
But Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, are essentially following the same game plan that the late Lee Atwater — an early political mentor of Rove's — used to get the first President Bush elected in 1988: define and undercut an opponent early with a fusillade of negative attacks.
"This team is tough. You cross them and they go after you and raise questions about you and your credibility rather than what you have to say," said Thomas Mann, a scholar with the Brookings Institution.
Others who have fallen out of favor over Iraq include former economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki. All voiced concerns about either the expense or number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. All were treated dismissively by the White House. All are gone, but their estimates proved accurate.
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV drew the administration's wrath by suggesting Bush exaggerated Saddam's nuclear capabilities. A federal grand jury is investigating whether a White House official illegally disclosed that Wilson's wife was a CIA officer to get back at him.
On the domestic front, Paul O'Neill was fired as Treasury secretary in December 2002 after publicly questioning the need for additional Bush tax cuts — another core campaign issue for Bush.
Administration officials now are waging a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Richard Foster, a Medicare accountant who publicly said he was forbidden by his superiors from sharing with Congress a higher — and more accurate — cost estimate for the administration's Medicare program.
John DiIulio quit as director of Bush's office of faith-based initiatives in 2002, telling Esquire magazine that "Mayberry Machiavellis" led by Rove were basing policy only on re-election concerns. He later apologized for making what he said were rude remarks.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., stood on the Senate floor last week to urge Bush to stop the "character attacks" on Clarke, saying they recalled scorched-earth tactics that Bush and his allies used to defeat Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona in the GOP presidential primary in 2000, and Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia in the 2002 midterm elections.
The risk for Bush in aggressively challenging a former member of his own administration is that it could backfire. Clarke's book instantly became a best seller, and the White House counterattack is helping to give the allegations even wider circulation.
But administration defenders said it was important to rebut the charges quickly to ensure that they wouldn't linger unanswered.
"I think the American people do not believe that the president of the United States is pursuing a folly in the war on terror," and it is important to drive that home, said Bush National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice .
Not every White House attempt at damage-control works. Last summer, White House officials tried to pin the blame on CIA Director George Tenet for not waving Bush off his State of the Union claim that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons.
Political analysts rushed to proclaim Tenet a goner, but those obituaries proved premature. CIA memos suddenly surfaced showing that Rice and her top advisers had, in fact, been given just such a warning by the CIA — months before Bush's speech.
Tenet, a politically wily Clinton administration holdover, remains on the job.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — Tom Raum has covered Washington for The Associated Press since 1973, including five presidencies.Tuesday, March 30, 2004
BUSHCO AGREES (VERY CONDITIONALLY) TO LET CONDI TESTIFY
(Please note the passage in bold italics)
White House to Let Rice Testify in Public
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - In a reversal, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify in public under oath before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as long as the panel seeks no further public testimony from White House officials, the administration said Tuesday.
In addition, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have agreed to a single joint private session with all 10 commissioners, with one commission staff member present to take notes of the session, said Gonzales's letter.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan, on Air Force One with President Bush, said the commission had unanimously agreed to the administration's conditions for the testimony.
The decision was conditioned on the Bush administration receiving assurances in writing from the commission that such a step does not set a precedent and that the commission does not request "additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice," White House counsel Alberto Gonzales said in a letter to the panel.
Subject to the conditions, the president will agree "to the commission's request for Dr. Rice to testify publicly regarding matters within the commission's statutory mandate," Gonzales's letter stated.
"The president recognizes the truly unique and extraordinary circumstances underlying the commission's responsibility to prepare a detailed report on the facts," Gonzales added.
Congressional leaders, Gonzales noted, have already stated that this would not be a new precedent.
The decision to have Rice testify is made in the wake of the publication of former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's book, in which he charges that the Bush administration was slow to act against the threat of al-Qaida.
Rice offered a rebuttal on Sunday to criticism by Clarke that President Clinton "did something, and President Bush did nothing" before Sept. 11 and that both "deserve a failing grade."
Rice responded: "I don't know what a sense of urgency — any greater than the one that we had — would have caused us to do differently."
Clarke testified before the commission last week.Monday, March 29, 2004
WHAT THE WHITEHOUSE NEEDS IS GROUCHO MARX
A series of letters from the redoubtable Groucho.
When the Marx Brothers were about to make a movie called A Night in Casablanca, there were threats of legal action from Warner Bros., who, five years before, had made a picture called Casablanca starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Whereupon Groucho, speaking for his brothers and himself, dispatched the following letters:
Dear Warner Brothers:
Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document waming us not to use the name Casablanca.
It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-greatgrandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.
I just don't understand your attitude. Even if you plan on rereleasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don't know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.
You claim you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without your permission. What about "Warner Brothers"? Do you own that, too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor's eye, and even before us there had beer. other brothers-the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Da: Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and "Brother, Can You Spare -. Dime?" (This was originally "Brothers, Can You Spare a Dime?" but this was spreading a dime pretty thin, so they threw out one brother: gave all the money to the other one and whittled it down to "Brother - Can You Spare a Dime?")
Now, Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well, it's not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks - there was Jack of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day.
As for you, Harry, you probably sign your checks, sure in the belief that you are the first Harry of all time and that all other Harrys are impostors. I can think of two Harrys that preceded you. There was Light-house Harry of Revolutionary fame and a Harry Appelbaum who lived on the corner of Ninety-third Street and Lexington Avenue. Unfortunately, Appelbaum wasn't too well known. The last I heard of him, he was selling neckties at Weber and Heilbroner.
Now about the Burbank studio. I believe this is what you brothers call your place. Old Man Burbank is gone. Perhaps you remember him. He was a great man in a garden. His wife often said Luther had ten green thumbs. What a witty woman she must have been! Burbank was the wizard who crossed all those fruits and vegetables until he had had the poor plants in such a confused and jittery condition that they could never decide whether to enter the dining room on the meat platter or the dessert dish.
This is pure conjecture, of course, but who knows-perhaps Burbank's survivors aren't too happy with the fact that a plant that grinds out pictures on a quota settled in their town, appropriated Burbank's name, and uses it as a front for their films. It is even possible that the Burbank family is prouder of the potato produced by the old man than they are of the fact that from your studio emerged Casablanca or even Gold Diggers Of 1931.
This all seems to add up to a pretty bitter tirade, but I assure you it's not meant to. I love Warners. Some of my best friends are Warner Brothers. It is even possible that I am doing you an injustice and that you, yourselves, know nothing at all about this dog-in-the-Wanger attitude. It wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that the heads of your legal department are unaware of this absurd dispute, for I am acquainted with many of them and they are fine fellows with curly black hair, doublebreasted suits, and a love of their fellow man that out-Saroyans Saroyan.
I have a hunch that this attempt to prevent us from using the title is the brainchild of some ferret-faced shyster, serving a brief apprenticeship in your legal department. I know the type well - hot out of law school, hungry for success, and too ambitious to follow the natural laws of promotion. This bar sinister probably needled your attorneys, most of whom are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits, etcetera, into attempting to enjoin us. Well, he won't get away with it! We'll fight him to the highest court! No pasty-faced legal adventurer is going to cause bad blood between the Warners and the Marxes. We are all brothers under the skin and we'll remain friends till the last reel of A Night in Casablanca goes tumbling over the spool.
Sincerely,
Groucho Marx
For some curious reason, this letter seemed to puzzle the Warner Bros. law department. They wrote-in all seriousness-and asked if they could give them some idea what their story was about. They felt something might be worked out. So Groucho replied:
Dear Warners:
There isn't much I can tell you about the story. In it I play a Doctor of Divinity who ministers to the natives and, as a sideline, hawks can openers and pea jackets to the savages along the Gold Coast of Africa.
When I first meet Chico, he is working in a saloon, selling sponges to barflies who are unable to carry their liquor. Harpo is an Arabian caddie who lives in a small Grecian urn on the outskirts of the city.
As the picture opens, Porridge, a mealymouthed native girl, is sharpening some arrows for the hunt. Paul Hangover, our hero, is constantly lighting two cigarettes simultaneously. He apparently is unaware of cigarette shortage.
There are many scenes of splendor and fierce antagonisms, and Color, an Abyssinian messenger boy, runs Riot. Riot, in case you have never been there, is a small nightclub on the edge of town.
There's a lot more I could tell you, but I don't want to spoil it for you. All this has been okayed by the Hays Office, Good Housekeeping, and the survivors of the Haymarket Riots; and if the times are ripe, this picture can be the opening gun in a new worldwide disaster.
Cordially,
Groucho Marx
Instead of mollifying them, this note seemed to puzzle the attorneys even more. They wrote back and said they still didn't understand the story line and they would appreciate it if Mr. Marx would explain the plot in more detail. So Groucho obliged with the following:
Dear Brothers:
Since I last wrote you, I regret to say there have been some changes in the plot of our new picture, A Night in Casablanca. In the new version I play Bordello, the sweetheart of Humphrey Bogart. Harpo and Chico are itinerant rug peddlers who are weary of laying rugs and enter a monastery just for a lark. This is a good joke on them, as there hasn't been a lark in the place for fifteen years.
Across from this monastery, hard by a jetty, is a waterfront hotel, chock-full of apple-cheeked damsels, most of whom have been barred by the Hays Office for soliciting. In the fifth reel, Gladstone makes a speech that sets the House of Commons in an uproar and the King promptly asks for his resignation. Harpo marries a hotel detective. Chico operates an ostrich farm. Humphrey Bogart's girl, Bordello, spends her last years in a Bacall house.
This, as you can see, is a very skimpy outline. The only thing that can save us from extinction is a continuation of the film shortage.
Fondly, Groucho Marx
After that, the Marxes heard no more from the Warner Bros.' legal departmentMonday, March 29, 2004
THE STATEMENT IS NOW INOPERATIVE
Dude, this shit just gets more and more absurd, like some surreal Marx Brothers comedy, "ah, you no canna fool me - there ain't no Sanity Clause!" (Duck Soup):
"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this."
Richard Clarke
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/...ain607356.shtml
March 20, 2004
As for the alleged pressure from Mr. Bush to find an Iraq-9/11 link, Hadley says, "We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred." When told by Stahl that 60 Minutes has two sources who tell us independently of Clarke that the encounter happened, including "an actual witness," Hadley responded, "Look, I stand on what I said."
Deputy NSC Director Steven Hadley
March 20, 2004
Why do I get the feeling that particular stand will be rendered "inoperative" before long?
Billmon
March 20, 2004
Until today, the Bush administration denied a meeting had taken place between the president and Clarke, during which Bush allegedly instructed Clarke to investigate Saddam Hussein and Iraq after Sept. 11. The White House today reversed that comment, and staff members now tell reporters, "We are not denying such a meeting took place. It probably did."
CBS News
March 26, 2004Monday, March 29, 2004
DR. LAURA EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU
Okay, this is an oldie, but it's still a goodie:
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Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is, my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev.20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Signed,
An adoring fan
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Dr. Laura bares it all for you:
Monday, March 29, 2004
NEW RULES
From Bill Maher, who doesn't always suck:
"New Rule: Politics is about compromises, really stupid compromises. That's how we got such laws as: blacks are three-fifths of a person; slaves are property unless they make it to Ohio; interning the Japanese but not the Germans; slaughtering the Indians but letting the ones who survive run the Keno parlors.
Porn, but not hardcore porn. Booze, and then no booze, and then booze again. But no pot. Except medical marijuana, which is legal to possess, but illegal to obtain! And my favorite: you can't have stem cells except the ones we already have.
Now, in this spirit, I would like to offer a few compromise suggestions for the knotty issue we face today: same sex marriage. Why not this? It's okay to be gay if you're already gay, but no new gays. We'll grandfather you in if you're already an organ grinder, but that's it.
Or, how about, let gays marry, but come out against gay mortgages? Or maybe the answer to this is as plain as the nose in my lap.
With both sides so set, one being all for gay marriage and the other completely against it, how about we just let the lesbians marry? I mean, come on. Marriage is a chick thing anyway.
Monogamy and marriage were invented by women and the church as a way to address female insecurity and to stamp out oral sex as we know it. And don't give me some line about how two women can't reproduce. As long as David Crosby is alive and can swallow a Viagra, that's not a problem.
Plus, let's face it, when people talk about homosexuality being not natural and an abomination, they're not talking about the women. No, they're talking about the men. Nobody seems to find anything so abominable about Britney Spears tonguing Madonna or Gina Gershon in bed with Jennifer Tilly, or anything else on the third shelf of my library.
No, in America, when a man puts something in another man, it had better be a bullet.
So, isn't it time both sides compromised a little on this issue? The statistics tell us that anywhere from two to ten percent of people in America are gay. Although it seems higher at my bathhouse.
So, look, conservatives. I know you're sincere. I know you think you're doing God's work. But in 100 years, people traveling by jet-pack to Mars are not going to be tripping on gay marriage. The whole issue is just going to be a joke. On you.
So my advice is simple. They're here. They're queer. Get bored with it!"Monday, March 29, 2004
CONDOSLEEZZA ON EVERY TV CHANNEL: WON'T TESTIFY IN PUBLIC UNDER OATH
Rice Asserts She Can't Testify in Public
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
CRAWFORD, Texas - National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is waging a vigorous defense of her actions in every public forum except one: the Sept. 11 commission where she would be questioned about the government's failure to prevent the terrorist attacks.
Rice declared Sunday night that "nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify" to the commission. But, she added, "there is an important principle involved here: It is a long-standing principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress." She has appeared before panel members in closed session.
Interviewed on CBS' "60 Minutes," Rice also said she'd like to meet with the families of the Sept. 11 victims.
"I'd love to meet with (Rice) as long as it's under oath and it's live in front of television cameras," responded Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband Ronald died in New York's World Trade Center.
Rice should "come out and explain what the national security adviser knew, didn't know, what kind of information was passed to the president and didn't" get passed, said Lorie Van Auken, widow of another World Trade Center victim.
Commission member John Lehman, a Republican, called the refusal to testify "a political blunder of the first order."
The controversy stemming from the publication of former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's book is in its second week, complicating President Bush (news - web sites)'s re-election campaign. Bush spent a long weekend on his Texas ranch, giving no ground, and several aides said he will not change his mind on letting Rice testify.
Rice acknowledged Sunday that Bush had asked Clarke at a meeting on the day after Sept. 11 to find out if Iraq had been involved in the terror attacks.
The president, she said, was not trying to bully Clarke or force him to give a particular answer.
"This was a country with which we'd been to war a couple of times, it was firing at our airplanes in the no-fly zone. It made perfectly good sense to ask about Iraq," Rice said on CBS.
Rice offered a rebuttal to criticism by Clarke on NBC's "Meet the Press" that President Clinton "did something, and President Bush did nothing" before Sept. 11 and that both "deserve a failing grade."
Rice responded: "I don't know what a sense of urgency — any greater than the one that we had — would have caused us to do differently."
Appearing on ABC, Democratic commissioner Jamie Gorelick said better coordination inside the government might have averted "disconnects."
"The CIA had not told the FBI that two bad actors it knew about were coming to this country," she said.
"If you brought people together and say, 'What do you have today? Have you talked to so-and-so?' — perhaps those connections would have been made," Gorelick added.
Rice said "the war on terrorism is well served by the victory in Iraq."
Told there have been more terrorist attacks since Sept. 11 than before it, she replied: "I think that's the wrong way to look at it."
While the terrorists will sometimes succeed, she said, in the end, "they are going to be defeated."
Clarke said his Jan. 25, 2001, memo urging steps against the al-Qaida terrorist network and the Bush administration's national security directive eight months later are "basically the same thing."
"They wasted months when we could have had some action," said Clarke, urging that his Jan. 25 memo and the Sept. 4 national security directive be declassified for comparison purposes.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "My bias will be to provide this information in an unclassified manner not only to the commission, but to the American people. ... We're not trying to hide anything."
Powell criticized Clarke, saying, "I think Dr. Rice is getting a bit of a bum rap. It's been set up as, I told her everything we needed to do and she ignored it all. That's not accurate. Condi was on this from the very beginning. She took action."
Questioned about his motives for attacking the administration, Clarke said he will make substantial donations from the profits of this book to the families of Sept. 11 victims. Making clear he won't donate everything, he said he has to take into account the fact that his enemies are saying "Dick Clarke will never make another dime in this city."
Clarke said he voted for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000, but "I'm not going to endorse John Kerry," Bush's presumptive opponent in November. "That's what the White House wants me to do. They want to say I'm part of the Kerry campaign."
Sunday, March 28, 2004
L...I...A...R...
"George W. Bush is a liar. He has lied large and small. He has lied directly and by omission. He has misstated facts, knowingly or not. He has misled. He has broken promises, been unfaithful to political vows. Through his campaign for the presidency and his first years in the White House, he has mugged the truth—not merely in honest error, but deliberately, consistently, and repeatedly to advance his career and his agenda. Lying greased his path toward the White House; it has been one of the essential tools of his presidency. To call the 43rd president of the United States a prevaricator is not an exercise of opinion, not an inflammatory talk-radio device. This insult is supported by an all too extensive record of self-serving falsifications. So constant is his fibbing that a history of his lies offers a close approximation of the history of his presidential tenure."
- David CornSunday, March 28, 2004
WHITLEBLOWER CALLS BUSHIT ON CONDOSLEEZZA
The house of cards continues to crumble. At the 9/11 hearings, former translator Sibel Edmonds (who was in hot water as a whistleblower as early as 2002), has been telling the panel all about the intelligence goodies that crossed her desk which totally refute the garbage coming out of the White House, and how she was told to purposely mismanage her job and the information it produced.
Edmonds first made headlines in 2002 when she blew the whistle on the FBI's translation department, which was suddenly thrown into the spotlight as investigators clamored for original terrorist-related information, often in Arabic. Edmonds made several reports of serious misconduct, security lapses and gross incompetence in the FBI translations unit, including supervisors who told translators to work slowly during the crucial post-9/11 period to ensure the agency would get more funds for its next annual budget. As a result of her reports, Edmonds says she was harassed at the FBI. She was fired in March 2002.
Litigation followed, and in October 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss the Edmonds case, taking the extraordinary step of invoking the rarely used state secrets privilege in order "to protect the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States."
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From Salon magazine:
A former FBI wiretap translator with top-secret security clearance, who has been called "very credible" by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has told Salon(.com) she recently testified to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that the FBI had detailed information prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted.
Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available." Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie."
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"President Bush said they had no specific information about Sept. 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're facing."
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From CBS's "60 Minutes", July 13 2003:
Because she is fluent in Turkish and other Middle Eastern languages, Edmonds, a Turkish-American, was hired by the FBI soon after Sept. 11 and given top-secret security clearance to translate some of the reams of documents seized by FBI agents who, for the past year, have been rounding up suspected terrorists across the United States and abroad.
Edmonds says that to her amazement, from the day she started the job, she was told repeatedly by one of her supervisors that there was no urgency - that she should take longer to translate documents so that the department would appear overworked and understaffed. That way, it would receive a larger budget for the next year.
“We were told by our supervisors that this was the great opportunity for asking for increased budget and asking for more translators,” says Edmonds. “And in order to do that, don't do the work and let the documents pile up so we can show it and say that we need more translators and expand the department.”
Edmonds says that the supervisor, in an effort to slow her down, went so far as to erase completed translations from her FBI computer after she'd left work for the day.
“The next day I would come to work, turn on my computer and the work would be gone. The translation would be gone,” she says. “Then I had to start all over again and retranslate the same document. And I went to my supervisor and he said, ‘Consider it a lesson and don't talk about it to anybody else and don't mention it.’”
The lesson was don’t work, and don’t do the translations.
Edmonds put her concerns about the FBI's language department in writing to her immediate superiors and to a top official at the FBI. For months, she said she received no response. Then, she turned for help to the Justice Department's Inspector General and to Sen. Charles Grassley, whose committee, the Judiciary Committee, has direct oversight of the FBI.
“She's credible,” says Sen. Grassley. “And the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.”
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The transcript of the "60 Minutes" interview with Ms. Edmonds has disappeared from the government's DOJ website. However, Google's cached copy can still be viewed.