On the morning of 9/11, did the former veep violate the Constitution?

Source: motherjones.com

Where to begin… First of all, James is treating Cheney’s “own account” as proof he arrived at the PEOC “shortly before 10:00 a.m.” Which account is he referring to? It couldn’t be this recent one from the same speech James is referencing. That account says, “when radar caught sight of an airliner heading toward the White House at 500 miles an hour. That was Flight 77” [...] “With the plane still inbound, Secret Service agents came into my office and said we had to leave, now. A few moments later I found myself in a fortified White House command post somewhere down below.”

Flight 93 never came within 50, 30, or 10 miles of Washington D.C. so the plane the “young man” was referring to according to Mineta was, in fact, Flight 77.

Anyway… as James points out, shoot-down orders weren’t issued by Cheney until 10:18. If Cheney was in the bunker before the Pentagon was hit, and the conversation between the “young man” and Cheney that Mineta referenced took place at 9:25, then what orders were they? Why did the “young man” question them by asking “do the orders still stand?” Why was that “young man” never named? Why was he never brought before the 9/11 Commission to testify? If the conversation that took place between the “young man” and Cheney took place at 9:25, and referenced already given orders, than those orders were given before 9:25.

What orders were they? - Jon

—By James Ridgeway
Sun May 24, 2009 9:43 PM PST

Say what you will about Dick Cheney, at least he’s consistent. While he was in office, the Vice President made a practice of exploiting the fear and loss wrought by the 9/11 attacks to advance his own political agenda—and he’s still doing it now. During his speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, according to Dana Milbank’s calculations in the Washington Post, “Cheney used the word ‘attack’ 19 times, ‘danger’ and ‘threat’ six times apiece, and 9/11 an impressive 27 times.”
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Source: 911truth.org

Hat tip to simuvac who caught this here (no, he wasn’t the source for Dr. Scott). - Jon

May 22, 2009
Peter Dale Scott
911Truth.org

Here is an excerpt from the text of what Cheney said at the American Enterprise Institute on May 21, 2009:

“For me, one of the defining experiences was the morning of 9/11 itself. As you might recall, I was in my office in that first hour, when radar caught sight of an airliner heading toward the White House at 500 miles an hour. That was Flight 77, the one that ended up hitting the Pentagon. With the plane still inbound, Secret Service agents came into my office and said we had to leave, now. A few moments later I found myself in a fortified White House command post somewhere down below.

There in the bunker came the reports and images that so many Americans remember from that day - word of the crash in Pennsylvania, the final phone calls from hijacked planes, the final horror for those who jumped to their death to escape burning alive. In the years since, I’ve heard occasional speculation that I’m a different man after 9/11. I wouldn’t say that. But I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.”

– http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics (Emphasis added)

The first radar sighting of a plane approaching Washington was at 9:21 AM. In other words Cheney has confirmed his first account (and ours) that he was taken from his office earlier than 9:36 AM (as claimed in the 9/11 Report, p. 39), and first arrived in the bunker much earlier than “shortly before 10:00; perhaps at 9:58″ (9/11 Report, p. 40, citing Cheney interview with Newsweek, November 19, 2001). There were of course no images to watch for some time from the crash in Pennsylvania, as opposed to the Pentagon.

What Cheney said yesterday adds nothing to his first account on September 16, 2001, but clearly discredits his second conflicting account for Newsweek two months later. (Cf. Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11, 197-98, 200-01).

Olbermann: Former vice president made delusional claims about national security

Source: msnbc.com

5/21/2009

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about Mr. Cheney’s speech. Neurotic. Paranoid. False to fact and false to reason. Forever self-rationalizing. His inner rage at his own impotence and failure dripping from every word and as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane, as any terrorist.

The former vice president has today humiliated himself beyond redemption.

The delusional claims he has made this day could be proved by documentation and first-hand testimony to be the literal truth, and still he himself would be wrong, because the America he sought to impose upon the world and upon its own citizens, the dark hateful place of Dick Cheney’s own soul, the place he to this hour defends and to this day prefers, is a repudiation of all that our ancestors, all that for which our brave troops of 200 years ago and two minutes ago, have sacrificed and fought.

I do have to congratulate you, Sir. No man living or dead could have passed the buck more often than you did in 35 minutes this morning. It’s not your fault we water-boarded people, you said. It isn’t torture, you said, even though it is based on 111 years of American military prosecutions. It was in the Constitution that you could do it, even if our laws told you, you could not. It was in

It produced invaluable information, you said, even though the first-hand witnesses, the interrogators of these beasts, said the information preceded the torture and ended when it began. It was authorized, you said, by careful legal opinion, even though the legal opinions were dictated by you and your cronies, and, oh by the way, the torture began before the legal opinions were even written. It was authorized, you said, and you imply even if it really wasn’t, it was done to “only detainees of the highest intelligence value.”

It was more necessary, you said, because of the revelation of another program by the real villains, the New York Times, even though that revelation was possible because the program was detailed on the front page of the website of a defense department sub-contractor. It was all the fault of your predecessors, you said, who tried to treat terror as a “law enforcement problem,” before you came to office and rode to the rescue… after you totally ignored terrorism for the first 20 percent of your first term and the worst attack on this nation in its history unfolded on your watch.

“9/11 caused everyone to take a serious second look at threats that had been gathering for awhile,” you said today, “and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated.” Gee, thanks for being motivated, by the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans, to go so far as to “take a serious second look.” And thank you, Sir, for admitting, obviously inadvertently, that you did not take a serious first look in the seven months and 23 days between your inauguration and 9/11.

For that attack, Sir, you are culpable, morally, ethically. At best you were guilty of malfeasance and eternally-lasting stupidity. At worst, Sir, in the deaths of 9/11, you are negligent. The circular logic, and the self-righteous sophistry, falls from a copy of Mr. Cheney’s speech like bugs from a book on a moldy shelf. He still believes in “dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.” He still assumes everyone we captured is guilty without charge or trial, but that to prosecute law-breaking by government officials is “to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors.”

And most sleazy of all, while calling the CIA torturers “honorable,” he insists the grunts at Abu Ghraib were “a few sadistic prison guards (who) abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency” even though — and maybe he doesn’t know we know this — even though there is documentary proof that those guards were acting on orders originating in the office of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

It is, in short, madness.Madness, Sir. Mr. Cheney, your speech was almost entirely about you. There are only five or six other people even mentioned, and only two quoted at any length. And why would you have quoted, as you did, the man who said this. “I know that this program saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.”

Source: hcgroups.wordpress.com

Kevin Fenton
5/21/2009

A document recently discovered in the National Archives shows that, in a memo to the 9/11 Commission’s chairman and vice-chairman on false statements made by NORAD and FAA officials about the failure of US air defenses, the commission’s Executive Director Philip Zelikow failed to mention the possibility of a criminal referral. This supports allegations that Zelikow “buried” the option of a criminal referral by the commission to the Justice Department for a perjury investigation. The document was found at the National Archives by History Commons contributor paxvector and posted to the History Commons site at Scribd.

Initially, the FAA and NORAD claimed that the FAA had notified NORAD of the third hijacked flight 13 minutes before it hit the Pentagon and that it had also notified NORAD of the fourth plane, which NORAD then allegedly tracked until it crashed in Pennsylvania. After working for a year and analyzing documents and audio recordings, the commission formed the opinion that the FAA had given NORAD much less notice and that the fourth plane had never been tracked. The staff also thought that the FAA and NORAD officials who had made the false statements must have known they were false when they made them, and wanted the issue to be referred to the proper authorities for investigation.
Read the rest of this entry »

I can guarantee that Osama Bin Laden hasn’t used 9/11 as much as Dick Cheney has. - Jon

Source: rawstory.com

Published: May 21, 2009

Former Vice President Dick Cheney continued his unprecedented attack on a young presidential administration Wednesday.

Even though Cheney’s predecessor, former Vice President Al Gore, waited a few years before hitting the Bush Administration, the media made sure to remind viewers that such instances were rare, and many hinted that he was wrong to do so, despite waiting. Meanwhile, Cheney, whose popularity ranks lower than most politicians past and present and who may conceivably face future charges for his role in countless alleged illegal acts and decisions, continues to garner tons of attention from the press.

Cheney’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute entitled “Keeping America Safe” - which began after President Obama’s speech ended though it was scheduled before - is garnering live coverage on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel.

At Washington Independent, David Weigel reports that the speech will refer to 9/11 25 times. The former administration faced a lot of criticism from the left for pulling the “9/11 card” out anytime it found itself in a jam.

Weigel writes, “Cheney talks about the run-up to 9/11, the events of 9/11, where he was on 9/11 (’I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities’), the aftermath of 9/11 (’We could count on almost universal support back then, because everyone understood the environment we were in’), the temporary patriotism of the media (’After 9/11, the Times had spent months publishing the pictures and the stories of everyone killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11?), the threat of a ‘9/11 with nuclear weapons,’ and how the administration prevented another 9/11. In all, he mentions ‘September 11? or ‘9/11? 25 times.”

Highlights from Cheney’s speech selected from transcript of prepared remarks:

In the years since, I’ve heard occasional speculation that I’m a different man after 9/11. I wouldn’t say that. But I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.
….
The key to any strategy is accurate intelligence, and skilled professionals to get that information in time to use it. In seeking to guard this nation against the threat of catastrophic violence, our Administration gave intelligence officers the tools and lawful authority they needed to gain vital information. We didn’t invent that authority. It is drawn from Article Two of the Constitution. And it was given specificity by the Congress after 9/11, in a Joint Resolution authorizing “all necessary and appropriate force” to protect the American people.

Our government prevented attacks and saved lives through the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which let us intercept calls and track contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and persons inside the United States. The program was top secret, and for good reason, until the editors of the New York Times got it and put it on the front page. After 9/11, the Times had spent months publishing the pictures and the stories of everyone killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11. Now here was that same newspaper publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaeda. It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn’t serve the interests of our country, or the safety of our people.

In the years after 9/11, our government also understood that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists. And in a few cases, that information could be gained only through tough interrogations.

In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.

Our successors in office have their own views on all of these matters.
By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public’s right to know. We’re informed, as well, that there was much agonizing over this decision.

Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.

Over on the left wing of the president’s party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists. The kind of answers they’re after would be heard before a so-called “Truth Commission.” Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense, and political opponents as criminals. It’s hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors.

Apart from doing a serious injustice to intelligence operators and lawyers who deserve far better for their devoted service, the danger here is a loss of focus on national security, and what it requires. I would advise the administration to think very carefully about the course ahead. All the zeal that has been directed at interrogations is utterly misplaced. And staying on that path will only lead our government further away from its duty to protect the American people.
….
Maybe you’ve heard that when we captured KSM, he said he would talk as soon as he got to New York City and saw his lawyer. But like many critics of interrogations, he clearly misunderstood the business at hand. American personnel were not there to commence an elaborate legal proceeding, but to extract information from him before al-Qaeda could strike again and kill more of our people.

In public discussion of these matters, there has been a strange and sometimes willful attempt to conflate what happened at Abu Ghraib prison with the top secret program of enhanced interrogations. At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency. For the harm they did, to Iraqi prisoners and to America’s cause, they deserved and received Army justice. And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful, and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men.
….
I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about “values.” Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11. We know the difference in this country between justice and vengeance. Intelligence officers were not trying to get terrorists to confess to past killings; they were trying to prevent future killings. From the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans.

Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations. And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.

If you are in the 9/11 Truth Movement, you may have heard someone ask “if they pulled it off to go to war with Iraq, then why didn’t they get Iraqis on the planes?” Now you can tell them, because they didn’t need them to be Iraqis. All they had to do was torture people to get the connection that they wanted. It also didn’t hurt to have a media willing to parrot whatever the Administration wanted them to (read Fact #’s 12, and 27). - Jon

Detainee whose tortured tales were used as justification for Iraq war ‘committed suicide’ in Libyan prison

Source: rawstory.com

BY STEPHEN C. WEBSTER
Published: May 14, 2009

The chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says that the Bush Administration authorized torture of detainees before even rendering a legal opinion on the practice — and that they sought to torture detainees in an effort to produce intelligence tying Iraq to al Qaeda.

“What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida,” former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson wrote Wednesday evening. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is an internal 9/11 Commission e-mail from staffer Warren Bass calling a claim by White House press spokesman Scott McClellan that the administration was co-operating fully “flatly untrue.” Thank you to Kevin Fenton of www.historycommons.org for showing this to me. The source link is blurry. I have uploaded the downloaded/clear version for you to download.

Download
PDF

Jon Gold
5/7/2009

Today, Rawstory reported on New York Times columnist Frank Rich, and his belief that the Defense Department Inspector General’s office’s investigations over the years may have been cover-ups that were “carried out in response to “orders from above.” He said that any report “over the past five or six years during the war in Iraq” may be suspect, and that “there may be a much bigger story here.”

Really?

Maybe that’s why when the Washington Post reported on 8/2/2006 that “the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public” and that “the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation,” a report was released on 8/5/2006 by the Defense Department Inspector General’s office that said, NORAD’s mistakes were due to “inadequate forensic capabilities” and “poor record-keeping.” A ridiculous excuse within “the past five or six years during the war in Iraq.”

Maybe that’s why when the New York Times reported on 8/9/2005 that “more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress,” a report was released on 9/21/2006 by the Defense Department Inspector General’s office, and it was reported that, “a review of records from the unit, known as Able Danger, found no evidence it had identified ringleader Mohamed Atta or any other terrorist who participated in the 2001 attacks.” A report that former Rep. Curt Weldon said was created by a an Inspector General that “cherry-picked testimony from witnesses in an effort to minimize the historical importance of the Able Danger effort.” Also within “the past five or six years during the war in Iraq.”

Most people are comfortable with the idea that the Bush Administration and others lied about the Iraq War, wiretapping, torture, among many other things, but refuse to believe they would lie about 9/11. I think it’s time for the world to admit that the 9/11 attacks were covered-up, and there needs to be truth, justice and accountability. Otherwise, the “Post-9/11 World” will destroy us.

The former FBI translator and whistleblower suggests blackmail may be at the heart of Congressional refusal to bring accountability and oversight to its own members - such as both Hastert and Harman - in matters of espionage and national security

Source: bradblog.com

Exclusive to The BRAD BLOG…
Guest Editorial by Sibel Edmonds
5/4/2009

I have been known to quote long-dead men in my past writings. Whether eloquently expressed thoughts by our founding fathers, or those artfully expressed by ancient Greek thinkers, these quotes have always done a better job starting or ending my thoughts - that tend to be expressed in long winding sentences. For this piece I am going to break with tradition and start with an appropriate quote from a living current senator, John Kerry: “It’s a sad day when you have members of Congress who are literally criminals go undisciplined by their colleagues. No wonder people look at Washington and know this city is broken.”

The people do indeed look at Washington and know that this city is ‘badly’ broken, Senator Kerry. The public confidence in our Congress has been declining drastically. Recent poll results highlight how the American people’s trust in their Congress has hit rock bottom. A survey of progressive blogs easily confirms the rage rightfully directed at our Congress for abdicating its role of oversight and accountability. Activists scream about promised hearings that never took place - without explanation. They express outrage when investigations are dropped without any justification. And they genuinely wonder out loud why, especially after they helped secure a major victory for the Democrats. The same Democrats who had for years pointed fingers at their big bad Republican majority colleagues as the main impediment preventing them from fulfilling what was expected of them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jon Gold
4/22/2009

Has anyone else noticed that the media, and Congress is acting as though torture is the only crime committed by the Bush White House (with the possible exception of illegal wiretapping)?

Why has everyone forgotten the other crimes perpetrated by the Bush White House? Crimes like stealing the elections. Proveable crimes concerning the this country into war. Crimes like ” at a recent debate held at Chapman Univeristy in California. During the debate, he made the following argument:

“Three thousand of our fellow citizens had been killed in a deliberate attack by a foreign enemy,” he told a crowd at Chapman University. “That forced us in the government to have to consider measures to gain information using presidential constitutional provisions to protect the country from further attack.”

That doesn’t sound so bad does it? They were just trying to protect the people of America “from further attack.” In the eyes of America, and the world, with the use of spin media, this argument will make the Bush White House and America appear “less evil” than if they were to acknowledge the previously mentioned crimes. If they were to acknowledge the previously mentioned crimes, and tried to hold people accountable for them, then there would be a massive series of arrests in Washington D.C. Not only would Bush Administration officials be held accountable, but everyone that enabled them to commit their crimes would be as well. Making torture the sole crime of the Bush White House, in my opinion, will allow the “powers that be” in Washington D.C. to maintain the “status quo.” It will allow them to maintain the system that brought us to where we are today.

We must hold them accountable for EVERY crime they committed. If we don’t, then we deserve whatever happens to us in the future.