From yesterday, thanks to thinkprogress.org…

Fact #12 from my article, “The Facts Speak For Themselves…”

“In the days and months following the attacks, several people within the administration and elsewhere tried to tie Iraq to 9/11. General Wesley Clark said, “there were many people, inside and outside the government, who tried to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11.” According to George Tenet, shortly after 9/11, Richard Perle said, “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday, they bear responsibility.” Former CIA Director James Woolsey said, “[I]ntelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks-whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others-were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein,” he writes. “As yet, there is no evidence of explicit state sponsorship of the September 11 attacks. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Dick Cheney claimed the bogus Atta-Iraqi spy meeting had been, “pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.” Since that time, they have done so again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and even Hillary did it.”

“We went to war BECAUSE WE WERE ATTACKED, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens.” - George W. Bush

I guess we’re still waiting on that. - Jon

Reps. Waxman And Maloney Call For Hearings

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — FEBRUARY 10, 2005; 3:19 PM
CONTACT: Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Karen Lightfoot, 202-225-5051

WASHINGTON — February 10 — Today Rep. Waxman and Rep. Maloney ask for hearings on whether political considerations caused the Administration to delay release of findings by the 9/11 Commission about pre-attack warnings. The text of the letter follows:

The Honorable Tom Davis Chairman
Committee on Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Mr. Chairman:

We are writing to request that our Committee hold hearings to investigate two extremely serious questions raised by an article that appeared in this morning’s New York Times. The first question is whether the Administration misused the classification process to withhold, for political reasons, official 9/11 Commission staff findings detailing how federal aviation officials received multiple intelligence reports warning of airline hijackings and suicide attacks before September 11. The second question relates to the veracity of statements, briefings, and testimony by then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice regarding this issue.

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This is a new entry at historycommons.org. Condoleezza Rice doesn’t deserve “more favorable” treatment. She belongs in prison.

May-June 2004: Zelikow Has Portions of 9/11 Commission Report Rewritten to Be More Favorable to National Security Adviser Rice
9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow tells the staff team working on the Bush administration’s response to terrorist threats in the summer of 2001 that their drafts must be rewritten to cast National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in a better light. Rice’s testimony about the administration’s prioritizing of terrorism has been contradicted by former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, who said that al-Qaeda was not a high priority for the White House. The commission staffers think that Clarke is telling the truth, because, in the words of author Philip Shenon, Clarke had left a “vast documentary record” about the White House’s inattention to terrorism. Clarke’s account is also corroborated by other National Security Council (NSC) members, the CIA, and the State Department.

• Zelikow’s Reaction - However, Zelikow, a close associate of Rice (see 1995 and January 3, 2001), tells the staffers their version is “too Clarke-centric” and demands “balance.” Shenon will comment: “He never said so explicitly, but Zelikow made clear to [the staffers] that the commission’s final report should balance out every statement of Clarke’s with a statement from Rice. The team should leave out any judgment on which of them was telling the truth.”
  
• Support from Commission Lawyer - Zelikow is supported to a point in this dispute by Daniel Marcus, the commission’s lawyer. Marcus thinks that the staffers are making Clarke into a “superhero,” and that there were some “limitations and flaws” in his performance. Marcus also sees that the staff’s suspicions of Zelikow and his ties to Rice are no longer hidden, but will later say: “In a sense they overreacted to Philip because they were so worried about him they pushed and pushed and pushed, and sometimes they were wrong.”
  
• Staffer Regrets Not Resigning Earlier - One of the key staffers involved in the dispute, Warren Bass, had previously considered resigning from the commission due to what he perceived as Zelikow’s favoring of Rice. At this point he regrets not resigning earlier, but does not do so now. Bass and his colleagues merely console themselves with the hope that the public will read between the lines and work out that Clarke is telling the truth and Rice is not.
  
• “Tortured Passages” - Shenon will comment: “[T]he results of the team’s work were some of the most tortured passages in the final report, especially in the description of the performance of the NSA in the first months of the Bush presidency. It was written almost as a point, counterpoint—Clarke says this, Rice says the opposite—with no conclusion about what the truth finally was.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 394-396]
  

Can we at least blame Condoleezza Rice for the killings caused by her dangerous conduct, and her obvious lack of concern for human life? - Jon

Source: fool.com

By Associated Press December 10, 2007

A government lawyer urged a federal appeals panel Monday to find that former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman cannot be held liable for telling residents near the World Trade Center site that the air was safe to breathe after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Department of Justice attorney Alisa Klein said that holding Whitman liable will set a dangerous precedent in future disasters: “The consequence would be a default to silence. If you speak, you will be potentially held liable. Then the clear message for government officials is to say nothing.”
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Thanks to www.cooperativeresearch.org

August 12-25, 1998: Suspect Claims ‘Extensive Network of Al-Qaeda Sleeper Agents’ Is Planning ‘Big Attack’ Inside US
Mohamed al-Owhali is arrested and immediately begins confessing his role in the recent al-Qaeda bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. He reveals to the FBI what an FBI agent will later call “blue-chip” information. [CNN, 1/19/2001] He reveals to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and others that when he was told by a handler in Afghanistan that he would take part in an operation in Kenya, he insisted “I want to attack inside the US” instead. But his handler tells him that the Kenya attack is important because it will keep the US distracted while the real attack is being prepared. Owhali futher explains to his interrogators, “We have a plan to attack the US, but we’re not ready yet. We need to hit you outside the country in a couple of places so you won’t see what is going on inside. The big attack is coming. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.” [USA Today, 8/29/2002; Wright, 2006, pp. 278-279] Presumably, Owhali is also the suspect at this time who “inform[s] the FBI that an extensive network of al-Qaeda ‘sleeper agents’ currently exists in the US.” It is known that counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke passes on this information to Condoleezza Rice when she begins her position as National Security Adviser in January 2001 (see January 25, 2001), but other details about this warning are not known. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 260] Owhali also reveals the telephone number of a key al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen (see Late August 1998) and warns that an al-Qaeda attack is Yemen is being planned (see Mid-August 1998). [CNN, 1/19/2001]
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Someone on my site watched this recently, so I thought I would as well. I noticed a friend is in it, so I figured what the hell, I’ll upload it to Google Video. This is probably the “shining moment” of the 9/11 Commission. The one thing they, or at least Richard Ben-Veniste, did right. I am no fan of Richard Ben-Veniste. According to 9/11 Family Member Bob McIlvaine, Ben-Veniste told him that the 9/11 Commission was “not an investigation but merely an exposition.” Knowing that, and not making the public aware of it, or not attempting to report it to the media, and not resigning his position in protest, is criminal as far as I’m concerned. 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland spoke up. If Richard Ben-Veniste wanted any credibility, he would have done the same. - Jon

Many thanks to www.cooperativeresearch.org

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One of the newest tidbits of information to come out about 9/11 was the discovery of a meeting on July 10th, 2001 between Cofer Black, George Tenet, and Condoleezza Rice. In October 2006, the “Jersey Girls” released a petition calling for the declassification of all information pertaining to that day, among other things. On June 18th, 2007, the “Jersey Girls” delivered the petition to those in Washington D.C.

The following is everything I have pertaining to that day:

Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting From 9/11 Commission

Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice

9/11 Panel Members Weren’t Told of Meeting

Rice disputes report she brushed off CIA chief

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