YBBS ForumsThanks to www.cooperativeresearch.org
July 9, 2003: Mylroie Testifies Before 9/11 Commission, Airs Theories of Connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda
The 9/11 Commission holds its first set of public hearings on al-Qaeda and its connections to other nations and terrorist groups. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 130-134]
Read the rest of this entry »
Currently, the History Commons is in need of donations. Please do what you can. - Jon
Thanks to www.cooperativeresearch.org
While some find neoconservative author Laurie Mylroie’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission of a terrorist conspiracy between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda to be compelling (see July 9, 2003), others do not. One group that is not convinced is the so-called “Jersey Girls,” the group of widows who lost their husbands in the 9/11 attacks and then worked to force the Bush administration to create the Commission (see March 31, 2003). They lambast Commission director Philip Zelikow for allowing Mylroie to testify. “Jersey Girl” Lorie Van Auken, who has learned a great deal about Mylroie’s theories in her research, confronts Zelikow shortly after the hearings. “That took a lot of nerve putting someone like that on the panel,” she tells Zelikow. “Laurie Mylroie? This is supposed to be an investigation of September 11. This is not supposed to be a sales pitch for the Iraq war.” Van Auken later recalls “a sly smile” crossing Zelikow’s face, as he refuses to answer. “He knew exactly what he was doing,” Van Auken will say. “He was selling the war.” After the hearing, Zelikow informs the staff that he wants them to aggressively pursue the idea of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Author Philip Shenon will later write, “To some members of the staff, Zelikow seemed determined to demonstrate that whatever the evidence to the contrary, Iraq and al-Qaeda had a close relationship that justified the toppling of Saddam Hussein.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 130-134]
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
By Dan Froomkin
Monday, February 4, 2008; 1:41 PM
Less than four months before the 2004 election, it looked like President Bush might face a perilous accountability moment.
An independent, bipartisan commission was set to report on the “circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks.”
The White House had a lot to lose from an unfettered, authoritative examination of those issues. The last thing Bush needed during a hotly contested reelection campaign was a reminder of his inattention to the threat of terrorism before 9/11, or of his initial paralysis when he heard the news, or of his misbegotten attempts to pin the blame on Iraq.
I can’t emphasize this enough. Please get this out there. - Jon
The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation
For Immediate Release
February 4, 2008
Philip Shenon’s new book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, serves to justify our suspicions and the concerns of the Family Steering Committee, that we attempted to publicly air during the course of the 9/11 Commission’s tenure.
One of the most egregious revelations put forth by Mr. Shenon is the fact that Philip Zelikow was hired as the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, despite his direct ties to the Bush Administration. In 2000-2001 he served as a member of Condoleezza Rice’s National Security Council (NSC) transition team, where he was allegedly the “architect” of the decision to demote Richard Clarke and his counter terrorism team within the NSC. Furthermore he was a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) from 2001-2003, where Zelikow drafted most of the 2002 “National Security Strategy of the United States,” creating the pre-emptive Iraq war strategy. These areas were within the scope of the Commission’s mandate and as such were of critical importance to determine what, if any, impact they had on the government’s ability to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
As the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow was given the responsibility for choosing the entire direction of the Commission’s investigation. Essentially, Mr. Zelikow determined who was or was not interviewed as a witness, and which information was or was not looked at. He also influenced which documents would be requested from the various agencies. It seemed to us, that allowing an individual with this much involvement in the Bush administration to run the investigation, might give the appearance of impropriety and could ultimately taint the Commission’s findings.
In a statement issued by the Family Steering Committee of March 20, 2004 we wrote:
It is apparent that Dr. Zelikow should never have been permitted to be Executive Staff Director of the Commission. As Executive Staff Director, his job has been to steer the direction of the Commission’s investigation, an investigation whose mandate includes understanding why the Bush Administration failed to prioritize the Al Qaeda threat.
In the same statement we also called for:
Zelikow’s immediate resignation; Zelikow’s testimony in public and under oath; and the subpoena of Zelikow’s notes from the intelligence briefings he attended with Richard Clarke.
Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Vice-Chair Lee Hamilton instead chose to have Mr. Zelikow recuse himself from the areas of the investigation that dealt with the transition period. However, they allowed Mr. Zelikow to be one of only two people (Ms. Gorelick was the other) to review the Presidential Daily Briefings (PDB’s), reports that went to the heart of what the White House and its National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, knew prior to 9/11. While investigating the events that led up to the September 11th attacks, Philip Zelikow was called as a witness by the 9/11 Commission though transcripts of his testimony were never made public.
Despite our vehement objections, Mr. Zelikow was allowed to remain in his position as what seemed to be the “gatekeeper” of the 9/11 Commission.
Mr. Shenon’s book illustrates just how deeply and insidiously the Commission’s basic fact-finding work was compromised by Zelikow’s conflicts. He recounts that even after his recusal, Mr. Zelikow continued to insert himself into the work of “Team 3,” of the Commission. This team was responsible for examining the White House, and therefore, the conduct of Condoleezza Rice and Richard Clarke during the months prior to 9/11.
According to the author, Team 3 staffers would come to believe that Mr. Zelikow prevented them from submitting a report that would have depicted Ms. Rice’s performance as “amount[ing] to incompetence, or something not far from it.”
Evidence of the possible duplicitous nature of Mr. Zelikow’s role on the 9/11 Commission was further exemplified by his numerous conversations with Karl Rove, President Bush’s Senior Political Advisor. When questioned about his contact with Rove, Zelikow’s response was to tell his secretary to stop logging his calls.
Contrary to former Commissioner John Lehman’s recent comment on MSNBC that Zelikow’s conversations with Rove are a “red herring”, these contacts with Rove should have been a red flag. Negotiating for or procuring of White House documents for the Commission should have been done through the Office of White House Counsel NOT the President’s political advisor. Consequently, knowing how this would appear, one must ask why Zelikow was speaking with Rove?
It is abundantly clear that Philip Zelikow should have immediately been replaced when the first rumblings of his impropriety and conflicts of interest surfaced. When all of this information became clear, the Commissioners and the press should have called for Zelikow’s resignation. We did. Shamefully, most were silent.
Further evidence of political maneuvering came to light in the story of Commissioner Max Cleland. Cleland was publicly critical of the Commission and the Bush White House. According to Shenon’s book, when it became obvious that Max Cleland would continue to be loudly critical, Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Vice-Chair Lee Hamilton sought the help of Senator Tom Daschle to find Cleland a new job. Thus, Max Cleland was quietly removed and silenced with a new job in the Bush Administration.
Also revealed in Shenon’s book is the fact that the Commission’s staff never ventured to the National Security Agency (NSA), the chief collector of intelligence information, in order to review their “voluminous treasure trove of documents”. At NSA Headquarters, 27 miles from the Commission’s offices, there was a “gold mine” of information detailing terrorist’s threats and connections, including those of al Qaeda. General Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA at the time, was eager to cooperate and share what his organization had with the 9/11 Commission, but Executive Director Zelikow was not interested.
A lone staffer, who understood the importance of these archives, had the information moved to a reading room within walking distance of the Commission’s offices. Even then, she was the only member of the Commission to take the time to read these documents. By her own admission, this insightful staffer had concerns as to how much she, on her own, would be able to glean from these jargon filled documents. Why didn’t Phil Zelikow make reviewing these vital NSA documents a Commission priority? It seems clear that not every fact and lead was followed in this investigation compromising the validity of the Commission’s final report and its findings.
Moreover, the “Pre-9/11 story” largely revolved around second and third hand knowledge of interrogations of tortured individuals, detainees that were being held in secret locations.
According to many sources at the CIA and deep within the government, confessions extracted from individuals who are tortured are generally deemed useless. A tortured detainee will say anything in order to make the torture stop and therefore, the confession cannot be trusted. One needs to look no further than the Army Field Manual on Interrogation (FM 34-52), which states in Chapter 1:
“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”
How could the Commission have based their entire pre-9/11 narrative on these unreliable, torture-induced confessions?
We believe that author Phil Shenon has revealed information which only scratches the surface as to what went on behind the scenes of this investigation.
Why, when this Congressionally mandated Commission could have done much to fix the fatal flaws in our in government by conducting a real investigation and making vital recommendations, would they instead allow it to become a sham. This investigation was meant to fix the loopholes that allowed our Country to be so vulnerable. Why would they choose instead, to succumb to political machinations? What would we find out if a real investigation into September 11, 2001 were ever done?
The bottom line is that the most deadly attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor remains dangerously unexamined. This can only be remedied with an investigation guided by the facts and conducted outside the reach of those with a vested interest in suppressing the truth.
# # #
Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken
I thought this was an appropriate story to re-post considering the news about Zelikow. - Jon
Source: 911truth.org
Bryan Sacks
November 28th, 2005
9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow has deep, lasting ties to several members of both the Bush I and Bush II Administrations. Any one of these connections could have been deemed sufficient to eliminate Zelikow from consideration on the basis of non-independence. Consider:
This is being shot out across the “wire”. This is such big news. If you are new to 9/11 Truth, this essentially verifies what we’ve been saying for a long time. The 9/11 Commission was not a real investigation into the attacks of 9/11. We need a real, criminal investigation. - Jon
Source: ap.google.com
By HOPE YEN – 35 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Sept. 11 commission’s executive director had closer ties with the White House than publicly disclosed and tried to influence the final report in ways that the staff often perceived as limiting the Bush administration’s responsibility, a new book says.
Philip Zelikow, a friend of then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, spoke with her several times during the 20-month investigation that closely examined her role in assessing the al-Qaida threat. He also exchanged frequent calls with the White House, including at least four from Bush’s chief political adviser at the time, Karl Rove.
Zelikow once tried to push through wording in a draft report that suggested a greater tie between al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Iraq, in line with White House claims but not with the commission staff’s viewpoint, according to Philip Shenon’s “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.”
Some of you may have seen the news regarding Philip Zelikow. If you watched Keith Olbermann tonight, you were in for a treat. During the time of the 9/11 Commission, the “Jersey Girls” called for the resignation of Philip Zelikow. As you can see from this clip from 9/11: Press For Truth:
Essentially, the “original members of the 9/11 Truth Movement” “disreputed” the 9/11 Commission long ago Mr. Holland.
Thanks to www.cooperativeresearch.org
November 1997-August 1998: Future 9/11 Commission Staff Attend Terrorism Study Group; Predict Consequences of ‘Catastrophic Terrorism’
Over a period of nine months, faculty from Harvard University, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Virginia meet in a collaborative effort called the Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group. Its members include experts on terrorism, national security, intelligence, and law enforcement. The project director is Philip Zelikow, future executive director of the 9/11 Commission. Future 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick is also a member, along with Ernest May, who will be a senior advisor to the 9/11 Commission. The culmination of the group’s efforts is a report written by Zelikow and its two co-chairs: former Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and former CIA Director John Deutch. A condensed version of the report is published in the journal Foreign Affairs in late 1998. They write: “Long part of the Hollywood and Tom Clancy repertory of nightmarish scenarios, catastrophic terrorism has moved from far-fetched horror to a contingency that could happen next month. Although the United States still takes conventional terrorism seriously… it is not yet prepared for the new threat of catastrophic terrorism.” They predict the consequences of such an event: “An act of catastrophic terrorism that killed thousands or tens of thousands of people and/or disrupted the necessities of life for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, would be a watershed event in America’s history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented for peacetime and undermine Americans’ fundamental sense of security within their own borders in a manner akin to the 1949 Soviet atomic bomb test, or perhaps even worse. Constitutional liberties would be challenged as the United States sought to protect itself from further attacks by pressing against allowable limits in surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and the use of deadly force. More violence would follow, either as other terrorists seek to imitate this great ‘success’ or as the United States strikes out at those considered responsible. Like Pearl Harbor, such an event would divide our past and future into a ‘before’ and ‘after.’” [Carter, Deutch, and Zelikow, 10/1998; Foreign Affairs, 11/1998; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. xi-xiv]
Read the rest of this entry »
Last year, I started giving online classes for 9/11. This write-up was one of the subjects that were discussed. I think there is a lot of good information in this piece, and I wanted to share. - Jon
Formally known as the “National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States”
This took place on March 21st, 2006 at a rare Press Conference Bush gave in the White House Press room. Helen Thomas asked him a simple question.
“Why did you really want to go to war from the moment you stepped into the White House?”
This is a well documented fact. “It was all about finding a way to do it” says Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. Ron Suskind, a Wall Street Journal reporter, interviewed Paul O’Neill, and was told that’s what it was all about in early 2001. Finding a “way” to invade Iraq.
Let’s also not forget the drive of the PNAC to invade Iraq.
So why did the President lie to Helen?
Is it because if the President wanted to invade Iraq before 9/11, and the only way he could do so was by something like 9/11 happening, and then something like 9/11 DOES happen… Doesn’t that make him a suspect?
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
