A Question for Condi
6 April 2004, Allan Wood, Common Dreams
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify before the 9/11 Commission-- on national television and under oath-- this Thursday, April 8. Most of the questions will focus on the apparent contradictions between what she has said since September 11, 2001 and the public testimony given recently by former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke.
Rice should also be asked about what she did on the morning of 9/11. Under its agreement with the White House, in order to have Rice testify, the Commission is forbidden to ask any administration official to testify in any future public hearings. So if any of the 10 Commission members wants any White House official to speak to the country about what happened on 9/11, he or she better ask those questions on Thursday.
Here is one of mine:
We do not know if George W. Bush knew of the first crash upon his arrival at the Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, shortly before 9:00 am on September 11. Some reports say he was informed while in his motorcade. We do know that when he got to the school, he was told there was a urgent phone call from Rice. (Bush's actions that day are outlined in detail in An Interesting Day, an article I co-wrote with Paul Thompson, who had compiled the Complete 9/11 Timeline.
From An Interesting Day:
Booker principal Gwen Tose-Rigell was waiting for Bush outside the school. "The limousine stops and the president comes out. He walks toward me. I'm standing there in a lineup; there are about five people. He walks over and says he has to make a phone call, and he'll be right back." From a room with secure communications, Rice updated Bush on the situation. As National Security Advisor, Rice had to have had as much information as anyone. By the time she spoke to Bush, she must have known that three planes had been hijacked and that the country was under attack.
We know very little about the conversation-- only that Rice later claimed, "(Bush) said, what a terrible, it sounds like a terrible accident. Keep me informed." One reporter noted: "Bush did not appear preoccupied (after the phone call) . There was no sign that Rice had just told (him) about the first attack (on the World Trade Center)." Tose-Rigell was then summoned to a room to talk with Bush: "He said a commercial plane has hit the World Trade Center, and we're going to go ahead and go on, we're going on to do the reading thing anyway."
One local reporter notes that at this point, "He could and arguably should have left Emma E. Booker Elementary School immediately, gotten onto Air Force One and left Sarasota without a moment's delay ... But he didn't." The only possible excuse is that Bush was completely clueless as to what was happening. Sure enough, at a press conference on the evening of 9/11, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was asked by a reporter, "And then this morning, when Andy Card told him about the first accident, was Andy Card or Condi Rice or any of those aware of the hijackings? What did they know when they-- " Fleischer cut in and replied, "No, at that point they were not." So supposedly, 15 minutes after the first crash, none of Bush's aides, not even Rice back in Washington, DC, knew a thing about the hijackings that had been reported to NORAD 20 minutes earlier? This simply is not plausible.
Fleischer was lying. By the time of the first crash-- 8:46 am-- the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Secret Service and Canada's Strategic Command all knew that three commercial airplanes had been hijacked. They all knew that one had been flown deliberately into the World Trade Center, a second was wildly off course and also heading toward Manhattan and a third had abruptly turned around over Ohio and was flying back toward Washington, DC.
And despite the administration's claims in the weeks after the attacks that there had been no warnings whatsoever, in the two months before 9/11, there were actually dozens of warnings of impending terrorist attacks against the US, including:
Summer 2001: US intelligence received warnings of multiple hijackings from Afghanistan, Argentina, Britain, Cayman Islands, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco and Russia. The Russian warning came directly from President Vladimir Putin.
July 5: Richard Clarke, in a meeting with officials from a dozen federal agencies, specifically mentioned al-Qaeda and stated: "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon."
July 20-22: Acting on specific warnings that al-Qaeda might attempt to assassinate Bush and other leaders at the G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy, the government surrounds the summit with anti-aircraft guns, keeps fighter jets in the air and closes off local airspace. The reports are taken so seriously that Bush stays overnight on an aircraft carrier; other leaders stay on a luxury ship.
August 6: Bush received a classified intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." It focused on the possibility of multiple hijackings and terrorist attacks inside the US. Bush broke off work early that day and spent most of his time fishing. Indeed, Bush and Dick Cheney were both on vacation for almost the entire month of August.
September 6: Gary Hart, who co-chaired the US Commission on National Security, met with Rice "after the president was in Crawford and being briefed by CIA officials on the possible use of aircraft against American targets. [I told her], 'Get going on homeland security, you don't have all the time in the world.' "
September 10: A group of top Pentagon officials may have received "a particularly urgent warning" the night before the attacks. According to Newsweek, they cancelled their travel plans for the next morning.
When Condoleezza Rice heard of the first hijacked plane-- Boston air traffic controllers were treating it as a hijacking as early as 8:13 a.m.-- 33 minutes before it crashed-- how could she not have known that this was probably the attack she had been repeatedly warned about?
So what did Rice tell Bush? From the scraps that have been reported, it looks like she told him the first crash was merely an accident and he should go ahead with his photo-op. I want to know why the Commander-in-Chief was allowed to conduct a 20-minute reading session with a group of second-graders while the country was in the midst of a horrific terrorist attack.
The reports we have been told make absolutely no sense. In fact, there really is no "official story" of what happened on 9/11, because all of the accounts flatly contradict each other. And no one in the mainstream media has yet seen fit to demand a coherent explanation. Perhaps the Commission can start that search with its questioning of Condoleezza Rice.
Allan Wood is a member of 9/11 Citizens Watch.
Whistleblower Speaks
"I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes"
2 April 2004, Andrew Buncombe, The Independent
A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.
She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie."
Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege."
She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily."
She added: "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers."
The accusations from Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who speaks Azerbaijani, Farsi, Turkish and English, will reignite the controversy over whether the administration ignored warnings about al-Qa'ida. That controversy was sparked most recently by Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism official, who has accused the administration of ignoring his warnings.
The issue what the administration knew and when is central to the investigation by the 9/11 Commission, which has been hearing testimony in public and private from government officials, intelligence officials and secret sources. Earlier this week, the White House made a U-turn when it said that Ms Rice would appear in public before the commission to answer questions. Mr Bush and his deputy, Dick Cheney, will also be questioned in a closed-door session.
Mrs Edmonds, 33, says she gave her evidence to the commission in a specially constructed "secure" room at its offices in Washington on 11 February. She was hired as a translator for the FBI's Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa'ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps.
She said said it was clear there was sufficient information during the spring and summer of 2001 to indicate terrorists were planning an attack. "Most of what I told the commission 90 per cent of it related to the investigations that I was involved in or just from working in the department. Two hundred translators side by side, you get to see and hear a lot of other things as well."
"President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said. There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away.
To try to refute Mr Clarke's accusations, Ms Rice said the administration did take steps to counter al-Qa'ida. But in an opinion piece in The Washington Post on 22 March, Ms Rice wrote: "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 planes to try and free US-held terrorists."
Mrs Edmonds said that by using the word "we", Ms Rice told an "outrageous lie." She said: "Rice says 'we' not 'I'. That would include all people from the FBI, the CIA and DIA [Defence Intelligence Agency]. I am saying that is impossible."
It is impossible at this stage to verify Mrs Edmonds' claims. However, some senior US senators testified to her credibility in 2002 when she went public with separate allegations relating to alleged incompetence and corruption within the FBI's translation department.
©2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
vengeance
From Juan Cole at Informed Comment
There is increasing evidence that the brutal attack on the American security guards in Fallujah, and the desecration of their bodies, was the work of Islamists seeking vengeance for the Israeli murder of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Leaflets found at the scene said the operation was in the name of Yassin. al-Hayat reports in its Friday edition that responsibility for the attack has been taken by a group called Phalanges of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The group said the deaths were a "gift to the Palestinian people."
Juan Cole
Blackwater USA
Slain Contractors Were in Iraq Working Security Detail
2 April 2004, Dana Priest, Mary Pat Flaherty, Jackie Spinner, Washington Post
The four men brutally slain Wednesday in Fallujah were among the most elite commandos working in Iraq to guard employees of U.S. corporations and were hired by the U.S. government to protect bureaucrats, soldiers and intelligence officers.
The men, all employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, were in the dangerous Sunni Triangle area operating under more hazardous conditions -- unarmored cars with no apparent backup -- than the U.S. military or the CIA permit.
U.S. government officials said yesterday that they suspect that the men were not victims of a random ambush but were set up as targets, which one defense official said suggested "a higher degree of organization and sophistication" among insurgents. "This is certainly cause for concern."
A Blackwater spokesman said the men were guarding a convoy on its way to deliver food to troops under a subcontract to a company named Regency Hotel and Hospitality. Three of those killed were identified by their families or a family spokesman yesterday as Jerry Zovko, 32, an Army veteran from Willoughby, Ohio; Michael Teague, 38, from Clarksville, Tenn.; and Scott Helvenston, 38. The other Blackwater employee was a former SEAL, the Navy's elite counterterrorism force.
The bodies of the four men were dragged through the streets by jubilant crowds.
Blackwater issued a statement saying it did not intend to release the victims' names. "Coalition forces and civilian contractors and administrators work side by side every day with the Iraqi people," the statement said. "Our tasks are dangerous and while we feel sadness for our fallen colleagues, we also feel pride and satisfaction that we are making a difference for the people of Iraq."
The Fallujah killings this week resonated heavily among the dozens of companies providing security services in Iraq.
"No one is retreating," said Mike Baker, chief executive of Diligence LLC, a Washington security firm with hundreds of employees in Iraq. "No one is calling saying we ought to pull our guys out. I don't think it's stopping anyone from going in. They are fully aware of the security situation."
But Baker, a former CIA case officer, added that how the military is "responding is going to be very important. If there's not a harsh, well-thought-out response, they will take that as a complete sign of weakness and they will become emboldened."
Blackwater has about 400 employees in Iraq, said one government official briefed by the company. Its armed commandos earn an average of about $1,000 a day.
Although most of their work is to act as bodyguards for corporate, humanitarian or government employees, they sometimes perform more precarious jobs that are inherently riskier -- escorting VIPs, doing reconnaissance for visits by government officials to particular locations.
Employees of security companies such as Blackwater frequently come under fire from insurgents. When they do, they fire back.
"Nobody wants to be seen as a cowboy, but the truth is that if someone pops a weapon up, you respond," Baker said. ". . . This is a very difficult environment. There is always a potential for a problem."
Blackwater, security experts said, is among the most professional of the dozens of multinational security firms in Iraq, most of them there to protect U.S. government employees, private firms, Iraqi facilities and oil pipelines.
The firm also protects officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority, including the U.S. governor in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. It has contracts as well with the departments of Defense, State and Transportation.
The company also did work in Afghanistan during the war there, said people who have worked with company employees.
Blackwater is in Moyock, N.C., just across the Virginia border, and U.S. law enforcement and military personnel frequently use its 6,000-acre site for weapons training.
Government contracting records show Blackwater Training was paid $13 million between April 2002 and June 2003 for security training of Navy personnel.
The firm's president and training director, and Blackwater Security Consulting's director, are veteran Navy SEALs. The name Blackwater alludes to covert missions undertaken by elite divers at night.
Government officials who have been briefed by the company said Blackwater carefully vets its employees, the vast majority of whom are former military personnel, and puts them through rigorous training requiring the same skill levels as those possessed by U.S. Special Operations troops.
Blackwater Security Consulting was formed a year ago and is one of five private companies within Blackwater USA. The training center was started in 1996, and according to the company's promotional material was formed in response to "the anticipated demand for government outsourcing" of firearms and security training. In January, it reported sales of nearly $14 million.
©2004 The Washington Post Company
Apartheid Enforcers Guard Iraq For the U.S., Marc Perelman, Forward
The Privatisation of War, Ian Traynor, The Guardian
U.S. gives $400M in work to contractor with ties to Pentagon favorite on Iraqi Governing Council, Knut Royce, Newsday
Bush To City: Drop Dead
1 April 2004, Jack Newfield, The Nation
FULL ARTICLE - Bush To City: Drop Dead
The Bush Administration has treated New York City like a battered wife who still gets displayed for photo-ops and state dinners. George Bush and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress have starved New York for three years with fiscal policies that alternate between abuse and neglect. But now Bush will stage his renomination convention in the city he has used and abused--sticking his finger in our eye and exploiting our bereavement. This August, Karl Rove, the kitschy guru of political theater, will try to convert the crematorium of Ground Zero into a re-election billboard.
One of Bush's first TV ads of the season was another example of his exploitation of New York. It contained footage of New York firefighters carrying the remains of a dead co-worker on a gurney draped with an American flag. The image was an icon of the carnage. Scores of 9/11 widows and firefighters condemned the ad's poor taste and hypocrisy. As Jimmy Breslin wrote in Newsday, "In his first campaign commercial, George Bush reached down and molested the dead."
There are many ways in which the Bush Administration has attempted to strangle New York. The most telling has to do with its treatment of the city after the September 11 attacks. But there are others that show the extent of Bush's contempt not just for New York but, by implication, all of urban America.
In the first round of homeland security funding, in 2003, New York--twice targeted by terrorists, in 1993 and 2001--received 25 percent of the total of $500 million, which was divided among seven cities. In the 2003 supplemental budget, New York's share had shrunk to 18 percent, and the money was split among thirty cities. By last November, when New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in testimony before Congress that New York was being shortchanged, the city's share had dwindled to less than 7 percent, and the money was divided among fifty localities.
The most at-risk city in America had been cut by two-thirds. Homeland security money has become another run-of-the-mill pork-barrel patronage operation, like highways. Kelly says, "The credible threat of terrorism is considered a secondary factor in Washington in the way homeland security funding is allocated."
In February Bush proposed an increase to $1.4 billion in homeland security funding for so-called "high-risk cities." But fifty cities are still designated as high risk, so New York's share is only $94 million--a fraction of what is needed. On a per capita basis, New York State ranks forty-ninth among the states in antiterrorist funding, far below rural, sparsely populated Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. According to the New York Daily News, New York is also forty-ninth in per capita funding among cities: $5.87 per person. Compare that with $35.80 for Pittsburgh. But then, Tom Ridge was governor of Pennsylvania. Or look at Florida, where Jeb Bush is governor. Miami gets $52.82 per person. Orlando gets $47.14--as if Disney World is a bigger terrorist target than the New York subway system, the United Nations, the Stock Exchange, Times Square, JFK Airport, Yankee Stadium on opening day, or our reservoirs and water system. What's the biggest recipient of any US city, at $77.92 per person? New Haven, Connecticut. Is Yale a high-priority target because both Bushes are alumni?
FULL ARTICLE - Bush To City: Drop Dead
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