9/11 info stonewalling

[lapsedmodernist]

Graham Claims Bush Administration Blocking Release Of 9/11 Report

link: http://www.thewpbfchannel.com/news/2192959/detail.html

POSTED: 10:50 a.m. EDT May 9, 2003
UPDATED: 10:55 a.m. EDT May 9, 2003
Florida Senator and presidential candidate Bob Graham says the Bush administration is stonewalling the public release of a congressional report on the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Graham is the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
While a summary of the report has been released, the full classified version is still under review at the FBI and CIA. They are trying to determine whether any disclosure of information might pose a risk to national security and should remain secret.
Graham thinks the White House is behind the delay. He says that the US has never seen "an administration that was so committed to secrecy as this Bush administration."
Graham says the White House wants to "avoid the American people's opportunity to know what happened, why and what this administration has done about it."

Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Comments

[(Anonymous)]

i think that this was first reported in newsweek last week:

"A 'working group' of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to review the [congressional report] document has taken a hard line against further public disclosure. By refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions, the administration has essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of this month, congressional and administration sources tell Newsweek. In some cases, these sources say, the administration has even sought to 'reclassify' some material that was already discussed in public testimony ... The administration's stand has infuriated the two members of Congress who oversaw the report -- Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss. The two are now preparing a letter of complaint to Vice President Dick Cheney."

here's isikoff discussing the newsweek article he co-wrote:
http://stream.paranode.com/democracynow/dn2003-0502-2.mp3

there has also been lying...

remember last summer and fall when there was a lot talk of "intelligence" (whatever happened to the words "knowledge" or "information"?) about iraq that shrub (and, later, powell) would reveal to the u.n.? 1) not only did they not have any information ("oh, they have information," the apologists said, "but they can't tell the rest of us because it will endanger sources or reveal information gathering techniques") but also 2) they knew that the information they had did not support their goals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/opinion/06KRIS.html

http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?030512fa_fact

have too much to read? here's seymour hersh talking about his article in the new yorker: http://stream.paranode.com/democracynow/dn2003-0508-2.mp3

-mjm

more lying

[(Anonymous)]

from Time magazine:

"F___ Saddam. we're taking him out." Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase. The Senators laughed uncomfortably; Rice flashed a knowing smile. The President left the room."

the date is important: March 2002, over one year ago. for the past year there were public statements such as shrub saying "I still have not made my mind about war" (in March 2003) and fleischer saying that shrub was "working overtime to find diplomatic alternatives to the war in Iraq." this was all lying for public consumption. it's all part of the same deception that goes back years to the "compassionate conservative" (repubs love alliteration) phrase -- mouth pretty words to provide cover for what you want to do.

-mjm

more lying II

[(Anonymous)]

seymour hersh discusses his article:

http://newyorker.com/online/content/?030512on_onlineonly01

"The real problem, though, is that when you examine the factual basis for some of the Pentagon's intelligence reviews closely it's not very good. One of their big sources was defector reports, many of which they got through the Iraqi National Congress (I.N.C.), Ahmad Chalabi's coalition of Iraqi dissidents. But these accounts were not always what they seemed. In fact, in my article I quote a former Bush Administration intelligence official who described a case in which a classified report on what a defector had said—about training in biological and chemical weapons with members of Al Qaeda—was distributed with the support of the Pentagon. It was also leaked to newspapers. Later, the C.I.A. found the defector and interviewed him separately, and he told them, "No, that's not what I said." No Al Qaeda, no chemical or biological weapons. Chalabi's group offered them little more than intelligence to please—for example, September 11th took place, and almost immediately defectors appeared who could give a dramatic account of how Iraq was the site of training by Al Qaeda and other terrorists in the high art of hijacking aircraft. Within a month or two of September 11th, the New York Times and the PBS series "Frontline" had defectors giving chapter and verse on how strongly Saddam Hussein was connected not only to Al Qaeda and terrorism training in general but to the World Trade Center attacks. And the people in the Pentagon were susceptible to their own biases. Whatever intelligence they found that supported their preëxisting theories was the intelligence they believed. And all of this has an effect; my article cites a recent poll that showed that seventy-two per cent of the American public believed it was likely that Saddam had something to do with September 11th."

and later...

"If it is true that this Administration deliberately, from the very beginning, understood that the best way to mobilize the American people was to present Saddam as a direct national-security threat to us, without having the evidence beforehand that he was, that's, well, frankly, lying. That's the worst kind of deceit a President can practice. We don't elect our President to not tell us the real situation of the world, particularly when he sends kids to kill and be killed."