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"Vendicar Decarian" <VD@Pyro.net> wrote in message news:...
Ex-FBI worker challenges 9/11 `lie'
Claims U.S. had warnings of airplane attacks

White House adviser's statements `not accurate'


TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON-When Condoleezza Rice takes her seat before the independent 9/11
commission here Thursday her assignment will be nothing short of halting the
most serious assault yet on the credibility of U.S. President George W.
Bush.

Sitting in the hearing room as Rice testifies will be a 33-year-old former
FBI translator who may yet hold the key to the question now engulfing this
nation - did an indifferent Bush administration ignore specific warnings
that Al Qaeda was about to launch horrific attacks in the United States on
Sept. 11, 2001?

While allegations brought by former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke
have swung the tide against the Bush White House in recent weeks, Sibel
Edmonds delivered her own broadside against her government in private,
during more than three hours of testimony to investigators for the 9/11
panel on Feb. 11.

> Edmonds, who was hired as a translator by the FBI nine days after the
> attacks, told the investigative panel she has seen and handled
intelligence
> documents and cables that show Rice, the national security adviser, is
wrong
> when she says there was no advance warning of air attacks on U.S. soil.
>
> She saw intelligence documents that pointed to the use of aircraft against
> skyscrapers in major U.S. cities.
>
> "We had various information from various sources and investigations," she
> said in an interview yesterday.
>
> "In terms of specific cities? Yes. It was not only New York and
Washington,
> D.C. There were four or five cities specifically named.
>
> "There were specific activities known. Domestic institutions were being
> targeted and airplanes were going to be used. That was known. Now, did it
> say Sept. 11, 8:30 in the morning? I am not aware of such information. Did
> it say it was going to crash the planes in the building? I am not privy to
> that information.
>
> "But there was specific information on the use of airplanes. There were
> people issuing orders and information on people already in place in this
> country months before Sept. 11."
>
> She said she is not passing on hearsay, but information on specific
> documents, the names of witnesses, the names of FBI agents and other
> information so investigators can rely "not on my word," but on the
documents
> themselves. Most of them were dated April and May, 2001, she said. She has
> previously provided such information to congressional investigators.
>
> Edmonds, a Turkish-born U.S. citizen, said she was "appalled" by Rice's
> public statements, delivered in a number of television interviews, that
> there was no information indicating planes would be used on domestic
> targets.
>
> Had Rice indicated that she did not know, Edmonds may have given her the
> benefit of the doubt.
>
> "Then I would say maybe the FBI did not take the information to her, maybe
> she didn't know," Edmonds said.
>
> "But she's is saying `we' did not know, including herself, her advisers
and
> the FBI. That statement is not accurate. I've never really been diplomatic
> in life. It's a lie and a lie is a lie."
>
> An Aug. 6, 2001, daily intelligence briefing prepared for Bush indicated
Al
> Qaeda might have been planning to hijack airplanes, a point the White
House
> has not disputed.
>
> Rice has maintained there was no specific information in the briefing that
> would indicate the planes could have been used for suicide missions
against
> U.S. targets, a point that critics have always questioned.
>
> On the CBS program 60 Minutes eight days ago, she said everything pointed
to
> "an attack abroad."
>
> In an opinion piece for the Washington Post published last month, Rice
> wrote: "Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that
> terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as
> missiles.
>
> "Some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack planes to try and
> free U.S.-held terrorists."
>
> Yesterday, two major U.S. newspapers ran front-page stories that gave
> further credence to the testimony of Clarke.
>
> The New York Times published an exhaustive study of anti-terrorism efforts
> by the Bush White House during the summer of 2001, concluding that
vigilance
> may have peaked in early July that summer, followed by "a scattered and
> inconsistent" effort in the weeks before Sept. 11.
>
> The Washington Post, in a series of interviews with former administration
> officials and congressional investigators, found broad support for
Clarke's
> claim that the White House reacted slowly to warnings of the attacks.
>
> The paper also reviewed declassified testimony given by Clarke in 2002 in
> front of congressional investigators and found no clear evidence of
> contradictions in his later testimony.
>
> Also yesterday, the chair of the commission investigating the attacks said
> the White House would vet its final report "line-by-line," a review Thomas
> Kean said he was surprised to learn was required by law.
>
> Vice-chair Lee Hamilton, in a joint appearance on NBC's Meet the Press
with
> Kean, said the commission will abide by the law but will not allow the
White
> House to "distort" the report.
>
> Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and Hamilton, a former
> Democratic congressman from Indiana, are to submit their final report in
> late July.
>
> "I've been surprised by some of the things we've found," Kean said.
>
> It is impossible to corroborate Edmonds' statements, but she knows there
> have been attempts to discredit her. She knows whistle-blowers are often
> dismissed "as kooks or nutcases" and she shares that opinion regarding
some
> others who make unsubstantiated claims or promulgate conspiracy theories.
>
> She is also embroiled in a legal battle with U.S. Attorney-General John
> Ashcroft over her dismissal from the FBI. But she says she cannot be
written
> off as a disgruntled ex-employee because she was making allegations about
> slipshod procedures within the FBI before she fired.
>
> Edmonds has filed a lawsuit against the department, saying she was fired
> after she raised security concerns within the FBI. The justice
department's
> internal inspector-general is investigating her claim she was fired in
> reprisal for her allegations about shoddy transcriptions, unqualified
> translators and a potential security breach.
>
> "She is a spectacular woman," said Edmonds' New York lawyer Eric Seiff.
>
> "If I am being fooled here, then I am being fooled big time. She comes
> across as wonderfully straight with me in all our dealings."
>
> Bush, after months of refusals, succumbed to public pressure and allowed
> Rice's public testimony this week.
>
> --
> "We must create a <economic> crisis in order to ensure that there is no
> alternative to a smaller government." - Bush - Imprimus Magazine 1995.
>
> "We seek to remove resources from the control of the state, thereby
starving
> it." - International Society for Individual Liberty - NeoCon Libertarian.
>
> "Throughout his term, Bush has implied tax cuts would starve the
government,
> paying for themselves by causing budget deficits that, in turn, would
place
> heavy pressure on Congress to lower spending." - Jeff Lemieux - Senior
> Economist - Progressive Policy Institute.
>
> "They have an agenda which is to starve the government of revenue. But in
> order to get it through, they keep on having to pretend that the tax cuts
> are affordable, and so they've been suppressing the likely cost of
> everything, including the war on terror." - Paul Krugman - Economist.
>