🚀 go-pugleaf

http://www.911pi.com/



"No One" <noone@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:opdsa.506$Ly2.66472@cletus.bright.net...
> The Secrets of September 11
>
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/907379.asp?0cv=KA01&cp1=1
>
> The White House is battling to keep a report on the terror attacks
> secret. Does the 2004 election have anything to do with it?
>
> April 30 -  Even as White House political aides plot a 2004 campaign
> plan designed to capitalize on the emotions and issues raised by the
> September 11 terror attacks, administration officials are waging a
> behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events
> relating to the attacks.
>
> AT THE CENTER of the dispute is a more-than-800-page secret report
> prepared by a joint congressional inquiry detailing the intelligence and
> law-enforcement failures that preceded the attacks-including
> provocative, if unheeded warnings, given President Bush and his top
> advisers
> during the summer of 2001.
>
> The report was completed last December; only a bare-bones list of
> "findings" with virtually no details was made public. But nearly six
> months later, a  "working group" of Bush administration intelligence
> officials assigned to review the 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-a move one
> Senate staffer described as "ludicrous." 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.
>
> Graham is "increasingly frustrated" by the administration's
> "unwillingness to release what he regards as important information the
> public should have about 9-11," a spokesman said. In Graham's view, the
> Bush administration isn't protecting legitimate issues of national
> security but information that could be a political "embarrassment," the
> aide said. Graham, who last year served as Senate Intelligence Committee
> chairman, recently told NEWSWEEK: "There has been a cover-up of this."
>
> Graham's stand may not be terribly surprising, given that the Florida
> Democrat is running for president and is seeking to use the issue
> himself politically. But he has found a strong ally in House
> Intelligence Committee Chairman Goss, a staunch Republican (and former
> CIA officer) who in the past has consistently defended the
> administration's handling of 9-11 issues and is considered especially
> close to Cheney.
>
> "I find this process horrendously frustrating," Goss said in an
> interview. He was particularly piqued that the administration was
> refusing to
> declassify material that top intelligence officials had already
> testified about. "Senior intelligence officials said things in public
> hearings that they [administration officials] don't want us to put in
> the report," said Goss. "That's not something I can rationally accept
> without further public explanation."
>
> Unlike Graham, Goss insists there are no political "gotchas" in the
> report, only a large volume of important information about the
> performance and shortcomings of U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement
> agencies prior to September 11.
>
> And even congressional staffers close to the process say it is unclear
> whether the administration's resistance to public disclosure reflects
> fear of political damage or simply an ingrained "culture of secrecy"
> that permeates the intelligence community-and has strong proponents at
> the highest levels of the White House.
>
> The mammoth report reflects nearly 10 months of investigative work by a
> special staff hired jointly by the House and Senate Intelligence
> Committees and overseen by Eleanor Hill, a former federal prosecutor and
> Pentagon inspector general. Hill's team got access to hundreds of
> thousands of pages of classified documents from the CIA, FBI, National
> Security Agency and other executive-branch agencies. The staff also
> conducted scores of interviews with senior officials, field agents and
> intelligence officers. (They were not, however, given access to some top
> White House aides, such as national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice or
> other principals like Secretary of State Colin Powell or Secretary of
> Defense Donald Rumsfeld.) The team's report was approved by the two
> intelligence committees last Dec. 10. But because the  document relied
> so heavily on secret material, the administration "working group,"
> overseen by CIA director George Tenet, had to first "scrub" the document
> and determine which portions could be declassified.
>
> More than two months later, the working group came back with its
> decisions-and some members were flabbergasted. Entire portions remained
> classified. Some of the report-including some dealing with matters that
> had been extensively aired in public, such as the now famous FBI
> "Phoenix memo" of July 2001 reporting that Middle Eastern nationals
> might be enrolling in U.S. flight schools-were "reclassified." Hill has
> since submitted proposed changes to the working group, pointing out the
> illogic of trying to pull back material that was already in the public
> domain. But officials have indicated the "review" process is likely to
> drag on for months-with no guarantees that the "working group" will be
> any more amenable to public disclosure.
>
> A U.S. intelligence official cited international distractions as at
> least one reason for the delays. "In case you hadn't noticed, there have
> been two wars going on," the official said. The official added:  "We're
> working this [report] to try to get it out without putting lives at risk
> and without endangering sources and methods." Asked why the working
> group was refusing to permit disclosure of material that had already
> been made public, the official said: "Just because something had been
> inadvertently released, doesn't make it unclassified."
>
> The administration's tough stand, some sources say, doesn't augur well
> for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks-which is conducting its
> own investigation into the events of 9-11. Already, flaps have developed
> on that front, as well. When one commissioner, former congressman Tim
> Roemer, last week sought to review transcripts of some of the joint
> inquiry's closed-door hearings, he was denied access-because the
> commission staff had agreed to a White House request to allow its
> lawyers to first review the material to determine if the president wants
> to invoke executive privilege to keep the material out of the panel's
> hands.
>
> "I think it's outrageous," says Roemer, who plans to raise the matter at
> a commission hearing this week. But a commission staffer says he
> expected the White House review to be finished by the end of the week,
> and it was unclear whether the president's lawyers would try to invoke
> executive privilege-a stand that would almost certainly provoke a major
> legal battle with the panel.
>
> The tensions over the release of 9-11 related material seems especially
> relevant-if not ironic-in light of recent reports that the president's
> political advisers have devised an unusual re-election strategy that
> essentially uses the story of September 11 as the liftoff for his
> campaign. The White House is delaying the Republican nominating
> convention, scheduled for New York City, until the first week in
> September 2004-the latest in the party's history. That would allow
> Bush's acceptance speech, now slated for Sept. 2, to meld seamlessly
> into 9-11
> commemoration events due to take place in the city the next week.
>
> Some sources who have read the still-secret congressional report say
> some sections would not play quite so neatly into White House plans. One
> portion deals extensively with the stream of U.S. intelligence-agency
> reports in the summer of 2001 suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning an
> upcoming attack against the United States-and implicitly raises
> questions about how Bush and his top aides responded. One such CIA
> briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and prophetic. It
> predicted that Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist strike
> "in the coming weeks," the congressional investigators found. The
> intelligence briefing went on to say: "The attack will be spectacular
> and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or
> interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with
> little or no warning."
>
> The substance of that intelligence report was first disclosed at a
> public hearing last September by staff director Hill. But at the last
> minute, Hill was blocked from saying precisely who within the Bush White
> House got the briefing when CIA director Tenet classified the names of
> the recipients. (One source says the recipients of the briefing included
> Bush himself.) As a result, Hill was only able to say the briefing was
> given to "senior government officials."
>
> That issue is now being refought in the context over the full report.
> The report names names, gives dates and provides a body of new
> information about the handling of many other crucial intelligence
> briefings-including one in early August 2001 given to national-security
> adviser Rice that discussed Al Qaeda operations within the United States
> and the possibility that the group's members might seek to hijack
> airplanes. The administration "working group" is still refusing to
> declassify information about the briefings, sources said, and has even
> expressed regret that some of the material was ever provided to
> congressional investigators in the first place.
>
>
>