9/11 Remembered
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| Fri, 09-10-2004 - 11:46am |
Asleep at the Wheel
By Bill Moyers, NOW with Bill Moyers. Posted September 10, 2004.
It has taken three years for the details of the terrorist plot of 9/11 to emerge. The fateful turns that led to the attacks have finally entered the public discourse. Their lessons, however, have yet to be learned.
The first lesson is that the highest officials in government did not want us to know the truth.
They already had the story they wanted Americans to believe: Nearly 3,000 people had died, we were assured, because the terrorists turned our liberties against us, had brazenly exploited our open society. According to this official view, the atrocities were inevitable, the plot so diabolical and its execution so precise that only a superhero could have prevented it.
It sounded right. For the American people, the terror seemed to have fallen out of that near-perfect September sky, out of the clear blue.
We now know otherwise. The report of the 9/11 Commission lays the story bare in exhaustive, forensic detail:
That Condoleezza Rice in the White House press room told reporters May 16, 2002: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, taken another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."
That George Tenet, in testimony before Congress, countered Rice's claim: "The documents we've provided show some 12 reports spread over seven years which pertain to possible use of aircraft as terrorist weapons. We disseminated those reports to the appropriate agencies, such as the FAA, the Department of Transportation, and the FBI as they came in."
That the CIA in late 1999 had identified one of the future hijackers, Khalid al Mihdhar, tracked him and a companion to Malaysia, obtained a photocopy of his Saudi passport, learned he had a U.S. visa valid until April 2000, obtained photographs of him and his associates, recognized that "something more nefarious afoot," and then promptly lost Mihdhar, and his traveling partner and fellow future hijacker, Nawaf al Hazmi, in Thailand.
That Mihdhar and Hazmi arrived in Los Angeles aboard a United Airlines flight on Jan 15, 2000.
That Mihdhar was, according to a 9/11 Commission staff report, "a known al Qaeda operative at the time."
That Mihdhar and Hazmi lived openly in San Diego, obtained California drivers' licenses in their own names, even rooming for a time with an FBI informant.
Even when the CIA learned of Mihdhar and Hazmi's arrival, their names were not added to a terror watchlist until August 24, 2001.
That even today, after three years of intensive FBI investigation, the 9/11 Staff conceded an "inability to ascertain the activities of Hazmi and Mihdhar during their first two weeks in the United States...."
That FBI director Robert Mueller said, "They gave no hint to those around what they were about. They came lawfully. They lived lawfully. They trained lawfully."
That the staff of the 9/11 Commission endeavored "to dispel the myth that entry into the United States was 'clean and legal.'"
"That all 19 of the still-existing hijacker applications were incomplete in some way..."
That the hijackers cleared U.S Customs a total of 33 times over 21 months through 9 airports.
Ziad Jarrah, one of the 4 pilots, entered the U.S. a total of seven times between May 2000 and August 2001.
That "in all, had 25 contacts with consular officers and 43 contacts with immigration and customs authorities."
That Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, "KSM," the mastermind of the terror plot, used "a travel facilitator" to acquire a U.S. visa on July 23, 2001 in Saudi Arabia – even though he had been indicted in the Southern District of NY in 1996.
That Mohammed Atta was readmitted to the US on January 10, 2001 – even though he had overstayed his previous visa by a month.
That even when Atta was referred for further, "secondary inspection" at Customs, "Atta's secondary inspector misjudged him as a tourist, even though Atta presented him with a student/school form as a basis for entry."
That "in late June, 2001, when intelligence indicated that al Qaeda was planning a major attack against U.S. interests in the near future, the Visa Express Program in Saudi Arabia was expanded to include all applicants in Saudi Arabia."
That, "according to the GAO, consular officers in Riyadh refused .15 percent of Saudi citizen visa applications during the period from September 11, 2000 to April 30, 2001."
That U.S. visa policy in Saudi Arabia "derived from several sources"...including "common interests" that "resulted in what one senior consular official serving in Saudi Arabia described as 'a culture in our mission in Saudi Arabia to be as accommodating as we possibly could.'"
That when the 9/11 Commission staff "asked consular officials whether they felt pressure from their superiors or others to issue visas, they answered that pressure was applied from several sources, including the U.S. ambassador, Saudi government officials or businesspeople, and members of the U.S. Congress."
That "al Qaeda's senior leadership" stopped using a satellite phone, and the NSA lost an effective avenue of surveillance, "almost immediately after a leak to the Washington Times" in August 1998 – just after the Clinton administration's failed strike on his Afghan camp.
That on 9/11 "the Secretary of Defense did not enter the chain of command until the morning's key events were over."
That at 10:39 am on 9/11, Vice-President Cheney informed the Secretary of Defense that "...it's my understanding they've already taken a couple of aircraft out."
That "NORAD and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11th, 2001. They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never before encountered and had never trained to meet."
Then on page 265 the final report of the Commission concludes that the terrorists "exploited deep institutional failings within our government."
That is not the whole truth. What are institutions if not the lengthened influence of individuals? "The system failed" is the catchphrase now in vogue in Washington. Critics and fans alike of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush still rely on this hollow analysis. But "the system" is no mindless mechanism operating independently of the men and women individuals with names, power, and obligations – who are charged with making it work. Before "the system" can fail, they must fail.
The Commissioners avoided blaming any government officials, past or present, for the failure to prevent the attacks. They maintain that their job was not to assign individual blame, but provide the most complete and frank account of the decisive events surrounding the attack. To that end, they succeeded.
But to stop there is to stop short. Read the final report of the Commission carefully – connect the dots – and a fuller pattern emerges: Key government officials failed the system, and they failed the American people.
Judges and social workers talk of the "circle of accountability." The 9/11 Commission was indeed an historic undertaking. Yet in spreading the blame as broadly as it possibly could, the Commissioners, rather than enlarging that circle, have all but closed it. Americans deserve better than to allow accountability to be passed off as a mere abstraction; they should know where the buck stops. The nearly 3,000 men and women who died on 9/11 deserve better, too. It will not bring them back to hold accountable the particular officials in high office who could have acted and did not. But it will assure that they did not die in vain.
This commentary is associated with "9/11: For the Record" a one-hour documentary by Bill Moyers, Andrew Meier, and Sherry Jones which airs on PBS' NOW with Bill Moyers, on Friday, September 10 at 9 PM (check local listings).

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It may not be a smear job, but GWB will make Graham sorry he wrote the book. Here is the article I referred to earlier.
Vengeance is His
By Paul Begala
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A president who unveils his ideas for his second term in the last hundred days of his reelection campaign is admitting that he has no new ideas for the next four years. So why is George W. Bush bothering to run again, anyway? Perhaps to justify what he sees as accomplishments--principally, tax cuts for the rich and the occupation of Iraq. Perhaps for the chance to one-up his dad as a two-term President Bush. But I believe much of his second term will be given over to another motive--one that's more personal and political:
Vengeance.
If George W. Bush is given a second term, and retains a Republican Congress and a compliant federal judiciary, he and his allies are likely to embark on a campaign of political retribution the likes of which we haven't seen since Richard Nixon.
How do I know this? I'm from Texas. Again and again, I've seen Bush turn a blind eye as his henchmen have leveled zealous attacks against his political enemies--assaults which the president himself has sometimes directly encouraged. Perhaps most disturbing, the subjects of these attacks have often been longtime Bush allies who ended up on the president's enemies list for minor slights.
Back home Bush had no better Democratic buddy than House Speaker Pete Laney, a quintessential Texas good ol' boy who ran the House through his mastery of both procedure and policy. Together with the late Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, Laney was responsible for Bush's success as Texas governor. (The governor of my state has little real power, but Bush teamed ably and admirably with Laney and Bullock.)
After the Supreme Court handed the 2000 election to Gov. Bush, it was Pete Laney who let him address the nation from the chamber of the Texas House of Representatives, even introducing Bush as a bipartisan healer. Bush made a point of praising Laney, whom he called "my friend."
Two and a half years later, Bush's "friend" was holed up in Ardmore, Okla., in a vain attempt to stop a bone-crunchingly partisan redistricting of Texas that could not have been brought about without the approval of his buddy George. The congressional map was redrawn just two years after the last redistricting--not because population patterns had shifted, but because political power had shifted. When Democrats fled the state to prevent legislative action on the redistricting plan, the Texas Rangers were called in to track them down. And when the Rangers couldn't find the Democrats, the Republicans called in President Bush's federal Department of Homeland Security, which found them by tracing Laney's private plane.
Today Pete Laney is no longer Speaker--with Bush's help, Republicans took over the Texas Legislature--and now Pete is in the fight of his life, running in a new, Republican district created with the support of his old buddy.
Thanks, George.
Laney's story is especially upsetting because Bush tried to destroy someone who had never crossed him--simply for the crime of being a Democrat.
Tony Sanchez's story is different. He actually dared to run against Bush's handpicked successor. The son of a typewriter repairman, Sanchez is a great American success story, rising from days packing produce on the Mexican border to eventual success in the very areas that had disappointed Bush: in the oil patch and, later, in banking. In 1994, Sanchez donated $300,000 to Bush's campaign, making him one of Bush's leading Democratic supports and putting him in league with Ken Lay as one of the largest patrons of Bush's early political career.
Sanchez stood by Bush when he ran for reelection, and then when he ran for president. But he just couldn't stomach Rick Perry, Bush's lieutenant governor, who took over when Bush went to Washington. So Sanchez decided to run himself, perhaps naively thinking his old pal George might be neutral in a race between his lieutenant governor and his most prominent Hispanic supporter.
Fat chance.
Bush not only actively campaigned for Perry, but he also allowed Perry's goons to run vicious ads against Sanchez. They portrayed Sanchez as somehow complicit in the 1985 torture and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena because during the 1980s, drug dealers used Sanchez's bank (as they did most banks on the border) without his knowledge.
What the ads did not mention is that Sanchez helped federal authorities bust the bad guys, and earned the praise of the Reagan Justice Department. In fact, when the ads ran, David Almaraz, the DOJ official who handled the investigation, denounced them, saying, "Perry's claim is absolutely preposterous and completely false, without any foundation and fact."
But Sanchez's vast fortune was no match for good old-fashioned Texas racism. Do the math: Mexican American plus rich plus bank plus drugs equals disaster. Sanchez was crushed in the 2002 election.
We don't have to wonder what George W. Bush might do with four more years in the most powerful job on earth--and with no future campaigns to curb his enthusiasm. He's already countenanced the abuse of the federal anti-terror agency to hound Pete Laney. He's already smiled approvingly as racist ads were run against Tony Sanchez. And he's made vengeance a top priority in Washington already.
A prime example is the White House's treatment of Tom Daschle in late 2001. Up until that point, Daschle had been an amiable partner, working with Bush to craft compromises on several important early pieces of legislations and standing strong behind Bush after September 11. In those dark and desperate days, Daschle even earned a public hug from Bush on national television. But in November 2001, Daschle successfully blocked a Bush-backed "economic stimulus" bill which would have, among other things, given a quarter billion dollar tax cut to Enron.
Bush was mad. Just after Thanksgiving 2001, he directed his staff to attack Daschle publicly; shortly thereafter, everyone from Ari Fleischer to the National Review to the editorial page of The Washington Times pushed the White House line that Daschle was an "obstructionist." Rush Limbaugh did them one better: on his radio show, he started calling the Senate Majority Leader "Puff Daschle" and "El Diablo." The GOP attack machine funded aggressive, anti-Daschle ads in South Dakota--an unprecedented direct assault by a president against a sitting leader of the Senate. One particularly egregious ad, which complained that Daschle's opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve threatened our national security, featured a photograph of Daschle next to one of Saddam Hussein.
Who will be the next unlucky enemy targeted under a second Bush term? I'd put my money on any Democratic swing-state legislator who seeks to accommodate him. Moderates like Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) might feel an even greater political imperative to accommodate Bush on his second-term agenda--from further tax cuts to privatizing social security--but if history is any guide, he will simply pocket their support and then viciously attack them. That, after all, was the fate of former Sen. Max Cleland who supported Bush's tax cuts and the war in Iraq. All he got for his goodwill was a ruthless general election campaign engineered by the national GOP on behalf of Saxby Chambliss, who ended up taking Cleland's seat after attack ads charged that the Vietnam triple amputee was soft on national security.
If Democrats are smart, they will instead steal a page from the playbooks of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and the late senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.). In the midst of tough midterm election challenges in heavily contested swing-states, both politicians stood up to Bush. Although the GOP attack machine whirred into action, it sputtered and failed against Harken and Wellstone. Even voters who disagreed with them on some issues admired their independence Harkin won his race easily, and Wellstone was well out in front when he died in a plane crash. Their toughness should provide a model to other targeted Democrats, even in states with split constituencies: In modern politics, as in war, there's simply nothing to be gained by accommodating the enemy.
Bush sees the world in black and white. You're either for him or against him; a saint or a sinner; a friend or a foe. If given four more years in the White House, there's little doubt that the politics of retribution and bitter partisanship will dominate every day.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.begala.html
Bush sees the world in black and white. You're either for him or against him; a saint or a sinner; a friend or a foe. If given four more years in the White House, there's little doubt that the politics of retribution and bitter partisanship will dominate every day.
That's why I laughed in terror when he claimed to be a "Uniter"...a 'compassionate Conservative'...'bi-partisan'...
How very correct! But hey if you can fool the people, then by all means deceive away!
I agree, he didn't know about it, but at the same time how can a President be so foolish or ignorant? US politics is becoming as dirty as the one in India. In India politicians don't care about civilian deaths at all. In fact most of the riots where innocents are killed are instigated by politicians. I hesitate to beleive any US politician would stoop so low, but with all the ties of Bush family with the Saudi royal family etc... One can't help but wonder.
In America, the people have generally held politicians accountable. However, I am very concerned about the new republicans. They seem to be as corrupt as they could possibly be, not caring about the reaction to their actions. If the US is so stupid as to re-elect Bush, then I am sure the world will try to discredit him. Annon statement about the invasion of Iraq being illegal may be an initial step. Just a supposition.
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