by Will Bunch, Philadelphia Daily News
Oct. 4, 2006
How John Ashcroft saved his own sorry rear end, and not the lives of 2,973 people who died on 9/11:
Just over three years ago, when such things were not in vogue, we wrote an article about the 20 unanswered questions of 9/11. It's sad, but three years later, many of them are still unanswered -- but at least we are finally getting some info. Here's one of those questions we asked on Sept. 11, 2003:
2. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?
On July 26, 2001 -- 47 days before the Sept. 11 attacks -- CBS News reported that Ashcroft was flying expensive charters rather than commercial flights
|
|
|
because of a "threat assessment" by the FBI. CBS said, "Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term."
Newsweek later reported that on Sept. 10, 2001, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."
Did either Ashcroft or the Pentagon have advance information about a 9/11-style attack and, if so, why wasn't this shared with the American public?
Tonight, it looks like we can answer the first half of this one.
Yes.
As pointed out earlier today by Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake, Ashcroft was in on the July 2001 warnings of a pending attack by top CIA officials, the same one that was given to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who then tried to lie and say the meeting never happened.
Check out this report from the News Service Formerly Known as Knight Ridder:WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.
One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.
This is incredible.
This meeting reportedly took place no later than July 17, 2001 -- or just nine days before the CBS report about a "threat assessment" and Ashcroft switching to private jets. So his first instinct, then, was to save himself.
The U.S. attorney general did nothing of substance, it seems, to move on the safety of the innocent Americans who did board commercial jets that were hijacked about seven weeks later, or the many more who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It is all so much like the Mark Foley scandal in this sense: The people in power wanting to save only themselves, with no concern for the innocent.
We've said this before, and we'll say it again: There must be a new, impartial and thorough investigation of 9/11. To those who say that the terror attack has already been investigated ... it hasn't.
Archived from original publication
Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11
by Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott, McClatchy Newspapers
Oct. 2, 2006
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.
One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.
Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel's executive director and the principal author of its report, who's now Rice's top adviser.
A new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post alleges that Rice failed to take the July 2001 warning seriously when it was delivered at a White House meeting by Tenet, Cofer Black, then the agency's chief of top counterterrorism, and a third CIA official whose identity remains protected.
Rice's deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, who became national security adviser after she became secretary of state, and Rice's top counterterrorism aide, Richard Clarke, also were present.
Woodward wrote that Tenet and Black considered the briefing the "starkest warning they had given the White House" on the threat posed by Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. But, he wrote, the pair felt as if Rice gave them "the brush-off."
Speaking to reporters late Sunday en route to the Middle East, Rice said she had no recollection of what she called "the supposed meeting."
"What I'm quite certain of, is that it was not a meeting in which I was told that there was an impending attack and I refused to respond," she said.
Ashcroft, who resigned as attorney general on Nov. 9, 2004, told the Associated Press on Monday that it was "disappointing" that he never received the briefing, either.
But on Monday evening, Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack issued a statement confirming that she'd received the CIA briefing "on or around July 10" and had asked that it be given to Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.
"The information presented in this meeting was not new, rather it was a good summary from the threat reporting from the previous several weeks," McCormack said. "After this meeting, Dr. Rice asked that this same information be briefed to Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Ashcroft. That briefing took place by July 17."
Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman, said he had no information "about what may or may not have been briefed" to Rumsfeld at Rice's request.
David Ayres, who was Ashcroft's chief of staff at the Justice Department, said that the former attorney general also has no recollection of a July 17, 2001, terrorist threat briefing. Later, Ayres said that Ashcroft could recall only a July 5 briefing on threats to U.S. interests abroad.
He said Ashcroft doesn't remember any briefing that summer that indicated that al-Qaida was planning to attack within the United States.
The CIA briefing didn't provide the exact timing or nature of a possible attack, nor did it predict whether it was likely to take place in the United States or overseas, said three former senior intelligence officials.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because the report remains highly classified.
The briefing "didn't say within the United States," said one former senior intelligence official. "It said on the United States, which could mean a ship, an embassy or inside the United States."
In the briefing, Tenet warned in very strong terms that intelligence from a variety of sources indicated that bin Laden's terrorist network was planning an attack on a U.S. target in the near future, said one of the officials.
"The briefing was intended to `connect the dots' contained in other intelligence reports and paint a very clear picture of the threat posed by bin Laden," said the official, who described the tone of the report as "scary."
It isn't clear what action, if any, the administration took in response, but officials said Rumsfeld was focused mostly on his plans to remake the Army into a smaller, high-tech force and deploy a national ballistic missile defense system.
Nor is it clear why the 9/11 commission never reported the briefing, which the intelligence officials said Tenet outlined to commission members Ben-Veniste and Zelikow in secret testimony at CIA headquarters. The State Department confirmed that the briefing materials were "made available to the 9/11 Commission, and Director Tenet was asked about this meeting when interviewed by the 9/11 Commission."
The three former senior intelligence officials, however, said Tenet raised the matter with the panel himself, displayed slides from the PowerPoint presentation and offered to testify on the matter in public.
Ben-Veniste confirmed to McClatchy Newspapers that Tenet outlined for the 9/11 commission the July 10 briefing to Rice in secret testimony in January 2004. He referred questions about why the commission omitted any mention of the briefing in its report to Zelikow, the report's main author. Zelikow didn't respond to e-mail and telephone queries from McClatchy Newspapers.
Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Ben-Veniste and the former senior intelligence officials all challenged some aspects of Woodward's account of the briefing given to Rice, including assertions that she failed to react to the warning and that it concerned an imminent attack inside the United States.
Clarke told McClatchy Newspapers that Rice focused in particular on the possible threat to President Bush at an upcoming summit meeting in Genoa, Italy, and promised to quickly schedule a high-level White House meeting on al-Qaida. That meeting took place on September 4, 2001.
Ben-Veniste said the commission was never told that Rice had brushed off the warning. According to Tenet, he said, Rice "understood the level of urgency he was communicating."
Archived from original publication
| | | You're invited to respond: |
| |
|
We appreciate the heck out of everyone who helps.
|
|
| All republished material is copyrighted by its original publisher.
This site contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this is a 'fair use' of copyrighted material, as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: www.law.cornell.edu/ uscode/17/107.shtml. |
|
|
|
Commentary by Gordon Montague:
Remember, way back, when we heard that John Ashcroft
stopped flying on commercial flights ahead of 9/11?
July 26, 2001:
"Threat assessment" keeps Ashcroft off commercial air flights
That was a key part of the "conspiracy theory" that
the Bush Regime LIHOPed 9/11 ("Let It Happen On
Purpose").
But that was bullcrap. Ashcroft denied it meant anything... but that was another damned lie. As we learned this
week Condoleezza was explicitly briefed by George Tenet,
the head of the CIA, that a "10" on the scale of 10
risk was at hand, and then she asked that Ashcroft
and Ridge be briefed...
So Ashcroft was lying.
BUT WAIT! There's more! Remember Slick Willie Brown,
then-mayor of San Francisco, who was also warned ahead of
time -- and who then changed his plans?
Sept. 12, 2001:
San Francisco Mayor says he
was warned not to fly yesterday
Excerpt: For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something
was amiss came late Monday when he got a call from what
he described as his airport security -- a full eight
hours before yesterday's string of terrorist attacks --
advising him that Americans should be cautious about
their air travel.
The mayor, who was booked to fly to New York yesterday
morning from San Francisco International Airport, said
the call "didn't come in any alarming fashion, which is
why I'm hesitant to make an alarming statement."
That was
undoubtedly the result of the same thing: the Lords
of the US gossiped and warned each other not to fly...
apparently a lot of these fuckers were warned ahead
of time!
I want to know which one of these fuckers DIDN'T know in advance,
so that we can fire him or her for being such a
clueless asshole... clueless, like the other 299,900,000
Americans who were neither warned nor protected by their government.
Bush himself got an August briefing stating
"Bin Laden determined to strike in US", which
contained references to hijacking an aircraft.
And Bush, like the others, didn't do a fucking thing...
EXCEPT... the one thing the Bush Regime did was
schedule an Air Force training exercise with
simulated civilian jet hijackings on the morning
of September 11, 2001, with the end result that
the four *real* hijacked jets were able to fly
around for more than an hour without interception.
Those are the facts. That isn't a theory. And it
isn't a conspiracy theory anymore. It is a fucking
FACT.
Gordon Montague
|
|
In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.
"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.
LINK |
|
|
|
Is it luck that aberrant stock trades were not monitored? Is it luck when 15 visas are awarded based on incomplete forms? Is it luck when Airline Security screenings allow hijackers to board planes with box cutters and pepper spray? Is it luck when Emergency FAA and NORAD protocols are not followed? Is it luck when a national emergency is not reported to top government officials on a timely basis?
To me luck is something that happens once. When you have this repeated pattern of broken protocols, broken laws, broken communication, one cannot still call it luck.
If at some point we don't look to hold the individuals accountable for not doing their jobs properly then how can we ever expect for terrorists not to get lucky again?
LINK
|
|
|
|
Amazingly, Air Force One took off [from Florida after the attacks of September 11] with no military protection. It remained unprotected in the sky for more than an hour, though Florida is filled with Air Force bases just minutes away with planes that are supposed to be on twenty-four-hour alert.
Bush's aides later offered, and retracted, the excuse that he spent the day flying around the country because of threats to Air Force One believed to have been received at the White House. What nobody has ever explained is this: If you think Air Force One is to be attacked, why go up in Air Force One?
LINK |
|
|
|
The fact that top officials, at a time of extraordinary crisis and public anxiety, lied to protect the president's image has immense implications. If, within 24 hours of the terror attacks, the White House was giving out disinformation to deceive the American public and world opinion, then none of the claims made by the government from September 11 to the present can be taken for good coin.
If Bush lied about his activities on the day of the attacks, why should anyone assume he has not lied about the government's investigation, the identity of the perpetrators, the motives and aims of US war preparations, and the intent and scope of expanded police powers demanded by his administration to wiretap, search and seize, and detain suspects?
LINK |
|
|
|
The 9/11 investigation was originally given a budget of $3-million, later increased to $12-million. Some reports say the budget is now $14-million.
By comparison, when the shuttle Columbia disintegrated during its descent in February 2003, $50-million was budgeted for an investigation, which began about an hour and a half after the disaster.
Another $305-million was spent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), searching for shuttle debris.
The investigation into the shuttle accident began publicly releasing its findings within several weeks, and concluded its work with an exhaustive report about six months later.
Even the Warren Commission, the U.S. government's widely-disbelieved investigation of Pres. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, was budgeted at $5.5-million -- in 1963 funds.
Adjusted for inflation, that's more than $32-million in 2003 dollars.
You might think it would cost substantially more to thoroughly investigate a complicated event -- nineteen foreign hijackers commandeering four passenger jets and obliterating the World Trade Center, damaging the Pentagon, and killing thousands of Americans -- than to investigate the shooting of the president in a parade.
The Bush Administration seems to disagree. They think it should cost substantially less.
LINK |
|
|
|
CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq -- even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.
LINK
|
|
|
|
"We've been fighting for nearly 21 months -- fighting the administration, the White House," says Monica Gabrielle.
Her husband, Richard, an insurance broker who worked for Aon Corp. on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center's Tower 2, died during the attacks. "As soon as we started looking for answers we were blocked, put off and ignored at every stop of the way. We were shocked. The White House is just blocking everything."
Another 9/11 family advocate -- a former Bush supporter who requested anonymity -- was more blunt: "Bush has done everything in his power to squelch this [9/11] commission and prevent it from happening."
LINK |
|
|
|
President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN.
LINK |
|
|
|
Why did the US military, with the most powerful arsenal in world history, fail to prevent or at least try to stop a series of hijackings and crashes that went on for nearly two hours?
Where was the Air Force?
If President Bush and his cabinet were not, at this very moment, still trying to censor, suppress and delay the publication of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, if there had been honest disclosure and straight stories from the beginning, perhaps all these "dark questions," as the Post puts it, would never have arisen.
The great majority of people, sickened and overwhelmed by the horror of the attacks, unquestioningly accepts the White House version.
Many thousands, however, are patiently stitching together the documented evidence and noting the huge holes in the fabric of that official story.
LINK |
|
|
|
|
On Sept. 10, Newsweek has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.
LINK |
|
|
|
Do we know the answers to these questions about September 11?
Of course not. Nobody will know the answers until there's an open and honest investigation.
But anyone courageous enough to think can see that the pertinent questions for any serious "investigation" were never asked, let alone answered.
--Helen & Harry, Unknown News
|
|
|
|
|
|
You know, in a courtroom, when a witness is shown to be clearly lying about one detail, it calls that witness's entire testimony into doubt.
If it worked that way with presidents, we'd have ample grounds to doubt everything the Bush administration has told us about September 11, 2001.
After all; every newspaper and television account is directly or indirectly based in large part upon what the Bush administration has announced -- that they had no prior warning, that they knew immediately Osama bin Laden was to blame, that exactly 19 hijackers were aboard those four planes, that each hijacker has been posthumously identified, etc.
So our shared public perception of what happened on September 11, and why it happened, is really built on just one assumption, universally agreed: That the Bush administration is comprised of honest people, telling the truth.
But I don't see any evidence to support such an allegation.
LINK |
|
|
|
At his press conference yesterday, President Bush was asked about charges that he had received warnings prior to the September 11th attacks that a terrorist incident was imminent.
He answered that even asking such a question was "an absurd insinuation."
LINK
|
|
|
|
The United States allowed members of Osama bin Laden's family to jet out of the US in the immediate aftermath of September 11, even as American airspace was closed.
Former White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke said the Bush administration sanctioned the repatriation of about 140 high-ranking Saudi Arabians, including relatives of the al-Qaida chief.
LINK |
|
|
|
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-Qaida'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".
LINK |
|
|
|
Yet one week, one week after 9/11, in response to initial reports that the military failed to defend our domestic airspace during the hijacks NORAD issued an official chronology that stated that the FAA notified NORAD of the second hijacking at 8:43 -- wrong. FAA notified NORAD of the third hijacking at 9:24, according to your report, wrong, FAA notified NORAD of the fourth hijacking at an unspecified time and that prior to the crash in Pennsylvania Langley F-16 combat air patrol planes were in place, remaining in place, to protect Washington, D.C..
All untrue.
LINK
|
|
|
|
At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said in a report today.
That manager crushed the cassette in his hand, shredded the tape and dropped the pieces into different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.
LINK
|
|
|
|
Although American and British officials say they have "no doubt" that Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist organization were behind the crimes of Sept. 11, so far no actual evidence has been made public.
... During the Cuban missile crisis, the United States publicly released photographs that made a convincing case that the Soviets were lying about the missiles in Cuba. This tangible evidence helped retain support from allies and isolated the Russians diplomatically. Our situation today calls for similar action. President Bush should not let a blanket concern about protecting intelligence sources dissuade him from releasing enough intelligence to make our case.
LINK
|
|
|
|
"The report is incomplete at best," said Breitweiser.
"Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi. We have clear and convincing money trails linking the Saudi princes to the terrorists. Why that's not finding its way into the report, I don't know."
LINK
|
|
|
|
One day before two American Airlines jets were hijacked and crashed, for example, 1,535 contracts changed hands on options that let investors profit if AMR stock falls below $30 per share before Oct. 20. That was almost five times the total number of those October $30 put options traded before Sept. 10, according to Bloomberg data. AMR shares fell $11.70 today to $18.
Those 1,535 contracts were worth $1.6 million at today's closing price compared with $337,700 at the end of trading on Sept. 10, according to Bloomberg data. A contract represents options for 100 shares.
Similarly, October $30 put options for UAL soared, with 2,000 contracts traded on Sept. 6, three trading days before the attack. A total of 27 contracts had traded previously.
LINK |
|
|
|
A Saudi citizen who provided help to two of the September 11 hijackers may have been an agent for the Riyadh government, a congressional report will highlight this week.
The explosive allegation in the report, which is understood to be highly critical of the FBI, is likely to reignite the controversy over Saudi Arabia's links with al-Qa'eda and has already led to accusations that the Bush administration is covering up for the House of Saud.
LINK
|
|
|
|
|
There's much more than this at Unknown News.
|
