September 11, 2001

Are Members of Congress (and Maybe Even the President) Being Blackmailed?

dlindorff — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:31:21 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

For some time now, many Americans have wondered how Congress, the
elected body that the nation’s Founding Fathers saw as the bulwark of
liberty, could have been so thoroughly unwilling to, or incapable of
challenging the dictatorial power-grabs and the eight-year Constitution
wrecking campaign of the Bush/Cheney administration.

There has been speculation on both the far left and the far right,
and even among some in the apolitical, cynical middle of the political
spectrum, that somehow the Bush/Cheney administration must have been
blackmailing at least the key members of the Congressional leadership,
most likely through the use of electronic monitoring by the National
Security Agency (NSA).

I’ll admit that I considered the idea of blackmail a bit far out.
But now suddenly there is at least some evidence that such seemingly
wild speculation may not have been off the mark, with reports that the
NSA was indeed monitoring Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), and that the Bush
Administration used the evidence it had obtained of her improper
conversations with and promises to assist agents of the Israeli
government and its lobby here in the US, the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to blackmail her into supporting the NSA’s
warrantless spying program—the very kind of spying that led to her
being caught on tape plotting with an agent of a foreign power.

At the time of the taping of Harman’s incriminating phone
conversations, the administration was trying desperately (and
ultimately successfully) to get the New York Times to hold
off on publishing a shocking investigative report by journalist James
Risen about a massive campaign of warrantless tapping of Americans’
phone and internet communications.

According to a report by Jeff Stein, published in the latest issue of Congressional Quarterly,
the NSA in 2006 recorded Rep. Harman negotiating with an alleged
Israeli agent about helping Israel win a reduction in the espionage
charges filed by the US in 2005 against two members of the AIPAC lobby
accused of providing US intelligence information to the Israeli
government (the case against AIPAC’s Stephen Rosen and Keith Weissman
is still waiting to go to trial). According to the transcript, a copy
of which was obtained by CQ, the Israeli agent offered to
have AIPAC lobby, and more specifically to have a it arrange for a
wealthy Jewish pro-Israel donor in California donate money to Rep.
Nancy Pelosi, in order to get her, once she became House Speaker, to
name Harman as chair of the House Intelligence Committee. At the end of
the phone conversation, Rep. Harman, who offered to help, was heard to
say, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

According to reports in CQ and in the New York Times,
which ran a story on the scandal as its lead news item on Tuesday, then
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales subsequently intervened with the FBI
to prevent any prosecution of Harman, a key member of Congress on whom
the administration was relying to help it persuade the Times to withhold its NSA wiretapping exposé until after the 2006 election. In the event, Rep. Harman did later make calls to a Times, editor, the paper did hold its story until after the election, and Harman later was a leading backer of the administration’s controversial (and, according to a federal district judge, illegal) NSA spying program.

There are several serious issues here. One is the extraordinary
glimpse it offers into the extent to which Israel has penetrated the
centers of power in Washington. It is illegal for foreign governments
to directly lobby and to offer to arrange financial contributions for
members of the US government, but here, clearly, Israeli agents were
doing just that. The role of AIPAC as a front for the Israeli
government in Washington, as exposed here, is simply stomach-turning,
and should make it a toxic organization to politicians. Instead, they
flock enmasse to its annual meetings, as President Obama did almost
immediately upon winning the November election, and a large proportion
of both houses from both parties happily accept its campaign largesse.

A second, even bigger, issue is the NSA’s spying activities
themselves. According to CQ, the particular wiretap that caught Rep.
Harman inflagrante with an Israeli agent was a court-approved tap—part
of an investigation into Israeli government spying activities. But even
if this is true—and at this point, we’re relying on what the government
is telling us about it—it shows how dangerous the broader unwarranted
monitoring program of the NSA has been, and remains. Back in 1978,
Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA) in
direct response to the disclosure during the Watergate hearings and
subsequent investigations that the Nixon Administration had been using
the NSA to conduct illegal monitoring of the communications of anti-war
activists, and of members of Congress. To prevent such
police-state outrages in the future, Congress passed the FISA
legislation, establishing a secret court staffed by a panel of
top-security-cleared federal judges, whose sole responsibility was to
consider and grant requests from the NSA for warrants to conduct secret
electronic surveillance within the US or involving American citizens
abroad.

President Bush used the pretext of the 9-11 attacks to secretly
order the NSA to begin a massive compaign of surveillance without going
through the FISA Court for warrants, even secretly soliciting the
cooperation of the nation’s several telecom companies in splicing in
routers at their switching hubs to make it possible to monitor all
conversations moving across the wires and the internet. It seemed to
some observers, myself included, that the only reason the
administration could have had for bypassing the FISA court (which over
30 years of operation has been incredibly accommodating of government
spying requests) was that it was planning to engage in spying that
would outrage the public and the Congress and even the FISA judges. It
also seemed likely, given the Bush/Cheney administration’s public
stance that everyone was either “with us or against us,” and that
critics of the administration’s “War on Terror” or of its plans to
invade Iraq, were “unpatriotic” or “soft on terror,” that congressional
opponents of the administration would be obvious—and indeed
irresistible--targets of that surveillance.

Now that we have seen proof that the administration was not above
using its NSA-acquired knowledge to pressure a member of Congress, it
becomes absolutely essential that Congress and the Justice Department
investigate to see whether other members of Congress were also victims
of agency spying, and whether others besides Rep. Harmon were similarly
extorted or otherwise compromised.

The American public can, at this point, have zero confidence in the
integrity of the Congress or of their own representatives, knowing that
politicians and government officials may be acting not in the public
interest but rather under duress in the interest of those who control
the National Security Agency. We can have zero confidence either in the
integrity of the president, who likewise may well have been compromised
by NSA surveillance conducted on him before he became president.

The only possible position for the public to adopt as of today is to be suspicious of any politician who opposes a full and public investigation
into the NSA’s seven-year-long campaign of sweeping, warrantless
electronic eavesdropping, since opposition to such an investigation, in
the wake of the Harman episode, could well be an indication that the
political figure in question is afraid she or he has been monitored, or
worse, that she or he has been threatened by those who have the
records. Every citizen concerned about the fate of American democracy
should demand that his or her senators and representative promptly call
for such a public probe.

It is no longer a wild idea at all to imagine that our Congress has
been reduced to the status of a Potemkin legislature because of real or
imagined spying by the NSA.

_____________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book
is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Osama Bin Forgotten

Bob Fertik — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:17:00 -0500

Guess who Bush never mentioned at his final press conference? Eric Boehlert writes:

Noticing anything missing from that list? Like the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, which for years, we were told, was the administration's top priority since bin Laden was behind the terrorist attack that killed more than 3,000 Americans.

Since the press conference though, I haven't seen or heard any press reports mention that glaringly obvious gap in Bush's list. Instead, reading off the White House play sheet, the press no longer thinks bin Laden matters.

Lapdogs to the end.

UPDATE: A check of the transcript shows that Osama bin Laden, the man who defined Bush's presidency, was never mentioned by either Bush or anyone in the press corps during the president's expansive, 45-minute farewell press conference.

Shoot Your Friends First: The Cheney Doctrine

dlindorff — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:28:17 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Some people are expressing consternation and disbelief at a report
by journalist Seymour Hersh that Vice President Dick Cheney had
discussed the idea in his office of having some Navy Seals dress up as
Iranians, and then putting them in faked Iranian speedboats to make a fake
attack on US ships in the Persian Gulf. The ensuing faked battle, with
fake Iranians shooting at US ships and US ships firing back, he
suggested, could be used to spark a war between the US and Iran.

` I don’t know why people would find it hard to believe that this
vice president would think up an idea like having Americans shoot at
other Americans in the interest of his own warped view of national
security.

After all, this is a guy who shoots his own friends.

Besides, Cheney is in good company in this kind of thinking. We know
from reports of the meeting filed by British intelligence that
President Bush engaged in the same kind of thing when he was having
trouble getting the country and the rest of the civilized world behind
his and Cheney’s plan to attack Iraq. It was disclosed years later that
in early 2003, Bush suggested to Prime Minister Tony Blair that the US
could paint a U-2 spy plane in UN colors and fly it over sensitive
parts of Iraqi airspace, so that Saddam Hussein would order it show
down. That, he argued, would anger enough UN member states to win a
security resolution to support a war on Iraq, and failing that, would
give the US an excuse to go in on its own. Blair was reportedly
horrified at this kind of kamikaze thinking—but not horrified enough to
expose the president as a nutcase.

So that’s where we are today folks. A president and a vice president
who both think that it’s a great idea to either send some of your own
troops under false flags into harm’s way to get shot at so you can
start a war, or, even worse, to dress up some of your soldiers as the
enemy you want to go after, and have them open fire on your own guys so
that you can claim you were attacked, and then go to war.

Who gets tricked by all these mad schemes?

Not the Iranians, or in the earlier instance, the Iraqis. They know
they aren’t attacking American forces. No. It’s us, the American
people, who are being tricked. Cheney knows that most Americans think
the idea of attacking Iran—especially when we’re five years into an
interminable war in Iraq and seven years into another war in
Afghanistan, neither of which has an end in sight—is really, really
stupid. So they’re trying to think up a way to trick us into supporting
doing such a stupid thing. And the only thing they can come up with to
overcome our reticence is making us think that our guys are being
attacked.

Now let me say that I’ve been a skeptic about people who claim the
9-11 attacks were an “inside job”—that the US government actually
organized those attacks. I know all the arguments and evidence, but it
always seemed to me that it was over the top to think that our leaders
would try to deliberately kill Americans in order to achieve some
policy goal. And yet, here we have Dick Cheney, the real brains (such
as they are) behind the Bush administration, discussing a plan, using
American forces, to fake an attack on other American forces.

It makes me wonder whether maybe Cheney deliberately shot his friend
Harry Whittington, either to flush those damned elusive quail he was
after, or so that he could generate public sympathy for the embattled
President Bush. And it even makes me wonder whether crazy Dick actually
did have a hand in bringing down those Twin Towers. He may be too
stupid to pull something like that off, but he has made it clear that
it isn’t moral scruples that would prevent him from doing such a
monstrous thing.

As ludicrous, pathetic and outrageous as this administration is, we
need to take this latest Hersh report seriously. It seems clear that
Cheney has a predilection for using fratricide to achieve his nefarious
ends.

It’s one thing when he does it with his own rifle, though. It’s
another when he does it with the world’s most mighty military machine.
______________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is
“The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available
in paperback edition). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Censorship and the Anemic State of Political Discourse in America

dlindorff — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 08:56:43 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

When I lived in China in the early 1990s, there were things that you could not discuss. One was Tibet. Another was Taiwan, "referred to in my daughter's public elementary school in Shanghai as "China's largest island." Another was the 1989 massacre of students and workers in Beijing. I used to be grateful at the time that I was an American and that back home, we could talk about anything.

Except that in a way we can't. Not in public discourse, anyhow.

Take the silly broughhaha on the Right, in the media, and in the Democratic primary campaign, over the statements of Obama's "spiritual mentor" the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Everyone is all worked up--and Obama has sacked Wright from his campaign's religious advisory committee--because of some statements Wright has made that crossed an invisible line of permissible discourse.

Wright's "crime"? He dared to point out that the US is a racist nation. He dared to suggest that the US is a terror state.

In fact, what Wright said is absolutely correct. If you look at the incarceration rate for African Americans, at the fact that half of the astonishing two million Americans who are in prison at this moment (one-percent of the adult population!) are black, at the fact that half the approximately 4000 people on death row are black, at the appalling education that is offered to most of the nation's black children (my daughter teaches math at a "magnet" high school in Brooklyn, NY that is billed as a college preparatory institution, where there are 35 kids per classroom and where there's no teacher offering calculus or even pre-calc even though some students are ready for it), if you look at who the main victims are of the sub-prime loan scandal, if you look at how the Republican Party has deliberately worked in state after state to keep blacks from voting, it's clear that this is a racist nation.

But you're not allowed to say that and be a candidate, or work for a candidate, for public office, much less for the office of president.

Rev. Wright said that 9-11 was a case of "the chickens coming home to roost." He cited America's use of nuclear bombs on civilian targets--the non-military cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He might as well have mentioned the equally catastrophic US bombing of the cultural city of Dresden. These were terror bombings pure and simple, on a scale never seen before in the history of war.

He might also have mentioned the sacking and leveling of Fallujah in 2004--an act of "collective punishment" by the US for the killing and subsequent mutilation of four mercenaries captured by militants in that city.

But in America you're not allowed to say that the US is a terrorist nation, even though objectively, it is at the top of the list. (Look what happened to tenured professor Ward Churchill for saying the same thing at Colorado State University: He was fired.) Nor are you allowed to suggest that 9-11 was in any way a predictable result of US behavior towards third world nations or towards the people of the Islamic world, although it is patently obvious that it was US behavior in the Middle East--propping up dictatorial regimes (including Saddam Hussein's), backing Israeli policies towards Palestinians, etc.) that made us a target of Al Qaeda.

Wright said that the response of the US to the 9-11 attacks was to "pay back and kill," and if you think back, he is totally correct. All the expressions like " it's payback time" and "let's roll!", the American flags everywhere, the lust for getting Osama "dead or alive", and finally, the cheerleading for an attack on Iraq (which had nothing to do with (9-11), were based upon a blind and ill-thought-out lust for revenge, encouraged by a president and vice president who had been angling to attack Iraq at least nine months before the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But you're not supposed to say that American wars are based on blood lust.

Wright crossed another line when he said that the US had "supported state terrorism" against Palestinians and the African population of South Africa. And yet he is absolutely correct on both counts. The US has unquestioningly and aggressively supported 60 years of Israeli attacks on and abuse of Palestinians, and continues to do so, with money, arms and votes in the United Nations. It also overtly and covertly backed the white Apartheid government of South Africa in its policy of apartheit and suppression of the legitimate rights of the majority black population of that nation.

But you are not allowed to criticize Israel in American politics, or to suggest that the US backed apartheid in South Africa.

Wright also said that the US had contributed to the drug crisis among blacks in America's cities by smuggling cocaine into the US in return for money to back anti-government rebels in Nicaragua (the Contras). There is solid evidence that this was in fact the case, including a crashed CIA plane in Central America loaded with guns that was tied to drug flights in the other direction. Several well-documented investigative books have been written on this topic. (There is evidence that the US backed the production and sale of opium and heroin by its anti-communist allies in Southeast Asia in the '60s and '70s, too.)

But you're not allowed to say that the US government is a long-time drug runner and a promoter of drug use inside its own borders.

Even Wright's claim that the US encouraged the spread of AIDS in black commuities has some truth to it. By opposing needle exchanges despite the documented benefits of free clean needle availability in reducing the incidence and spread of AIDS among drug users, the federal government has worsened the AIDS problem in America.

Unfortunately, none of these topics can be openly and intelligently discussed and debated. Once Wright mentioned them, Barack Obama had two choices: rationally explain why the pastor was right, and become instantly a has-been candidate for president, or denounce the pastor and his statements, and sever all connections with him.

Obama chose the latter tactic, and America is the poorer for it.

Like China, there are some things you can't say or discuss in public in America.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Just Gimme Some Truth!

dlindorff — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:16:16 -0500

The New York Times called Mitt Romney a liar today, but not CIA Director Michael Hayden.

What was Romney’s big one? He ran an ad in New Hampshire this week saying Sen. John McCain had called for allowing illegal workers in the US to collect Social Security, and the the paper of record said he was lying. That’s not what McCain had said. But When Gen. Hayden told a much bigger whopper, saying that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of the “interrogations” of two suspected Al Qaeda leaders because of concerns that the tapes might disclose the identities of CIA agents, thus exposing them and their families to danger, the Times, in the same issue of the paper, let it pass.

Near the end of the lengthy half-page, one-jump article, the paper did quote Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Righst Watch, as saying that Hayden’s explanation “wasn’t credible,” which indeed it wasn’t. But you’d have to read a lot of verbiage to get to that gentle challenge.

The truth is that the CIA is full of documents that if leaked would disclose agents’ identities, and the CIA doesn’t destroy those records.

The truth is also that if the CIA wanted to keep the tapes, and even make them available if asked to, it has the means to easily wipe away the identities of any agency assets or agents who appear in the film, and even to mask their voices. News programs do that all the time. So the excuse doesn’t wash.

The reason the Agency destroyed those tapes is not because of concerns about agent safety, but because those tapes are the CIA’s Abu Ghraib moment. They are incontrovertible documentary evidence of the CIA’s blatant use of torture, which it was authorized and instructed to use against terror suspects by President Bush after 9-11, in what is clearly an impeachable act. And in Hayden’s view, and the view of the agency heads before him, it was better to break the law and destroy the evidence than to turn it over to Congressional investigators, defense attorneys for terrorism suspects on trial, and the 9-11 Commission, all of which groups had asked about the existence of such tapes, and about those tapes in particular. And all of which were lied to by the Agency.

So let’s at least call a lie a lie.

Chisled into the marble entranceway to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency is the phrase: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Right.

Obviously that line is meant ironically. The CIA is not about truth. It is about shadows, secrecy and deceit.

The question is why someone like Hayden is accorded any credibility at all by the news media.

I’m past expecting Congress to do anything about this torture scandal, or about Hayden’s lies, since it hasn’t done anything about any of the other scandals of this administration. But it would be nice if the media, including the New York Times, would at least call a lie a lie.

We can only hope that some person of character at the CIA , or someone with a grudge or a problem who needs some insurance or payback potential, has kept a copy of those tapes, and that at some point they will see the light of day. (If you’re out there, please mail it to me at PO Box 846, Ambler, PA 19002. Confidentiality guaranteed.)

Maybe many Americans think torturing our enemies is a good thing. But they’re wrong. Torture not only is a poor and perhaps even a useless tool for learning anything of value (since the victim clearly will say anything, true or false, to get the torture to stop, and thus can send people on endless wild goose chases, wasting resources and time), but it is inevitable that some of the people who get tortured wil be innocent. Besides, once it is known that torture is the fate of those who are captured by American forces, people will go to much greater lengths to avoid capture, which means more fights to the death, and inevitably more casualties on our side. Better to let our enemies know that if they give up, they’ll be treated fairly, with respect and in accordance with the law.

Besides, if we torture, how are we any better than the terrorists and the rogue nations?

For that matter, if we have an agency that is founded and built on lies, what does that have to do with a democracy?

And if we have a media that lets those lies pass, and that treats the liars with respect, what kind of a media do we have?

____________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Two Brothers and Two Scandals

dlindorff — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:38:52 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

The State Department’s top internal investigator, Inspector General Howard Krongard, revealed in a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Tuesday, that his brother, Alvin B. Krongard, was a member of the advisory board of Blackwater, the very private mercenary company whose bloody, murderous behavior the IG office was supposed to be investigating.

Unmentioned in reports on this tainted relationship was the fact that Alvin Krongard, the former third-ranking leader of the CIA from 2001-2004, has also been the subject of some speculation regarding possible foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks by some within the intelligence establishment.

Alvin Krongard joined the CIA in 1998, leaving a post at Bankers Trust, which, in 1997 acquired the venerable investment-banking house of Alex Brown. Prior to the acquisition, Krongard had been CEO and chairman of the board of Alex Brown. In the merged firm, he became head of private banking for Bankers Trust, where he was responsible for the bank’s relations with extremely wealthy (and extremely private) clients.

What makes this history of particular interest is that Alex Brown was the investment bank that handled most of the suspicious short-selling “puts” that were placed on the stocks of four companies—United Airlines, American Airlines, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch—that were pummeled by the 9-11 attacks.

As has been reported in Bloomberg Financial News Service reports and in the San Francisco Chronicle, in the several days preceding September 11, 2001, unidentified investors placed an unusual number of “puts” on the stocks of the two airlines whose planes were hijacked that day, as well as on the two investment banks, one of which occupied 22 floors of one of the World Trade Center towers and the other of which owned a building directly across the street which was significantly damaged and forced to close down.

According to news reports, between Sept. 6 and Sept. 9, some 4744 put orders were placed on United Airlines, compared to just 393 calls (bets that the stock would rise). On September 10, 4516 puts were placed for American Airlines stock, vs. only 748 calls. These orders were six times the normal volume of puts and calls on the Chicago Board Options Exchange for those firms. Moreover, there were no such puts placed on any other airlines, and there was no news justifying such orders at the time. In the three days prior to 9/11, 2151 puts were placed on Morgan Stanley shares, and 12,115 puts on Merrill Lynch, companies that also were not at the time the subjects of any negative news.

The stocks of those four companies, following the attacks and the collapse of the Twin Towers, subsequently tanked, making the combined puts worth about $16 million.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, no one collected the $2.5 million in profits from the puts placed on United Airlines. The identities of the investors in the put orders have never been disclosed by Alex Brown.

Incredibly, there was never any serious investigation of these peculiar and suspicious investments, though they clearly suggest that someone knew something was going to happen that would make those four companies’ stocks plunge in value.

The US corporate news media has never pursued this story or in many cases even reported it, nor was it seriously investigated by the FBI or the 9-11 commission.

Could Krongard, in his role as executive director of the CIA, have had inside information in the days ahead of the attacks, that an attack on the World Trade Center, involving the hijacking of planes operated by UAL and American Airlines, was imminent? Could he have supplied that information to clients of Bankers Trust and its subsidiary Alex Brown, so that the put investments could be made? If so, who else in the federal government knew?

We can’t know, because, amazingly, nobody’s dragged Krongard or officials of the bank before a congressional panel and demanded answers under oath.

So now we see that the Krongard brothers have a level of integrity that is down in the sewer, with one working for a murderous mercenary outfit that has been slaughtering innocent Iraqis in the course of providing “protection” to State Department officials in Iraq, and the other pretending to investigate the activities of that private firm, never mentioning the grotesque conflict of interest of having his brother working for the very firm he’s supposedly investigating.

Maybe, given this sorry picture, House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Henry Waxman will finally see fit to call Alvin Krongard and other witnesses in to question them under oath about whether he also had a conflict of interest in serving as a top ranking CIA executive while perhaps maintaining links with Alex Brown, and whether he had anything to do with those peculiar puts.
___________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative reporter and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

House Parties for 9/11 Truth

Bob Fertik — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:48:59 -0400

From our friends at 911pressfortruth.com:

Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just announced that he will begin holding new hearings into 9/11 beginning in September because "the Commission Final Report... never resolved certain conflicts." The acclaimed film 9/11 Press For Truth details those conflicts like no other movie has, featuring five members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee (the small group of victim's relatives who forced the creation of the 9/11 Commission), who revealed for the first time in the movie that "70% of our questions" were not answered by the Final Report.

In response to Kucinich's announcement, the makers of 9/11 Press For Truth are launching of a new campaign to bring about real answers for the September 11th families -- and a brand new web site at 911PressForTruth.com.

From August 3rd - 12th, a coalition of organizations will join forces to host "Answers For 9/11 Families" week. Hundreds of Americans will come together at house parties across the country to screen 9/11 Press For Truth, telling the powerful story of the September 11th families' continuing fight for answers.

Now, Please join the effort to encourage Congress to support Kucinich's investigation until all remaining Family Steering Committee questions are answered. Send a "Press For Truth Pack" to your Congressman and sign up today to host or attend a 9/11 Press For Truth house party in your community.

(NOTE: Simple instructions on how to make your house party film screening a success will be emailed to everyone who signs up to host a party. Please order your DVD immediately after signing up in order to ensure it arrives in time for your house party.)

"We thought the country was at risk from terrorists and from incompetence," says Jersey widow Lorie Van Auken in the movie, "and maybe worse." Fellow 'Jersey Girl' Patty Casazza puts it more succinctly: "They lied. They all lied." With an election year looming, it is more important than ever that we demand Congressional hearings that will finally provide the answers these families have devoted over five years of their lives toward.

Help make it happen. Send a "Press For Truth Pack" to your Congressman today.

And we hope you'll join us in August. Open your house to family, friends and neighbors - or join them at a house party nearby -- to watch this movie and support the Kucinich subcommittee investigation until all remaining Family Steering Committee questions are answered. Thank you so much for you support. Sincerely,

Ray Nowosielski, Director/Co-Writer/Co-Producer
9/11 PRESS FOR TRUTH

How hard is it to refute the 9/11 commission, really?

JimWilliams — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:52:06 -0400

This Google video is wonderful - eviscerates the Bush Conspiracy in just over two minutes flat!

Crazy people

What If the FBI Hired Someone Honest to Look into 9-11?

davidswanson — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:29:40 -0400

By David Swanson

It did. Her name was Sibel Edmonds. This is her story, as she told it to me. Edmonds discusses what she knows, whom it implicates, and what she's been through and what hope there is in the new Congress to start an investigation.

Here's the audio.

Swanson: This is David Swanson with Sibel Edmonds. It's great to talk with you, thanks for being here.

Edmonds: Thanks for asking me for this interview, David.

Swanson: So I should ask, I guess, before I start, are you under any gag order? Are there things that you can and cannot talk about?

Edmonds: Well - that's a very interesting question, David, because when the government invoked the State Secrets Privilege, it was specifically for the court procedures, so there won't be any court hearings, and as far as the courts are concerned, my case is gagged and classified.

Separately, they invoked the retroactive classification order on Congress and this was for the Senate Judiciary committee in May 2004 - and the way the imposed this gag order - and I have to emphasize that this gag order was illegal, because in order for them to retroactively classify congressional investigations, the Attorney General for the Justice Department had to meet three criteria and he did not. But even though the gag order was illegal, at that time in May 2004, the Senate Judiciary committee complied with it, they complied with an illegal gag order.

But I've never had a gag order placed on me as far as the public statements, or any other investigative procedures are concerned, but as you know they have declared everything in my case, including my languages, and what I did for the FBI, classified. Now the question is whether this classification that they're using is even legal, or justified. As you know the executive branch has complete control over the classification.

Swanson: So you are not allowed to discuss what languages you speak? You're forbidden to say that?

Edmonds: Well - that's what they have ordered, and that's what the court has actually ruled in their favor - but the interesting this is if you were to go and just google my name, you will see everywhere that my language skills are all listed there - because it's public information. I mean, take a look at the implications of this, based on this classification, I can't even have my resume out there because when you put your resume, and you put your language skills, that would be violating classification. But my resume has been out there, and the government has not come to me and told me to pull my resume.

They have been playing this game because they can get away with it in court, and Congress - but as you can see, this information is readily available - it's public. The same thing is true with my university degrees - the government specifically declared my Masters degrees, my undergraduate degrees, and the topics of those studies as classified! This is the Kafkaesque thing that I have been trying to point out to people, and we haven't had much media attention on this - when they can go, in this ridiculous way, in this ludicrous way, to invoke 'privilege' and classification - even on information that is readily available in public.

Swanson: For those who still don't know what your story is, and what you did, and why the government would be taking these sorts of actions, why don't we start at the beginning and just go very briefly, but maybe if I say a couple of things, tell me if I’m wrong...

You were hired by the FBI just after September 11 when they decided that it would be a good idea to hire translators who knew foreign languages - and the foreign languages that you were hired to work on were Turkish, Farsi, and Azerbaijani. And your background is one of having lived in Iran, Turkey and the US - and having had struggles in those previous countries with repressive governments and censorship and corruption and having thought, somewhat hopefully, about the US when you came here as being a country of freedom and transparent government. Am I on the right track?

Edmonds: Absolutely. I was a believer and I took my citizenship oath in 1995, I really took that oath, as you take any oath, seriously, and I was so proud to become a citizen of this country and have the constitution, and all the principles, and the bill of rights applying to me. As you know, those rights are non-existent in countries such as Turkey and Azerbaijan and Iran - in most places in the world, people are not even allowed to write about those rights, forget about even demanding them.

Swanson: What made you inclined to take a job with the FBI as a translator?

Edmonds: There needs to be a brief explanation - three years before I took that job, I was doing my studies in forensic science and criminal justice, and I had applied for an internship position with the FBI, not a full time or permanent job position, and at that point they were interested in my language skills, but they basically messed it up. I sent them the application, I took the polygraph test for that internship position for their language department, and somehow in 1999 they lost all that information - not only mine, but from 150 other applicants they had for language specialist positions. These documents, these files were lost within the FBI - or at least that's the explanation they gave to these applicants.

And then the 911 terrorist event took place and I'd turn on the TV and kept hearing the Director of the FBI pleading for language specialists - especially for the languages that I speak - because they were desperate for language specialists. And at that point it was a duty to go and say "Look - I have these skills, you need these skills for the nation, and I'm offering it to you." So I took this position as a contract language specialist for those languages and my top secret clearance was issued and I started working five days after 911.

Swanson: And they were in pretty bad shape, right? How many skilled translators of Turkish materials did they have at that point?

Edmonds: At that point they had no Turkish language specialists... In fact, they had an unofficial division for years, and they had people coming, on and off, from DOD, or the State Department on loan, and working on certain projects, but they did not even have a formal division for Turkish. They had a small division for Arabic language, and they also had a large division for Farsi - the language spoken in Iran.

As you know, because of the Cold War, most of the emphasis was placed on Russian languages - so they had a very large division for the Russian language. Since 1991, the need was not as great for those languages, and they never fortified the other divisions - so they had a lot of Russian translators, and a lot of Chinese translators, very few Arabic language specialists, and a mid-size Farsi department.

And more than the size, and this is quantity-vs.-quality, the department was not even managed, because the solid good working people (at the FBI) are mainly agents, but the language division is not managed by the agents - that division, for all these languages, is managed by administrative people. These people are former language specialists who have been promoted to supervisory positions who oversee the language division, and you have no direct involvement from the agents - so you have this layer of administrative people blocking the interaction between the agents and the language specialists. The second reason is that the language division is considered the most classified and sensitive unit in the entire FBI - so the clearance we had, and the access we had, was far more sensitive than the agents'. So even when an agent wanted to come to the division and work for a few minutes with a particular language specialist, that agent had to be escorted to the division, and watched, because everything is managed on a 'need-to-know' basis, and let's say an agent is coming to that division to talk with a Turkish language specialist, he may be exposed to some other information from, let's say, the Chinese counter-intelligence, or Arabic, for let's say Saudi Arabia. And they didn't want that to take place, so there was this great separation between the agents and the language specialists - and that itself brought a lot of problems with it - because you had these bureaucratic layers in the middle and the agents were very frustrated because they wanted to work directly with the language specialists.

You know, a lot of people consider the language specialists as like a clerical job, but you need to realize, when the information comes and you’re looking at all sorts of intelligence, whether it's counter-intelligence or criminal, related to all these different languages and countries, the first people exposed to it are the language specialists. Before that information gets transferred to agents or analysts, the first person who sees it is the language specialist in charge of that particular language - and that language specialist is in a position to decide whether or not, this particular piece of information, whether it's a wiretap or document, is important enough to be translated, whether or not it should be translated verbatim - in detail, or just a summary translation. So by the time that information goes to an analyst or an agent, it has already gone through this filter of the language specialist. So not only do they need to have language skills, linguistic skills, the translators also need to have training and enough information and knowledge to be able to make that decision in terms of what is important, and not, what is urgent, and not urgent.

Swanson: There's a saying in Italian "Traduttore traditore" which means "The translator is a traitor" - which is something that poets and authors think - and this gives new meaning to that phrase. If you have someone in that position who is not doing their job, who has other interests and loyalties, they're in a position of enormous power because no-one else has seen, or can understand the information that has come in.

So you took this job 5 days after 911 and you were not translating newspapers and public materials, so we can hope that someone at the State Department was doing that - you were translating wiretapped calls, transcripts and so forth, and by March of 2002 you were fired. Why were you fired? What happened in between?

Edmonds: Well - I'll try to answer that briefly, because so much information is already available on the net, in various publications that have come out that basically summarize the issues that I reported

Swanson: Ok - what's the best place for people to go?

Edmonds: They can go to my website - www.justacitizen.com - and there are plenty of documents there, both official documents and various interviews etc summarizing the case and there are court documents there.

But if I were to summarize the 3 or 4 general areas that I reported in terms of the serious problems... One had to do with, and this took place almost within the first two months I was there, that had to do with information related to counter-terrorism division dealing mainly with the 911 terror attacks - and in order to deal with it, not only did it deal with information available after 911, but the agents and the divisions went and actually retrieved a lot of documents and wiretap conversations - some of them dating back to 1999/2000 - on various suspects, or people they believed maybe were suspects.

So they wanted to review a lot of things that took place even before 911. So you were not only dealing, after 911, with information that started coming in, or being obtained after the terrorist attack, but a lot of information that either was translated - verbatim or in many cases summary translations - or things that were maybe overlooked that were retrieved, again from the archives, and this was a decision made by the higher-ups, and for some of those materials to be reviewed again to see what was missed, or what was not translated correctly etc.

Swanson: But you clearly came upon things that the FBI did not want to see made public - would have found embarrassing. Things that you made public to the extent that you were able, that things were poorly translated, things were missed, things were done wrong, and you reported to higher-ups that you had colleagues who were not doing their work properly.

Edmonds: Correct - and, again, there were two categories involved. In some cases it was either intentional or unintentional, unintentional due to incompetence - certain information that was not translated before 911 or they were translated inaccurately. And I also emphasize intentional cases that I reported.

The second category (of things that I reported) was other information that was available and there were significant issues, significant cases, that were not pursued because of 'certain diplomatic relations' and this is something that a lot of people have a hard time understanding, and that is, selective selection of information. That is, let's say certain information came from, let me give you a hypothetical example, let's say it came from Iraq, or certain Iraqi individuals, you can bet that would be processed because of the Axis of Evil Doctrine by our President

Swanson: Whereas Saudi Arabia is 'less evil', for example?

Edmonds: Absolutely! Or you would have in certain cases, there were certain cases that you had several individuals or entities from different nations, let's say, Pakistan, or Turkey, or Israel - and that information, due to pressure by the State Department, they were not transferring that information from counter-intelligence (they were obtained under counter-intelligence, ok) - to the counter-terrorism division - even though they were relevant, extremely relevant, directly relevant.

So the agents were very frustrated because, another thing your listeners hopefully will grasp here, when we say 'the FBI' it's not the entire FBI. All the agents that I worked with, they were great individuals, they were patriotic, they were as frustrated as I was - and they were outraged that these layers from the Pentagon, and the State Department, that they were interfering with their investigations - because automatically they had the right, the obligation, to transfer that information that they obtained from counter-intelligence, let's say, involving money laundering tied to some terrorist activities, by let's say, Turkish individuals, or some Pakistani individuals, or entities here in the US (whether official governmental related entities, or others) - to counter-terrorism to be pursued because they considered the relationship with Pakistan and Turkey too sensitive and they didn't want to mess it up.

Swanson: And so when you ran up against these issues - facts that you thought important that were being covered over, you went higher and higher up, correct? And so you spoke with people like Deputy Assistant Attorney General, or the Director of the FBI - did you ever get anywhere? And how high did the problem go?

Edmonds: You are right on target, because again, there's this misconception out there. People think 'OK, a whistleblower sees some wrongdoing and they just jump out there and go to the media and leak the information.' I spent 3.5-4 months - first I went to my supervisors, but they were a part of the problem. Then I went above them, I went to the division chief, then I went to the FBI headquarters, I went all the way up to the Director - Director Mueller. And I filed these issues, and when I filed them, I filed them with the supporting documents. - it was not me saying 'This is what I think is happening.' Because it was within the FBI, I was presenting them - let's say there were certain forms, certain documents - to the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility - OPR - and the amazing thing that took place was, immediately I started seeing this reaction to it towards me.

First, the FBI management accused me of having gone to congress, and disclosing this information to congress, and I had not done so at that point. I didn't believe that I needed to go to Congress at that point. They did not believe me - they said 'we are suspicious that you have been communicating with congress on these classified issues and doing this via email communication' - so I had agents coming to my house and removing my home computer - my husbands computer - without a warrant! They took it, and then took it to pieces, and they didn’t find anything - and so I said 'OK - maybe it was a misunderstanding.' Two weeks later they issued an order for me to take a polygraph test, and the polygraph test was to determine whether I had gone to Congress. Their fear was not the classification, the fear was whether this was going outside the FBI - and I passed the polygraph because I had not gone to congress at that point. Then they started removing my jobs, and as you know, finally I was terminated, and during these 3-4 months, I presented them with these 3 or 4 different categories of very important issues.

The other important case (that I reported on), had to do with certain public officials, corruption cases, that the FBI had obtained - and again, this was the operation that was taking place between 1997 and 2002 - and I’m talking about solid evidence. And these officials are high-profile public officials.

Swanson: People as high as say Congressman Denny Hastert?

Edmonds: Well, that information has been public, with the Vanity Fair article, and he was only one of the people, at least from the elected officials side - one of several. And they had at least 2 or 3 people in the Pentagon, and they had at least one person in the State Department - and they had this documented information, evidence, on these people actually not serving the interests of the United States - and giving out extremely sensitive information to other...

Swanson: To Turkey.

Edmonds: Well, when you say "Turkey" - not necessarily the government of Turkey that we consider an ally, but to entities that who are driven by certain interests - many of them financial interests that have to do with the military industrial complex - and they had this information, and those same individuals - not the ones from Congress necessarily, but the ones from the State Dept and Pentagon.

They were not only doing it with one country - because that operation was the sister operation of another investigation that dealt with Israel, but the FBI was not translating these from counter-intelligence to investigation units, and they were supposed to do that. They were supposed to transfer and let the counter-espionage unit in the FBI, and the criminal division handle it. But they were not (transferring these cases). So this was another case that I reported internally - and I never got anywhere with it as far as the FBI was concerned - and later, of course, when Ashcroft came out and invoked the State Secrets Privilege, Ashcroft himself inadvertently explained it! There is a sentence there saying "The State Secrets Privilege is being invoked in order to protect certain sensitive diplomatic relations and business relations of the US" - this is an exact quote from Ashcroft, explaining why the State Secrets Privilege was invoked.

Swanson: Right! 'Business relations' as though the US is a business... It's amazing to me that you put one honest person in the FBI for a few months and they end up reporting a number of different scandals and failures, and it makes you wonder what goes on the rest of the time.

And the story of what happened, you sued, and they got it thrown out on grounds of 'State Secrets' - from what I've read there have been threats to your family, a suspect colleague of yours has left the country effectively with the result that they can't be called to testify, and I guess at least some of the allegations that you've made have been confirmed, if not made public, by the Inspector General at the Justice Dept who said that you were basically fired in retaliation - is that right?

Edmonds: Absolutely, and the most amazing aspect of it is, let's say you have a Justice Dept and the FBI who is willy-nilly invoking this privilege to cover-up criminal wrongdoings, but then you have these judges in the Federal Court, due to this fear of 'Oh, I'm going to be violating some classification and helping the terrorists' or for whatever reasons, going along with it, and this happened in the lower court, it happened in the appellate court.

I don't know if you remember this, but during the appellate court hearings, these three judges closed the court to the public and the media, and after we argued our case, when the ACLU was representing my case before the appellate court, and then it was the government's attorneys turn to argue their case, they asked us, the plaintiffs - my attorneys and I - to step out of the courtroom because we couldn’t even hear what argument the government had! I mean, how can you argue in court against something that you don't even know what it is? So this is the Kafkaesque aspect of it, and what our country has come down to.

Swanson: And you're not a prisoner in Guantanamo - you're an employee of the FBI! Not that they shouldn’t have these rights either. This is the throwing out of the right to stand and hear the evidence against you that's been part of American and British justice for hundreds of years.

Edmonds: It's more than that, David. They are doing it to an American citizen. What made me really outraged was the fact that nobody in the media really reported on this. Here is an American citizen, not a terrorism suspect - and yes, they are misusing that big time, and it's against all sorts of human-rights principles that we are supposed to have here - but the fact that they are doing it to an American citizen, not someone who is a suspect in a criminal case, or terrorism case, this is an American citizen who is being deprived of her due process and her Fourth Amendment, and nobody in the media picked it up. The implications of this, now they are doing it successfully, unfortunately, to American citizens. What does it say about where we are today as a nation? And the disregard they have to the Bill of Rights, and our constitution?

Swanson: And information that the FBI made public, or gave to Congress, they classified that retroactively right? They went back and decided we should make this stuff classified after it was out there! Is there any possible respectable explanation for that kind of secrecy?

Edmonds: Absolutely not. In fact, later on in court, and this is the Project on Government Oversight - POGO - they sued the Justice Dept and they said "No. This information was available for two years. More than 30,000 websites have already downloaded it. How could you classify something that has been out there for two years?" Later, the FBI conceded and they didn't go through the lawsuit, they said 'Fine - you can publicize it.'

Despite that fact, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the congress, still didn't put those documents back online, they are still afraid to put it out there. That is the part that is so mind-boggling - which brings us to another important point. I went to Congress, I went to the appropriate committees, the Senate Judiciary committee and later I went to Congressman Waxman's committee - that's the Government Reform Committee - and I observed the classification rules, I went inside the SCIFs - these are the secured facilities they have where they can receive classified information where you can present them with documents, and details, and file numbers etc. Initially, we had Senator Grassley and Senator Leahy, a Democrat and a Republican - this was in the summer of 2002. These two senators, together, came out publicly and they said 'We started investigating this case, we have already interviewed the FBI officials, they confirmed all her allegations to us, and she's 100% credible. We need to turn the FBI upside down' - and this comment that 'We need to turn the FBI upside down' was made by Senator Grassley on CBS 60 Minutes, with 5+ million people watching.

Swanson: And what was the follow through?

Edmonds: Nothing. Initially, they promised that there would be this major public hearing, they were going to bring these witnesses - because I'm not the only witness. Some of these people's names are not public because they haven't come out to blow the whistle publicly, but they have to congress and the Justice Dept Inspector General's office filing exactly the same reports that I filed. They started doing this in 2002 in April, May.

Swanson: Are some of them still employed?

Edmonds: Some of them are retired - and you're looking at veteran FBI agents who were in charge of these operations. They want to testify under oath, they want to testify publicly, and they have filed these reports. So we got the promise from Congress that there will be a hearing, these agents will testify, they will bring in the bad guys from the FBI and have them testify under oath - and then, nothing. A deafening silence.

Swanson: A lot of Americans expected that of the Republican Congress. We've now had 2.5 months of a Democratic Congress, with Senator Leahy now the Chairman. Now Senator Leahy can do more than just write letters and complain about Senator Grassley - what has the difference been? What change have you seen?

Edmonds: Well, we are hoping to see the change. Let me first do the distinction between the Senate and the House. With the Senate, even though we have had Democrats gaining the Majority, we haven't had almost any support from almost any Senate offices. Unfortunately, somebody like Senator Feingold, who I respect tremendously, he's not on the appropriate committee - but you're looking at Senator Leahy, you're looking at Senator Akaka, they are still acting as though they are being repressed there - and they don't want to touch these issues. And of course, you know, people like Senator Clinton - and there are so many of them, and again, it's mind-boggling how these people, after getting the voters who said 'We need change,' they're not doing what they were asked to do - the reason they got re-elected, or some of them who got elected.

In the House we have a little bit more positive situation because we have some great individuals, people who I respect tremendously, Chairman Conyers, and Chairman Waxman, who have already started fairly well, and again it remains to be seen with some of the issues. I'm still hoping that they will do more, but at least we have had some positive response. We’ve got a hearing for whistleblowers through congressman Waxman's office and congressman Waxman's committee - the Government Reform Committee - introduced one of the best, I would say the only good legislation to protect whistleblowers which will include national security whistleblowers - from the agencies like the FBI, NSA, CIA etc. We are so thankful for that - but when it comes to my case, because it is so controversial, because it is so packed with damning information, they have not been willing - and this is specifically congressman Waxman's office - the Government Reform Committee - to come out publicly and commit to this hearing.

And there is nothing, David, nothing that stops them - they have subpoena power, they don't even need to use it a lot because there are so many agents, and I have their names, and they are willing to go and testify under oath. We have been asking congressman Waxman to come out publicly and say 'We are going to hold this public hearing' - and I’m going to emphasize the word 'public' - I have had closed hearings which act like these black holes - you go there and you give the information and nothing happens. This information belongs to the American public and until that happens we won't find out about some unbelievable criminal activities that are taking place within our government agencies.

So last week we started this public action campaign that you're aware of, and I'm very thankful to your website because you published that and you have been one of the supporters and you have signed on to this petition. We have 30 organizations - and this is transpartisan, David. We have the ACLU, OMB Watch, Project on Government Oversight, GAP (Government Accountability Project), National Coalition against Censorship, OpenTheGovernment.org - we have people from the right, we have libertarian organizations like Liberty Coalition, we have People For the American Way, your organization. Thirty major organizations have come together and put together this petition, serving congressman Waxman and his committee - and this happened last week - saying 'We want you to have open, public hearings on this case' - not about the whistleblower being fired - about what were the issues that were being covered up, and are still covered up, and (calling) other agents and other witnesses to testify so we can take this information to the American public and we'll see some accountability.

And so far we have received no response, David. We have 15000 citizens who have signed this petition, we have 30 major organizations, we have had hundreds if not thousands of people calling in the past few days, and we are still waiting to hear from Chairman Waxman's office to publicly say that 'Yes, we are going to hold these public hearings,' and have these witnesses, these veteran agents, these high level FBI people who are willing to testify, to testify. We want to introduce these documents that have no information that is 'state secrets' or that will hurt our national security - but information that will let the public know that here we have appointed officials and elected officials who are out there engaged in treason!

Now, some people may consider the way I'm characterizing this as maybe outrageous, or an exaggeration, but I don't know what else to call it, David. When you have people, for greed, for money, selling out information, covering up cases, giving out our true State Secrets information to entities - whether or not they're allies, Israel or Turkey or Pakistan - these people are engaged in treason.

And these cases are documented, the files, the wiretaps, go back to 1997, 1998. They are documented, there are documents, there are witnesses and we need to expose these people and we need to see criminal indictments against these people - and it will (happen). All we need is for this hearing to take place, for people to testify, and for the documents to be introduced, then you're going to see criminal indictments against these people.

Swanson: That's extremely well said, and I think it's exactly right. This is the purpose that Congress serves - to hold public hearings, not to issue reports quietly from friendly witnesses, but to use the power of the subpoena, and putting people under oath, and in front of cameras - and this congress has not done this on the fraud that took us into this war, and has not done it on the mis-steps that allowed 911 to occur, and this is what we put a Democratic majority in the there for in hope of, and we have yet to see it.

If people want to get involved and help push for this to happen with your case, how can they do that?

Edmonds: The best thing they can do, and the time to do it is right now because we just released this petition, they were just served last week with this petition signed by 15,000 people and signed by 30 organizations, is for all your listeners to call Congressman Waxman's office, both the committee's office and his personal office, and demand - send letters, call, because calling is effective, send letters and emails, and say 'We want you to come out publicly and commit to his hearing, and have this public hearing take place' because they listen.

Unfortunately we don't have a good, independent mainstream media - otherwise we wouldn't be in this position in the first place, David. You mentioned Iraq, and the illegal war - with all these cases, unfortunately, our mainstream media acted as enablers. They sit in the middle there and they didn’t do what they were supposed to do, they're still not doing it, and they're leaving the public in the dark. So because we don't have the mainstream media we have people like you. We have websites like yours, we have some of these great organizations who are doing it on behalf of the public.

Swanson: And we have some very talented film-makers, I haven’t seen it yet, but who have made a documentary of your story, right?

Edmonds: Yes David - and it's ironic, because here it took these French producers, coming from France, on behalf of this Channel2 French network to put together for a year and a half, these directors and the producers worked on this case to document it. And they also did a lot of investigative work - but they had to come from France to put it in place here on a case, on an issue that implicates US officials, and has implications for the American public. And the Vanity Fair article that you mentioned, that was done by this great reporter, David Rose, who is British, he lives in England - he had to come and do a one year investigation to that piece out, and I don't know what our mainstream media reporters are doing, but we are depending on foreign nations, and other countries, to do what our own mainstream media should be doing here.

And again, as I said, that's why it's up to these organizations, activists like you and your listeners to take that two minutes, maybe less than two minutes, and call Chairman Waxman, and remind him that he's the Chairman, there's no obstacle.

This case is not allegation, it's not a case that needs to be investigated, that has already been done. Even the Dept of Justice's own Inspector General's Office has put out a report vindicating the case. We have had bipartisan congressional statements saying that this is credible, and absolutely confirming it. So this is not taking something that is unknown. He's the Chairman, he has the power, there's nothing that stands in his way, this is a confirmed case, let's see some justice and accountability.

I don't want anything my job, about why I was fired, about why they did these wrongdoings - yes, they did it to me, that is me personally being affected, and it also sends a chilling message to other whistleblowers - but that is secondary. The most important thing is there are individuals who are engaged in acts of treason, okay. People from the State Dept, people from the Pentagon - some of these individuals are already under some quasi-investigations. I mean, we hear things about Douglas Feith, we are hearing things about Richard Perle, but trust me, they are not putting everything that there is out there. Because when you are looking at organizations like the American Turkish Council here, and you see the sister organization is AIPAC. AIPAC helped form the American Turkish Council - look at the board members, look at the people. You will see the same people involved in both fronts, because it is the same operation. And you come across the same individuals over and over again. You know, I don't understand how the case only ended up stopping with Larry Franklin - and I still can't believe that the evidence that they had from the parallel investigation didn't get its way into the court. You need to look at individuals like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Marc Grossman, Dennis Hastert, and others. And documented evidence they have collected on these people. What are they doing with this information?

Swanson: It's an excellent question. All of those people and more need to be subpoenaed and put under oath, and on camera, and we need to get some information to the public, without which we're not going to have a democracy. So I would encourage everyone to take your suggestion, and call Congressman Henry Waxman, and ask for open, public hearings on this issue. And go to where? The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition website?

Edmonds: If you could publish the information - Luke Ryland has put together an action campaign page with all of that information with Congressman Waxman's office phone number, fax information, email etc. It's a very good website done by Luke Ryland, and I would appreciate it if you would add that information so your listeners can go to that website and also the phone numbers for Chairman Waxman so that they can call and contact, that would be great (see contact details below).

Swanson: We will do that, no question. Thank you very much for taking this time to open some eyes to what still needs to be looked into.

Edmonds: Thank you David, and thank you for everything you have been doing, because as I said, our only basically is you people, us, and those of us who are saying 'Let's defend our country against all enemies - not foreign,, but also domestic' - and that's what you have been doing so we are thankful for everything you have been doing. Thank you.

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Contact Information
Congressman Henry Waxman (contact page)
In Washington, D.C.
2204 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3976 (phone)
(202) 225-4099 (fax)
Ask for Michelle Ash ( Michelle.Ash@mail.house.gov ) & David Rapallo ( David.Rapallo@mail.house.gov )

In Los Angeles
8436 West Third Street, Suite 600
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 651-1040 (phone)
(818) 878-7400 (phone)
(310) 652-3095 (phone)
(323) 655-0502 (fax)

House Government Reform Committee ( contact page)
By Mail or Phone:
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5051

Please also contact Congressman John Conyers, asking him to support hearings by Chairman Waxman.

Email: John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

Washington, DC
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GOP Senator Still Linking Iraq To 9/11

Bob Geiger — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:56:51 -0500

So there I was over the weekend electronically leafing through the Senate's Congressional Record from last week to see if I missed anything newsworthy and I saw something that kind of took me aback -- and you're not easily surprised when you read the Record every day and see what kind of stuff from the Senate floor can slip under the news radar.

But there was Republican Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, speaking for the record and suggesting that anyone who believes political compromise may be in order in Iraq wants to play nice with al Qaeda and, for a real oldie (and not a goodie), Gregg also went back to the playbook of linking Iraq and September 11.

"I rise to talk a little bit about the situation in Iraq and how we are trying to deal with this as a nation. We need to start with, when we are discussing Iraq, what are our national interests and why are we engaged there," said Gregg on Thursday.

So far, so good, right? But there's more…

"Our basic national interest in Iraq is the protection of America, our desire to make sure that we are projecting our purposes in a way that reduces the ability of those who would wish to do us harm in this war against us, which was declared in the late 1990s, when it was obviously brought to our shores on September 11, that in that war we are best postured to make sure terrorists, specifically Islamic fundamentalists who wish to do us harm, are not successful. That is the first purpose of our engagement in Iraq."

Apparently Gregg didn’t get the Republican National Committee memo telling him that, while making the bogus connection between our presence in Iraq and 9/11 may have had some utility at one point, it's kind of a played-out fib that doesn’t even fly in the reddest of the red states any longer.

But for those of you who had a hard time following Gregg's rambling sentence, he described the kinds of terrorists who attacked us on September 11 and said "That is the first purpose of our engagement in Iraq."

I don’t think even Fox News is using that line any longer, but here we had a United States Senator saying it into the Congressional Record on the Senate floor.

Gregg then broaches the subject of the bipartisan Biden-Hagel-Levin resolution, which gives the sense of the Senate that we should not be escalating the war in Iraq and that a solution to the Iraq quagmire will only come politically and not militarily. Which is all well and good, except that Gregg plays dumb -- or perhaps not -- and suggests that Democrats who believe that a compromise-based political solution is the only way to end the sectarian violence in Iraq, may actually want appeals to go out to al Qaeda and Iran.

"I notice, in the concurrent resolution which was submitted by some of our colleagues, they stated that the primary objective of the strategy of the United States in Iraq should be to have the Iraq political leaders make political compromise necessary to end the violence in Iraq," said Gregg to his Senate colleagues. "That is an objective, but that is not our primary objective. To make compromise? Whom are they going to compromise with, al-Qaida? Are they going to compromise with Iran?"

Gregg wraps it up with the time-honored Republican tradition of accusing Democrats of hurting the troops by opposing the continuation of the Iraq mess. He did it while responding to a staged question from John Cornyn (R-TX) in which Cornyn reminds everyone that some Senators are declared presidential candidates and asks Gregg whether he "believes that perhaps we have let our guard down and let this discourse become too political in nature rather than solution oriented?"

Here's Gregg, with a veiled reference to Democrats -- and I guess Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) as well -- hurting the troops by bringing forth legislation to keep George W. Bush from escalating the war.

"My big concern goes to the morale of the troops in the field. What are they thinking? What are they thinking as a young 19-, 20-, 22-year-old soldier in Iraq today when they hear this discourse going forward and they are asked to go out on patrol, and they are told that maybe the troops their military leadership says it needs to support them is an issue?

"It is a legitimate issue as to how long we should allow this to hang out there. Let's have the debate. Let's resolve our national position as to what it is going to be, at least for the next year, if we get that far, and resolve it so that we know where we are; otherwise, we do harm to our national policy, because it is so disruptive to have this many voices at the same time claiming legitimacy and, more importantly, it does harm to our troops in the field, which is my primary concern."

So there you have it -- Republicans continuing to use the tired, dishonest trifecta of linking the Iraq war with 9/11, implying that Democrats want to play kissy-face with al Qaeda and painting any opposition to Bush as harming the troops.

Of course, Senator Gregg has the luxury of not having to run for reelection until 2010. I'm guessing it's his hope that by then he can escape questions about whether, at a time of national turmoil, he was just so dumb that he didn’t know the facts or so scummy that he thought he could sell some manufactured reality of his own.

You can read more from Bob at BobGeiger.com.