AFP: "Allegations that the US tortured terror suspects in its custody will underpin the defense at the retrial of the only man convicted over the September 11 attacks in the US... Attorneys for Moroccan national Mounir El Motassadeq have said they will demand the court dismiss the case against their client when his new trial begins Tuesday, on the grounds that key evidence is inadmissible. Lawyer Josef Graessle-Muenscher said one of the alleged masterminds behind the plot to assault US cities with passenger jets in 2001, Yemeni national Ramzi Binalshibh, had likely been mistreated by American investigators, tainting any information he had provided. 'A fair trial is no longer possible because the important evidence is either lacking or contaminated,' Graessle-Muenscher said, adding that he had compiled 1,000 pages of documents about US interrogation methods he would submit to back up his claims."

Sibel Edmonds is a former FBI translator who lost her job at the FBI for demanding that critical information on the 9/11 attacks be correctly interpreted and passed on to the appropriate high-level officials. This information reveals clear foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks not mentioned in the recently released 9/11 Commission report. Since being fired, the courageous Sibel has been determined to let the American public know the truth. To silence her, John Ashcroft imposed a gag order. But since Sibel learned of the contents of the 9/11 report, she has decided to break the gag order and risk all to expose the truth that the 9/11 Commission failed miserably to report critical facts that would have clearly revealed the existence of a cover-up.

The worst thing about this report is that we the American taxpayers actually PAID for it. Not only does it make the ridiculous claim that the disaster was due to "lack of imagination" (an almost criminally inadequate "airy-fairy" statement, as we are sure the 9/11 familes will agree), it makes an obvious attempt to placate Democrats by saying neither Bush nor Clinton were to blame. But this old "six of one half dozen of the other" card the Repugs love to play doesn't wash. To lump Clinton, who pursued Bin Laden with an almost obsessive intensity, with Bush, who called the FBI off his trail two months before 9/11, is an almost obscene miscarriage of fairness.

On Hardball 7/21/04, MSNBC will highlight 12 ways our government failed to stop 9/11. Incredibly, Bush has not fired ONE official responsible for these failures - not a single one! In fact, most have been promoted, like Gen. Richard Myers, who headed NORAD on 9/11 and failed to scramble jets to intercept the hijacked planes - he was promoted to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff!

The critical chapter in the "failed intelligence story" is BushCheney's claim that there were ties to Al Qaeda and Iraq - a claim hugely instrumental in paving the road to war. Yet when the 9/11 intelligence assessment is released today, it will omit this chapter. In fact, the commission now wants to defer any assessment of BushCheney's role in the war until AFTER the election. How astoundingly convenient. "As the Intelligence Committee report to be released tomorrow will indicate, the CIA intelligence was way off, full of exaggerations and errors, mainly on weapons of mass destruction," Levin said Thursday. But the CIA NEVER promoted the idea of an Al Qaeda-Saddam connection - in fact, they early on said there was no evidence of such a link. But with only half the story being told, once again, the CIA is being force to take the fall 100%.

The bipartisan 9/11 Commission rejected the Bush administration's latest attempt to "manufacture facts" and stood by its finding: there was no connection between the 9/11 tragedy and Iraq. Cheney has been pandering lies to the media for the past two weeks, claiming that there was "other data" that led him and sidekick Bush to implicate Iraq in 9/11. But the Commission says, in essence, "Nice try!' -they had access to the SAME info as Cheney. There is no mysterious "other data." Except the stuff that Cheney and pals make up as they go along.

"In their second round of testimony concerning FAA/NORAD and national command response to the attacks on 9/11 the Commission seems to have been blinded by hindsight, focusing on a timeline that conflicts with both published reports, witness and pilot statements and earlier testimony by officials. Detailed testimony about delayed communications and flawed responses leaves the impression that prior to 9/11 FAA and NORAD were incapable of responding to air emergencies in a timely fashion, yet they had done so dozens of times each year in the past. The Commission praises NORAD and criticizes the FAA for their inability to intercept or stop the 'suicide hijackings' on 9/11, blaming the unprecedented nature of the attacks. However both agencies violated standard operating procedures...Neither agency knew that they were hijackings or suicide missions at the start, but they did know commercial aircraft were in trouble and failed to respond as they had in the past."

This week, the 9/11 Commission is hearing testimony on why the Bush administration failed to defend the US from the September 11 attacks once the events began to unfold that day. What we are hearing is a litany of lies and outrageous excuses from one from Bush rep after another. Their strategy of desperation now relies on the public's ignorance of how the nation's top-level response system works. To help you disentangle fact from fiction, here is a comprehensive overview, put together back in May 2002, as to just who was supposed to be doing what on that fateful day.

After listening to an hour or so of 9/11 commission testimony on C-Span, we just had to repost this page. We couldn't believe that one Bush admin. representative after the other apparently plans to stick to their story that no one dreamed terrorists would fly planes, or that a plane would ever be crashed into a landmark building like the WTC or Pentagon. But a plane crashing into the Pentagon was not only anticipated as a possibility - it was PLANNED for one year before 9/11. In May, 2002, Democrats.com found an article on this exercise at the Military District of D.C. - which was nearly immediately scrubbed. Fortunately, we kept a mirrored copy. See also : http://democrats.com/view.cfm?id=7382

On Thursday the 9-11 Commission will hear testimony from NORAD and the FAA. 9-11 Citizens Watch provides a devastating summary of the failures on that tragic day. Will anyone be held accounatable?

"9/11 CitizensWatch, a public group working to monitor the national 9/11 Commission and demand transparency, accountability and a thorough investigation agrees with Commission Chair Tom Kean that 9/11 'was not something that had to happen'. 'If normal procedures had been followed by FAA and NORAD, numerous and specific warnings and forewarnings had been acted on, and investigative leads had been allowed to be properly followed, it is certainly possible that the plot could have been foiled,' notes John Judge, a co-founder of CitizensWatch. 'There was an across-the-board failure of every possible warning, prevention, interception and defense system simultaneously that made 9/11 possible. This goes beyond simple incompetence or failure of agencies to cooperate. Routine procedures were breached that had the potential to save thousands of lives, and systems were inexplicably blind to known threats. Standard defenses were never mobilized on 9/11,' said Kyle Hence, the group's co-founder."

From the Baltimore Chronicle: "Sibel Edmonds and Behrooz Sarshar, beginning in December of 2001, began filing reports to their superiors at the FBI. These reports could lead to the collapse of a corrupt power structure that has a stranglehold on the very institutions that are obligated to control it. We cannot excuse these institutions, for while they fiddle, they pass death sentences on their own troops, and on the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. On April 30th, Sibel Edmonds was my guest for 50 minutes on WGDR radio. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. The editing is for the sake of a more readable piece." So writes Jim Hogue.

Denver Post reports that after hearing Bush and Cheney's "testimony" on Thursday, Bob Kerrey was "'still bewildered why it was so easy' for terrorists to carry out their 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. Kerrey said he would not repeat the questions he asked during the meeting at the White House, but said he sought the same answers he has been pursuing as a member of the commission. 'The questions were not different than questions we've been asking all along in the hearings,' Kerrey said. 'Why didn't we respond earlier (to previous terrorist activities) with military action? And why were we so surprised by a hijacking?'" Meanwhile Bush has been preening himself on his Thursday performance, making it appear as if it had all been his idea in the first place -- and that he had done us all a favor just by showing up.

Even Drudge was shocked by this one! In the Drudge report for 04/30/04 a.m.: "Commissioners were searched by hand for weapons before they stepped into the Oval Office… Their notebooks were taken from them before they left the session, with the White House saying they would be returned to them after they were reviewed for classified information... "

Peter Beinart writes: "Republicans say they are dismayed by the partisanship of the 9/11 Commission. And, if you define partisanship as criticism of the Bush administration -- the working definition on much of the right -- they are exactly right. But, if you define partisanship the way it's traditionally understood -- as placing party interests above national ones -- then the 9/11 Commission hasn't been very partisan at all. And that's what really irks the GOP: They're dismayed that the 9/11 Commission isn't partisan enough. Because the less partisan the Commission is, the harder it is to discredit its findings."

NY Times: "The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is expected to offer sharp criticism of the Pentagon's domestic air-defense command in its final report, according to commission officials who said they believed that quicker military action might have prevented a hijacked passenger plane from crashing into the Pentagon itself... Norad's failure to defend Washington and New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, will be subjected to intensive scrutiny at the remaining public hearings of the 10-member commission...The commission has repeatedly complained that Norad, a joint American-Canadian military command created in 1958 to defend airspace over North America from Soviet missiles and bombers, has been uncooperative in the commission's investigation."

NY Times: "A federal appeals court on Thursday restored the government's full case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in an American court with conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, and allowed prosecutors once again to seek the death penalty. At the same time, the three-judge appeals panel, in Richmond, Va., backed defense lawyers in their argument that Mr. Moussaoui is entitled to introduce testimony from captured members of Al Qaeda who have told interrogators overseas that he had nothing to do with the plot. The panel, drawn from members of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ordered the trial judge to work out a compromise on the issue that has long threatened to derail the case: how to grant Mr. Moussaoui access to information from the captured Qaeda members while preserving the government's rights to interrogate enemy combatants without interruption during wartime."

WSWS.org: "What has emerged is a picture of defenses deliberately stood down -- as commissioner Bob Kerrey described it, a government not at battle stations, but with 'stacked arms.' Bush administration officials displayed an unaccountable degree of indifference to the prospect of a major terrorist operation unfolding on American soil... but the much-publicized hearings have avoided the central question: was the extraordinary lack of vigilance a deliberate lowering of US defenses, carried out in order to permit terrorist attacks to take place and thereby create the conditions for the Bush administration to accomplish its goal of conquering Iraq and establishing US domination of the region where the bulk of the world's oil resources are concentrated?"

AP: "Six years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA warned in a classified report that Islamic extremists likely would strike on U.S. soil at landmarks in Washington or New York, or through the airline industry, according to intelligence officials. Though hauntingly prescient, the CIA's 1995 National Intelligence Estimate did not yet name Osama bin Laden as a terrorist threat. But within months the intelligence agency developed enough concern about the wealthy, Saudi-born militant to create a specific unit to track him and his followers, the officials told The Associated Press. And in 1997, the CIA updated its intelligence estimate to ensure bin Laden appeared on its very first page as an emerging threat, cautioning that his growing movement might translate into attacks on U.S. soil, the officials said, divulging new details about the CIA's 1990s response to the terrorist threat."

Here's a story being suppressed by 9/10 of the corporate media! Just try to find this story (as of 4:45 pm on 4/20) in any news search engine! The downplayed NPR audio bit is all you'll find. Instead, you'll find plenty of right wing anti-Gorelick diatribes. From NPR: "The FBI is looking into death threats against a member of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick was the target of pointed criticism last week from Attorney General John Ashcroft during his testimony, and that prompted calls for her resignation. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports."

Every rightwing rag in the universe has taken up Ashcroft's lie - that Jamie Gorelick "invented" the so called "intelligence wall" through a memo - here's a sample of the propaganda: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1117216/posts/ Ashcroft's accusations have led to Gorelick being targeted with death threats and calls for her resignation from the commission. But, as it turns out, the "wall" was created by rightwing icons Reagan and Bush I. In fact, Gorelick's memo actually INCREASED intelligence sharing between the FBI and CIA over Reagan and Bush's guidelines! Not only should Gorelick NOT resign, she is owed a public apology by Ashcroft and Condi Rice - not to mention a full investigation of the rightwing terrorists who threatened her life.

Last week, we linked to an article as follows: "Jim Rarey writes, 'Defense Secretary Rumsfeld needs to be recalled to clear up the confusion about the scrambling of jets. Most researchers... had assumed the longstanding procedure for scrambling jets whenever air traffic control reported a suspected or actual hijacking or lost contact with a plane was still in place on 9/11... the longstanding procedure was not in place on 9/11! It had been superseded by an instruction from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued on June 1, 2001 [that inserted several bureaucratic levels including the] personal approval of the Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) for authority to scramble the jets. Rumsfeld says he was at his desk in the Pentagon and had no knowledge of any hijackings until the Pentagon was hit. (Did he have his phone off the hook?)'" (See http://www.worldnewsstand.net/MediumRare/40.htm) Below is the actual Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction. Read it for yourself!

"CIA Director George Tenet on Wednesday told the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that it would will take 'another five years of work to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs' to combat al-Qaida and other terrorist threats. 'The same can be said for the National Security Agency, our imagery agency and our analytic community'... But he also charged that budget cuts imposed since the end of the Cold War contributed to the 'systemic weakness' that allowed the Sept. 11 plot to go undetected." Hey George, how come the CIA still engages in covert Iran-Contra-type operations, thus draining resources from the analytic side? Will this restructuring mostly beef up the CIA's black bag operation, instead of the analytic community? Does Bush really care about improving the ability to fight terror? We already know that the White House had no problem burning a CIA operative who tracked WMDs -- Valerie Plame -- in a vendetta over their Iraq WMD lies.

Sensenbrenner - no doubt on a prearranged cue by his pals in the White House - is self-righteously calling for Jamiee Gorelick to be removed from the Commission - a position she was APPOINTED TO by Bush & Co. The central issue is a memo written years ago by Gorelick that the Bushies are now using as "proof" of their primary defense: the 9/11 failure was all due to the alleged "intelligence wall" created in the mid-1990s. First Ashcroft shows up referring repeatedly to the "wall," and being given NO tough questions by the panel. Next, Ashcroft conveniently comes equipped with Gorelick's memo thanks to instant-declassification. This reeks of Karl Rove's handiwork -- an attempt to shift the focus away from the Bush administration and cast doubt instead on Clinton and the commission.

Read 9/11 Commission staff statement #9 that was prepared for the hearings on the FBI and its actions prior to 9/11.

Ashcroft and others are blaming Commissioner Gorelick for creating a wall between the criminal and the intelligence divisions of the FBI. But is that what really happened? To support his accusation the DOJ declassified the 1995 memo.

WashPost: "By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined 'Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US,' the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions. So had Vice President Cheney and Bush's top national security team, according to newly declassified information released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports, 'Bin Laden planning multiple operations,' 'Bin Laden network's plans advancing' and 'Bin Laden threats are real.'...Without knowing when, where or how the terrorists would strike, the CIA 'consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level."

Josh Marshall writes: "The Post today quotes the president as saying: 'I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America -- at a time and a place, an attack ... [if the FBI or CIA] found something, they would have reported it to me.' One thing we have here is this ridiculous notion that there was nothing that could be done unless the warning includes a means of attack, a place and a date. Presumably if the CIA or the FBI had cracked the thing wide open and knew exactly what was coming they would have rolled the operation up on their own and just let the president know what they were doing. The implication behind the president's remark is that so long as there was no specific plot detected and there was no concrete, specific response put together by the CIA that he could sign off on, there was really nothing he could or should do. From the In Box to the Out Box, Next." Didn't Bush ask questions? Request more info? Guess not...

Bush's response to the August 6 memo is unbelievably infantile! "I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America: a time, and a place of an attack...of course we knew that America was hated by Osama bin Laden." What would it have taken to get Bush to act? A complete Terrorist Itinerary, complete with names, coordinates, and flight numbers? The Aug. 6 memo, which localized the threat to New York City and specified commercial aircraft as targets, was far more specific than most of the Homeland Security info that now prompts the entire nation to go on high alert!

NBC: "In the summer of 2001, career FBI official Tom Pickard became acting director of the FBI. Because of intelligence intercepts, concern about a terror attack was high. In July, Pickard went to brief Attorney General John Ashcroft about al-Qaida threats and other FBI matters. NBC News has learned that Pickard now has told 9/11 commission investigators that Ashcroft was somewhat dismissive of the latest information on al-Qaida. 'It wasn't something he wanted to hear more about. Ashcroft had other things on his mind.' sources say Pickard told the commission. Pickard testifies publicly before the 9/11 Commission Tuesday and would not comment to NBC."

The Institute for Public Accuracy offers sampling commentaries on Condi's testimony. "Like other top officials in the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice has repeatedly made statements about war in Iraq that are demonstrably false and that she had to know were false at the time she said them." - Sheldon Rampton, PR Watch. "The administration has impeded the investigation and is continuing to do so. The White House received a promise that the commission would not call any more White House staffers after Rice's appearance. This allows Rice to be able to make any claims and assertions she wants without any possibility of refutation from other White House staffers." Clarence Lusane, author of "Hitler's Black Victims.

Comments by 9/11 family members via Reuters: " No one wants to take any responsibility. Three thousand people died, and all they want to talk about is structural problems...They should be ashamed of themselves." -Bob McIlvaine of Oreland, PA. "I am angry at the lack of accepting accountability -- that's what the president should have done, accepted responsibility. Instead, it's been outwardly directed, not just at the terrorists but at previous administrations" - Beverly Eckert of Stamford, CT. " "I think it made her [Condi] look incompetent in her position." - Patty Casazza, NJ. "We did not hear [an apology] today. I'm hoping we are going to hear that because it is clear that 3,000 people don't just get murdered. There were mistakes made and we need to fix them to make sure Americans are safer." - Carie Lemack

Even Howard "Mediawhore of the Year" Fineman takes a dim view of Condoleezza Rice's testimony to the 9/11 Commission. "She was a bureaucrat explaining 'structure' to a national audience (and a chamber full of family members) that yearned for blunt talk." And he's sounding astonishingly skeptical about Bush's claim to be a leader: "Remember the picture of the president in the classroom, being told of the attack by chief of staff Andy Card? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated.... But what if he was literally on vacation -- at the ranch in Crawford -- when he should have been making sure that someone was ringing alarm bells throughout the bureaucracy?" If "Fine" is asking tough questions instead of offering fulsome praise, the wheels really have come off the Bush Juggernaut.

Despite it's, er...pithy title, this summary of the information ignored and/or discarded by the Bush regime before 9/11 will "set your hair on fire" (as many privy to the facts have described the feeling). On the list: the Hart-Rudman commission report, Diane Feinstein's repeated calls for restructuring homeland defense, warnings of the Gore Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, warnings of NSA's Echelon electronic spy network, etc. One of the most suspicious bits of info: Why has the federally-commissioned 1993 "Terrorism 2000" report co-authored by Brian Sullivan that includes potential terrorism scenarios - including planes being used to crash into prominent US landmarks such as the WTC - been scrubbed from every search engine and from the Homeland Security's own archives?

Here's a link Democrats.com posted in May, 2002 regarding Condi Rice's claim that no one ever expected the Pentagon to be hit by a civilian airliner. "According to the official government Web site of the Military District of Washington, the Pentagon ITSELF planned in detail how it would respond to just such a scenario from October 24-26 2000. And this was no low-level exercise, since it took place in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room! Folks, we must have found something REALLY EXPLOSIVE - because not only did Rove & Rumsfeld & Rice scrub this article - they temporarily scrubbed the whole Military District of Washington Web site" Luckily, Democrats.com kept a mirror copy! (http://democrats.com/view.cfm?id=7382)

In what must be the most colossally outrageous excuse offered on the 9/11 failures yet, Rice claims Bush did nothing to address the Al Qaeda issue pre-9/11 because any non-comprehensive action (ie any action that did NOT involve bombing and invading another country) would have been like 'swatting flies." "He made clear to us that he did not want to respond to Al Qaeda one attack at a time," she said. "He told me he was 'tired of swatting flies.'" Rice then lied blatantly and said defeating Al Qaeda was Bush's first national security directive after he took office in January 2001 - "not Russia, not missile defence, not Iraq, but the elimination of Al Qaeda." Oh, really? Is that why Russia, Iraq and missile defense were routinely mentioned by Bush - while Al Qaeda rarely if ever shows up in a SINGLE statement, speech, or report?

Today (4/8) Condi told the 9/11 commission that the Bush administration essentially just took over where Clinton left off in efforts to go target Al Qaeda. However, Richard Clarke has stated that not only did Bush ignore Al Qaeda prior to 9/11, but that the subject was virtually never mentioned. The paper trail supports Clarke, rather than Rice. If Al Qaeda was, as Rice says, an ongoing priority, then why does no pre-911 statement from the Bush admin ever mention the group? Nor is there any mention of the organization in this 2001 report: "Patterns of Global Terrorism" http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2000/ , or in this April 30 statement by Colin Powell on the state of global terrorism - even though he briefly refers to Osama Bin Laden http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2001/2557.htm And why did Rice HERSELF fail to mention Al Qaeda or Bin Laden in a speech on national security she was to have given on Sept. 11, 2001?

The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks announced yesterday that it has identified 69 documents from the Clinton era that the Bush White House withheld from investigators and which include references to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and other issues relevant to the panel's work. Democratic commissioner Timothy J. Roemer, a former Indiana congressman, said: "We continue to have document problems with this White House. Access to documents is absolutely crucial for this commission to be able to do its work."

Gary Hart writes, "When told that the 9/11 commission has not asked for any public testimony from us, most people are incredulous. If the 9/11 commission is really trying to find out what was known and when it was known, they ask, why would your national security commission's warnings and recommendations not be of direct relevance and urgent interest? Didn't you publicly and privately warn the new Bush administration of your concerns about terrorism? Didn't you specifically recommend a new national homeland security agency? Why wouldn't all this be of central importance to the work of the 9/11 commission? The simple answer to all these questions is: I don't know why we have not been asked to testify."

"Current and former leaders of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are expected to come under criticism from the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at public hearings next week, with Attorney General John Ashcroft and Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I. director, being called to account for their agencies' failures before the attacks, panel officials say. Commission members say the hearings will bolster what will almost certainly be a major recommendation of the panel's final report this summer: an overhaul of domestic counterterrorism programs, possibly through creation of a domestic counterintelligence agency separate from the F.B.I. The Bush administration has said it opposes such a move."

UK Independent: "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-Qa'ida'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'. Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place."

Maureen Dowd got a super-secret copy of a letter sent from White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to the 911 Commission, on the conditions limiting Bush's testimony: "The President at all times, even on trips to the men's room, will be accompanied by the Vice President. The Commission must agree in writing that it will not pose any questions directly to the President. Mr. Bush's statements will be restricted to asides on Dick Cheney's brushoffs, as in 'Just like he said,' 'Roger that' and 'Ditto.'... The Commission must not, under any circumstances, ask the Vice President why American soldiers and civilians in Iraq are being greeted with barbarous infernos rather than flowery bouquets. Finally, we request that when the President finishes with this painful teeth-pulling visit, the Commission shall offer him a lollipop."

Tom Flocco writes, "Three weeks before Bush selected Kean on December 16, 2002 to head the terrorist probe (15 months after 911), Amerada-Hess--an oil company where Kean is still a director and shareholder--severed its joint venture deal with Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil, involving one of the largest undeveloped oil fields in the world in the Caspian Sea basin. According to Fortune, one of Delta Oil's backers is Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law Khalid bin Mahfouz, founder and chairman of the Saudi National Commercial Bank (NCB). Mahfouz transferred personal funds and $3 million diverted from a Saudi pension fund to New York and London bank accounts linked to terrorism. In turn, NCB deposited the money into Islamic charities Islamic Relief and Blessed Relief--where Mahfouz's son Abdul Rahman serves on the board in Sudan. Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Mahfouz and others transferred 'tens of millions of dollars to bank accounts linked to indicted terrorist Osama bin Laden.'"

Here is the key sentence from Alberto Gonzales' letter about Condi's testimony: "The Commission must agree in writing that it will not request additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice." That means the 911 Commission will get exactly ONE CHANCE to question Condi under oath. It also means they cannot go back to other officials to make them explain any previous lies that contradict the sworn testimony of Clarke and Condi. We predict Condi will take the fall in order to protect others - but who are they? Best bets are: Stephen Hadley, Condi's deputy, Scooter Libby, Cheney's Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, Bush's puppetmaster, and Dick Cheney, the Virtual President.

"White House officials worked yesterday to negotiate a compromise that would allow public release of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the independent commission looking into the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to administration aides... the White House believes Rice's refusal to testify is becoming a political problem and officials are looking for a way out. The leading possibility is for Rice to submit to another private session with the commissioners and allow them to release a transcript,... The White House did not allow a recording to be made of what Rice said when she met privately with the commissioners for four hours in February. But the commissioners and their staff members have notes that were described as being nearly verbatim."

"A member of the 9/11 commission said yesterday that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice indicated in a private session she was wrong to have once stated no one expected terrorists to use planes as missiles. The White House reportedly also backpedaled yesterday on whether President Bush pressed counterterror czar Richard Clarke the day after the attacks to find evidence that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was involved. Clarke said the meeting occurred in the White House Situation Room and presidential aides said earlier this week the meeting never happened. But CBS News reported last night that White House aides now concede the meeting 'probably' occurred." The NEW Condi lie: "'I could not anticipate that they would try to use an airplane as a missile,' but... 'the intelligence community could anticipate it.'"

"'These are senior statesmen, very much people who are at the heart of the establishment,' [Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who is spending a semester in the Capitol and observed the proceedings] said. Describing the panel as 'probing, but not aggressive,' he said, 'I think there's a very, very strong disposition to avoid finger pointing. It's very clear that they don't want to single out people for incompetence or not being vigilant enough.' That has provoked criticism from some relatives of the victim. 'They asked them easy questions, and they let them get off with baloney answers,' Bruce DeCell, whose son-in-law, Mark Petrocelli, died in the attacks, said Tuesday, after listening to the panel question Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his predecessor, Madeleine K. Albright. He added, 'I'm not impressed.'"

"The U.S. intelligence community received a flood of threat warnings in the summer of 2001 that 'spectacular' terrorist attacks were likely... In the summer of 2001, two veteran officers of the CIA's counterterrorist center who were deeply involved in issues dealing with bin Laden were so worried about an impending disaster that they considered resigning and going public with their concerns, the staff reported... A former FBI translator said Wednesday that the bureau had 'real, specific' information relating to the Sept. 11 attacks before they happened. Sibel Edmonds worked for the agency working from Sept. 20, 2001 to March 2002... Edmonds has testified before the Sept. 11 commission, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Intelligence Committee."

Reuters: "Senior officials of both the Bush and Clinton administrations have faced tough questioning by commissioners, suggesting that the bipartisan body could issue an extremely critical report in July. For Clinton officials, that may affect the way historians judge their tenure. But it could be a much bigger problem for Bush, coming at the height of his re-election campaign. This week's testimony has made it much clearer that there was a wealth of intelligence available in the summer of 2001 indicating that a major terrorist attack was coming. Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, a deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton, said she read the intelligence briefings given to Bush before Sept. 11 and the information on the gathering threats 'would set your hair on fire.'"

Today before the 9/11 panel, Colin Powell repeated the lie told by Condi Rice last week as to: why an armed Predator was not used to take Osama Bin Laden out in the summer of 2001. Both Rice and Powell say the armed Predator (unmanned plane) was "not operational." This is a bald-faced lie. From CNews: "By summer 2001, the Predator was armed for another test in the Nevada desert that destroyed a mock-up of a home bin Laden was suspected of using in Afghanistan...Hellfire missiles were attached to the drone after unarmed Predators flown by the CIA from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan spotted a man that several U.S. intelligence analysts believed was bin Laden, or his trademark Japanese truck, as many as three times in September and October 2000, the officials said." What is the penalty for lying to Congress?

WashPost reports: "Sen. John F. Kerry, intensifying the election fight over terrorism and national security, accused President Bush on Sunday of 'stonewalling' for political reasons separate investigations into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and prewar intelligence on Iraq. The Massachusetts Democrat echoed Bush's promise to make Sept. 11 a top election issue and, for the second time in the young general election campaign, portrayed the president as playing politics with the deadliest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor."

Reuters: "A commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks on Tuesday pledged to report its findings by July 26 at the latest, after the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives withdrew his objections to giving it more time to complete its work. 'We told the speaker today July 26 at the absolute limit. If we can get it out before we will. In no case would we get it out after that,' former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, commission chairman, said after meeting with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican. Under pressure from the Senate, Hastert agreed on Friday to extend the work of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The commission had been scheduled to go out of business on May 27."

"Members of the bipartisan commission said they were considering a subpoena to force the public testimony of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice... The federal panel reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks has scheduled interviews with former President Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore this month but is struggling to get similar cooperation from President Bush and other administration officials."

Despite a promise from Bush for a two-month extension to the 9/11 Commission's deadline, his "allies in Congress, including Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, continue to oppose any extension. The Commission will have to cancel important hearings and interviews and will not have time to analyze critical documents. The result will be an incomplete report that is likely to leave answerable questions unanswered and fail to provide a full list of recommendations for preventing future attacks. We need your help to convince Congress to pass legislation giving the Commission an extension. You can do two things: 1) Send a fax to Scott Palmer, Rep. Hastert's Chief of Staff, at fax number 202-225-0697, and tell him you want Rep. Hastert to support an extension of the Commission's deadline (or phone 202-225-2976). 2) Contact your own representative and senators urging them to support the bills that would grant the Commission an extension: H.R. 3771 in the House and S. 2040 in the Senate."

"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet will testify publicly next month in a federal commission inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks. The two-day hearing in late March, to focus on U.S. counterterrorism policy, will be unprecedented in its review of high-level officials in the administrations of both Presidents Clinton and Bush, Philip Zelikow, executive director of the Sept. 11 commission, said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. Also scheduled to testify are Secretary of State Colin Powell; his predecessor Madeleine Albright; and Clinton's defense secretary, William Cohen... On Friday, Bush agreed to meet privately with [some] commissioners but said it was unnecessary for him to testify publicly, and he would not. Cheney also has said he would meet with some commissioners, and Clinton and Gore have said they will cooperate in private meetings while not saying whether they would testify publicly."

Reuters: "Bush would not commit on Sunday to being questioned by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 'Perhaps, perhaps,' Bush told NBC's 'Meet the Press' in an interview when asked if he would submit for questioning. The Sept. 11 commission interviewed Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, on Saturday. It met last weekend with her deputy, Stephen Hadley."

"Despite initial objections, Bush agreed on Wednesday to extend until July 26 the deadline for the panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to finish its work, setting the stage for it to issue its report at the height of the presidential campaign. The extension was requested by the commission, which wanted the current May 27 deadline pushed back by 60 days in order to complete interviews and review documents related to the attacks."

Condi "Rice has agreed to be interviewed by the bipartisan 9/11 commission on Feb. 7. [But Bob Kerrey] said that Ms. Rice's interview will not be held under oath, and the results of the interview are not to be made public... Mr. Kerrey, the commission's unlikely new spitfire, told The Observer he would lobby the commission to request sworn, public testimony from Bush's embittered national security advisor... The commissioners are divided on whether or not to press the point - and to use a subpoena if she refuses. 'We're not there yet,' said former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, the committee's chairman.... House Speaker Dennis Hastert has insisted that the commission 'live within the current deadline,' which is the end of May. But significant numbers of Senate Republicans, Mr. Kerrey believes, 'have figured out that the best delay for them is a six-month delay, to get our report beyond the election.'" Impeach Bush Now!

No doubt you've heard the one about the child who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan. That's the strategy Bush is taking with the 9/11 Commission. "Commission officials said there was no way to finish their work on time, a situation they attribute in part to delays by the Bush administration in turning over documents and other evidence... 'We think it's important they move forward as quickly as possible to complete their work,'" Bushmouth Scott McClellan said. THEN SEND BUSH TO TESTIFY!

WashPost reports: "The U.S. government fumbled repeated opportunities to stop many of the men responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks from entering the country, missing fraudulent passports and other warning signs that should have attracted greater scrutiny, according to a preliminary report released yesterday. The new findings by the independent commission investigating the terrorist strikes stand in marked contrast to the contentions of many senior U.S. officials, who for more than two years have portrayed the 19 hijackers as law-abiding travelers who did little to attract government suspicion and who, in nearly all cases, entered or resided in the country legally. Yesterday's report disclosed that as many as eight of the hijackers carried passports that 'showed evidence of fraudulent manipulation,' while as many as five of the passports had 'suspicious indicators.' The report did not identify the details missed by authorities."

UK Guardian reports: "The United States was warned of impending September 11 terrorist attacks by an Iranian spy, but ignored him, German secret service agents testified yesterday in the trial of an alleged al-Qaida terrorist. The spy, identified as Hamid Reza Zakeri, tried to warn the CIA after leaving Iran in 2001, but was not believed, two German officers who interviewed him told the Hamburg court. Zakeri worked in the department of the Iranian secret services responsible for 'carrying out terrorist attacks globally', one of the officers said. Prosecutors called the spy as a surprise witness against a Moroccan man, Abdelghani Mzoudi, who is on trial for being a key aide to three of the September 11 hijackers."

"The Justice Department's 18-month investigation into the leak of classified intercepted messages is focusing on Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the time of the disclosure, according to a law enforcement official and congressional sources. A grand jury has been hearing information and has taken the testimony of at least two witnesses, including Shelby's former press secretary, sources said. The investigation centers on the disclosure in 2002 that the National Security Agency had intercepted two messages on the eve of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks signaling that something was to happen the next day. The cryptic messages were not translated until Sept. 12. Shelby has since left the committee and is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee" and says he never "knowingly" compromised classified information. Yeah, sure. Where is the outrage from the White House and the right-wing media whores?

The 9/11 Commission "faced angry questions after revelations that two of its own senior officials were so closely involved in the events under investigation that they have been interviewed as part of the inquiry. Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director, worked on the Bush-Cheney transition team as the new administration took power, advising his longtime associate and former boss, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, on the incoming National Security Council. [Condi, of course ignored emphatic warnings about Al Qaeda from her predecessor, Sandy Berger.]... 'Did he interview himself about his own role in the failures that left us defenseless?' asked Lori Van Auken, the widow of Kenneth. 'This is bizarre.' More recently, some relatives have accused [Zelikow] of being in touch with White House political supreme Karl Rove -- the man widely believed to be the most powerful figure in the administration... [Commission spokesman] Felzenberg did not deny the allegation."

NY Daily News: "The federal 9/11 commission has formally decided to ask Bush and former President Bill Clinton to meet with the panel and to extend its investigation by several months. Cheney and former Clinton veep Al Gore also would be called, a spokesman told the Daily News yesterday. Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton will approach the four men, said spokesman Alvin Felzenberg. The request to appear is just that, a request, and not a legal subpoena. Felzenberg said if Bush and Clinton agree, the sessions likely won't be in public... He also said that because of alleged stonewalling by the Bush administration and by Mayor Bloomberg's office, some commissioners want to extend their probe past the May deadline for the final report, while others are against any extension, Felzenberg said... Kristen Breitweiser of Monmouth County, N.J., whose husband, Ronald, died in the World Trade Center attack, said there should be an interim report if the probe is prolonged."

"Poised to convene its first hard-hitting hearings in January, the federal commission investigating the 9/11 attacks continues to be at odds with the White House over access to key information and witnesses. Two government sources tell Time that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is arguing over ground rules for her appearance in part because she does not want to testify under oath or, according to one source, in public. While national security advisers are presidential staff and generally don't have to appear before Congress, the commission argues that its jurisdiction is broader... One Republican commissioner says a comment by Rice last year--that no one 'could have predicted that they would try to use 'hijacked airplane as a missile'--was 'an unfortunate comment . . . that was, of course, a wrong-footed statement on its face,' given that there was years of intelligence about Al Qaeda's interest in airplane attacks."

"Although fighter jets were racing toward the city after the commandeered planes, the transcripts showed that controllers at La Guardia Airport, apparently unaware of the hijackings, continued to send out flights until the second plane had struck the World Trade Center. That was nearly an hour after the first plane had been hijacked. The records are the latest to be released by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in response to a lawsuit brought by The New York Times. Four months ago, the Port Authority released about 2,000 pages of transcribed phone calls and radio transmissions that revealed communications problems and mistaken assurances that people could stay inside the towers. Among the matters being investigated by the federal 9-11 Commission is the performance of the FAA, which controls the nation's air traffic, and how quickly it notified air defense and local air traffic controllers."

TIME reports, "Poised to convene its first hard-hitting hearings in January, the federal commission investigating the 9/11 attacks continues to be at odds with the White House over access to key information and witnesses. Two government sources tell TIME that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is arguing over ground rules for her appearance in part because she does not want to testify under oath or, according to one source, in public... Rice could face tough questioning. One Republican commissioner says a comment by Rice last year-that no one 'could have predicted that they would try to use a... hijacked airplane as a missile'-was 'an unfortunate comment ... that was, of course, a wrong-footed statement on its face,' given that there was years of intelligence about Al Qaeda's interest in airplane attacks. "

Kos writes, "It's slowly gathering steam. Murdoch's NY Post was on it [as well as Fox News]... The real story won't explode until the public hearings in January. This is only foreshadowing, and the longer the story plays out, the better. I know many of you are upset that stories like the Plame Affair or Yellowcake didn't bring down the administration. But you are looking at it all wrong. Each one of those stories has helped erode the public's support for Bush. It's death by a thousands paper cuts... Bush's numbers are in the 50s (Saddam's 'boost' notwithstanding) because of the steady stream of bad news painting the administration as 1) corrupt, 2) incompetent, or 3) overly political. This story may be another paper cut, or it could be the Big One We've All Been Waiting For. Either way, it won't tickle Bush. They have plenty to be worried about."

"Ellen Mariani, wife of Louis Neil Mariani, who died when United Air Lines flight 175 was flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 911 announced today, in the wake of the capture of Saddam Hussein, she will seek an extraordinary writ by the Honorable Court to immediately depose Saddam Hussein, a critical witness to support the merits of her RICO Act cause of action against Defendant George W. Bush, et. al." Mrs. Mariani wants to ask Saddam for the truth about Bush I and Reagan's collusion with Saddam in the past and the possible bearing this has on the events of 9/11 - BEFORE Bush "justice" blocks the truth through every means at its disposal.

Former Senator Max Cleland (D-GA) refused to go along with Bush's coverup of 911, so he was "appointed" to a position on Export-Import Bank that requires him to leave the commission. Tom Daschle will appoint Cleland's replacement. For Americans to learn the TRUTH, Daschle MUST appoint one of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee members who has refused to be bribed into silence. Call (800) 839-5276 or (800) 648-3516 or Fax (202) 224-6603

AP reports: "Victims' relatives who pressed for an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks say the panel risks being undercut by the government's failure to cooperate with it. The Family Steering Committee, a group of victim advocates, marked the one-year anniversary of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States by urging an extension of its May 27 deadline for submitting findings and recommendations. 'Unfortunately, the production of a timely report no longer seems to be possible, in large part because of the delays caused by the (Bush) administration and the agencies that report to it,' the group said Wednesday in a statement."

A single-engine near DC "violated restricted air space around 11:15 a.m. EST and was diverted by military fighter jets scrambled to respond... The first [flight security ring] permits small aircraft to fly within 23 miles of the capital if the pilot has prior approval from air traffic controllers. The second zone prohibits any aircraft from within a 17-mile radius of downtown Washington... the private plane flying from north to south was identified immediately after violating the outer restricted area. NORAD said two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington and escorted the plane out of the prohibited zone. [It] was diverted about 10 miles from downtown Washington." The plane was intercepted after traveling only 16 miles - on 911, why did NORAD take so long to intercept Flight 77? The 911 commission wants to know - and so do we.

The 9-11 Commission "stepped up pressure on the Bush administration to cooperate by issuing a subpoena on Friday to the Pentagon. Members said they were still weighing a subpoena to the administration for Oval Office documents Bush received in the days before 9-11, although the panel chose not to issue one today... It voted to subpoena the Pentagon for documents, tapes and transcripts involving the actions of the NORAD on the morning of Sept. 11, as the suicide hijackings were being carried out... Commission members say they are trying to determine how NORAD responded to the first reports of the hijackings and whether the military could have done anything to prevent the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, possibly by using fighter jets to shoot down the passenger planes... They also want access to information about communications between Norad and Air Force One, on which Bush was traveling on Sept. 11." Hooray for truthseekers Tim Roemer and Richard Ben Veniste!

NY Times reports: "The White House has offered to provide a federal commission with limited access to Oval Office intelligence reports regarding the Sept. 11 terror attacks, but some members of the panel have described the offer as inadequate and are renewing the threat of a subpoena... Commission officials said at least three other members of the panel believed that the White House offer was inadequate... The official said the commission would also weigh subpoenas on Friday against the Defense Dept. and CIA for information that has so far been withheld from the panel. A Democratic member of the panel, Jamie S. Gorelick said that she believed the panel was in an 'endgame' with the White House over access to the Oval Office documents... Ms. Gorelick said White House efforts to withhold the documents were a 'mistake.' 'It makes people think that there's something really nefarious in those documents,' she said." Something nefarious indeed!

Thomas Kean, "chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks says that the White House is continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he is prepared to subpoena the documents if they are not turned over within weeks... [He said] the bipartisan 10-member commission would soon be forced to issue subpoenas to other executive branch agencies because of continuing delays by the Bush administration in providing documents and other evidence needed by the panel. 'Any document that has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach,' Mr. Kean said on Friday in his first explicit public warning to the White House that it risked a subpoena and a politically damaging courtroom showdown with the commission over access to the documents, including Oval Office intelligence reports that reached Bush's desk in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. 'I will not stand for it,' Mr. Kean said."

AP: "The independent commission studying the Sept. 11 attacks has voted to subpoena the Federal Aviation Administration, ordering the agency to hand over documents for the investigation. The 10-member commission said it had learned through interviews that the agency had not turned over tapes, statements, reports and other documents 'highly material to our inquiry.' One commission member said the documents relate in part to lingering questions over how, and how quickly, the FAA notified U.S. air defenses about hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001... During a hearing in May, Democratic commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste... dug into the length of time it took the FAA to notify [NORAD] about American Airlines Flight 77... A witness at the hearing, retired Maj. Gen. Larry K. Arnold, who was in charge of NORAD on the day of the attacks, said it was 'physically possible' that fighter jets could have beaten the civilian airliner to the Pentagon had they been activated earlier."

WashPost: "The executive director of a panel investigating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is at the center of an escalating fight between the commission and some victims' relatives, who say he should remove himself from a broad part of the inquiry because of his ties to key national security officials. The families wrote in an Oct. 3 letter to the Sept. 11 commission that executive director Philip Zelikow should recuse himself 'from any aspect of national security and executive branch negotiations and investigations' because of his past connections to the National Security Council and to key Bush administration officials. If not, the letter said, Zelikow should resign because of the 'danger these conflicts pose to [the commission's] credibility.'"

From Secrecy News: "In a letter to Senator Bob Graham last week, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice dismissed for the foreseeable future the possibility of further declassification of the report of the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11. Based on their own knowledge of the classified report, several Democrats and some Republicans had urged the declassification of at least part of the censored 27 pages of the report concerning possible foreign involvement in the 9/11 attacks. That section reportedly addressed the role of Saudi Arabia. The White House said that none of the material could be declassified. The congressional dispute with the White House had the potential to raise fundamental questions about national security classification policy. But the opportunity was squandered when the Senate Intelligence Committee decided it would not even attempt to exercise its own declassification authority, abandoning the field to the executive branch once and for all."

"House Democrats on Wednesday asked for hearings into allegations the Environmental Protection Agency [under pressure from the Bush White House] misled New Yorkers about the dangers of debris in the air around the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11 attacks. 'We do not want the Congress of the United States to be party to a scandal,' said the House Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California. Pelosi was joined by Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes ground zero, and others in her party in calling for a congressional investigation... Last month, the EPA's internal watchdog found the agency, at the urging of White House officials, gave misleading assurances there was no health risk from the dust in the air after the towers' collapse. The White House 'convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones' by having the National Security Council control EPA communications after the attack, according to the inspector general's report."

The Miami Herald reports: "Two Democratic House members from South Florida, Peter Deutsch and Robert Wexler, are calling for an investigation into how Bush administration officials allowed about 140 Saudi nationals to leave the country in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. At a time when all private aviation was grounded, top officials allowed charter flights to pick up Saudis around the country and then leave for Saudi Arabia, according to reports in Vanity Fair and The Tampa Tribune. The group included some members of the royal family and some relatives of Osama bin Laden. The departures occurred as investigators learned that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia, and some Saudi officials said they feared a backlash against their citizens. Deutsch and Wexler requested the General Accounting Office to launch a formal investigation of the incident."

WashPost reports, "Germany opened its second trial of an alleged member of the Hamburg terror cell that investigators say led the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.... Defense attorneys signaled... that they have planned an aggressive defense that will demand that the United States turn over key witnesses who are in secret custody, and will force prosecutors to prove through physical or other explicit evidence what the state calls basic accepted facts, such as the presence of cell member Mohamed Atta on the first plane that hit the World Trade Center. The defense said further that it might attempt to explore theories that the hijackings served the foreign policy goals of U.S. conservatives by creating a pretext to transform the U.S. military posture in the world. 'It appears the U.S.A. was aware of the political advantages of the attack on the World Trade Center, as an idea, in advance,' defense attorney Michael Rosenthal said."

James Ridgeway writes, "The report lists 36 different summaries of warnings dating back to 1997. Among them: 'In September 1998, the [Intelligence Community] obtained information that Bin Laden's next operation might involve flying an explosive-laden aircraft into a U.S. airport and detonating it.' 'In the fall of 1998, the [Intelligence Community] obtained information concerning a Bin Laden plot involving aircraft in the New York and Washington, D.C. areas.' 'In March 2000, the [Intelligence Community] obtained information regarding the types of targets that operatives of Bin Laden's network might strike. The Statue of Liberty was specifically mentioned, as were skyscrapers, ports, airports, and nuclear power plans.'... How could [Condi] Rice, having known all this, say that the administration had no idea 'these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon?''"

"A Sept. 11 hijacker in the cockpit of UA Flight 93 instructed terrorist-pilot Ziad Jarrah to crash the jetliner moments before it slammed into a Pennsylvania field because of a fierce passenger uprising in the cabin. The theory described by FBI Director Robert Mueller, based on the government's analysis of cockpit recordings, discounts the popular perception of insurgent passengers grappling with terrorists inside the cockpit, trying to seize the plane's controls, immediately before the crash. The government's findings - laid out deep within the July 24 congressional report - aim to resolve one of the enduring mysteries of the deadliest terror attacks in U.S. history: What happened in the final minutes aboard Flight 93? ... The FBI strenuously maintains that its analysis does not diminish the heroism of passengers who, with the words 'Let's roll,' apparently rushed down the airliner's narrow aisle to try to overwhelm the hijackers." Did the FBI scrub all the shootdown evidence?

NY Times reports: "F.B.I. agents have interviewed a Saudi citizen identified by Congressional investigators as a likely intelligence operative for Riyadh who befriended two of the 9/11 hijackers in California more than a year before the attacks, government officials said today... Omar al-Bayoumi, who was living as a student in San Diego in early 2000 when he met Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, 2 of the 15 Saudis who came to the United States to train for the hijackings. The officials said that in the interview Mr. Bayoumi denied any advance knowledge of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, although officials cautioned that the questioning was incomplete and that a number of questions remained to be asked about his activities in the United States. Mr. Bayoumi's dealings with the two hijackers are detailed in both the public parts of the report and in a still unreleased 28-page classified chapter... more than 40 Democrats have demanded the release of the classified section."

Interview with 9/11 Commission member Max Cleland. "CLELAND: Let's talk about that here. This commission was formed about mid-December, the 9/11 Commission. We were supposed to use the joint inquiry report as a launching pad to get into this issue of not only fixing the intelligence community, but moving beyond, and getting into what is the al Qaeda all about? What is this terrorist global network that we're fighting? A new kind of war and all that. Well, the independent, bi-partisan commission, hello, didn't even get the stuff 'til a few weeks ago. I'm saying that's deliberate. I am saying that the delay in relating this information to the American public out of a hearing... series of hearings, that several members of Congress knew eight or ten months ago, including Bob Graham and others, that was deliberately slow walked... the 9/11 Commission was deliberately slow walked, because the Administration's policy was, and its priority was, we're gonna take Saddam Hussein out."

"A key figure in the 9/11 report that was released yesterday is reportedly living in Saudi Arabia and should be brought back to the United States for further questioning in light of new evidence linking him to two of the hijackers and al-Qaeda, US Senator Charles Schumer said today. In a letter being sent to President [sic] Bush today, Schumer urged the Administration to use its influence with the Saudi Royal family to get them to turn the figure, Omar al-Bayoumi, to US authorities. 'The link between al-Bayoumi and the hijackers is the best evidence yet that part of official Saudi Arabia might have been involved in the attacks,' Schumer said. 'If the Saudi Royal family is as committed to fighting terrorism as it claims, it will turn this guy over to US officials immediately so that we can finally get to the bottom of his role in the attacks and his links to al Qaeda.'"

"In February 2002, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence agreed to conduct a Joint Inquiry into the activities of the U.S. Intelligence Community in connection with the terrorist attacks perpetrated against our nation on September 11, 2001. This report (available as both S. Rept. 107-351 and H. Rept. 107-792) consists of 832 pages that presents the joint inquiry's findings and conclusions, an accompanying narrative, and a series of recommendations."

NY Times reports: "Senior officials of Saudi Arabia have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable groups and other organizations that may have helped finance the September 2001 attacks, a still-classified section of a Congressional report on the hijackings says, according to people who have read it. The 28-page section of the report was deleted from the nearly 900-page declassified version released on Thursday by a joint committee of the House and Senate intelligence committees. The chapter focuses on the role foreign governments played in the hijackings, but centers almost entirely on Saudi Arabia, the people who saw the section said. The Bush administration's refusal to allow the committee to disclose the contents of the chapter has stirred resentment in Congress, where some lawmakers have said the administration's desire to protect the ruling Saudi family had prevented the American public from learning crucial facts about the attacks."

The Miami Herald reports: "A long-awaited final report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will be released in the next two weeks, containing new information about U.S. government mistakes and Saudi financing of terrorists. Former Rep. Tim Roemer, who served on the House Intelligence Committee and who has read the report, said it will be 'highly explosive' when it becomes public... The report will show that top Bush administration officials were warned in the summer of 2001 that the al Qaeda terrorist network had plans to hijack aircraft and launch a 'spectacular attack.'' Hill would not discuss details of the report, but said it will contain 'new information' about revelations made last year, when the joint House-Senate investigation held nine public hearings and 13 closed sessions. The final report was completed in December. Since then a working group of Bush administration intelligence officials has 'scrubbed' the report, objecting to additional public disclosures."

Time reports: "Will Resident Bush be summoned before the independent commission investigating 9/11? It now appears very likely. John Lehman, Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary and one of five Republicans on the 10-member panel, told TIME that he wants both Resident Bush and former President Clinton to meet with the commission and discuss matters that could include what their Administrations knew about the al-Qaeda terrorist plots -- and what was done to combat them -- before the 9/11 attacks." But the first, and most obvious, question of Bush should ask why he went into that classroom and read a story about a goat, instead of ensuring that fighters were scrambled.

AP reports: "A federal appeals court allowed preparations to proceed for accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui to interview Ramzi Binalshibh, dealing at least a temporary setback to prosecutors who want to prevent Moussaoui from using the captured al-Qaida prisoner in his defense. Thursday's ruling by a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., allowed the judge in Moussaoui's trial to resume arrangements for the Binalshibh interview."

David Corn writes, "While the investigators are investigating, the [9/11] commission has held two rounds of hearings. In addition to providing a forum for gut-wrenching statements from relatives of the 9/11 dead, these sessions produced valuable testimony about issues the commission has to address... [Yet] the hearings and the commission's work have not received extensive media notice, which is odd, since the panel is seeking to explain the most traumatic moment in recent US history. The New York Times did not cover the commission's last set of hearings, nor did most cable and network news shows. But 'the families' and a handful of others are closely watching the commission, which, to its credit, has been attentive to the suggestions and concerns of the relatives."

Tom Flocco writes: "For those Americans watching recent C-Span replays of 9/11 Commission testimony, particularly air force generals and other government officials addressing issues surrounding U.S. military air defense failures, a number of revelations suggested additional doors for further inquiry and witness scrutiny. And U.S. lawmaker witnesses also offered probing analysis at impromptu news briefings outside the hearing room. Breaking new ground, Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), a member of the intelligence committee, hinted that multiple terrorism updates in the months prior to the attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon could have 'probative value' as evidence in the Commission's ongoing investigation. This was the first reference by a government official to the White House pre-attack intelligence briefings as possible 9/11 evidence."

"Prosecutors urged a federal appeals court Tuesday to keep terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui from interviewing a senior al-Qaida operative, arguing he has no constitutional right to question an enemy combatant and disrupt a military interrogation. 'The damage to the United States will be immediate and irreparable,' Assistant [AG] Michael Chertoff argued as he tried to convince the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals that Moussaoui can receive a fair trial without access to the al-Qaida witness he demands. The court's ruling could have far-reaching implications, determining whether Moussaoui's case is transferred to a military tribunal and what rights people accused of terrorism in the future will [have] in the courts. Moussaoui's lawyers countered that the government cannot carve out an exception to a constitutional right of defendants just because they are charged with terrorism. Moussaoui contends that access to the disputed witness could exonerate him or spare him the death penalty."

Tom Flocco writes: "Curiously however, none of the testimony offered before the Commission was sworn under oath (either on Thursday or Friday); and the most critical statements concerning the 9/11 military response failures occurred on the morning prior to a long Memorial Day weekend when the public would not be paying attention... Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ) [told us]: 'The evidence is compelling; but the Administration is not very inclined to go after the answers. It [not swearing in witnesses] doesn't surprise me'... Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton entered the fray, asking [NORAD Commander] Arnold when Bush gave the order to shoot down airliners assumed to be hijacked, and why that exact time of the shoot-down order was not entered into the official NORAD 9/11 timeline... Arnold answered Hamilton... : 'I am sure that information is available,' Congressman Hamilton, adding 'I appreciate your question.' Everyone in the hearing room seemed stunned at his answer."

Several lawmakers are calling for a more forceful and less government-controlled investigation into the events of Sept 11, 2001 and the role the US government may have played in these events. Even the current commission's over-generalized title suggests a watering down and avoidance of the real issues pertaining to 9/11: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. This avoidance maneuvering was echoed by Republican panelist Porter Goss of Florida (as if FLA doesn't have enough of its own dirty linen to account for!), who said the commission should focus just on suggestions for the future - thereby neatly avoiding past culpability. Meanwhile, the media and White House are trying to claim the call for a true investigation is merely a political scheme concocted by "Democratic presidential contenders." But John McCain and other Republicans of conscience are also calling for a more incisive investigation. How do Ari and Karl explain that away?

Newsday reports: "The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks grilled the former chief federal aviation regulator yesterday in a tense public exchange over whether the government bungled its response that day. Jane Garvey, former head of the Federal Aviation Administration, was asked pointedly by commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste why the agency apparently took a half-hour to notify the country's air defense command about the hijackings. Another commissioner, Fred Fielding, pressed Garvey about an FAA report from Sept. 11 that a hijacker on American Airlines Flight 11 fatally shot a passenger five minutes before the plane smashed into the World Trade Center. The federal government has said no guns were on any of the four planes... Garvey initially said the command was notified at 8:34 a.m., but when Ben-Veniste read aloud testimony from NORAD's former commander saying the FAA didn't notify his agency until 9:24 a.m., Garvey said she would have to check FAA records."

Howard Blume writes for LA Weekly: "Mindy Kleinberg began by telling of a fall day in the Northeast, so warm and clear that she 'literally skipped home' after seeing off her 10-year-old and 7-year-old at the school-bus stop. On that day, September 11, 2001, her 39-year-old husband, a stock trader with Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center, lost his life along with some 3,000 others in that day's terrorist attacks. Kleinberg testified last week before the national commission investigating 9/11. The commission took two days of testimony just blocks away from Ground Zero, hearing both from survivors and from experts, who spoke of the hijackers' financial sources and U.S. intelligence lapses."

Mindy Kleinberg lost her husband Alan Kleinberg in the WTC. She asked the 9-11 Commission: "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? We must find the answers as to what happened that day so as to ensure that another September 11th can never happen again."

Mary Fetchet lost her son Brad in the attacks on the World Trade Center. She is Co-Chair of Voices of September 11th and a member of the steering committee for the 9/11 Independent Commission. She asked the 9-11 Commission: "What were the breakdowns in communication between the control towers, the FAA, NORAD, and other government agencies? On a larger scale, what was the CIA, the FBI, the INS and the military doing to protect our country? What were the systemic failures? Who should be held accountable?... September 11th was not a 'wake up call.' Nor was it a 'new danger.' September 11th should have been predictable. The loss of life in the 1993 bombing and the continued threats specifically on the World Trade Center and on other New York City landmarks should have been THE wake up call."

"The government's 9/11 National Commission opened today. A new non-partisan group called 9/11 CitizensWatch presented 'unanswered questions' from 9/11. It says it will work with both the National Commission and independent researchers to get to the bottom of the September 11 tragedy. 'We honor the victims by learning the truth,' said Kyle Hence of 9/11 CitizensWatch, 'and by learning the truth of what happened that day and why, we help ensure that such a tragedy never happens again. The fact is, a global community of independent researchers has been investigating 9/11 for eighteen months, and is finding a great deal of evidence that conflicts with the official story. We welcome the federal government in finally joining this historic truth-finding effort, and we plan to constructively engage the National Commission and act as a liaison to the independent research community.'" Learn more at http://www.911citizenswatch.org

NY Times opines, "Reasonable people might wonder if the White House, having failed in its initial attempt to have Henry Kissinger steer the investigation, may be resorting to budgetary starvation as a tactic to hobble any politically fearless inquiry. The committee's mandate includes scrutiny of intelligence failures and eight other government areas. The White House vows that in coming budget initiatives there will be no shortchanging of the nation's duty to face the facts of the tragedy. As things now stand, $3 million budgeted as start-up funding could run out this summer. An estimated $14 million is needed for the task of finding out precisely how the attackers were able to pull off their plot in which nearly 3,000 people died. This seems a bargain given the importance of the mission. By comparison, the inquiry into the shuttle disaster's loss of seven lives may cost an estimated $40 million, and the inquiry into the Whitewater controversy ate up more than $30 [sic: $60+] million."

The Columbia investigation began within hours; Bush delayed the 9-11 investigation by 18 months. "The purpose of this public hearing is to engage those whose lives were forever changed by the events of September 11 in a public dialogue about the Commission's goals and priorities. The Commission also seeks to learn about work already completed and the state of current knowledge, in order to identify the most important issues and questions requiring further investigation. After brief opening statements by the Commissioners, they will hear from New York Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, survivors, representatives of victims' families, and members of Congress. On the second day, the Commissioners will hear testimony from experts on various topics related to September 11. The hearing is open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis" - 250 seats will be handed out at 8 a.m.

On 10-30-02, Asia Times reported: "Initially, the joint ISI-FBI plan was to take Shaikh Mohammed alive... [But] a few Pakistan Rangers entered the flat, where they found Shaikh Mohammed and another man, allegedly with their hands up. The Rangers nevertheless opened fire on the pair. Later, the Pakistani press carried pictures of a message scrawled in blood on the wall of the flat, proclaiming the Muslim refrain of Kalma, in Arabic: 'There is no God except Allah, Mohammed is his messenger'). An official who was present in the flat at the time of the shooting has told Asia Times Online that the message was written by Shaikh Mohammed with his own blood as his life drained from him." Gee, we wonder how they're going to explain THIS one...

Wayne Madsen writes, "Trent Lott had one more nasty surprise for the American people before he announced he was quitting his leadership post. He nominated former Navy Secretary John Lehman as a member of the 'independent' Sept. 11 investigation commission, passing over former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H, [co-chair of the] Commission on National Security that recommended drastic changes in the U.S. intelligence infrastructure before the attacks in 2001. Lehman was Navy secretary from 1981 to 1987 and presided over Ronald Reagan's buildup to a 600-ship Navy. But Lehman also presided over one of the worst cover-ups in the Navy's entire 227-year history... Rewarding an arch-cover up artist like John Lehman with a seat on the Sept. 11 investigation commission is a disservice to the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks who are seeking answers to why it happened and closure to their horrific tragedies." We demand Lehman's resignation!

Michel Chossudovsky writes, "Unknown to most, UNOCAL's partner in the Cent-Gas trans-Afghan pipeline consortium, the Saudi Company Delta Oil, is owned by the bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi clans which allegedly have ties to bin Laden's Al Qaeda. According to a 1998 Senate testimony of former CIA director James Woolsey, powerful financier Khalid bin Mahfouz' younger sister is married to Osama bin Laden. Bin Mahfouz is suspected to have funnelled millions of dollars to the Al Qaeda network. Now, 'by sheer coincidence', former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean (R), the man chosen by Bush to lead the 9/11 commission, also has business ties with bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi. Thomas Kean is a director (and shareholder) of Amerada Hess Corporation , which is involved in the Hess-Delta joint venture with Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia (owned by the bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi clans)." We demand a Congressional investigation of Kean's ties to these powerful Saudis!

From the AP: "Families of Sept. 11 victims fear that the White House will block their effort to get former Sen. Warren Rudman of New Hampshire on the new commission investigating the attacks. They consider Rudman the only well-qualified Republican sufficiently independent of his party and the White House to do a thorough job on the commission, Stephen Push, a spokesman for the families, said Friday. 'At issue is whether this commission is going to have any teeth,' he said. 'Having one independent Republican will make all the difference.' Push said the families believe Rudman is being blocked because of opposition from the White House. 'For some reason the administration has been fighting this (the commission) ... from day one. I assume they're worried about criticism they didn't heed those earlier warnings' of an attack, he said... Push said the families, through McCain, recommended Rudman to incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. He said Lott is balking."

"A National Security Council task force is recommending an action plan to Bush that is designed to force Saudi Arabia to crack down on terrorist financiers within 90 days or face unilateral U.S. action to bring the suspects to justice, senior U.S. officials said yesterday. The interagency plan, devised before the recent furor over allegations of Saudi involvement in terror financing, comes amid growing concern among some congressional leaders and U.S. allies that the administration has been unwilling to press Saudi Arabia for action for fear of alienating a key Arab ally as possible war with Iraq looms."

MikeHersh.com writes: "The Bush White House is trying to block investigations into the September 11th terror attacks. Democrats demand public investigations, but George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are desperate to prevent this....Millions of Saudi dollars compromised the patriotism of top current and former Bush officials, including George W. Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, James A. Baker III, and many others who work or worked in both Bush administrations. Ties between the Bush and bin Laden families, the Carlyle Group and top Saudi officials let the Oil Royals beat the US like a rented camel....Bush ordered our national security agents to 'back off' the bin Laden terrorists. A former CIA agent appeared BBC TV saying: 'We were just told, 'You get caught spying on the Saudis or looking into their affairs, and you will lose your head!'...The Bush administration is trying to lean on and laugh off our elected officials who demand answers....We cannot afford secrecy over security."

Democrats.com joined the families of the 911 victims in calling for an independent blue ribbon commission to investigate the attacks. Bush resisted the call for ANY investigation until he recognized that position was too conservative (and politically untenable to fail to investigate the deaths of 2,800 of our fellow Americans) to be compassionate. Have you ever had to jump into a job in the middle? Then you know that getting up to speed isn't easy. That's just what the congressional lawmakers will be doing if the report isn't issued before January. "The findings of a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks could be shaped by lawmakers who have had little to do with the investigation..." We demand an independent blue ribbon investigation, one in which those conducting the investigation draw the conclusions and issue the findings. If you were among the victims, would you expect anything less?

"We declare a national emergency in uncovering what really happened on 9/11/2001 through an immediate call for an independent collaborative investigation worldwide. The U.S. government could help us but instead is doing everything it can to stop any investigations into 9/11.The People's Investigation of 9/11 is an assemblage of international researchers and activists with no central leadership, politics or associations. Task-based functional groups work together on various projects, including research topics and volunteer efforts. Until a legitimate independent citizen's committee is funded and recognized by the U.S. government or a world political body or court, it is left up to the citizens of the world to investigate and share what they know with others." The site is portal to other 911 investigative sites, offering resources to learn, teach, investigate and organize.

Relatives of 9/11 victims have placed the blame straight on George the Heartless for the failure of Congress and the White House to form a bipartisan commission to investigate 9-11. Shrub apparently thinks political power plays and his penchant for secrecy are more important than finding out the truth about the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history! Send him a message to stop endangering our national security and exacerbating the sorrow of the 9-11 families who want an investigation -- support the commission NOW!

"U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham said on Sunday he is seeking to declassify 'the most important information' obtained in a congressional probe of the Sept. 11 attacks. The Florida Democrat described the material as a key toward better protecting the United States... The committees are to issue a draft report by the end of this year, with a final report due in February. In the meantime, they are seeking to declassify much of what they learned. 'Frankly, there is a piece of information which is still classified which I consider to be the most important information that's come to the attention of the joint committee,' Graham said on CBS's 'Face the Nation.' 'We hope that it will be declassified,' Graham said. 'I think it is an important part of our judgements as to where our greatest threats are and what steps we need to do to protect the American people here at home.' Graham said."

AP reports, "Tearful relatives of Sept. 11 victims urged White House officials Wednesday [10/16] not to block Congress' plans to create an independent commission to investigate the attacks. About 10 relatives met on Capitol Hill with lawmakers and two White House officials, Nicholas Calio and Jay Lefkowitz, in an unsuccessful attempt to break a deadlock over the commission... 'Our frustration level has never been higher,' said Beverly Eckert of Voices of Sept. 11. The relatives and their congressional supporters said they are waiting to hear back from the White House... Bush objects to a provision that would allow five members of the 10-person commission, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, to issue a subpoena. The administration also wants its only member on the commission to be the sole chairperson, instead of being co-chair with a Democratic appointee." Bush is terrified of the truth - call the White House (202-456-1414) and tell Bush to stop abusing the victims of 9-11!

Helen Dewar reports: "Angry lawmakers accused the White House yesterday of secretly trying to derail creation of an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks while professing to support the idea. The White House responded by renewing its pledge of support for the proposal and suggesting an agreement was near. A day after collapse of an announced deal to create the commission, there was little agreement on anything, including causes of the disagreement. The White House said the remaining disputes involve how many votes from commission members would be required to issue subpoenas and who would appoint the chairman. Lawmakers said the issue is whether the White House really wants a commission..... Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ) and House Democratic Whip Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) held a news conference to blame what Pelosi called the 'invisible hand' of the White House for torpedoing an all-but-final accord on the issue."

"A steady stream of disclosures about unheeded warnings and missed clues before Sept. 11 is intensifying pressure on the White House and intelligence agencies to reveal who knew what before the attacks and to improve counterterrorism. With five public hearings and three staff reports, the joint House-Senate investigation into the intelligence community has produced more revelations and moments of drama than many in Washington expected.... E-mail traffic, cables and the exact text of briefings have shown that the CIA and FBI were aware by the summer of last year that al Qaeda terrorists were preparing an attack, possibly using aircraft as weapons, and that the United States was in danger.... 'Someday, someone will die,' a frustrated FBI agent in New York told a supervisor 13 days before the World Trade Center was destroyed.... the staff reports paint a detailed picture of intelligence officials who never seriously analyzed the threat ..."

"A Minneapolis FBI supervisor said in a pre-Sept. 11 conversation with headquarters that he wanted to prevent suspicious student pilot Zacarias Moussaoui from flying a plane into the World Trade Center, a congressional investigator testified Tuesday. The supervisor said he had no reason to believe Moussaoui was planning such an attack, but made the remark in a frustrated attempt to convince headquarters that a special search warrant was needed to search Moussaoui's computer... The supervisor told the committee staff he was 'trying to get people at FBI headquarters 'spun up' because he was trying to make sure that Moussaoui 'did not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center,'' Hill testified. Hill said the headquarters agent responded, 'That's not going to happen. We don't know he's a terrorist. You don't have enough to show he is a terrorist." Who was it that did not know that a 1978 FISA law permitted a warrant in such a case - David Frasca?

MSNBC.com reports: "The Senate-created commission's probe would be much broader than a House version, which was limited mainly to post-Sept. 11 intelligence questions. The Senate panel would have authority to look into the roles of law enforcement, commercial aviation, U.S. diplomacy, border control and immigration, along with intelligence. Stephen Push, leader of a group of Sept. 11 victims' families, said the families were thrilled by the solid Senate vote. 'We are trying to keep other families from suffering the way we suffered,' said Push, whose wife died in the hijacked plane that rammed the Pentagon. Voting against the independent commission were Sens. Christopher Bond, R-MO; Thad Cochran, R-MS; Phil Gramm, R-TX; Judd Gregg, R-NH; Trent Lott, R-MS; Richard Lugar, R-IN; Craig Thomas, R-WY; and George Voinovich, R-OH." Have they no shame, no compassion? Vote out ALL Republicans to restore our Republic to its democratic -- rather than the current fascistic -- practices!

The Senate voted 90-8 to create a Blue Ribbon Commission to conduct a broad inquiry into governmental failures leading up to Sept. 11. The commission "would look into problems arising from foreign policy, law enforcement, commercial aviation, financing of terrorist groups, visa procedures and border control as well as intelligence issues already being investigated by the House and Senate intelligence committees. Rather than 'pointing fingers,' [it] would 'make the government as a whole look in the mirror' to assess its own flaws, said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT)... The top Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress would name a 10-member commission composed of prominent non-government figures, evenly divided between the two major parties. It would be armed with subpoena powers and a $3 million budget and directed to file an initial report within six months and a second report, including recommendations for action, within another 12 months." This is a major victory for truth!

When Bush announced to the public that he would support an independent investigation of 9/11, he did not read the public "the fine print." If he did, he would have mentioned that he intends for the investigation to focus on border security, aviation, visas and state and local security issues - anything BUT the White House and intelligence agencies. He also has indicated he does not want the investigators to have supboena powers. So, in short, he has pulled yet another scam: Make a big show of offering the public a great deal - then stick it to 'em. Senate Intelligence Committee's Richard Shelby (R-AL), recently remarked: "Are we getting the cooperation we need? Absolutely not." Nicolas E. Calio, White House legislative counsel, has already started issuing investigation "guidelines" in writing. Americans deserve more than this cynical, sick joke of an investigation.

For a year, Bush rejected a Blue Ribbon Commission on 9-11. But last week, Bush did a triple back flip. "The change came, NEWSWEEK has learned, after three secret and at times contentious White House meetings between family members and top presidential aides... [where family members fumed] that top government officials had yet to be held 'accountable' ... With family members threatening to go public, the White House had virtually no choice. 'There was a freight train coming down the tracks,' said one White House official. 'They realized how powerful the voices of the families were,' added Democrat Rep. Jane Harman... 'I never want to hear the phrase 'lessons learned' again,' said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was killed in the World Trade Center. 'I want people brought up on charges of malfeasance.'" For the names of the bureaucrats who let the 19 terrorists succeed, visit http://buckstopsthere.com

Christopher Lee reports: "Everyone wants to see Kristen Breitweiser's ring...a man's gold band, badly scratched...it has become...a potent tool for a 31-year-old widow on a quest for public answers to why her husband and thousands of others were murdered.... Before senators heard a formal report that officials had received many warnings of 'spectacular' attacks, they heard much the same conclusion from Breitweiser, who had culled her findings from nothing more sophisticated than media accounts. 'It was just a matter of putting it all together on one page and reading it off, one line after the other...When you put it together, it sort of presents a different picture than just the sporadic leaks that happened throughout the year.' It is a picture of bureaucratic errors and missed opportunities, she said, arguing that Congress would continue the pattern if it fails to create an independent commission. 'We need leaders with the courage to take responsibility for what went wrong.'"

CNN.com reports: "Despite White House opposition, a bipartisan group of senators announced Thursday a renewed push for an independent commission to investigate the September 11 terrorist attacks. The announcement comes one day after the release of a congressional report saying that the U.S. intelligence community had multiple warnings of possible terrorist attacks - even one using airplanes - against the United States years before the September 11 hijackings. However, that report also said there was no one single warning that spelled out the particulars of what ultimately transpired last fall. The senators said they would call for the commission in an amendment they will offer to legislation creating a Department of Homeland Security. "It is the one thing we can still do," said Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-New Jersey, one of four senators behind the effort. "It doesn't bring back lives, it doesn't recreate the moment, but at least you will know what was known and what failed."

WashPost reports, "U.S. intelligence agencies received many more indications than previously disclosed that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network was planning imminent 'spectacular' attacks in the summer of 2001 aimed at inflicting mass casualties, according to the preliminary findings of a joint congressional intelligence panel report released yesterday. Although the panel's staff unearthed no single intelligence report foreshadowing the particulars of the Sept. 11 strikes, the investigators assert that U.S. agencies failed to commit adequate resources and analysis to understanding and apprehending al Qaeda terrorists." FBI agent John O'Neill was obsessed with Al Qaeda, but Bush's bureaucrats wouldn't listen, so he quit in frustration. When will the media tell John O'Neill's tragic story? And when will those who refused to listen to O'Neill be held accountable for their failures?

Washpost's Dana Milbank reports, "On the day a joint House and Senate intelligence committee released a staff report on the Sept. 11 failures and began to hold hearings, those involved in the congressional investigation said they had been thwarted by the administration's reluctance to share information about what the White House knew before last year's terrorist attacks. 'Are we getting the cooperation we need? Absolutely not,' Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence committee, said in a joint appearance with Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.) on NBC's 'Today' show. Graham added: 'What we're trying to do is to get people who had hands on these issues... And what we're being told is, no, they don't want to make those kind of witnesses available.' Both Graham and Shelby yesterday endorsed the idea of independent panels.'"

CBSNews.com reports: "The (911) report will not say outright whether intelligence agencies had enough information to have prevented the attack, said the source. But this person said the report does raise questions about whether the American public was given enough information to understand the likelihood of such an attack. 'This is the beginning. This is not the whole picture' the source said....No public hearings have been scheduled beyond Wednesday. The source said the committees have had difficulty getting the Bush administration to provide witnesses for the public sessions. Members of the committees have said the administration's lack of cooperation has hindered the inquiry and may prevented it from conducting a thorough review by the time its mandate ends in February. Some have called for a separate, independent investigation, which has been opposed by the administration."

AP reports, "The July 2001 briefing for senior government officials said that based on a review of intelligence information over five months 'we believe that (bin Laden) will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. 'The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning,' it said.Among other intelligence reports mentioned by Hill: - In September 1998, the intelligence community obtained information that Osama bin Laden's 'next operation could possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a US airport and detonating it.' - In the fall of 1998, intelligence agencies received information about a bin Laden plot involving aircraft in New York and Washington areas. - Between May and July, 2001, the NSA reported at least 33 communications indicating a possible, imminent terrorist attack."

The joint Congressional committee investigating the September 11 attacks has uncovered "a surprising number of credible reports of a likely terrorist attack". These reports should have necessitated increased security and intensified intelligence gathering to prevent an attack, wherever and whenever it might occur. But the government did nothing. Why not? We must have an independent probe to determine who was responsible for making the decision -- and why they decided to ignore the warnings.

CNN reports, "Four or five Republican senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee may now be willing to support an independent commission, even though the Bush administration is against the idea. Apparently frustrated by the minimal progress the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee is making, senators who were once reluctant to support an independent commission now believe it may be the only way to get some answers as to why intelligence agencies were caught flat-footed on September 11. The joint committee's funding runs out in February, and lawmakers on the committee say they have been met with consistent resistance in getting information from the agencies they are investigating. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, now supports the idea and even Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham, D-FL [says] he would vote for it... Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-MS, told reporters earlier this week he is still skeptical of any and all commissions because no one pays attention to them."

After months of work on a joint Congressional committee investigating the events of Sept. 11, Senator Richard C. Shelby (R-AL) said he feared that Congress would adjourn before all the facts are unearthed. As a result, he said, he would not oppose an outside investigating commission. 'Time is not on our side,' warned Mr. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee...Grimly, Mr. Shelby promised that the nation would someday learn of other lapses, which he could not yet divulge. 'There are a lot of other things that I believe we don't know,' he said. 'As a matter of fact I believe that there will be more - there will be more information coming out of this joint inquiry. Some, I know, will be very, very sensitive. Some should be brought to the attention of the American people.' He suggested that the information would prove explosive. 'I think there are some more bombs out there,' he said, adding, 'I know that.'

Jacob Levich writes, "In a mystery that raises further questions about official accounts of the September 11 attacks, a man named as a key player in the Al Qaeda 9/11 conspiracy seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. Atif Ahmed, 30, was scooped up by Scotland Yard detectives nine months ago after the FBI, working with the NYC police, linked him to accused '20th hijacker' Zacarias Moussaoui... In his own trial on capital conspiracy charges, Moussaoui, an admitted Al Qaeda member, has identified Ahmed as a 'very important part' of the 9/11 terror plot. Moussaoui has also claimed that Ahmed was a double agent working for British intelligence. That charge, if true, would have alarming implications about the extent of 9/11 foreknowledge among Western intelligence agencies. Yet, since the day of his arrest, Atif Ahmed has been all but erased from the public record in what feels eerily like a deliberate news blackout."

"Zacharias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was part of a second wave of suicide hijackings planned for early 2002 in Europe and the United States, French intelligence authorities told ABCNEWS, and they say the U.S. Justice Department is making a mistake in identifying him as the so-called 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. 'The people were trained, the cash was there. This was going to happen,' said [Alexis] Debat. 'He was not part of the 9/11 plan.' One year ago today, in Paris, FBI and CIA agents got a full briefing on Moussaoui's terror background from their counterparts at the French Ministry of the Interior in Paris" - but top FBI bureaucrats in Washington blocked a search warrant request from Colleen Rowley's colleagues in Minneapolis. Amazingly, those bureaucrats have never been punished by Bush.

ChicagoTribune.com reports: "A Senate committee has concluded that FBI supervisors in Washington made errors that stopped field agents from following up on evidence that could have foretold the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a preliminary report obtained by The New York Times. The report…will be made public next month, but the Times obtained a draft copy on Tuesday. It focuses on errors in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person accused directly in the hijacked-airliner attacks of Sept. 11. But it also points to a broader FBI culture that allowed the mistakes, the newspaper reported. When Minnesota agents arrested Moussaoui last summer, they believed he was a terrorist who might use a commercial airplane as a weapon, so agents sought a search warrant under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FBI officials in Washington denied the request, apparently unaware that the federal act clearly permitted a warrant in that case, the report said."

Ted Rall writes: "There is no conceivable national security interest in keeping Americans in the dark about September 11th, a horribly public mass murder that devastated our national sense of invulnerability... To hell with closed-door Congressional hearings. America needs a full, open, publicly-televised investigation into 9-11, and it needs it last October... we deserve -- and should demand -- honest answers to the following still-unanswered questions: What did Bush know and when did he know it?.. Did Echelon cough up the 9-10 warnings?.. Why didn't our Air Force shoot down the hijacked planes?.. Why were only 12 jets patrolling U.S. airspace?.. Was United Flight 93 shot down over Pennsylvania?.. Where was Osama on 9-11?.. Is the government spying on American citizens?.. Why doesn't the Bush Administration want a real investigation of 9-11?.. What is he hiding?"

"A federal judge in Manhattan took the unusual step yesterday of ordering federal prosecutors to investigate how the FBI had obtained a confession from an innocent Egyptian student who was detained in connection with the attack on the World Trade Center. The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court, also agreed to unseal virtually all documents that have been kept secret in the case of the student, Abdallah Higazy. He was initially held as a material witness in the Sept. 11 investigation after a security guard said he had found an aviation radio in the safe in Mr. Higazy's hotel room, which overlooked the trade center site. Mr. Higazy was later charged with perjury when he denied owning the radio, and spent about a month in jail. He was released after the guard admitted making up the story about the radio. But while Mr. Higazy was in jail, prosecutors told Judge Rakoff that the student had confessed to an FBI agent that he owned the radio, an admission now known to be untrue."

"A surprise House vote Thursday reopened the issue of how to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and raised the possibility that Bush might be forced to accept an independent commission he has long opposed. Supporters of a proposal to create an independent panel plan possible Senate action next week following the House of Representatives' unexpected vote to establish a commission... An independent commission is viewed by proponents as a way to investigate not only the nation's spy agencies but also others, such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service... The measure that the House passed would create a 10-member commission appointed by Congress; two members would be from the victims' families. 'The bipartisan passage of this bill is a significant step forward,' said its sponsor, Rep. Tim Roemer, D-IN." Call your Senators (202-224-3121) to support of an independent investigation for 911 victims and their families.

"Kyle Hence…joins me for a legitimate discussion of the questions on September 11th that all Americans should be asking and receiving answers to. Where is the accountability? All these whistleblowers and reports - are they being ignored? Where is the citizen outrage? Where is the media on this? C-Span? Kyle's group have put together a website full of information and questions on 9/11. They have also compiled a very compelling, legitimate, thought provoking video 'Unanswered Questions' that I strongly suggest you view. We were lied to about the hijacking scenario being unexpected and not 'traditional'. The testimony and facts given by Mary Schiavo, Esq, former Inspector General of the U.S. Dept of Transportation will astound you. The EXACT scenario happened on 9/12/70. Since 1972 there have been 682 hijackings worldwide, with 31 bombings and 59 shootdowns. Yet, we were lied to about 9/11 being 'new'." Also, check out Meria's recent interview with media critic Normon Solomon.

"A leading Spanish newspaper reported on Sunday that Mohamed Atta, suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, held a 'summit' with other alleged conspirators in Spain last summer to plan the suicide flights. El Pais said a second pilot who crashed a plane into the World Trade Center, Marwan al Shehhi, may also have been at the meeting in July last year in the Spanish coastal town of Tarragona. The newspaper said its story was based on a confidential 700-page report which Spanish authorities had handed to the FBI. 'Tracking for 10 months by more than a 100 police officers has verified the identity of the members of the suicide commando who came to Spain to hold a summit before the attack in which details of the terrorist action were finalized...Atta and Shehhi both studied at a Florida flight school before flying two aircraft into the World Trade Center...The report quoted no eyewitness or documentary evidence of the meeting and gave no details of what might have been discussed."

It recently was revealed that the NSA had intercepted information about the impending 9/11 attacks in the 48 hours before the disastrous event. This means THOUSANDS of lives may have been lost needlessly. So, is Bush outraged that the info was not used to try to avert or mitigate the attacks? Is he filled with shame and regret that he ignored the warnings (if he was briefed)? Nope. He's ticked off that the information about the intercepted messages was FOUND OUT. This is just one more piece of evidence that Bush's number one concern is political appearances - substance, real morality, real responsibility and the American public be damned.

Richard Leiby and Dana Priest write in the Washington Post, "The official in charge of ferreting out information about the FBI for a joint congressional intelligence panel allegedly obstructed a Justice Department probe of the bureau two years ago. As the FBI's deputy general counsel, Thomas A. Kelley was the bureau's point of contact for [the inquiry] into the 1993 Waco debacle. [Kelley now] heads the intelligence panel's probe of the bureau's role in tracking terrorists before the Sept. 11 attacks. According to a December 2000 internal FBI memo, Kelley 'continued to thwart and obstruct' the Waco investigation to the point that Danforth was forced to send a team to search FBI headquarters for documents Kelley refused to turn over." Sounds like the Bush gang has another cover-up artist just like Robert Mueller, who whitewashed the BCCI, Noriega and Contra probes.

Joe Conason writes, "Within the past two weeks, Congress has quietly set aside legislation that would establish an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. [The probe will] remain under the purview of the special House-Senate Joint Committee on Intelligence, whose deliberations are being held almost entirely behind closed doors. [It doesn't matter that] congressional intelligence committees themselves, having failed to exercise adequate oversight in years past, are part of the problem that needs to be examined... Politicians of both parties are as much a part of the problem as the agencies they failed to oversee. Who watches the watchdog? Not these toothless hounds and puppies. They ought to wrap up their effort as soon as possible and stop obstructing what the nation needs most: a wide-ranging, transparent, professional and unbiased investigation."

The AP reports, "Intelligence committees looking into the Sept. 11 attacks are seeking answers from a White House adviser who has had high-level positions fighting terrorism since the Reagan administration. Richard A. Clarke is the first outside witness to appear before lawmakers as part of the joint investigation by the House and Senate intelligence committees. Clarke, now President [sic] Bush's adviser on cyberspace security, was President Clinton's coordinator of anti-terrorism efforts." This is the same Richard Clarke that warned on July 5th "something really spectacular" would happen -- were his warnings ignored because he was a Clinton Appointee?

The NY Times reports, "A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade... Many of the same names and groups have emerged in virtually every failed or successful plot by Islamic militants... - Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind sheik; Ali Mohammed, the former Army sergeant who trained militants who trained future terrorists in Afghan camps for Mr. bin Laden; Wadih El-Hage, Mr. bin Laden's former personal secretary; and this week, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, linked to Ramzi Yousef... Mr. Yousef's first interview by the F.B.I. [after his arrest in 1995] revealed that he was obsessed with hijackings and spectacular attacks, with the need to attack vulnerable targets, and with other key features of what would later become classic Qaeda operations."

"A press conference and web site launch for UnansweredQuestions.org will be held on Monday, June 10th from 2-5 PM at the National Press Club in Washington. The goal is to pose pointed, as yet unanswered, questions regarding the failure of our national security infrastructure, and the response that has sacrificed civil liberties and rewarded failure as opposed to ensuring performance and guaranteeing freedoms. UnansweredQuestions.org is being launched by an independent, non-partisan network of citizens concerned about the growing number of issues surrounding September 11th that have yet to be addressed or resolved; and their related public safety and Constitutional implications. Panelists will present statements, research, and ask questions relative to these issues while addressing how citizens can act now to ensure accountability from those in government directly responsible for public safety and upholding the Constitution." E-mail events@c-span.org and call talk shows!

John of the Burning Bush writes, "So, some thirty people have gathered together. Amongst them an ex Bilderberger, some Trilateral bods, a few in the Council on Foreign Relations, a high ranking Mason, Gary Condit, a Rockefeller and an ex Hollywood actor. This has all the makings of a grand conspiracy. Sadly, it's the group in charge of investigating 9-11. What started off as a simple search turned into an obsessional inquiry into the history of the people who will decide whether the CIA/FBI/Republicans made mistakes and how they should reform. I started to wince when I saw the first Carlyle Group donation - it only went downhill from there. What follows is what I found; a list of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Committee on Intelligence. Each member was researched and notable objections to impartiality were noted." Another reason why we demand a Blue Ribbon Commission!

"On Tuesday, June 11 at 11 a.m. - A coalition of organizations representing families of the Sept. 11 victims will hold a rally to voice their support for passage of a bill to establish an independent, bipartisan commission that would have a broad mandate to study events surrounding the terrorist attacks and make recommendations to improve prevention of and response to future attacks. The rally will occur at Upper Senate Park on the corner of Constitution and Delaware Avenues in Washington, D.C. In the event of rain, the rally will be held in Room G50 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building."

"U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, predicted Monday that the hearings will highlight more 'big failures of intelligence.' 'I know the director over there is in denial, but I believe he's totally wrong, and facts will be brought out to prove that,' Shelby said on ABC, referring to CIA Director George Tenet. The latest revelation surfaced in a Newsweek article saying the CIA was aware two terrorists who commandeered the plane that crashed into the Pentagon were in the United States for 18 months before it told any other agencies… Shelby said details about how the nation's top law enforcement and security agencies handled intelligence information on terrorism before September 11 points to a problem of coordination and communication. 'They have not followed up on leads that have sat in their laps,' he said." Well, sort of… the problem is the pretzeldent [sic] failed in his constitutional duty to "protect and defend the United States."

"The director of the FBI will personally review all applications for search warrants related to terrorism investigations under a policy change quietly put into effect weeks ago in response to the furor over obstacles that hindered agents here investigating Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged '20th hijacker'... Search warrants sought under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will be quickly routed to Dale Watson, the FBI's chief of counterterrorism and counterintelligence, and to Mueller if the application is rejected by a mid-level supervisor... Rowley wrote that Minneapolis agents tried desperately to gain a warrant to search Moussaoui's laptop computer and personal belongings but were undermined by headquarters officials, who declined to seek FISA or criminal search warrants." But who will make sure the targets are true terrorists, not Bush's political opponents? Ashcroft cannot be trusted - he should be fired!

The NY Times reports: "The director of the FBI., Robert S. Mueller III, acknowledged today for the first time that the attacks of Sept. 11 might have been preventable if officials in his agency had responded differently to all the pieces of information that were available… Mueller's statements about how the F.B.I. dealt with intelligence reports before Sept. 11 were a sharp turnabout from both the substance and tone of remarks he and other other administration officials made in the weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As recently as May 8, Mr. Mueller told a Senate hearing that there was nothing the agency could have done to prevent the attacks. But that stance became increasingly untenable in recent weeks after news reports that two F.B.I. field offices might have had important pieces of information that were never connected by officials at headquarters." But what about the CIA, NSA - and BUSH? We demand a Blue Ribbon Commission to connect ALL the dots!

Here is the latest 911 cover-up from inside the counterintelligence bureaucracy. According to the NY Times, "The F.B.I. clearinghouse for Al Qaeda intelligence was the bin Laden and radical fundamentalist units in its counterterrorism division. The units had complete access to the Phoenix memorandum, the Moussaoui case and the Ressam debriefings. But the agents assigned to these units did not understand the broader meaning of the signs, senior law enforcement officials acknowledge. 'No one was looking at any overall picture,' one of the former officials said." Then what picture WERE they looking at with OUR tax dollars - a naked photo of Pamela Anderson?? The coverup continues: "'It's hard, scruffy, dirty work to do these analytical things.'" Reading and writing memos is SCRUFFY, DIRTY work? Are FBI bureaucrats CRYBABIES? Let them say that to our faces - we demand TELEVISED testimony from EVERYONE who let America be attacked!

Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Rowley is emerging as the first hero inside the government who is willing to criticize the powerful officials who failed so miserably to stop 911. Rowley, the mother of 4 and her family's sole breadwinner, is a 20-year FBI veteran who is completely dedicated to her job. In her memo, she criticized the FBI Supervisory Special Agent (perhaps a level or two below David Frasca) who "seemed to have been consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents' efforts" - and now occupies a "critical position in the FBI's SIOC Command Center," where he was then promoted! Rowley also criticized Mueller for distorting the truth about the Minneapolis efforts, which she insists, might have produced a lucky break that could have saved lives on 911. Rowley also criticized "careerism" in the FBI, and said, "the ranks of FBI management are filled with many who were failures as street agents." The sections removed by Time's editors must be devastating!

On CNN, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) urged additional hearings on 911. "Americans do not understand the gravity of the oversights on what appears to be the case with both the FBI and the CIA. And that's why I believe - and I have seen with my experience in the Senate the value of public hearings - when FBI Director Mueller has to answer these questions, when CIA Director Tenet has to answer why the president wasn't warned in the August 6 briefing about the tall buildings being in jeopardy, the White House and the CIA headquarters." Carl Levin (D-MI), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was unhappy with the performance of the FBI and the CIA. "I'm dissatisfied with the failure to look into their own failures, and I think both of them have to be seriously looked into. In many, many ways, they had a number of opportunities before the 11th. It's absurd to suggest that there weren't many signals that there could be an attack by an airplane on buildings in this country."

According to Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, past Blue Ribbion Commissions have failed to expose the whole truth. FDR did not tell the Pearl Harbor commission that the US had broken Japanese intelligence codes, which provided advance warning of the attack. Eisenhower's Secretary of State lied to Congress about Eisenhower's personal approval of every U-2 flight. The CIA's plan to assassinate Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs fiasco was never disclosed, hindering the Warren Commission's investigation of the assassination of JFK - along with J. Edgar Hoover's scrubbing of crucial FBI documents. And the Iran-Contra investigation was a pathetic failure, which led directly to the Stolen Election of 2000 by the Iran-contra criminals. It's time for a "Truth Commission" to reveal the truth about all of these historical lies.

"But the Bush administration adamantly opposes an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks last year... [because] a separate commission investigation could only add to his troubles... 'The intelligence committee gets part of the information,' Mr. Daschle said. 'Another committee gets another part of the information. A third committee gets a third or fourth part. The problem is, that information isn't shared to the extent it needs to be to get the full picture.' What Mr. Daschle was saying between the lines was that Democrats in the Senate must share any investigation with the Republicans, who control the House, and the Republicans would squelch any material that could be embarrassing to President [sic] Bush. 'The White House somehow feels it can control a Congressional committee better than it can an investigative commission, and the senators are afraid that may be the case,' said former Senator Warren B. Rudman." We demand a Blue Ribbon Commission!

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) writes in the Washington Post: "Consider empaneling an independent commission of trustworthy, experienced statesmen who, if not entirely devoid of partisan loyalties, are sufficiently removed by time and wisdom from the appeal of such loyalties to know when they conflict with the national interest. Give them complete access to all intelligence reports and internal documents with arguable relevance to their inquiry, and charge them with rendering a judgment about who failed and why in this administration and its predecessors, as well as in Congress, and with recommending appropriate remedies to guard against a recurrence… It is not responsible or right to shrink from offering thoughtful criticism when and to whom it is due, and when the consequences of incompletely understanding failures of governance are potentially catastrophic… Such timidity is indefensibly irresponsible especially in times of war, so irresponsible that it verges on the unpatriotic."

Poor William Safire. Like the rest of the Republican Right, he remains paralyzed by his hatred for Bill Clinton - get over it, Bill! But even Safire admits the intelligence community - which failed to stop 911 - cannot investigate its own failures, so he has joined Democrats.com in calling for an independent commission. Welcome aboard, Bill!

The Hart-Rudman Commission - formally known as the "United States Commission on National Security, created during a rare moment of agreement between President Clinton and House speaker Newt Gingrich... [Their] conclusions were startling: 'States, terrorists, and other disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction, and some will use them. Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers.'" The commission staff was led by fighter pilot, Charles (Chuck) Boyd, the only graduate of the Hanoi Hilton to make four-star general. Bush ignored their report, and instead told Cheney to start again from scratch - with disastrous results. Who would be better equipped to analyze that failure than the folks who tried desperately to prevent it?

"What we have to do now is to find out what the president [sic], what the White House, knew about the events leading up to 9/11, when they knew it and, most importantly, what was done about it at that time," [Dick] Gephardt (D-MO) said… Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-SD) said he was "gravely concerned" asking "Why did it take eight months for us to receive this information?"… Sen. Richard C. Shelby (AL), the top Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said, "I believe, and others believe, if it had been acted on properly, we may have had a different situation on September 11th." And what was Bush's reaction? Was he urgent and forthright about responding to the inquiries? Well, no! "During a private meeting with senators, he (Bush) immediately raised the topic and expressed great annoyance, according to a source who was there." Thousands are dead, and HE's annoyed! Call your Representatives (202-224-3121) and demand a Blue Ribbon Commission!

Washington counterterrorism bureaucrats who (correctly!) fear for their jobs are fiercely playing the "blame game" - to blame someone other than themselves for the failures to prevent the 911 attack. This Washington Post article by Barton Gellman defends CIA director George Tenet, who is described as "nearly frantic" with concern after 6-22-01, repeatedly saying "It is highly likely that a significant al Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks." The article cites an unnamed officially (probably in the CIA) complaining that "when a field agent in Phoenix reported suspicions of a hijacking plot just five days [after a key interagency meeting on 7-5-01], the FBI did not share the report with any other agency. 'I'm fit to be tied,' said one top official from another agency. 'People are saying we didn't connect the dots. It's awfully hard to connect the dots if people don't give you the dots.'" Let's put Tenet and Mueller in the ring for "Failed Bureaucrat Boxing"!

To George W. Bush, Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and the Media: Since September 11, dozens of important facts have been revealed about warnings that were received by the Bush Administration - and ignored. These facts have been concealed by the Bush Administration to avoid scrutiny of its failures. We, the American people, will not accept a coverup of the truth about 911. We will not accept a secret Congressional investigation controlled by the Bush administration or the Intelligence and Defense communities, which failed to protect America from attack. We demand a full, thorough, and PUBLIC investigation by a Blue Ribbon Commission comprised of prominent Americans whose integrity, patriotism, and commitment to the truth - however disturbing - cannot be questioned. This Blue Ribbon Commission should fully investigate the events which led up to the September 11 attack." Sign the petition!

In response to revelations of 911 warnings received by Bush, House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt said, "I think what we have to do now is to find out what the President, what the White House knew about the events leading up to 9/11, when they knew it and, most importantly, what was done about it at that time... We need to know what information was given to the White House and what they did with it, and we also need to know why it's taken until now to find this information out... I don't think this can just be a closed-door, secret intelligence investigation. I think this has got to be something that everybody understands." We agree - and that's why we continue to call for a Blue Ribbon Commission!

CNN reports, "It was in May 2001, for example, that Bush asked Vice President Dick Cheney to lead an administration task force to assess the country's counter-terrorism effort. At that time Cheney told CNN in an interview: 'Well, the concern here is that one of our biggest threats as a nation is no longer, sort of, the conventional military attack against the United States but, rather, that it might come from other quarters. 'It could be domestic terrorism, but it may also be a terrorist organization overseas or even another state using weapons of mass destruction against the U.S., a hand-carried nuclear weapon or biological or chemical agents,' he said. 'The threat to the continental United States and our infrastructure is changing and evolving. And we need to look at this whole area, oftentimes referred to as homeland defense.'" If Cheney was responsible for a comprehensive review of counter-terrorism, why did HE ignore the hijacking warnings?

From an interview with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL), CNN reported "the House and Senate intelligence panels will hold hearings soon about various memos and reports, including one dubbed the Phoenix document, written by an FBI agent last summer… The Phoenix document… cited 'an unusual number of Arab students' taking flight lessons in Arizona and raised 'the suspicion that they had been sent there in a coordinated plot by Osama bin Laden in order to learn the U.S. civil aviation procedures.' Asked whether the September 11 attacks might have been averted had the Phoenix document raised more red flags, Graham replied, 'Well, it might have been if this had been seen in the context of other information, which indicated that there was a potential conspiracy to use commercial airliners as weapons of mass destruction'… Lawmakers, Graham added, 'did not get a satisfactory answer' about why the memo did not prompt more FBI action and investigation." You go, Bob!

"When did America change so? When did it become wrong to speak out? The very essence of America's democracy hinges on the right of all citizens to speak freely, openly, and, yes, critically. An open government should not only want an investigation of the terrorist attacks, it should vigorously pursue one – even demand one! Too many unanswered questions remain, not the least of which is the intelligence failure that allowed this to occur on our soil. Only through rigorous scrutiny of these attacks can we ever hope to prevent more in the future. This is not a matter of being unpatriotic. This is a matter of common sense, self-preservation, and the preservation of our beloved America." So writes Becky Knight.

"A senior Senate Republican yesterday called for an immediate shake-up of Interior Department law enforcement operations in response to findings that officials did little to meet requests for assistance after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks... Law enforcement officials in the department were unprepared to provide accurate and timely information on the number and location of law enforcement personnel who could help investigate and respond to the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon... Interior's 4,400-person law enforcement operation is the third-largest in the federal government, after those of the Justice and Treasury departments. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and drugs, described the inspector general's findings as "one of the most damning indictments of a federal law enforcement agency that I have ever read." So reports the Washington Post.

The AP reports, "Congressional investigators examining how preparations for the Sept. 11 attacks went undetected by the nation's law enforcement and intelligence agencies have been receiving less than full cooperation from those agencies, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., told reporters Wednesday that some requested documents weren't being turned over, and interviews of potential witnesses were taking place in intimidating environments. He declined to go into specifics... Graham said the committee may exercise its subpoena power to force cooperation... [Despite this stonewalling,] Graham's committee approved an intelligence budget for 2003... [Richard] Shelby said it contained a 'meaningful' increase in funding for the nation's intelligence community" beyond the current secret budget of $30 billion.

"Lawmakers leading the investigation of intelligence agencies' failures surrounding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are increasingly concerned that tactics by the CIA and the Justice Department are actively impeding their efforts, congressional sources said Friday. Members of the Senate and House intelligence committees are so frustrated with the tactics, sources said, that they intend to complain directly to CIA Director George J. Tenet and Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft. Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to discuss the committee's concerns with the CIA and the FBI in detail but said: 'There are problems we are going to have to address'...Congressional investigators are under pressure to complete their work before ranking Intelligence Committee members' terms expire at the end of the year. 'There's no time to waste,' one source said, adding that the targets of the inquiry seem intent on exploiting that deadline," writes Greg Miller.

"A congressional investigation of the intelligence failures surrounding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been thrown off course by the sudden resignation of a former CIA official hired to lead the inquiry but criticized for being too cozy with his former employer... L. Britt Snider, former inspector general at the CIA, resigned under pressure Friday, less than three months into a high-stakes probe designed to determine why the nation's spy agencies failed to pick up any warning of the attacks... There were also complaints about Snider's perceived reluctance to cause trouble for his former colleagues at the CIA... In some ways, Snider's brief tenure underscores the politically treacherous nature of the committee's task. Even among the four ranking members of the House and Senate committees, there is tension over how aggressively to pursue the inquiry." Three thousand Americans died, yet seven months later they are quibbling about how aggressive to be? Where is the OUTRAGE???

"We, the undersigned, do hereby petition the Senate of the United States of America to thoroughly investigate the events surrounding the acts of terrorism that transpired in the United States on September 11, 2001. Such an investigation would include research into the following peculiarities relating to the terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11: 1) Thousands of put stock options that were purchased on United and American airlines immediately prior to 9/11/01... 5) Interviews of any air-traffic controllers on duty on 9/11 7) Aircraft debris strewn approximately seven miles from the crash site of Flight 93... 8) Unocal's role in its quest to build an oil pipeline across Afghanistan ... 12) Role of the Northern Alliance in explosive growth of opium production in Afghanistan after U.S. military intervention..." Sign the petition!

Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) created a firestorm with her simple request for an investigation of the events leading up to September 11. Should there be an investigation? Join our discussion here (registration required).

Fallout Shelter News has this collection of links and info about mysteries and questions surrounding the 911 attacks. It also features a petition to investigate thoroughly the key oddities surrounding the attack. Sign the petition!

Former CIA Inspector General Britt Snider "will head a congressional investigation into U.S. intelligence agency failures related to the Sept. 11 attacks, despite some objections he was too close to the spy agency to have an independent eye...Snider retired from the CIA last year. Some senators, including committee Vice Chairman Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, questioned whether a review into the failures of the intelligence community would be sufficiently independent if it were led by Snider who has close ties to CIA Director George Tenet... Snider served with Tenet on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee and then as special counsel to Tenet when he became CIA director, before getting the post of CIA inspector general in 1998." What an insult to the victims of 911! The nation's worst intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor should be investigated by a blue ribbon panel of patriotic Americans with NO ties to the people who screwed up - Tenet, Ashcroft, and Bush!!!

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL) caved under pressure from George Bush to limit the investigation of 9-11 to the Intelligence Committees. The Intelligence Committees conduct all of their serious business in secret, and their members are strictly prohibited from disclosing any secrets they learn. This guarantees that the truth behind the events leading up to 911 will be limited to what Bush wants to disclose. In other words, this guarantees a cover-up - unless the public demands a full and open investigation. Call your Senators and Representatives at 202-224-3121 and demand the truth about 9-11.

According to Roll Call, "Senate Select Intelligence Vice Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) reiterated Friday his opinion that the recent terrorist attacks represented a massive failure on the part of the U.S. intelligence community." Shelby criticized his House counterpart, Porter Goss (R-FL), for saying the CIA was blameless, and accused him of looking the other way. "You know, he is a former CIA employee, and I know he's close to a lot of people over there," Shelby said. "This idea that you don't critically evaluate people in high positions during a crisis is nonsense," Shelby added. But Shelby wants to control the investigation within his Senate committee, rather than appoint an independent oversight board as advocated by Senator Bob Torricelli (D-NJ).

"Calling the September 11 terror attacks a 'stunning failure' of U.S. intelligence, Sen. Robert Torricelli on Wednesday called for a board of inquiry to find out what went wrong. 'In the months ahead there must be a thorough inquiry into the actions of our intelligence agencies in the days and weeks leading up to September 11th,' Torricelli said. Speaking on the Senate floor, Torricelli, D-New Jersey, called for a 'Board of Inquiry,' patterned after the board authorized after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. 'The goal of this inquiry would not be to assess blame and ruin careers,' Torricelli said. 'It would have a much more important goal: determining what went wrong so we can prevent it from happening again.'"