Richard Clarke, Bush's Counterterrorism Czar and a holdover from the Clinton Administration, weighs in on the Bush Administration prior to and after 9/11, and recent attempts by Rice and Cheney to spin the events and their actions. Clarke gives his own spin, essentially labeling Bush Administration principals as negligent, but not calling for accountability, merely a slight correction of perspective and course. Clarke, in his book and in testimony, is one of the people who placed Cheney in the PEOC while the attacks were in progress (Against All Enemies, 2-19). Here he recalls, "Once in the bomb shelter, Cheney assembled his team while the crisis managers on the National Security Council staff coordinated the government response by video conference from the Situation Room." and quotes Cheney's recent admission that he was, without noting that this contradicts Cheney's and the 9/11 Commission's timeline; "'I'll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities,' Cheney said in his recent speech."

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/just-like-with-iraq-facts-regardi...

3 facts show that the government "fixed the facts" regarding 9/11 around a policy decision to exonerate the government from any blame whatsoever.

1. 9/11 Commission's Chief Counsel says Official Story "Almost Entirely Untrue . . . There Was an Agreement Not to Tell the Truth about What Happened"

As Daily Kos notes in a recent recommended story, the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission - John Farmer - states in a new book that the official story of 9/11 "almost entirely untrue".

As I noted last month, he also says:

At some level of the government, at some point in time...there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened.

and

The Centre for Research on Globalization writes:

IndictBushNow files Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to get to bottom of story

The cover-up of Bush-era crimes is taking a shocking but not unexpected turn. A fateful move has been made and it is certain to backfire.

A prisoner who was horribly tortured in 2002 until he agreed - at the demand of Bush torturers - to say that al-Qaeda was linked to Saddam Hussein is suddenly dead. Several weeks ago, Human Rights Watch investigators discovered the missing inmate and talked to him. He had been secretly transferred by the administration to a prison in Libya after having been held by the CIA both in secret “black hole prisons” and in Egypt.

(...)

Mr. Libi is suddenly dead. A Libyan “newspaper source” says that his death is an apparent suicide. His friends don’t believe that.

Mr. Libi joins the ranks of others, such as Bruce Ivins and David Kelly, whose convenient and suspicious suicides virtually put an end to painful government embarrassments.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/executive-summary-what-do-experts...

Here is a very brief summary of what the experts say about torture:

• Torture doesn't work in providing information which will keep us safe

• Torture actually reduces our national security

• Prosecuting those who created the torture program will REDUCE attacks against the U.S. and against American troops

• Most of those tortured were innocent

• They were not tortured in order to prevent terrorist attacks, but to create a false justification for the war in Iraq (by creating a false linkage between Iraq and Al Qaeda) (and see this)

• The 9/11 Commission report was primarily based upon confessions from those who were tortured. However, none of the information from those who confessed is credible. For example, one of the main sources for the 9/11 Commission Report was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was not even allowed to read. See also this, this, this and this.

If you are in the 9/11 Truth Movement, you may have heard someone ask "if they pulled it off to go to war with Iraq, then why didn't they get Iraqis on the planes?" Now you can tell them, because they didn't need them to be Iraqis. All they had to do was torture people to get the connection that they wanted. It also didn't hurt to have a media willing to parrot whatever the Administration wanted them to (read Fact #'s 12, and 27). - Jon

Detainee whose tortured tales were used as justification for Iraq war ‘committed suicide’ in Libyan prison

Source: rawstory.com

BY STEPHEN C. WEBSTER
Published: May 14, 2009

The chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says that the Bush Administration authorized torture of detainees before even rendering a legal opinion on the practice — and that they sought to torture detainees in an effort to produce intelligence tying Iraq to al Qaeda.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/one-of-main-sources-for-911-commi...

A special report from NBC news states:

The NBC News analysis shows that more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida operatives who were subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations is central to the Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks. The analysis also shows - and agency and commission staffers concur - there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, done specifically to answer new questions from the Commission.

I don't know why Rawstory is treating this like "news." It has been known for a long time. Read Fact #31 of my article, "The Facts Speak For Themselves." I am happy though that they mention the September 11th Advocates call for a new investigation. - Jon

Source: rawstory.com

By Stephen C. Webster
Published: May 13, 2009

Much of the material cited in the 9/11 Commission’s findings was derived from terror war detainees during brutal CIA interrogations authorized by the Bush administration, according to a Wednesday report.

“More than one-quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al Qaeda operatives subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques,” writes former NBC producer Robert Windrem in The Daily Beast. “In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.”

C-Span video at article link below; for more info on FBI Agent Ali Soufan and how he figures into the 9/11 investigation, see his profile: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=ali_soufan_1

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/13/ex-fbi-agent-no-actionable-intell...
Ex-FBI agent: Waterboarding produced ‘no actionable intel’ BY DAVID EDWARDS

Published: May 13, 2009
Updated 11 hours ago

A former FBI agent who interrogated suspected terrorists told a Senate panel Wednesday that no actionable intelligence was gained from “enhanced interrogations” such as waterboarding.

“I strongly believe that it is a mistake to use what has become known as enhanced interrogation techniques,” said Ali Soufan who worked for the FBI from 1997 to 2005. “These techniques, from an operational perspective, are slow, ineffective, unreliable, and harmed our efforts to defeat al Qaeda.”

not exactly "news", except that a former NBC producer is saying this...

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/13/report-much-of-911-commissions-fi...
Report: much of 9/11 Commission’s findings cite intelligence garnered by torture BY STEPHEN C. WEBSTER

Published: May 13, 2009
Updated 1 hour ago

Much of the material cited in the 9/11 Commission’s findings was derived from terror war detainees during brutal CIA interrogations authorized by the Bush administration, according to a Wednesday report.

“More than one-quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al Qaeda operatives subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques,” writes former NBC producer Robert Windrem in The Daily Beast. “In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.”

In this article, the AP writer continually refers to Zelikow's memo as if it's a fact; as far as I know, the only evidence of it existing in 2005 is that Zelikow, a completely untrustworthy source, claims he wrote it and circulated it. Perhaps he did. Nowhere does this article claim the AP has already obtained a copy, and they say, "Several members of Congress have asked the Obama administration to search for a copy." Still, it will be interesting to see what he has to say, and how he justifies not resigning, knowing what was going on, and having the opinion that he alleges he did.

Profile: Zelikow
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=philip_zelikow

Historian Sheldon Stern found numerous errors in their transcription of JFK tapes, some of which change the context of statements and conversations, despite him being able to clearly understand the words when he reviewed the tapes himself:
May 2000: Future Authors of 9/11 Report Produce John F. Kennedy Book Riddled with Errors
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a052000zelikowmay#a052000...

The article quotes Zelikow as saying he "suspect[s]" he gave Rice a copy:

Rice stumbles when asked about torture by fourth-grader by John Byrne
http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/05/04/rice-stumbles-when-asked-about-to...

Rice: "September 11 was the worst day of my life in government, watching 3,000 Americans die"

Profile: Condoleeza Rice
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=condoleezza_rice

Selections:

July 6, 2001: Clarke Tells Rice to Warn Agencies to Prepare for 3 to 5 Simultaneous Attacks; No Apparent Response
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a070601threetofive#a07060...

July 10, 2001: CIA Director Gives Urgent Warning to White House of Imminent, Multiple, Simultaneous Al-Qaeda Attacks, Possibly Within US
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a071001tenetwarnsrice#a07...

July 27, 2001: Rice Briefed on Terrorist Threats, Advised to Keep Ready
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a072701ricebriefed#a07270...

Between August 6 and September 11, 2001: No High-Level Meetings to Discuss ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US’ Memo

From Rawstory: "House Minority Leader John Boehner has posted an alarming new video on his YouTube page that includes images of the Pentagon burning on Sept. 11, 2009, and implications that the Congressman, or those who created the video, support torture techniques used on terror war prisoners during the Bush administration."

Note that Sept. 11, 2009 should have read Sept. 11, 2001, but I've quoted Rawstory verbatim, errors included. They or may not correct it soon.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/torture-used-to-try-to-link-saddam-wit...

When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks that I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memos asserted that “enhanced techniques” on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.

Many hyperlinks at original; firedoglake has been covering this issue consistently

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/04/25/zelikow-the-911-commission-...

Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission, and Effectiveness
By: emptywheel Saturday April 25, 2009 4:00 am

If you've been paying attention, you know I've been poring through the 9/11 Report to figure out how useful the interrogation reports from the waterboarded detainees were, and when they made them.

That exercise shows that the 9/11 Report found just 10 pieces of intelligence from Abu Zubaydah's interrogation reports informative and credible; it found just 16 pieces of such intelligence in al-Nashiri's interrogation reports. And while the Commission did find KSM's interrogation reports to be incredibly useful, an incomplete index (I'm working on this, but it's on the back burner for the next week) of the references to KSM show that many of his most productive interrogation sessions came long after he was waterboarded. And, as Philip Zelikow made clear in a memo relating to the torture tape destruction, there were abundant other problems with the quality of the interrogation reports coming from CIA, too.

"God help us if the only thing we get out of this is a commission modeled on 9/11," Turley commented. "That was a commission that was really made for Washington -- a commission composed of political appointees of both parties that ran interference for those parties -- a commission that insisted at the beginning it would not impose blame on individuals. So it's the ideal Washington commission -- a commission that would investigate without any reprecussions."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Turley_Torture_investigations_should_look_...
Turley: 'God help us' if torture only gets a '9/11 commission'
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Wednesday April 22, 2009

The recent release of Bush administration torture memos has given rise to calls for prosecution of the Justice Department lawyers who wrote those memos. However, law professor Jonathan Turley believes that this may represent a deliberate attempt to draw attention away from George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the other high Bush administration officials who ordered the torture.

5 hours after the 9/11 attacks, Donald Rumsfeld said "my interest is to hit Saddam".

He also said "Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

And at 2:40 p.m. on September 11th, in a memorandum of discussions between top administration officials, several lines below the statement "judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [that is, Saddam Hussein] at same time", is the statement "Hard+to+get+a+good+case." In other words, top officials knew that there wasn't a good case that Hussein was behind 9/11, but they wanted to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to justify war with Iraq anyway.

Moreover, "Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the [9/11] attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda".

And a Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary issued in February 2002 by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy.

And yet Bush, Cheney and other top administration officials claimed repeatedly for years that Saddam was behind 9/11. See this analysis. Indeed, Bush+administration+officials+apparently+swore+in+a+lawsuit+that+Saddam+was+behind+9/11.

Continued...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/5-hours-after-911-attacks-rumsfel...

Jon Gold
4/22/2009

Has anyone else noticed that the media, and Congress is acting as though torture is the only crime committed by the Bush White House (with the possible exception of illegal wiretapping)?

Why has everyone forgotten the other crimes perpetrated by the Bush White House? Crimes like stealing the 2000, and 2004 elections. Proveable crimes concerning the 9/11 attacks like obstruction of justice, and criminal negligence. Crimes like lying this country into war. Crimes like violating the Constitution. The list of crimes committed by the Bush Administration just goes on and on.

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/04/same-people-defending-torture-ignored-9...
'Same people defending torture' ignored 9/11 warnings

Posted by Larisa Alexandrovna -

Marc A. Thiessen, President Bush’s former speechwriter, is defending torture in the Washington Post. Apparently, this is the level of clout Dick Cheney and George Bush have, when the only people out defending them are speechwriters and people who are implicated in torture.

Here is what Mr. Thiessen writes:

In releasing highly classified documents on the CIA interrogation program last week, President Obama declared that the techniques used to question captured terrorists "did not make us safer." This is patently false. The proof is in the memos Obama made public -- in sections that have gone virtually unreported in the media.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month

By: emptywheel Saturday April 18, 2009 11:57 am

(PLS READ THE COMMENTS AT HUFFINGTON POST- on the FRONTPAGE at this moment)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/18/cia-waterboarded-khalid-s_n_188...

I've put this detail in a series of posts, but it really deserves a full post. According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Students send the CIA packing

http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/13/students-send-cia-packing

By Martin Smith | April 13, 2009

URBANA, Ill.--Students and activists won a victory April 9 when they forced the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) into a last-minute cancellation of its recruitment session at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

For a third year, members of the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN), Iraq Veterans Against the War and the International Socialist Organization joined forces to protest the CIA, but this is the first year that the agency canceled, after activists exposed the agency's dark history of assassinations, political sabotage and torture.

Outside the recruitment session door, one activist donned a black Grim Reaper cloak and stood with arms extended on a milk crate to greet potential recruits and remind them of the atrocities conducted at Abu Ghraib with CIA complicity. Another used a simple pillowcase as a hood and kneeled with arms clasped behind his back to show how prisoners are commonly treated at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay.

Fujimori’s Lesson for Bush
by Jacob G. Hornberger

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-04-09.asp

If President Bush and Vice-President Cheney think that time is on their side with respect to crimes committed by their administration, this week’s criminal conviction of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori should put those thoughts to rest. Returning to Peru in the hope of returning to power, Fujimori was instead put on trial and convicted of “crimes against humanity,” including the killing of 25 people by military death squad.

Meanwhile, a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, has opened a criminal investigation of six former Bush officials — Alberto Gonzalez, Douglas Feith, David Addington, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and William Haynes — for torture allegations arising out of the Pentagon’s operations at Guantanamo.

Garzon was the judge who secured a criminal indictment of former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet, which led to Spain’s extradition request for Pinochet when he visited London. While the request was ultimately unsuccessful, Pinochet was detained in London for a year awaiting the final disposition of the request.

Murder Trumps Torture Says Bugliosi

2003 State of the Union, Jan. 29, 2003. WikiCommons

Bush Crimes

"If we prosecute those in America who only commit one murder, under what theory don't we prosecute a president who is criminally responsible for over four thousand murders?" Vincent Bugliosi

Michael Collins

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/03/911-commissioner-bob-kerre...

Some of us have been writing for years (see this and this) that the 9/11 Commission Report was unreliable because most of the information was based on the statements of tortured detainees. As I wrote in March 2007:

Now might be a good time brush up on Stalin's Show Trials...

By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: March 9, 2009

The five detainees at Guantánamo Bay charged with planning the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have filed a document with the military commission at the United States naval base there expressing pride at their accomplishment and accepting full responsibility for the killing of nearly 3,000 people.

The document, which may be released publicly on Tuesday, uses the Arabic term for a consultative assembly in describing the five men as the “9/11 Shura Council,” and it says their actions were an offering to God, according to excerpts of the document that were read to a reporter by a government official who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The document is titled “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations,” the military judge at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp said in a separate filing, obtained by The New York Times, that describes the detainees’ document.

The document was filed on behalf of the five men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has described himself as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/03/congressman-holt-introduce...

Congressman Holt wants an anthrax investigation modeled on the 9/11 Commission.

Senators Leahy and White house want a torture investigation modeled on the 9/11 Commission.

But - according to the 9/11 Commission itself - the whole thing was a joke:

• The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission (Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton) now admit that the Commission largely operated based upon political considerations

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/02/senate-launches-truth-comm...

According to Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Senate is launching a "truth commission" to investigate Bush-era torture.

Given that torture is ineffective and harms national security, and given that it is illegal and a war crime under international laws which the U.S. is a party to, many argue that there should be prosecutions, and not more investigations.

Indeed, government investigations are almost all whitewashes.

Obama Faces Familiar Divisions Over Anti-Terror Policies - No Change in Views of Torture, Warrantless Wiretaps
http://people-press.org/report/493/obama-anti-terror-policies

Excerpts, Fair Use:

By a wide margin (59% to 25%), the public says that his administration’s policies will make the chance of another major terrorist attack on the United States less likely rather than more likely. However, while majorities of Democrats (76%) and independents (62%) say that the Obama administration’s policies will make another terrorist attack less likely, just 29% of Republicans agree. Nearly half of Republicans (47%) say Obama’s policies will make another attack more likely.
------
Similarly, views have remained stable about whether the use of torture is justified in order to gain important information from suspected terrorists. More than four-in-ten say such tactics are often (16%) or sometimes (28%) justified; a majority says torture is rarely (20%) or never (31%) justified. Public attitudes regarding the use of torture against suspected terrorists have been largely unchanged since 2004.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/02/high-level-counter-terrori...

Terrell (Terry) E. Arnold was the number 2 counter-terrorism official at the U.S. State Department, and is one of the world's leading experts on terror.

Arnold served as the Deputy Director, Office of Counter-Terrorism and Emergency Planning, at the U.S. State Department. He is also the former Chairman of the Department of International Studies at the National War College.

Arnold has worked as a crisis management consultant for several Federal agencies, including The State Department, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Customs Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He is the author of numerous books on terror*. Arnold is a U.S. Navy veteran of World War II and the Korean war.

I spoke with Arnold by phone...

Propaganda story attempts to justify Gitmo, torture

Report: Ex-Gitmo detainee joins al-Qaida in Yemen

By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Writer Maggie Michael, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jan 23, 10:56 am ET

CAIRO, Egypt – A Saudi man released from Guantanamo after spending nearly six years inside the U.S. prison camp is now the No. 2 of Yemen's al-Qaida branch, according to a purported Internet statement from the terror network.

The announcement, made this week on a Web site commonly used by militants, came as President Barack Obama ordered the detention facility closed within a year. Many of the remaining detainees are from Yemen, which has long posed a vexing terrorism problem for the U.S.

The terror group's Yemen branch — known as "al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula" — said the man, identified as Said Ali al-Shihri, returned to his home in Saudi Arabia after his release from Guantanamo about a year ago and from there went to Yemen, which is Osama bin Laden's ancestral home.

The Internet statement, which could not immediately be verified, said al-Shihri was the group's second-in-command in Yemen, and his prisoner number at Guantanamo was 372.