Expect 9/11 probe, and subsequent hearing to receive as little major press as possible.
”The White House exhibits a foolish obstinacy. It is destined to fail and, in the process make the administration look more culpable than it probably is. Bush would be wiser to order the release of the information, take whatever lumps may be coming to his administration and put the matter behind him.”
The Plain Dealer
The one thing that could dampen two consecutive war victory celebrations for President Bush, is the completion of that 9/11 inquiry and the subsequent hearing which reports on what he and other White house officials knew before the tragic events took place. There is such a congressional report that is 900 pages long, and based on 30,000 pages of documented findings. Not surprisingly, the White House is avoiding it like a vampire avoids the cross, and this is just an internal investigation mind you.
Before, people who would raise these issues concerning Bush and the intelligence community - including it’s top officer Condoleeza Rice - would pay with the loss of credibility, or as in the case of GA Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, their jobs. Now the White House is using the old standby; “national security concerns” to block the release of information that is damning toward the Bush administration-some of which is already known through alternative and Black media and websites. Among those are reports that an FBI agent warned higher-ups that al-Qaeda had students training at American flight schools, or the one regarding how the president and his advisors were warned that terrorists were rumored to be plotting to hijack American airplanes. Actually the first set of hearings began back on 6/4/02 in the 4th floor Capitol.
According to the Dealer, all of this cast the administration in a less-than-flattering light, but this started back from June ’02 to October ’02 when the joint probe began. One website stated: “it took Congress five months to even announce the inquiry, and another four months before it even got started.” That the Bush administration is working to block the release of the full report won’t sit well with Americans in the know. Back in January ’02 Bush asked Tom Daschle to limit the probe. Imagine all defendants having that option, "your honor, if the prosecution wouldn’t mind, I would ask them to please limit their investigation of me." Why the whole judicial system would be turned upside down.
But Bush is no dummy, back when Henry Kissinger resigned as chairman of the 9/11 commission, Ron Fournier of the Associated Press stated on 12/15/02 “The relatives groups have been skeptical about whether Bush wants a full investigation of the attacks, with a potentially embarrassing report due less than six months before the 2004 election.” Well it’s now six months after Kissinger’s resignation and Bush is already sweating bullets over the initial findings. Reportedly when he first signed legislation creating this commission, Bush pushed for expediency. The investigation was due to be completed within 18 months from that point, but it seems time is not the real issue for W, be careful of what you ask for.
According to reporters Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball, the secret report was completed last December and is the result of almost 10 months of investigative work “hired jointly by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and overseen by Eleanor Hill, a former federal prosecutor and Pentagon inspector general.” Though this team gained access to endless pages of documents from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, they were told to keep hands-off from interviewing Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld. The true problem seems to be the complicity of major media, and the lack of public pressure to expose the facts.
Chris Stevenson
Please email comments to Mr. Stevenson at: pointblankdta@yahoo.com
IS ANYONE SAFE?
Patriot Act swiftly uses anti-terror laws to track defendants of unrelated crimes.
Chris Stevenson
Dan Eggens’ article in the Washington Post confirms many suspicions across the nation that much of the anti-terror laws that republicans shook hands over was really operation salivate for conservative lawmakers. The 60-page report submitted to the House Judiciary Committee points to gross misuse of the powers granted under the post-9/11 fear factor, to pursue violations relating to drugs, bank theft, and credit card fraud.
“Tim Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the report confirms fears that justice and the FBI would abuse some of their new powers. ‘many of these terrorism powers were actually being asked for as a way of increasing the government’s authority in other area’s’ Edgar said.”
Eggen’s report shows an ugly by-product of a law signed back on 10/26/01, and confirms suspicions of what could result from secret interrogations and prosecutions, delayed detentions, and searches and seizures at a whim, all done to anyone at anytime the government chooses.
My initial concern was that when said terrorism ceases to be a threat, the government would quietly go after all the domestic undesirables they’ve always wanted like they did back from the ‘50’s through the ‘70’s. But leave it to Attorney General John Ashcroft to exceed even my expectations. According to the Post: “The report plays down the government’s use of some of the most controversial new powers. For example the report said that fewer than 10 FBI field offices have conducted investigations involving visits to mosques, and all but one were connected to ongoing criminal inquiries.”
The report couldn’t have made the House Judiciary Committee too happy since it was that very Patriot Act that Republican House Leadership used to nullify an antiterrorism bill that addressed the concerns that evidently have now become a reality. According to author Nancy Chang: “In the Senate, the vote in favor of the USA Patriot Act was 98 to 1, in the House, the vote was 356 to 66. This hastily drafted complex, and far-reaching legislation spans 342 pages, yet it was passed with virtually no public hearing or debate, and it is accompanied by neither a conference report nor a committee report.”
But such is the case with this bill, you can’t really even call it Patriot Act improprieties, since it sounds like an oxymoron, and is basically tailor-made to undermine your civil liberties. At its core racial profiling, legalized profiling, seems to be the lawmakers’ base desire, and their ignition that drives the suspect to months of highly questionable confinement, perhaps even a final destination with the electric chair, with little or no contact with an attorney. The rub is, the man over these measures is the Attorney General himself, Ashcroft. As expected the first targets of the initiative were people of middle-eastern appearance, the hope was, who would question government at a time like this when terror just looms in the air? As time went on however, we’ve come to know that even the suicide crashes of 9/11 were preventable.
The same FBI that warned the Bush administration of terrorists being trained to fly at expensive American commercial aviation schools before 9/11-only to be ignored-is now having constraints lifted to include non-terror suspects, and soon, poor working-class American citizens and minorities. Is anyone safe?
Chris Stevenson
Please email comments to Mr. Stevenson at pointblankdta@yahoo.com
Please also see:
9/11 Bush’s Interesting Day:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/main/essayaninterestingday.html
Bombs in the Building: World Trade Center 'Conspiracy Theory' is a Conspiracy Fact, by Randy Lavello;
http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_lavello_050503_bombs.html
Please also visit "A Small Selection of 9/11 Websites"
Al Martin Raw
http://www.almartinraw.com
The Center for an Informed America
http://davesweb.cnchost.com
Citizens for Legitimate Government
http://legitgov.org
From The Wilderness
http://www.fromthewilderness.com
International Responsibilities Task Force of the
American Library Associations’s Social Responsibilities Round Table
http://www.pitt.edu/~ttwiss/irtf/index.html
The Mad Cow Morning News
http://www.madcowprod.com
Questions Questions
http://www.questionsquestions.net
Reseau Voltaire (in French)
http://www.reseauvoltaire.net
September 11, 2001
http://pulsarnet.com/whodunnit.html
Unanswered Questions
http://www.unansweredquestions.org
The Split Second Error
http://serendipity.magnet.ch/wot/psyopnews1.htm
What Really Happened
http://whatreallyhappened.com
Who & Why ?
http://www.9-11.co.uk
For a sampling of the number of victims from each nation, please visit:
http://www.cryptome.org/wtc-non-us.htm