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The Bush administration's attempts to emasculate if not completely quell a full, independent and credible 9/11 inquiry

Down the Crooked U.S. Course Against 9/11 Terrorism

by the Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies (CAIS)

Bulatlat.com , 22 December /d�cembre 2002.
globalresearch.ca ,   26  December/ d�cembre 2002

Last December 12, the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the biggest intelligence failures in US history that led to 9/11 came out with a mercilessly-sanitized report after a mere six months of sporadic and inexhaustive hearings often closed to the public.

The joint congressional panel�s findings merely parroted US President George Bush�s opinions expressed the same time the joint inquiry began last June that (1) there was no evidence the US government could have avoided the 9/11 attacks, and that (2) there was inadequate communication between the CIA and FBI regarding possible clues leading to 9/11. Worse, the panel virtually endorsed Bush�s pending �counter-terrorism� measures, among them: creating a Cabinet-level director of national intelligence; creating a new domestic intelligence agency; more money for �counterterrorism� initiatives and training; and full development of the Department of Homeland Security.

The joint panel�s work fully validates the observation of the families of the 9/11 victims, expressed by Kristen Breitweiser, widow of 9/11 victim Ron Breitweiser, in her testimony before the panel that �this Committee does not detract, discount or dismantle the need for a more thorough examination of all culpable parties (as the Port Authority; the City of New York; the FAA; the INS; the Secret Service, NORAD, the Air Force, and the airlines, aside from the intelligence agencies).�

For in fact, given even the severely limited mandate of focusing merely on 9/11 intelligence failures, the panel determinedly avoided crucial facts brought to light since 9/11 that�when connected�give a far darker story behind the 9/11 attacks than the Bush administration�s official bin Laden/al Qaeda conspiracy theory would have us believe. Among a few:

*Amid what turned out was a plethora of high-quality intelligence warnings gathered by the CIA, FBI and NSA�among others�foretelling of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush White House has continued to fiercely conceal just what and how much of these advance warnings it actually received. The joint body refused to emphasize in its report the White House�s intransigence in sharing with the panel advanced 9/11-related information it actually got;

*A number of FBI agents have come forward before and after 9/11 and exposed systematic suppression by high FBI officials and even the White House of thorough efforts to go after Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and some of the 19 9/11 hijackers identified by the US. These FBI agents include Coleen Rowley, Robert Wright, Jr., and the New York FBI�s previous counterterrorism expert John O�Neill, the last having been killed at the WTC during 9/11 after leaving from the FBI in August 2001 in disgust over attempts from both high government levels and �oil interests� to block further investigations into bin Laden�s ties and activities;

*For all its assertion that 9/11 was a colossal US intelligence failure, the panel�s majority report retreated from pinpointing who in particular should be held accountable. In contrast, a minority report by panel member US Republican Senator Richard Shelby named current CIA Director George Tenet, ex-CIA Director John Deutch, ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh, and National Security Agency (NSA) Directors Michael Hayden and Kenneth Minnihan, and former NSA Deputy Director Barbara McNamara as having �failed in significant ways� in preventing 9/11;

*Far more telling is the panel�s suppression of the report that US$100,000 was ordered wire-transferred to Mohamed Atta, a key alleged 9/11 hijacker, by then Pakistan Inter-agency Intelligence Services (ISI) Chief Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad just a day before the 9/11 attacks. Could this be because Lt. Gen. Ahmad was meeting�among a whole lot of high US officials �with US Rep. Porter Goss and US Senator Bob Graham, respectively House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairs, and co-chairs of the same joint panel inquiring into 9/11 intelligence failures, right in Washington on the very morning of 9/11? Unless a thorough investigation into these two connected facts reveals otherwise, they implicate these same leading members of the US Congress which headed the just-concluded inquiry as possible complicit parties in the attacks.

Clearly then, even within the narrow mandate of investigating intelligence failures surrounding 9/11, the joint panel has utterly failed in shedding helpful light to the full story behind 9/11. The joint panel�s work thus makes for nothing more but a cover-up of the complicity of key and highly-positioned elements of the Bush government in the sophisticated military-style operation that 9/11 actually was.

Worse, the joint panel�s cover-up of the full 9/11 story will likely be promoted by a newly-formed US commission tasked by a recently-signed law to conduct an investigation into the other US government failures of 9/11. What stokes these fears are that, among others: (1) the chair of the commission�who Bush initially named was the infamous former US State Secretary Henry Kissinger, but was replaced by former New Jersey Republican Gov. Thomas Kean after Kissinger�s swift resignation�is appointed personally by Bush; (2) Bush�s congressional leaders rejected a key nominee of 9/11 victims� families, former Senator Warren Rudman, who issued a pre-9/11 commission report harshly criticizing US intelligence agencies; and (3) commission subpoenas for White House documents pertinent to 9/11 can still be rejected by Bush.

These latest efforts of the Bush administration to emasculate if not completely quell a full, independent, no-holds-barred, and credible 9/11 inquiry is part and parcel of the ruling US clique�s deliberate, brazen and desperate misdirection and misorientation of the global fight against terrorism.

For indeed, the systematic suppression by the Bush-Cheney regime of the full story on who constitute the complete clique of megaterrorists behind 9/11 constitutes the highest complacency with today�s terrorism. Such suppression is clearly designed to desperately defeat the real antiterrorist fight for truth, justice, peace and freedom waged by the teeming billions of freedom-loving peoples everywhere, among them millions of Americans and Filipinos who instantly connected via high technology with about 3,000 of their fellow brothers and sisters (more than a dozen Filipinos among them) in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania who were deemed �collateral damage� by the masters of terror and war that masterminded 9/11. Bulatlat.com


 Copyright  CAIS 2002.  For fair use only/ pour usage �quitable seulement .


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