The commissioners and staff director should be
investigated, not in charge of an investigation
Former NJ Governor Thomas Kean is on the board of Amerada Hess
petroleum company, which had business dealings with Saudi interests
Thomas H. Kean, Chair
Lee H. Hamilton, Vice Chair
Richard Ben-Veniste
Max Cleland (replaced when he started asking questions)
Fred F. Fielding
Jamie S. Gorelick
Slade Gorton
John F. Lehman
Timothy J. Roemer
James R. Thompson
Official "investigation"
expelled Senator Cleland, the only Commissioner who asked uncomfortable questions
'As each day goes by, we
learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists
before September 11 than it has ever admitted.'" -- Senator Max Cleland, member of the official National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Against the United States
quoted in the New York Times, October 27, 2003
"If this decision stands,
I, as a member of the commission, cannot look any American in the eye,
especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full
access. This investigation is now compromised."
--
Max Cleland
Former Senator and member of The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States refering to White House policies regarding the
sharing of presidential briefings with the commission http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/11/275652.shtml
New job takes Cleland off
9/11 panel
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- Former Sen. Max Cleland, a Democrat,
has been nominated by President Bush to serve on the board of the Export-Import
Bank.
As a result he will have to leave the commission investigating the Sept.
11 terror attacks.
The statutes governing the panel, formally known as The National Commission
on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, bar anyone who holds a federal
job like being on the Ex-Im Board.
Cleland has been one of the more outspoken members of the commission,
accusing the administration of delaying access to vital documents in an
effort to run out the clock on its investigation. The panel, which started
work at the beginning of the year, must submit its report by a congressionally
mandated deadline of May 27, 2004.
Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg told United Press International that
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle will nominate Cleland's replacement.
[Did Senator Cleland quit because of "an
offer he couldn't refuse" or from disgust with the blatant cover-up
perpetrated by the Commission?]
Senator Cleland's replacement with Senator Bob Kerrey shows that the
one commissioner who dared to nibble around the edge of the scandal was
replaced by a PNAC supporting war mongering war
criminal (Kerrey participated in massacres of civilians in Vietnam).
It's the "9/11 Warren Commission" (the "Warren Commission" was the official investigation and cover-up of the coup d'etat against
President Kennedy in Dallas).
Any genuine investigation would make public:
Cheney's energy task force documents (what did they say about Peak Oil, pretexts for invading the middle
east, etc.)
all of the foreign "warnings"
of 9/11 (whether genuine or part of an intelligence "legend"
is something we may never know)
the radar tapes and tapes of air traffic controllers in the FAA, military
and all other agencies with access to this information, with a "chain of custody" to prove thtat this information had not been altered in any way
full details on the CIA / National Reconnaissance "war
games" underway on 9/11 simulating a plane-into-building scenario
and the NORAD / Air Force war games that were also underway that morning
that confused some air traffic controllers for crucial minutes, thinking
it was the exercise and not an attack. Who gave the orders to conduct
these "war games" at the exact same time that 9/11 happened?
Family Steering Committee victims' relatives watchdogging the
Commission, their website has the best collection of "unanswered questions" www.911independentcommission.org
The Kean Commission came to New York the second week of May
for a two-day set of hearings at The New School University. As hundreds
of Sept. 11th family members, reporters and curious New Yorkers lined
up for airport-style security checks, they received copies of a new 24-page
booklet published by NY 9/11 Truth, with help from 911Truth.org.
"Scamming America: The Official 9/11 Cover-up" is named after
a quote by former Sen. Max Cleland, who resigned from the commission last
November with the words, "Bush is scamming America."
Cleland attacked his own commission after the other members cut a deal
to accept highly limited access to CIA reports to the White House that
may indicate advance knowledge of the attacks on the part of the Bush
administration. "This is a scam," Cleland said. "It's disgusting.
America is being cheated."
"As each day goes by," Cleland said, "we learn that this
government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before September
11 than it has ever admitted.... Let's chase this rabbit into the ground.
They had a plan to go to war and when 9/11 happened that's what they did;
they went to war."
The new booklet features articles about the Kean Commission's breathtaking
conflicts of interest and complete failure to ask any of the questions
about September 11 that really matter.
Philip Zelikow with his co-author Condi Rice
(they wrote a book together before 9/11)
here is the mandate for the official investigation,
such as it is; this part seems broad enough
In General.--The functions of the Commission are to--
(1) conduct an investigation that--
(A) investigates relevant facts and circumstances
relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
including any relevant legislation, Executive order,
regulation, plan, policy, practice, or procedure; and
(B) may include relevant facts and circumstances
relating to--
(i) intelligence agencies;
(ii) law enforcement agencies;
(iii) diplomacy;
(iv) immigration, nonimmigrant visas, and
border control;
(v) the flow of assets to terrorist
organizations;
(vi) commercial aviation;
(vii) the role of congressional oversight and
resource allocation; and
(viii) other areas of the public and private
sectors determined relevant by the Commission for
its inquiry;
THIS IS HOW THEY MAKE SURE THAT ANY IDEALIST OR ACCIDENTAL
MEMBER CAN BE PUBLICALLY BROWBEATEN FOR "EXCEEDING THE MANDATE"
IF THEY GO OFF ON A TANGENT TOWARD THE TRUTH
the commission is limited to:
(2) ascertain, evaluate, and report on the evidence
developed by all relevant governmental agencies regarding the
facts and circumstances surrounding the attacks;
(3) build upon the investigations of other entities, and
avoid unnecessary duplication, by reviewing the findings,
THIS IS HOW THEY KEEP THEIR FINGERS OUT OF ANY REAL INQUIRY
§604 (b) Relationship to Intelligence Committees' Inquiry.--When
investigating facts and circumstances relating to the intelligence
community, the Commission shall--
(1) first review the information compiled by, and the
findings, conclusions, and recommendations of, the Joint
Inquiry; and
(2) after that review pursue any appropriate area of inquiry
if the Commission determines that--
(A) the Joint Inquiry had not investigated that
area;
(B) the Joint Inquiry's investigation of that area
had not been complete; or
(C) new information not reviewed by the Joint
Inquiry had become available with respect to that area.
conclusions, and recommendations of--
THIS IS WHERE THEY MAKE SURE THAT NO RENEGADE HAS ANY POWER
DO ANYTHING. WHY DO THEY NEED A SUPERMAJORITY TO ISSUE A STINKING SUBPOENA
§605 (2) Subpoenas.--
(A) Issuance.--
(i) In general.--A subpoena may be issued
under this subsection only--
(I) by the agreement of the chairman
and the vice chairman; or
(II) by the affirmative vote of 6
members of the Commission.
(a) Consultation in Preparation.--(1) The Director of Central
Intelligence shall ensure that any report, review, study, or plan
required to be prepared or conducted by a provision of this Act,
including a provision of the classified Schedule of Authorizations
referred to in section 102(a) or the classified annex to this Act,
that
involves the intelligence or intelligence-related activities of the
Department of Defense or the Department of Energy is prepared or
conducted in consultation with the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary
of Energy, as appropriate.
PUT IT TO BED QUICKLY. tag it , bag it and sell it to the american people
(b) Final <> Report.--Not later than 18 months
after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Commission shall
submit
to the President and Congress a final report containing such findings,
conclusions, and recommendations for corrective measures as have been
agreed to by a majority of Commission members.
(c) Termination.--
(1) In general.--The Commission, and all the authorities of
this title, shall terminate 60 days after the date on which the
final report is submitted under subsection (b).
(2) Administrative activities before termination.--The
Commission may use the 60-day period referred to in paragraph
(1) for the purpose of concluding its activities, including
providing testimony to committees of Congress concerning its
reports and disseminating the final report.the way the commissioners
were appointed is also in this law
Initial thoughts on the 9/11
report
from Nic in New York:
On the insider trading, the alibi:
>A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no
conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on
September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying
115,000 shares of American on September 10.
Ah. "No conceivable ties to al-Qaeda" equated
with "no advance knowledge."
The assumption is that foreknowledge could come only through an al-Qaeda
connection.
No mention of stories from London, Frankfurt, Tokyo et al. or of trades
in anything other than UAL and AAR put options (WTC tenants, reinvestors).
What about the uncollected $2.5 million? Who was the "small airline"
responsible for the puts purchased in London?
[no stock trades ... the best evidence for the insider
trading on American, United and other impacted companies is published
by Michael Ruppert
Al Qaeda has been alleged to have used a variety of illegitimate means,
particularly drug trafficking and conflict diamonds, to finance itself.
While the drug trade was a source of income for the Taliban, it did not
serve the same purpose for al Qaeda,and there is no reliable evidence
that Bin Ladin was involved in or made his money through drug trafficking.128
Similarly, we have seen no persuasive evidence that al Qaeda funded
itself by trading in African conflict diamonds.129 There also have been
claims that al Qaeda financed itself through manipulation of the stock
market based on its advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Exhaustive
investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, and other
agencies have uncovered no evidence that anyone with advance knowledge
of the attacks profited through securities transactions.130 Highly
publicized allegations of insider trading in advance of 9/11 generally
rest on reports of unusual pre-9/11 trading activity in companies whose
stock plummeted after the attacks. Some unusual trading did in fact occur,but
each such trade proved to have an innocuous explanation. For example,the
volume of put options- investments that pay off only when a stock drops
in price-surged in the parent companies of United Airlines on September
6 and American Airlines on September 10-highly suspicious trading on
its face. Yet, further investigation has revealed that the trading had
no connection with 9/11. A single U.S.-based institutional investor
with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL
puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included
buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10. Similarly, much of
the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced
to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers
on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades. These examples
typify the evidence examined by the investigation. The SEC and the FBI, aided
by other agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources
to investigating this issue,including securing the cooperation of many
foreign governments. These investigators have found that the apparently
suspicious consistently proved innocuous.
Joseph Cella interview (Sept.
16, 2003; May 7,2004; May 10-11,2004); FBI briefing (Aug.15,2003);SEC memo,Division
of Enforcement to SEC Chair and Commissioners," Pre-September 11, 2001
Trading Review,"May 15,2002; Ken Breen interview (Apr.23,2004);Ed
G.interview (Feb.3,2004).
10/31/2004
Record of Bush Administration's Obstruction of Investigation of 911
[they claim the wargames were irrelevant
- but no mention of NRO wargame simulating a plane hitting the spy satellite headquarters at the same time the planes hit the WTC...]
Military Notification and Response. Boston Center did not follow the
protocol in seeking military assistance through the prescribed chain
of command. In addition to notifications within the FAA, Boston Center
took the initiative, at 8:34, to contact the military through the FAA's
Cape Cod facility. The center also tried to contact a former alert site
in Atlantic City, unaware it had been phased out. At 8:37:52, Boston
Center reached NEADS. This was the first notification received by the
military-at any level-that American 11 had been hijacked:115
FAA: Hi. Boston Center TMU [Traffic Management Unit],we have a problem
here.We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need
you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up
there,help us out.
NEADS: Is this real-world or exercise?
FAA: No, this is not an exercise,not a test.116
NEADS ordered to battle stations the two F-15 alert aircraft at Otis
Air Force Base in Falmouth,Massachusetts,153 miles away from New York
City. The air defense of America began with this call.117
footnote 116: On 9/11, NORAD was scheduled to conduct a military exercise,
Vigilant Guardian,which postulated a bomber attack from the former Soviet
Union.We investigated whether military preparations for the large-scale
exercise compromised the military's response to the real-world terrorist
attack on 9/11. According to General Eberhart,"it took about 30
seconds" to make the adjustment to the real-world situation. Ralph
Eberhart testimony, June 17, 2004. We found that the response was,if
anything, expedited by the increased number of staff at the sectors
and at NORAD because of the scheduled exercise.See Robert Marr interview
(Jan.23, 2004).
Note: The Northern Guardian exercise, also underway on 9/11 (and not
mentioned in the Commission report, was the Cold War scenario exercise
- a wargame that included deploying some of the fighters on alert to
northern Canada and Alaska, which ensured that those fighters would
not be able to defend the East Coast. Vigilant Guardian did not apparently
involve the Cold War style scenario of Northern Guardian.
911 OMISSIONS
Who needs Henry Kissinger, after all?
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
BY THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES
W.W. NORTON, 516 PAGES, $10 reviewed by SANDER HICKS
IN THE RECENT documentary Outfoxed, media critic Robert McChesney suggests
right-leaning news outlets like Fox News are worse than the Stalinist-era
propaganda. At least in Soviet Russia, he says, people knew they were
getting the official party line.
The problem of the 9/11 Commission Report is similar. Instead of being
printed by the government that wrote it, the Report is published by
the employee-owned, independent press W. W. Norton & Co. The writing
style goes out of its way to appear informal, with occasional references
to Hollywood films or rhetoric about the importance of civil liberties.
Norton's first printing of 500,000 has already been snapped up, leaving
bookstores nation-wide out of it, in more ways than one.
The only way to explain the best-seller status of this dry, stiff and
cynical book is to understand the 9/11 disaster as a national trauma
so intense that the co-dependent American family is still reaching for
anything that will assure it. The Saudi-Pakistani-Bush Family-CIA connections
aren't as incestuous as they seem, right? Everybody in the government
did everything in their power to stop it, didn't they? Surely they couldn't
have known about 9/11 and allowed it to happen to justify their agenda,
right?
The Report may be the most literary work ever authored by a group of
10. "Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless
in the eastern United States" is the opener. It's that undergraduate
formula: Start with the weather. The Report then moves on to tell a
selective conspiracy theory. The authors' motto: Do what Kissinger would
have done. Protect the White House. This Commission is as determined
as the kooks who shouted objections and were tackled by cops at their
hearings.
While the Report pays lip service to the value of the "investigative
journalists and watchdog organizations" who initiate government
inquiries, the Commission refused to call any 9/11 watchdogs or investigative
journalists to testify. Instead, they brought in fellow bureaucrats,
politicians, spies and policy wonks who provided a parade of mind-blowingly
dull chatter.
The 10 D.C. insiders that make up the Commission did their best not
to look at any of the strange anomalies that abound around 9/11. On
page 20, for example, the Commission reports that an air defense controller
at the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) reacted to the hijackings
by asking, "Is this real-world, or exercise?" The terrorists
somehow knew to strike on the morning that NORAD, NEADS and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff were preoccupied with three different air defense drills
(operations named things like "Vigilant Guardian," etc.) Although
victim family member Mindy Kleinberg brought up this coincidence to
them on the first day of hearings, the Commission only mentioned it
as an afterthought, buried in the notes section in the back of the book.
Regarding the background of Osama bin Laden, the Commission dives head-on
into the history of the terrorist ringleader's training as a mujahedeen
by the CIA: They deny it.
Bin Laden was the CIA's point man in Afghanistan in the 80s; he ran
the Maktab al-Khidamar. The MAK was the "primary conduit,"
according to MSNBC, for cash, weapons and CIA intelligence to flow through
Pakistan's mini-CIA, the ISI. Three weeks after 9/11, the CIA's Bill
Harlowe tried to spin that the CIA never had "any relationship
whatsoever" with Bin Laden. And the 9/11 Commission shows its cards
by trying to repeat the claim: Bin Laden received "little or no
assistance from the United States" in Afghanistan. It's no surprise
then to learn that a Commission panelist, Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste,
was also once the attorney for CIA drug-runner Barry Seal, or that Democratic
panelist Jamie Gorelick is on the CIA's National Security Advisory Panel.
Although the Bush Administration fought long and hard against its release,
the Report publishes an edited version of the famous August 6, 2001
presidential intelligence briefing. Here we learn the "FBI is conducting
approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that
it considers Bin Laden-related." Seventy different investigations?
Then let's hear about them. But the Report doesn't go there, let alone
discuss FBI whistle-blowers who tried to investigate Bin Laden-related
terrorists but were smacked down. On page 247, we meet Minneapolis terrorist-to-be
Zacarias Moussaoui, but not Time Person of the Year Coleen Rowley, the
FBI whistle-blower who couldn't get a warrant from headquarters on him.
Terrorist financing is covered, with a guileless, "We don't know
exactly where the money came from" manner. There is no mention
of FBI Special Agent Robert Wright, who tracked down and seized $1.4
million of Bin Laden-related funds before 9/11. His higher-ups fought
him every step of the way. After the carnage of 9/11, Wright understandably
broke down and, through tears, apologized on C-SPAN to 9/11 victims'
families. "[The FBI] allowed 9/11 to happen," he told the
world. "FBI management intentionally and repeatedly thwarted and
obstructed my investigations into Middle Eastern terrorist financing."
Both Rowley and Wright point to the FBI's David Frasca, the FBI's Radical
Fundamentalist unit chief. After 9/11, Frasca was promoted to #3 in
charge of Domestic Terrorism. Frasca is not mentioned in this Report.
Of the many theories about 9/11, some of the best questions involve
the mysterious Mohamed Atta, subject of the research of investigative
reporter Daniel Hopsicker. For two years, Hopsicker tracked Atta's final
moves in Florida, including his cocaine and alcohol binges with temporary
girlfriend, Amanda Keller, at the time a pink-haired stripper. The flight
school that Atta happened to "choose," Huffman Aviation in
Venice, also enjoys a sanitized version of its history. Flight-school
president Rudi Dekkers has a long criminal history, while owner Wally
Hilliard has ties to GOP Bush family friend Myron DuBain, Reverend Jerry
Falwell and Clinton financier Truman Arnold. None of this makes its
way into the report. Perhaps because Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste
is featured in Hopsicker's 2001 book, Barry and the Boys regarding the
CIA's Iran/Contra pilot Barry Seal.
So, 9/11 Commission, let's get this straight: If you're one of the best
9/11 investigative journalists, and you risk your own life, getting
death threats in Florida for two years of rubbing elbows with some extremely
creepy characters, should all of your research be disqualified just
because you found people who call Clinton's friend Richard Ben-Veniste
a "mob lawyer" in your last book? The Commission's answer
is yes.
The Commission can't ignore the Saudi/Pak/CIA menage-à-trois
that has been going on since the Afghan civil war. It's just that the
most interesting details on this have been reported by the international
press, and as a rule, the Commission ignores stories not picked up by
the U.S. media. So, the fact that Pakistani ISI director General Ahmed
wired $100,000 to Mohamed Atta on September 10 is not covered. The Times
of India and Agence France-Presse reported it, and General Ahmed was
forced to step down because of it. Stateside, these facts languish unused.
Instead, it's pointed out that General Ahmed happened to be in D.C.
meeting with Porter Goss and Sen. Bob Graham on the morning of 9/11.
The Commission does cover how Deputy Sec. of State Dick Armitage (who
holds a major decoration from the Pakistani army) used this to force
Pakistan to help with the invasion of Afghanistan.
To their credit, the subjects that the Commission does cover are well
researched. For instance, their toughest critics, the "9/11 Truth
Movement" folks, believe that 9/11 must have been the product of
a military stand-down. Earlier in 2001, 67 jets going off course were
handled by established protocols, so why couldn't fighter jets be scrambled
on 9/11? The Report points out the crucial difference that morning:
The terrorist pilots turned their transponders off and the planes were
harder to find. The lack of fighter jets on the morning of 9/11 could
be explained, technically, by this report. But the Commission indicts
itself for laziness by ignoring other anomalies on 9/11.
The Report climaxes in a grand paean to war-without-end. The enemy is
dehumanized and depoliticized. You can't "bargain" or "negotiate"
with terrorists. There is "no common ground," they can "only
be destroyed or isolated." In other words, don't ask yourself how
your enemy was created, or what the enemy believes in its heart about
its justification. Don't look at Bin Laden's own statements about the
U.S.'s backing of Israel, and don't consider the motivating effect when
Arab youth in the poorest countries on Earth watch Palestinian houses
bulldozed on Al Jazeera.
The 9/11 Commission Report has joined the Warren Report as one of the
greatest cover-ups of all time. Even if they did just happen to have
been caught off guard on 9/11, high-level personnel at the FBI, CIA
and the Department of Justice should have been indicted for incompetence.
If some knew about it, they should be indicted for their failure to
stop it. Instead, they are all thanked in the preface.
Volume 17, Issue 34
The Kean - Osama Connection
THOMAS KEAN, THE CHAIR OF THE 9/11 OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION, IS
A BUSINESS PARTNER OF OSAMA'S BROTHER IN LAW. There. That's a soundbite that few will forget.
Fortune magazine published an articletitled "Five Degrees of Osama"
that discussed this connection of Kean.
Henry Kissinger, Shrub's first appointee as Commission Chair had conflicts
of interest were much easier to explain.
The "xymphora" blog seems to have been the first with this story.
Globalresearch.ca covered it early, too.
Fortune withdrew this claim under pressure from Mr. Mahfouz,
who denies the allegations.
www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,410237,00.html?
Five Degrees of Osama
FORTUNE
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
By Nicholas Stein
In December, President Bush named Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor
of New Jersey, chairman of an independent commission examining... Continue
Full article is 199 words long
www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,410237,00.html
Five Degrees of Osama
FORTUNE Wednesday, January 22, 2003 By Nicholas Stein
In December, President Bush named Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor
of New Jersey, chairman of an independent commission examining the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks. But FORTUNE has learned that Kean appears to have
a bizarre link to the very terror network he's investigating--al Qaeda.
Here's how the dots connect: Kean is a director of petroleum giant Amerada
Hess, which in 1998 formed a joint venture--known as Delta Hess--with
Delta Oil, a Saudi Arabian company, to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan.
One of Delta's backers is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a shadowy Saudi patriarch
married to one of Osama bin Laden's sisters. Mahfouz, who is suspected
of funding charities linked to al Qaeda, is even named as a defendant
in a lawsuit filed by families of Sept. 11 victims. True, Hess is hardly
the only company to cross paths with Mahfouz: He has shown up in dealings
with, among others, ultra-secretive investment firm Carlyle Group and
BCCI, the lender toppled by fraud in 1992.
Kean, who was unavailable for comment, may not have been aware of the
Mahfouz connection. But Hess spokesman Carl Tursi did reveal another interesting
coincidence: Three weeks before Kean's appointment, Hess severed its ties
with Delta.
New Chairman of 9/11 Commission had business ties with Osama's
Brother in Law
by Michel Chossudovsky globalresearch.ca,
27 december 2002
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,. (US Senate, Senate Judiciary Committee, Federal News
Service, 3 Sept. 1998, See also Wayne Madsen, Questionable Ties, In These
Times,12 Nov. 2001 )
Bin Mahfouz is suspected to have funnelled millions of dollars to the
Al Qaeda network.(See Tom Flocco, Scoop.co.nz 28 Aug. 2002)
Now, "by sheer coincidence", former New Jersey governor Thomas
Kean, the man chosen by President 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).
Delta-Hess "was established in 1998 for the development and exploration
of oil fields in the Caspian region...In Azerbaijan Delta Hess is involved
in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli PSA (2.72%) and the Garabaghli-Kursangi PSA
(20%). It is also an equity holder in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil
pipeline":
"An air of mystery hangs over Delta- Hess, which... is registered
in the Cayman Islands. Hess is in no hurry to reveal the terms of the
alliance, which it says are subject to confidentiality clauses. 'There's
no reason why this should be public information,' a Hess spokesman says."
(Energy Compass, 15 Nov. 2002)
Coincidentally, the former Governor of New Jersey is also a member of
the Council on Foreign Relations, together with another prominent member
of the board of directors of Amerada Hess, former Secretary of the Treasury
Nicholas Brady:
In other words, Delta Oil Ltd. of Saudi Arabia --which is a partner in
the Hess-Delta Alliance--is in part controlled by Khalid bin Mafhouz,
Osama's brother in law.
And former Governor Thomas Kean not only sits on the board of directors
of a company which has business dealings with Khalid bin Mahfouz, he also
heads the 9/11 Commission, which has a mandate to investigate Khalid's
brother in law, Osama bin Laden.
Dr. Kissinger had a conflict of interest and resigned! The vice chairman
of the Commission, former Sen. George Mitchell of Maine, resigned for
the same reason. (See Xymphora, 19 Dec 2002 )
Now you would think that being a business partner of the brother in law
and alleged financier of "Enemy No. 1" would also be considered
a bona fide "conflict of interest", particularly when your mandate
--as part of the 9/11 Commission's work-- is to investigate "Enemy
No. 1".
And the corporate media applauds. Without acknowledging his Saudi business
connections, Thomas Kean is heralded as "a man of extraordinary integrity,
decency and intellect." In the words of the Baltimore Sun: "he
lacks obvious conflicts of interest" (26 Dec.2002). To which I respond:
"how more obvious can you get"!
It is also worth mentioning that Thomas Kean also sits as co-chairman
of the Homeland Security Project (HSP) under the auspices of the Century
Foundation. In this capacity, Kean has played a key role in the draft
recommendations of the Century Foundation, which laid the groundwork of
the Office of Homeland Security legislation.
The Saudi Connection
Thomas Kean, described as a "moderate Republican" is not alone
in this Saudi business relationship.
Extensively documented, other prominent members of the Republican party
including the Bush family have had business dealings with the bin Laden
family. (See George W. Bush Financial Scams: CRG selection of articles)
Moreover, it would appear that Delta officials (involved in the UNOCAL
trans-Afghan pipeline consortium) played a key role in negotiations with
the Taliban. In turn, Enron, the infamous energy giant — whose former
CEO, Ken Lay, had close connections to the Bush family — had been
contracted in a cozy relationship to undertake feasibility studies for
the Unocal-Delta consortium. Enron Corporation had also been entrusted
--in liaison with Delta-- with pipeline negotiations with the Taliban
government
Carefully documented by Wayne Madsen, George W. Bush also had dealings
with Osama's brother in law Khalid bin Mafhouz, when he was in the Texas
oil business. Both George W. Bush and Khalid bin-Mahfouz were implicated
in the Bank of Commerce International (BCCI) scandal:
"Other links between Bush and Mahfouz can be found through investments
in the Carlyle Group, an American investment firm managed by a board on
which former president George Bush himself sat. The younger [George W.]
Bush personally held shares in one of the components of the Carlyle group,
the Caterair company, between 1990-94. And Carlyle today ranks as a leading
contributor to Bush’s electoral campaign. On Carlyle’s advisory
board is found the name of Sami Baarma, director of the Pakistani financial
establishment Prime Commercial Bank that is based in Lahore and owned
by Mahfouz. (See Maggie Mulvihill, Jonathan Wells and Jack Meyers: Slick
deals; the White House connection; Saudi ‘agents' close Bush Friends,
Boston Herald, 11 December 2001).
In the wake of 9/11
In the wake of 9/11, Khalid bin Mahfouz (Osama's brother in law) was carefully
exempted from the Treasury investigations (another "sheer coincidence")
which led to the freezing of the financial assets of some 150 Saudi businesses,
charities and individuals:
"The US Treasury has frozen the assets of 150 Saudi individuals,
companies and charities suspected of financing terrorism. It has named
Blessed Relief, a Saudi "charity" as a front organisation providing
funds to Osama bin Laden. "Saudi businessmen have been transferring
millions of dollars to Bin Laden through Blessed Relief," the agency
said.
One rich Saudi patriarch under suspicion is Khaled bin Mahfouz, owner
of the National Commercial Bank, banker to the Saudi royal family,
...
US and British authorities have also investigated Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi,
another billionaire Saudi, for possible financial ties to Bin Laden. Al
-Amoudi, who oversees a vast network of companies involved in construction,
mining, banking and oil, has also denied any involvement with Bin Laden.
His Washington lawyers said he "was unalterably opposed to terrorism
and had no knowledge of any money transfers by Saudi businesses to Bin
Laden.
Both Al-Amoudi and Bin Mahfouz have been left untouched by the US Treasury
Department. The case against them, let alone against the government itself,
is unproven. But the post-September 11 spotlight on Saudi Arabia has brought
into sharp focus the fundamental question facing the country's rulers."
(Scotland on Sunday, 11 August 2002)
The 9/11 Victims Families Law Suit
According to one press report, Thomas Kean --in contrast to Dr. Henry
Kissinger-- was selected to head the 9/11 Commission because he was "close
to the families of the 9/11 victims, an important credential to the White
House, which was coming under increasing criticism from those families"
(Scripps Howard News Service, 17 December 2002)
Yet in a cruel irony, the $1 trillion lawsuit filed last August by the
families of the victims of the September 11 attacks , lists two of Thomas
Kean's business partners in the Hess-Delta joint-venture, among the accused:
Khalid Bin Mahfouz (Osama's brother in law), and Mohammed Hussein al Amoudi.
Both individuals have been tagged in the lawsuit as alleged "financiers"
of Al Qaeda. Now, how will Thomas Kean deal with that in the context of
the 9/11 Commission?
Mystery Surrounding the 1998 Embassy Bombings
Former CIA director James Woolsey's testimony confirms that the Sudan
pharmaceutical company bombed in 1998 on the orders of President Clinton
was owned by Salah Idris, a business associate and protegé of Khalid
bin Mahfouz, The bombing was in retribution for the alleged Al Qaeda African
Embassy bombings.
The Mahfouz conglomerate, which owns the largest bank in Saudi Arabia,
the National Commercial Bank, was preparing to pump money into the trans-Afghan
pipeline deal. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, 2002, Chapter
VI) Delta-Hess was also set up in 1998 to explore and develop oil and
gas resources in the Caspian Sea basin.
Now why would the Clinton administration order the bombing of a factory
which was controlled by a business crony of Unocal Corporation and Amerada-Hess?
Copyright Michel Chossudovsky CRG 2002. For fair use only/ pour usage
équitable seulement .
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO212A.html
Kean Insight: Bush, bin Laden, BCCI and the 9/11 Commission
by CHRIS FLOYD
January 31, 2003
When George W. Bush's first
choice to head an "independent" probe into the Sept. 11 attacks--suspected
war criminal Henry Kissinger--went down like a bad pretzel, he quickly
plucked another warm body from the stagnant pool of Establishment worthies
who are periodically called upon to roll out the whitewash when the big
boys screw up.
Kissinger's replacement, retired New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, was
a "safe pair of hands," we were assured by the professional
assurers in the mainstream media. The fact that he'd been out of public
life for years--and that he hadn't collaborated in the deaths of tens
of thousands of Cambodians, Chileans and East Timorese--certainly made
him less controversial than his predecessor, although to be fair, Kissinger's
expertise in mass murder surely would have given the panel some unique
insights into the terrorist atrocity.
But now it seems that Kean might possess some unique insights of his
own. Fortune Magazine reports this week that both Kean and Bush share
an unusually well-placed business partner: one Khalid bin Mahfouz -- perhaps
better known as "Osama bin Laden's bagman" or even "Osama
bin Laden's brother-in-law."
Kean, like so many worthies, followed the revolving door out of public
service into lucrative sweetheart deals and well-wadded sinecures on corporate
boards. One of these, of course, is an oil company--pretty much a requirement
for White House work these days. (Or as the sign says on the Oval Office
door: "If your rigs ain't rockin', don't come a-knockin'!")
Kean is a director of Amerada Hess, an oil giant married up to Saudi Arabia's
Delta Oil in a venture to pump black gold in Azerbaijan. (The partnership
is incorporated in a secretive offshore "tax haven," natch.
You can't expect a worthy like Kean to pay taxes like some grubby wage
slave.)
One of Delta's biggest backers is the aforesaid Mahfouz, a Saudi wheeler-dealer
who has bankrolled some of most dubious players on the world scene: Abu
Nidal, Manuel Noreiga, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. Mahfouz was
also a front for the bin Laden family, funneling their vast wealth through
American cut-outs in a bid to gain power and influence in the United States.
One of those cut-outs was Mahfouz factotum James Bath, a partner in
George W.'s early oil venture, Arbusto. Bath has admitted serving as a
pass-through for secret Saudi money. Years later, when Bush's maladroit
business skills were about to sink another of his companies, Harken Energy,
the firm was saved by a $25 million investment from a Swiss bank--a subsidiary
of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BBCI), partly owned
by the beneficent Mahfouz.
What was BCCI? Only "one of the largest criminal enterprises in
history," according to the U.S. Senate. What did BCCI do? "It
engaged in pandemic bribery of officials in Europe, Africa, Asia and the
Americas," says journalist Christopher Bryon, who first exposed the
operation. "It laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses
and law officers, engaged in extortion and blackmail. It supplied the
financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism. It financed
and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and prostitution."
Sort of an early version of the Bush Regime, then.
BCCI's bipartisan corruption first permeated the Carter Administration,
then came to full flower in the Reagan-Bush years. The CIA uncovered the
bank's criminal activities in 1981--no great feat, considering how many
of its own foreign "associates" were involved, including the
head of Saudi intelligence, Kamal Adham, brother-in-law of King Faisal.
But instead of stopping the drug-runners and terrorists, the agency decided
to join them, using BCCI's secret channels to finance "black ops"
all over the world.
When a few prosecutors finally began targeting BCCI's operations in
the late Eighties, President George Herbert Walker Bush boldly moved in
with a federal probe directed by Justice Department investigator Robert
Mueller. The U.S. Senate later found that the probe had been unaccountably
"botched"--witnesses went missing, CIA records got "lost,"
all sorts of bad luck. Lower-ranking prosecutors told of heavy pressure
from on high to "lay off." Most of the big BCCI players went
unpunished or, like Mahfouz, got off with wrist-slap fines and sanctions.
Mueller, of course, wound up as head of the FBI, appointed to the post
in July 2001--by George W. Bush.
In the late 1990s, U.S. authorities identified Mahfouz as a major financier
of his brother-in-law's extracurricular activities. He denied it, but
the spooked Saudis put him on ice, charging him with, of all things, bank
fraud. He's now under "house arrest"--or rather, "palatial
mansion arrest"--but still wheeling and dealing with Kean and Delta
and other worthies. Indeed, one of Mahfouz's hirelings--the director of
a Pakistani bank he owns--sits on the advisory board of our old friend
the Carlyle Group, cheek by jowl with the firm's most celebrated shill:
George Herbert Walker Bush.
Somehow we doubt that worthy Kean will poke very hard at the nexus of
intersections between his own business partner, Mahfouz, and the bin Ladens,
the Bushes, the Saudi royals, Saddam, the CIA and BCCI. We've only scratched
the surface here, but even this cursory glance makes the current
world crisis look less like some grand geopolitical "clash of civilizations"
and more like a nasty falling out among thieves, with rival mafias--who
sometimes collude, sometimes collide--now duking it out for turf, cloaking
their murderous criminality with pious rhetoric about freedom, security,
jihad and God.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor
to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
The Thomas Kean conflict story ... has made it to Fortune. Here is the
interesting part:
"Kean, who was unavailable for comment, may not have been aware of
the Mahfouz connection. But Hess spokesman Carl Tursi did reveal another
interesting coincidence: Three weeks before Kean's appointment, Hess severed
its ties with Delta."
This raises some issues: 1. Henry Kissinger was appointed chairman of
the commission on November 27, and resigned on December 13. Kean was appointed
chairman on December 16. It appears that the connection between Hess and
Delta may have been severed in anticipation of Kean being appointed a
member of Kissinger's commission, as it would have occurred almost exactly
at the time of Kissinger's appointment (the alternative is that this is
just another big coincidence). If it did occur in anticipation of Kean
serving on the commission - and it would make sense for Bush, struggling
to find someone in a hurry, to elevate someone to the chairmanship who
had already been selected to be a member of the commission - this indicates
that Kean felt that this relationship with bin Mahfouz/al-Amoudi would
cause trouble.
2. If the connection to Delta was severed on behalf of Kean, isn't this
just another example of the cozy crony capitalism that we've seen too
much of, where the interests of the corporation and its shareholders take
a back seat to the personal interests of the directors? Of course, the
directors could just argue that making Kean happy would make Bush happy,
a happiness that could only benefit the corporation in the long run.
3. What does "Hess severed its ties with Delta" mean? It is
not clear what the actual corporate structure of the Hess/Delta joint
venture was. Did Hess sell its interest to Delta? Did Delta sell its interest
to Hess? Did one or the other sell to a third party? Is Hess still involved
in the project? Is it possible that Hess made some contractual arrangement,
perhaps in the form of an option, whereby it will be able to buy back
into the project after this embarrassing incident with Kean's chairmanship
is over? I find it amazing that Hess would enter into this much discussed
project, the oil exploitation joint venture agreement of which was called
"the contract of the century", part of one of the great hydrocarbon
developments of our time (particularly the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli development,
which is in itself the reason for building the BTC pipeline), and simply
walk away from it (see the history of the development here; Hess bought
Ramco's interest and then combined its interests in the project, in a
still mysterious way, with the interest of Delta to form the joint venture).
I note that an Azerbaijan directory of businesses in Baku still has a
web page for the Delta Hess Alliance (see also here at 13). Hess's website
still shows its 2.72% interest in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli fields, which
may indicate that it is Delta that has left the project. On the other
hand, Hess's News Release dated January 30, 2003 stated: "In the
fourth quarter, the Corporation also recorded a gain from the sale of
an interest in two small producing properties in Azerbaijan."
4. Even severing the ties with Delta won't help Kean's conflict problem
as a director of Amerada Hess. If he is chairman of the 9-11 investigation
commisssion, his commission will still have an obligation to examine sources
of financing for the terrorism, which will lead directly to an examination
of bin Mahfouz and al-Amoudi. Since Kean still owes a duty to Hess, and
Hess was doing business with Delta, Kean's proper investigation will be
likely to breach his duties to Hess. The fact that Hess has terminated
its relationship with Delta doesn't change the fact that Hess was doing
business with Delta at a time that Delta was owned by people who may have
been financing terrorism. Whatever the strict legal position, the public
relations aspects of a proper investigation of bin Mahfouz and al-Almoudi
should deeply trouble Kean.
5. These is also the small matter of the trillion dollar law suit of the
families of the victims of 9-11 against a number of parties, including
bin Mahfouz and al-Amoudi. Obtaining a large judgment against bin Mahfouz
probably isn't worth very much, as I imagine collecting on it would be
impossible. Plaintiff lawyers tend to look for deep-pocketed domestic
defendants. Some enterprising lawyer might see in the Delta/Hess joint
venture a method by which someone like bin Mahfouz might attempt to launder
money that would be use to fund terrorism (the joint venture existed well
before September 11, 2001). Any partner of bin Mahfouz might be seen,
particularly by one of these notoriously stupid American juries, to be
engaged in enabling bin Mahfouz to launder terrorist funds. There would
probably be a number of corporate veils to pierce, but the thousands of
bodies under the WTC make corporate veil piercing quite easy. I don't
know why a completely reputable publicly traded company like Hess would
take the risk of doing business with someone with the reputation of bin
Mahfouz or al-Amoudi (and why did George Bush do business with bin Mahfouz?).
I'm not even going to mention the possibly problematic area of the effect
of various amendments in the laws of the United States contained in the
USA PATRIOT Act, some of which deal with forfeiture of property and the
criminal act of providing material support to terrorists, and which might
apply to actions taken in the United States after the act was passed.
6. Severing the ties with Delta also won't help Kean's conflict problem
as the chairman of the commission. Justice has to be seen to be done.
How are the relatives of the deceased of 9-11 going to be able to trust
an investigation by the chairman of the commission of the owners of a
former business partner of a company of which the chairman is a director,
especially if it is only a former business partner due to the fact that
the business relationship was severed in anticipation of the fact that
the chairman would be a member of the commission doing the investigation?
It is difficult to imagine how anyone could be in more of a conflict of
interest situation.
7. Fortune says that "Kean . . . may not have been aware of the Mahfouz
connection . . . ." Even in these days of amazingly lax standards
of corporate governance, I find it impossible to believe this.There is
absolutely no reason to doubt the integrity of either Amerada Hess or
Thomas Kean (though I have to say I doubt the business sense of dealing
with a company owned by people involved in something like BCCI and who
have been accused of funding terrorism). This whole mess is caused by
the unfortunate connection between Hess and Delta. Part of the problem
could be dealt with by the termination of the relationship with Delta.
The other part of the problem can only be dealt with by the resignation
of Thomas Kean as chairman of the commission.
From winter 2002 / 2003
Shrub's appointment of "Doctor" Henry Kissinger
to lead the "Warren Commission" style investigation of the 9/11
attacks is beyond parody, but it is funny, in a demented sort of way.
The announcement seemed conveniently timed for Thanksgiving Day, when
what is euphemistically called "news" is not as much of a focus
for the country. It doesn't take a crystal ball to predict that Kissinger
and friends will determine that the attacks probably happened because
the CIA, FBI, and the other alphabet agencies needed more surveillance
powers and a larger budget, which the Congress will then rubber stamp.
Of course, the actual budgets of the so-called intelligence agencies is
a state secret (a violation of the Constitution's requirements for open
government) so we will have to trust them that they really do need more
money, even though their budgets are not accountable to anyone. The commission
probably won't discuss in public the Air Force's curious reluctance to
scramble fighter planes to prevent the disaster, the prior warnings from
numerous countries, insider trading on affected companies the week before
the attack, and other evidence that makes "incompetence" an
unlikely explanation.
It is not a good thing that Kissinger left the Commission shortly after
being appointed, since his replacement - former New Jersey Governor Thomas
Kean - has even more blatant conflicts of interest than Henry the K, but
they have largely been ignored by the media (and few people know anything
about him - something that is not the case for the famous mad bomber of
Vietnam).
The independent commission charged with investigating the September 11
terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington has backed down in the
face of White House intransigence and agreed to let the Bush administration
determine what information it will turn over to the panel.
An agreement reached November 13 between the White House and the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States provides very limited
access to the Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs), the daily summaries of
all US intelligence reporting that are the most important documents being
withheld from the commission.
Daschle PNACkles "commission incredible"
By David Kubiak
Saturday, Dec 20, 2003
http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/21097.php
December 17th: 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean fires off a news blip claiming
the September 11 attacks were "preventable," some officials
had "simply failed", and "major revelations" are due
next month. Titillating stuff, without question, but Kean was already
backing off the next day, "clarifying" that "We have no
evidence that anybody high in the Clinton or Bush administrations did
anything wrong," i.e., only mid-level heads may be required to roll.
While the "preventable" crackle fades away on the news ticker,
I would commend your attention to a graver 9/11 story that never made
the crawl bar but directly affects the credibility of this inquiry as
a whole.
December 9th, two days after the 52nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the
National 9/11 Commission itself was hit without warning by Tom Daschle's
bombshell appointment of Iraq hawk Bob Kerrey to replace Max Cleland.
Kean's bully outbursts notwithstanding, the Independent 9/11 Commission
is in trouble. A majority of members have been tarnished with conflict
of interest allegations for their ties to airlines, oil firms, and the
Bush/Cheney crowd. The commission is also under fire for not requiring
witnesses to testify under oath and for allowing administration "minders"
to chaperone its private deposition interviews. The Administration is
not cooperating, the media is missing in action, and the Commission's
clock is running out. With two-thirds of its mandated life already passed,
it is still awaiting access to critical documents from the FAA, NORAD
and the White House.
To make matters far worse, it's also lost Max Cleland, one of the few
commissioners untainted by conflicts of interest and certainly the most
outspoken with regard to the facts. By June of this year Cleland was already
railing loudly against the Administration for "slow-walking"
cooperation, insisting on "minders", and routing the Commission's
information through a "political coordinator" in Ashcroft's
Justice Department Many victim family groups disappointed by the Commission's
compromises, vacuous hearings, and delays were stating privately that
Cleland was one of the only commissioners they could trust.
Then on July 11th, Tom Daschle suddenly and inexplicably nominated Cleland
for one of the Democrat controlled board seats in the Export-Import Bank.
The nomination required a presidential OK, but if approved would expel
Cleland from the 9/11 Commission since no commissioner could simultaneously
hold a federal post. So Daschle had knowingly put the fate of the Administration's
harshest 9/11 critic into the hands of the Bush team itself.
Cleland for his part refused to shut up, "As each day goes by we
learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists
before September 11th than it has ever admitted." (NY Times 10/26/03)
He was also the only member to speak out against the Commission leaders'
deal allowing the White House to severely limit and censure access to
requested Bush briefing documents. As Cleland raged to Wolf Blitzer on
CNN (11/13/03), ""This is a scam, it's disgusting. America is
being cheated... We shouldn't be making deals. If somebody wants to deal,
we issue subpoenas. That's the deal."
That may have been Cleland's idea of the deal, but it was also apparently
the last straw. Nine days later Bush confirmed Cleland's Ex-Im Bank appointment
and purged him from the Commission for good.
The ball then returned Daschle's court as he alone had the authority to
appoint Cleland's successor. The Family Steering Committee, which monitors
the Commission's proceedings on behalf of many victim family groups, lobbied
hard for another commissioner they could believe in -- someone who would
be as fearless, focused and candid as Cleland, and help allay their increasing
qualms. Their three recommendations included former Sen. Gary Hart, who
had co-chaired the prophetic Hart-Rudman Commission on national security
and terrorism; Eleanor Hill, a trusted commission staffer and former Pentagon
Inspector General; and 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser, co- chair of September
11th Advocates. Breitweiser was in fact the family groups' favorite as
she was not only "one of them," she had also been a driving
force behind the 9/11 Commission's creation when Congress's joint intelligence
investigation proved futile and Daschle meekly heeded Cheney's warning
not to launch any inquiries of his own.
Daschle could not be pushed around by just anyone however. He fearlessly
defied all victim group requests and New York editorials recommending
a family member for the post, as well as thousands of faxes and emails
begging him to choose Kristen above all. Daschle not only spurned these
appeals, he flabbergasted everyone by appointing New School University's
controversial president, Bob Kerrey, to the post.
Daschle's press office stressed all the Cleland/Kerrey parallels - both
men were outspoken former senators, red-state Democrats, and decorated
amputee Vietnam vets. What the press releases neglected to note was that,
unlike Cleland, Kerrey was also an ultra-hawk, a strategic ally of Bush's
neocon handlers, and an alleged war criminal to boot.
DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL, JUST RUN
Some who heard the news were disconcerted because of the unresolved war
crime charges against Kerry for his command of a Navy Seals special ops
unit in Vietnam. In the late '90s investigative journalist Gregory Vistica
found Vietnamese and military witnesses who claimed Kerrey ordered the
slaughter of 21 unarmed women and children in a raid on the tiny hamlet
of Thanh Phong in February of 1969. Kerrey went on to lose a leg in a
later skirmish, win the Medal of Honor, and enjoy a meteoric political
career. Pressed by Vistica's revelations, Kerrey finally acknowledged
the massacre in 2001, denying he started it, but admitting he didn't try
to stop it either. Whatever the truth of that night, many more were alarmed
by the fact that he concealed the bloody episode for three decades while
exploiting his "war hero" status to realize his political goals
(which were lofty, including a hard driving Presidential bid in '92).
One mainstream review of Vistica's expose, "The Education of Lieutenant
Kerrey," noted that "Kerrey did his best to control the story
and even to quash it by offering Vistica a job on several occasions. He
also changed his story repeatedly: 'After the many talks I'd had with
Kerrey over two- plus years, I came to see that he regarded the truth
as fluid--something that could be modified, mixed, or diverted to suit
his needs at the moment.'"
Reasonable doubt 1): how can someone who has shown so few misgivings about
cover-ups or fluidic deceit for so long suddenly become a principled champion
of concrete truth and full disclosure overnight?
ANSWERED PRAYERS
After serving one term in Nebraska's governor's mansion and nearly two
in the Senate, Kerrey summed up his national security vision in a famous
1999 speech that urged more of everything martial: more intrusive intelligence,
more sweeping surveillance, more billions (by far) for the Pentagon, and
a more damn-the-costs-tests-&-treaties--full-speed-ahead! approach
to Star Wars.
Reasonable doubt 2): if these were indeed your policy objectives, sir,
what about the post-9/11 world is not to like?
PNAC: THE LITTLE RAD POLICY ENGINE THAT COULD
If Kerrey's gung ho '99 overtures seem to chorus the militant anthems
of the Project for a New American Century, you have a good ear. PNAC,
you may recall, presents itself as an ultra-patriotic think tank and the
strategy Vatican of neo-conservatism. PNAC members and alumni like Cheney,
Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle, Abrams, et al. now dominate White House decision-making
and are the guiding force behind our current global adventurist spree.
For the last five years PNAC members have openly advocated total US military
and economic domination of land, space, and cyberspace to secure global
hegemony and economic supremacy, all of which would speedily deliver --
drum roll -- "the New American Century!"
PNAC has been the clearest voice promoting US control of the oil rich
Middle East states; the loudest boosting military spending, full spectrum
dominance, and space war tech; and the most wistful (in 2000) publicly
lamenting that all its grand designs would take forever to realize without
"some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
It's becoming clear that we the people should pay heed to what these guys
pray for, since they always seem to get their wish. One real concern,
as readers of Robert Stinnett's densely documented "Day of Deceit"
(Free Press, 1999) may recall, is that the "old" Pearl Harbor
was not exactly a grim godsend or even a surprise attack. Stinnett reprints
the Navy intercepts and internal memos that prove FDR knew it was coming
and deftly used the ensuing outrage against Japan to ship troops off to
Europe. (At least until our troops took Baghdad, this ranked as the greatest
political bank shot of our age.) FDR's foreknowledge has in fact long
been known to serious students of the era, and the PNAC fellowship, if
nothing else, is a historically literate crew.
Whatever this administration's foreknowledge of 9/11 (and god knows they
were warned eleven times), the issue with Kerrey is his ex post facto
collusion with the PNAC crowd to pump the 9/11 terror to sell the conquest
of Iraq.
MARKETING MAYHEM
Indeed to many 9/11 victim families in the Peaceful Tomorrows and Not
in Our Name camp, Kerrey's most disturbing employment was his zealous
membership in the PNAC-dominated Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
Better known in peace & justice circles as the Committee to Bomb Iraq,
the CLI was a White House-anointed "advocacy group" founded
in November 2002 to bolster faltering poll support for PNAC's long planned
Iraq war. Its mission according to its own website at the time: "The
Committee for the Liberation of Iraq will engage in educational and advocacy
efforts to mobilize U.S. and international support for policies aimed
at ending the aggression of Saddam Hussein… [which] poses a clear
and present danger to its neighbors, to the United States, and to free
peoples throughout the world."
Although Saddam's "clear and present danger" remained ominously
unspecified, PNAC board fixture and CLI executive director Randy Scheunemann
saw a more immediate threat arising here at home: "There's going
to be a huge need in the post-[2002] election vacuum to make sure that
what happened in August [when support for unilateral Iraq intervention
fell to 27% in the polls] doesn't happen in November and December... Capitol
Hill offices have been getting a lot of calls against [attacking Iraq]
and not many for."
With public support tanking and Iraq war prep well underway, a huge PR
campaign was called for and the CLI delivered. Chorusing White House canards
about WMDs, mushroom clouds, UN futility, and Iraq/Al Qaeda collusion,
CLI members and friends launched a media offensive that deluged news shows,
op-ed pages, and high profile podia for three months. By March, deception
prevailed, angst was restored, a majority believed Saddam had backed 9/11,
and nearly 60% were ready for us to take him on alone.
By any PR standard the campaign was audacious and a great success. Poli-
sci and propaganda buffs will no doubt study its techniques for many years.
But beyond its skillful mendacity, the nature of CLI's membership teaches
important lessons as well.
GAMES OF MONOPOLY, WAR AND PNACKLE
Remember Mussolini's maxim that fascism should rightly be called corporatism
because it merges corporate interests with state power? Well, the Committee
for the Liberation of Iraq is sort of an American microcosm of Benito's
corporate-martial dream, a corporatist hologram of our military-industrial
complex writ small. Consider the strategic fusion.
You want military? Check recent CV entries for CLI Prez Scheunemann (Rumsfeld's
Iraq policy consultant), or Richard Perle (Assistant Secretary of Defense
& Chairman, Defense Policy Board), or Frank Gaffney (Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense) or James Woolsey (CIA chief) or arch-hawks like
General Wayne Downing (Deputy National Security advisor & Iraq National
Congress lobbyist) and General Buster Glosson (Chief of Gulf War I bombing
campaign)
You want industrial? CLI chairman Bruce P. Jackson was a top seed in defense
industry games throughout the Nineties and weapons giant Lockheed Martin's
VP for Strategy and Planning right up to 2002 when he took the CLI post.
Chairman of the CLI Board was George Schultz, a patriarch of Bechtel,
which would go on to "win" more than $600 million in uncontested
Iraqi infrastructure contracts. And let's not forget the indefatigable
General Barry McCaffrey, notorious Gulf War I field commander, who now
represents Raytheon Aerospace, Integrated Defense Technologies, and Veritas
Capital, a growing Carlyle Group wannabe.
You want a complex? Consider the swarming CLI / PNAC nexus: not just CLI
insiders like PNAC co-founder Robert Kagain, PNAC chairman William Kristol,
PNAC's executive director Gary Schmitt, PNAC director Scheunemann, and
PNAC's "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle, but also the Committee's
compulsory conclaves with PNAC progenitors Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
Just how much more PNACkled can one little group get?
These linkages are critical because they tie Kerrey directly into the
heart of a crowd now being charged in various quarters with 9/11 foreknowledge,
passive abetment and thus treason and murder. Indeed respected former
cabinet ministers in both Britain and Germany have argued in print this
year that 9/11 was "allowed to happen" as a great enabler for
PNAC's imperial campaigns. In the US, Ellen Mariani, an elderly 9/11 widow,
recently filed a civil RICO (Racketeering, Influence, and Corrupt Organization)
Act complaint against Bush and such key PNAC puppeteers as Cheney and
Rumsfeld, presenting forty pages of evidence that they "knowingly
let 9/11 happen for their personal and political gain." The gains
enumerated include not only fear-induced poll bloat and 2002 congressional
victories, but also the huge windfall profits realized by defendant-related
firms in the destruction/reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq. (For
example, Cheney's 433,000 Halliburton stock options alone have now appreciated
to $26 million plus.)
Until these accusations are fully explored and adjudicated, Kerrey's close
strategic cooperation with these defendants in hyping their agenda makes
him a prime "person of interest" in both the evidential and
auxiliary sense.
WHO YA GONNA CALL? A TRUST-BUSTER?
So to sum up our reasonable doubts: Is a man who has: a) shown no personal
aversion to grave cover-ups and duplicity; b) noisily promoted the militarist
policies that 9/11 delivered; and c) collaborated with alleged accomplices
in, and obvious beneficiaries of, the 9/11 attacks, really the best candidate
we can find for a 9/11 sleuth?
Who knows what Daschle was thinking when he sacrificed Cleland, ignored
victim family pleas, and conjured up Kerrey (or for that matter what possessed
him earlier to spike his own 9/11 probe, back the Iraq war, and cheerfully
sign off on the Patriotic Act)?
What we do know is Kerrey's own view of his job, which was published the
same day as Kean's "preventable" claim. "The commission
should not be a vehicle to bash President Bush, in Kerrey's view. The
commission will have to do its work 'respectfully - but forcefully,' he
said, so as 'not to embarrass the president.'" (NY Villager, 12/17/03)
We also know that whomever the commission might eventually finger for
"failure" or "incompetence", the crucial question
of winking foreknowledge has yet to be raised, and without Cleland's brave
holler the victims' answer-hungry kin will have a much lonelier row to
hoe.
-----
W. David Kubiak is director of Big Medicine, a research and education
institute studying the corporate takeover of our country, culture and
consciousness. His email is bigmed(at)nancho.net.
The 9/11 "investigation"- sometimes priorities dictate
www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/120603Tomasi/120603tomasi.html
By Kerry Tomasi Online Journal Contributing Writer
"My father's no different than any other powerful
man. Like a senator or president."
"You know how naïve you sound? Senators and presidents don't
have men killed".
"Oh. Who's being naïve, Kay?"
-- Michael Corleone in "The
Godfather".
December 6, 2003-Suppose you were a detective assigned
to investigate a rather brutal murder, one in which the victim had been
tortured for several days prior to being killed.
At the scene of the crime you get what appears to be a lucky break-the
suspect's wallet seems to have been 'carelessly' dropped. It contains
his name, address, and phone number, and is someone you recognize as having
connections to an organized crime family.
Problem is, you also find your name and address in there, as well as those
of your children, grandchildren, and all of your nieces and nephews.
The message is quite clear, and your priorities dictate. You pocket the
wallet, and any other evidence you happen upon, and the crime goes unsolved.
Now suppose you were a congressman assigned to investigate the 911 terrorist
attacks. As you begin, it becomes apparent that certain members of the
US government had conspired to allow the attacks to occur. In fact, it's
just lying there, slightly below the surface, right out in the open. You
immediately realize you're dealing with the kind of people who would-at
the very least, and simply to further a political agenda-look the other
way while 3,000 civilians were murdered.
And if that wasn't troubling enough, you then get a 'friendly' visit from
someone you've never met before, inquiring into how well your daughter
is doing at that overseas university in Dorm Room 305, and if your nephew
made it into that prestigious preschool at 735 S. 4th Street in Atlanta.
You might even get a little note in the mail-laced with a powdery substance-just
to help you sort things out in your head. The message is quite clear,
and your priorities dictate. When the "investigation" is complete,
no governmental complicity in the crime is revealed.
As Henry Kissinger once theorized (as related in Paul Krugman's book "The
Great Unraveling"), when a revolutionary power seeks to overthrow
an existing and stable system, it begins first by refusing to acknowledge
the legitimacy of that system, or it's rules. Those living within the
system do not realize this, and therefore reject the notion that anyone
would, for instance, disobey 'the rules' so blatantly and permit the murder
of 3,000
people purely for political gain; even though such an action (or inaction)
would hand the conspirators the cover to achieve virtually everything
they could have ever dreamed of politically.
Anyone who tries to suggest that they would actually do such a thing,
or attempts to find out if they did, is derided as an alarmist and unpatriotic
by those within the existing system, and given subtle, or not so subtle,
'encouragement' by the conspirators to 'pocket the wallet.' Thus, the
revolutionary power is able to proceed unencumbered, without fear of oversight
or challenge.
Could this be where we are in this country right now? Does anything else
make sense?
What else would justify the silence and/or acquiescence of certain 'in-the-know'
members of our society to the flagrant economic, environmental, and societal
devastation going on today? Why are the Democrats, the media (those not
controlled by the 'revolutionary power'), the intelligence community,
and even traditional conservatives, so cowed by this movement? Why won't
they investigate, or at least speak up?
It can't simply be that they're worried about losing their jobs, or want
a big tax cut that bad. Not with so much at stake. There has to be something
more sinister in play here. Something most of us thought could never happen
in this country. Not on this scale anyway.
I know this all sounds somewhat cynical and a bit paranoid. That's probably
because I am quite cynical and a bit paranoid these days. I've been paying
attention-I can't help but be. But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong.
And if I am right, we are truly in a dreadfully serious situation.
Addendum:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 (UPI)-Former Sen. Max Cleland,
a Democrat, has been nominated by President Bush to serve on the board
of the Export-Import Bank. As a result he will have to leave the commission
investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The statutes governing
the panel, formally known as The National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States, bar anyone who holds a federal job
like being on the Ex-Im Board.
Cleland has been one of the more outspoken members of the commission,
accusing the administration of delaying access to vital documents in an
effort to run out the clock on its investigation. My best wishes to Mr.
Cleland, and all of his family members.
It will surprise no one that the official biographies listed on the official
website of the commission do not mention any of the seedy information
on this page ... not because this website is wrong, but because the official
effort is merely part of the cover-up, a truncated effort forced upon
the administration they only supported because several forces, including
some of the 911 families, embarrassed the administration to the point
that they had to have an inquiry. However, this investigation has very
little money, is structurally compromised, and has flagrant conflicts
of interest by most of its members that should be front page news in every
newspaper in the country.
The commission’s hearings received scant media attention, drowned
out by the celebratory coverage of the ongoing slaughter in Iraq. Despite
the wealth of unanswered questions about September 11 and the raw emotions
of those who survived or lost loved ones in the attacks, there is no desire
by any of the major media organizations to independently probe these issues.
The Kean commission’s determination to leave these questions untouched
is one more indication that the political establishment has much to hide
from the American public about these tragic events.
www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/opinion/31MON2.html
New York Times
Editorial
March 31, 2003
Undercutting the 9/11 Inquiry
It's hard to believe that everything related to the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks will not get the most thorough public scrutiny possible. But the
federal investigative committee so reluctantly supported by the White
House now seems in danger of being undermined. As the first hearings open
in Manhattan today, committee members are chagrined to be going hat in
hand to Congress for adequate financing. White House assurances led them
to believe needed funds would be included in the supplemental war budget
sent to the Capitol last week. But the commission's $11 million request
was not there.
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 million.
The nation demands an unflinching 9/11 search. A forthright Congress could
easily shake the money loose from the Capitol leadership. Everyone claims
to have homeland security as a top priority, but anything less than a
robust inquiry will amount to a fresh assault on domestic safety. Tim
Roemer, a former congressman and a commission member now buttonholing
old colleagues for the missing money, makes the case best: "Facing
the facts won't kill us. Not getting them might."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
March 22, 2003
Memory Lane
Bush Uses War to Bury Probe of 9/11
By CHRIS FLOYD
Long before Genghis W. Bush and his Boardroom Horde launched their campaign
of rapine against the clapped-out Iraqi regime, there was a little incident
involving hijacked planes, famous buildings and the mass slaughter of
innocent people on American soil that caused a good deal of commotion
at the time. You might remember; it happened on September 11 a couple
of years back.
True, Genghis does mention it occasionally, as part of his successful
bamboozling of the shell-shocked American people into blaming Iraq for
the atrocity, which was of course financed and carried out by faithful
followers of the extremist variant of Islam propagated worldwide by the
Bush Family's longtime pals and patrons, the Saudi royals. The attacks
were also facilitated at least in part (and perhaps--let's be charitable--indirectly)
by extremist elements in the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, longtime
ally of the Bush family firm, the CIA. The connections between these Bush
cronies and the Taliban, al Qaeda and the killers of journalist Daniel
Pearl are extensively documented in the public record.
Of course, the American public is told nothing of this record. Their own
history--even the recent horror that exploded live on their TV screens
that fateful September morning--is being falsified and obliterated by
the Bush Regime and its cowed, corrupted and ignorant enablers in the
media. Dazzled by the glitzy video-game graphics of the wardrumming TV
networks, and battered by a ceaseless barrage of lies from their leaders--even
from the sainted Colin Powell, whose much-ballyhooed "case for the
prosecution" at the UN has since been revealed as a farrago of fake
documents, doctored tapes and plagiarised schoolwork--a full 45 percent
of Americans now believe the transparent lie that Saddam Hussein was involved
in the September 11 attacks. Yet in the first months after the assault--before
the Bush fog machine went to work--only 3 percent of the public believed
this lunatic conspiracy theory, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
This week we saw how the national amnesia induced by the Bush blizzard
of bull is serving another useful purpose for the unelected junta: obscuring
its hugger-mugger strangulation of the "Independent Commission"
appointed to investigate the September 11 attacks.
Of course, Genghis long resisted any outside probe into the catastrophic
failure of his beloved secret services to thwart the plotters--not to
mention the Horde's strangely tepid response to the attack itself. Even
after severe public pressure forced Bush to convene an independent panel,
he tried to sandbag the proceedings by appointing accused war criminal
and self-proclaimed master of the public lie, Henry Kissinger, as chairman.
But Hank exited the scene rather than submit to disclosure rules that
would have revealed the extent of his role as bagman for the Saudis and
other interested parties.
Finally, a less controversial bagman for Saudi interests, Thomas Keane--an
oil business partner of Osama bin Laden's financier and brother-in-law,
Saudi magnate Khalid bin Mahfouz--was appointed to head the panel. At
last it seemed the commission's Establishment worthies could actually
get down to work. But one should never underestimate--or even misunderestimate--the
ingenuity of professional liars like the Bush boys. For they quietly found
another way to nobble the commission: subjecting the panel members--who
were picked, remember, because of their reputations for impeachable probity
and public service--to months-long security checks before allowing them
access to the secret documents at the heart of the probe, the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer reports.
Most commissioners already have security clearance from their previous
government service, but the Horde has decided to put many of them--those
not directly appointed by Bush, apparently--through the glacially-paced
FBI background checks yet again. How long will this take? Coy FBI officials
will say only that the usual length for such checks is 10 months. But
here's the beauty part: the panel is required to deliver its report to
Congress in just 14 months--leaving only enough time for the kind of rush-rush,
hush-hush whitewash the Horde has always wanted.
Family Quarrel
Of course, America's carefully cultivated amnesia also covers the entire
background history of the Bush rampage in Iraq. Few folks back in the
Homeland realize that Bush's planned mass murder of Iraqi children--half
the population targeted by his "Shock and Awe" missiles is under
age 15--is simply a falling out among thieves, old comrades in crime.
Yes, just like Daddy Bush's old punching bag, Panama's Manuel Noreiga,
and even the Islamic Pimpernel himself, Osama, Saddam is a son of the
CIA, as historian Roger Morris detailed in the New York Times this week.
In 1963, the CIA helped Saddam and his Baathist Party take power in a
brutal coup. Operating from secret bases in Kuwait (where Daddy Bush was
drilling for oil with his business partners, the Kuwaiti royals), the
Agency directed Baath rebels as they laid some serious "regime chance"
on an Iraqi strongman who'd gotten a bit uppity by seeking advanced weaponry
and challenging Western hegemony over the region. After winning power,
Saddam and his fellow CIA proxies launched a blood-Baath, systematically
murdering hundreds of people from lists helpfully supplied by American
agents. Five years later, the CIA gave Saddam and his family another boost,
helping their faction oust rivals in an internal power struggle. And still
later, that future CIA boss, now translated to Oval glory, would turn
out to be the most lavish and fawning of Saddam's many American sugar
daddies--long after the "Hitler of our day" had "gassed
his own people."
No, these dark forces--these secret agencies, these corrupt political
families, who gorge themselves on plunder and proxy murder--have never
been "liberators." They are not liberators now.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor
to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
Some two weeks ago or so much of the 'thinking' world was stunned to hear
that President Bush had appointed Henry Kissinger as Chairman of the 'independent'
commission of inquiry into the 911 attacks on the US. It is well known
in political and academic circles that Kissinger is a past master of secrecy
and deception, even if the impression of him held by a sometimes poorly
informed general public is commonly an honourable one.
The Bush administration had long delayed agreeing to legislation on the
911 inquiry until it could be sure of finding a chairman whom it could
rely upon not to dig too deep. But now Kissinger has himself suddenly
resigned, throwing the Bush 911 cover-up strategy into disarray - at least
for the moment.
Right from the minute he was appointed to lead the Commission, fierce
public pressure built up on Kissinger to declare his conflicts of interest,
and in particular to disclose the clients of his private consulting firm
'Kissinger Associates'.
Rather than concede to this Kissinger has now decided to resign his post,
despite the major embarrassment this causes to both himself and the White
House. Such has been the brazen arrogance of the Bush administration since
911 that clearly neither Kissinger nor the White House had anticipated
the intense public pressure that would arise for the disclosure of his
business associations.
Given the highly damaging nature of the resignation it is difficult not
to conclude that such disclosure must have had the potential to lead to
even worse, and therefore immense, embarrassment. And indeed this seems
more than likely. In particular disclosure would almost certainly have
placed further public attention on Kissinger's role as an adviser to US
oil company Unocal and its relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan
(more details below).
But this would not have simply been a personal embarrassment to Kissinger.
The Unocal trail leads directly to Enron and then on towards Vice President
Dick Cheney.
Former federal war crimes prosecutor John Loftus already claims knowledge
of paperwork confirming secret dealings between Enron and the Taliban.
According to Loftus an al-Qaeda document on this subject was discovered
in 1998 by FBI counter-terrorism chief, John O'Neil, following the US
embassy bombings in Africa.
The real dynamite, however, is that Loftus also claims that Cheney instructed
the FBI in January 2001 to back-off investigations of al-Qaeda in order
to protect Enron's interest in the development of a gas pipeline through
Afghanistan. That pipeline was originally due to be built by Unocal, with
no less than Henry Kissinger himself hired by them to advise on the project.
O'Neil resigned from the FBI in the summer of 2001 in protest at the attempts
by the Bush administration to obstruct him in his pursuit of al-Qaeda
- and the rest, as they say, is history. Or not quite.
Although O'Neil took a job at the World Trade Centre following his resignation
and was killed in the attacks on 911, Loftus says that fellow FBI agent
Robert Wright has compiled his own findings on the Enron block. Wright
has, however, been prevented by his superiors from publishing them.
Nonetheless Wright told the press earlier this year about other aspects
of FBI efforts to stifle terrorist investigations. The FBI continues to
illegally refuse the release of his 500 page manuscript, 'Fatal Betrayals
of the Intelligence Mission', that he submitted for prepublication review
in October 2001. In fact, the FBI has even refused to turn the manuscript
over to Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Vice Chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Commitee, charged with investigating the FBI’s intelligence failures.
Wright has now launched a lawsuit against the FBI.
So with a variety of time bombs apparently ticking away in the background,
and with Kissinger no longer in a position to neutralise them on behalf
of the White House, what is the Bush administration now going to do about
the 911 Commission? It's too late to stop the inquiry because it's already
on the statute books. The legislation was finally signed by Bush in November
once Kissinger had been secured for the job. Now Kissinger is suddenly
gone and so too is the Commission's vice chairman.
Is Bush's luck in fact starting to run out, or will Cheney be able to
retrieve the situation for him?
The replacement that has already been secured for the Vice Chair of the
Commission - Lee Hamilton - is a Democrat previously accused of participating
in inquiry cover-ups of alleged wrongdoings by Bush's father during the
Reagan era (ominously the official records of previous Presidents have
now been subjected to an Executive Order by Bush junior restricting public
access to them).
The earlier Bush related inquiries in which Hamilton was involved concern
the 'October Surprise' and 'Iran-Contra' scandals. And Cheney was in there
too - according to the reporter who broke parts of the Iran-Contra story
through Newsweek and Associated Press. In a more recent analysis entitled
'Covering Up Iran-Contra' (Consortium News, 5 November 2000 ) he comments
on Hamilton's and Cheney's role in that investigation as follows:
"A senior committee source said one of Cheney’s top priorities
was to block Democrats from deposing Vice President Bush about his Iran-contra
knowledge....... Despite surrendering to Cheney’s demands time and
again, Hamilton failed, in the end, to get a single House Republican to
sign the final report. Only three moderate Republicans on the Senate side
– Warren Rudman, William Cohen and Paul Trible – agreed to
sign the report, after extracting more concessions. Cheney and the other
Republicans submitted a minority report that denied that any significant
wrongdoing had occurred.... The watered-down Iran-contra majority report
essentially let Vice President Bush off the hook. Bush’s political
career was saved..... [and in] 1989, Cheney became Bush’s defense
secretary."
In the case of the 'October Surprise' hearings, one senior White House
correspondent pointed out at the time that "Hamilton held a press
conference to clear Bush before the investigation into the deal between
the Reagan-Bush candidates for presidential office and the Iranians, had
even started."
Despite his Democrat background Hamilton's closeness to the Bush Administration
is clear. A PTI newswire 21 December 2000 states: "According to Republican
sources, former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton’s nomination
as either Ambassador to the UN or as CIA director is also being considered
(by the new Bush Administration)". Hamilton also holds Central Intelligence
Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency awards.
The key issue now for the 911 commission is who will be appointed to replace
Kissinger, and will Kissinger, Cheney and Bush themselves be subpoenaed
to give evidence?
On the face of it things may not be too hopeful. According to an ABC News
news report before the Kissinger resignation "President Bush does
not envision testifying before an independent commission investigating
the Sept. 11 attacks .... The bill being signed by Bush, in most cases,
requires six of 10 panel members to approve subpoenas, meaning at least
one GOP [i.e Republican] panelist would have to side with Democrats to
compel Bush's testimony. The White House withheld its support of the bill
until it could ensure subpoena powers were limited."
How this situation is justified when President Clinton was forced into
giving evidence on the Lewinsky saga - a matter of infinitely trivial
importance by comparison - is beyond imagination. A dozing or pathetically
servile American press has yet to forcefully raise this simple point.
However, a week (or a fortnight in this case) is a long time in politics,
especially as the anti-war movement in the US now seems to be growing
fast. Nonetheless there is a danger that the Kissinger 911 fiasco could
cause panic to set in at the White House, making the media diversion that
would be caused by a war with Iraq (not to mention the likely ensuing
chaos in the Middle East) an even more appealing option for the lunatic
Bush team.
Or are the wheels about to come off their wagon before they get the chance?
Events can overtake even the most cunning, and much may be yet in store.
As John Loftus neatly puts it: "... the information provided by European
intelligence sources prior to 9/11 was so extensive, that it is no longer
possible for either CIA or the FBI to assert a defense of incompetence...
If Congress ever combines its Enron investigation with 9/11, Cheney’s
whole house of cards will collapse."
Kean's conflict is at the very heart of what his commission is supposed
to investigate. The commission is to examine whether the attacks could
have been avoided and is to recommend steps to prevent future attacks.
The reason the issue has become politicized - the reason why Bush was
forced by public pressure by the families of the victims of September
11 to establish such a commission - is that there remains a lingering
suspicion that the Bush Administration was somehow at fault for not stopping
the terrorism. There are three levels of suspicion:
1. The idea that the Bush Administration was behind the terrorist attacks,
or at least that part of the U. S. military or intelligence apparatus
close to the military industrial complex and members of the Bush Administration
planned the terrorism to satisfy various goals. This makes a lot of sense,
but is too conspiratorial for most Americans.
2. The idea that the Bush Administration ignored the massive amounts
of specific warnings of the attacks and arranged for the remarkably slow
NORAD response in order to allow the terrorism to occur, again to satisfy
various goals. This makes even more sense, and given the unbelievable
sluggishness of NORAD seems to me to be practically a certainty, but is
still too conspiratorial for most Americans.
3. The idea that business ties of various members of the Bush Administration,
particularly to the Bush family itself, led to improper restrictions in
the investigations being conducted by U. S. counterterrorism agencies
on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, restrictions which allowed the terrorism
to occur. This in my mind is an absolute certainty, and is so suspicious
that it appears to lie behind the concerns of the families of the victims.We
have to go back to John O'Neill, the the director of counterterrorism
for the FBI's New York office, and the FBI's leading expert on bin Laden.
He was a driven man, and was determined to catch bin Laden and stop his
organization, but was thwarted by what he felt was political interference
by the U. S. government. He was so frustrated at not being allowed to
do his job that he quit in disgust, and took a job as head of security
for the World Trade Center, only to die on his second day of work, probably
when he heroically went back into one of the towers to try to save people.
O'Neill felt that the answers to the terrorism question lay in Saudi Arabia,
and in particular, in the relationship between U. S. corporate oil interests
and the Saudi elites which were financing the terrorism. The U. S. policy
of treating the terrorist threat as subordinate to corporate interests
goes back at least to the Clinton Administration, but became even more
exaggerated under Bush, possibly because Bush and his family had personal
business connections with the Saudi elites, including the financiers of
al-Qaeda (not to mention the amazing fact that Bush's father's company,
Carlyle, had as an investor the bin Laden family itself - to quote myself:
"it is as if during the Second World War the main American military
supplier was partly owned by Roosevelt's father and partly owned by Hitler's
brother"). O'Neill's problems peaked when his investigation of the
bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen was acrimoniously thwarted by the U.
S. ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine. O'Neill's exit from the FBI seems
to have been hastened by some odd charges involving a missing briefcase,
an issue which supposedly led to his understanding that he would no longer
be considered for promotion. We have seen a number of examples where FBI
agents attempted to investigate suspicious incidents, but were mysterously
thwarted by the FBI bureaucracy (e. g., the Phoenix memorandum on Arabs
attending U.S. flight schools, the story of FBI informant Aukai Collins,
the failure to obtain a FISA warrant against Moussaoui - the man who heads
the FBI's National Security Law Unit, the unit that blocked the Minneapolis
agents from pursuing their suspicions about Moussaoui, recently received
a reward for "exceptional performance", which carried with it
a cash bonus of 20 to 35 percent of his salary and a framed certificate
signed by the President!). All of these incidents, together with O'Neill's
concerns, have to lead one to wonder whether corporate interests interfered
with a proper investigation of al-Qaeda, an investigation which would
have prevented 9-11. Kean's conflict fits squarely into this problem:
he is a director of a U. S. oil corporation which is in partnership with
a company owned by a family in the Saudi elites which is very closely
associated with Khalid bin Mahfouz, a man who probably financed President
Bush's oil business, a man closely associated with the debacle of BCCI,
and a man who has been alleged to be a financier of al-Qaeda. Kean is
supposed to investigate whether U. S. corporate oil interests, and in
particular business interests and connections of the President of the
United States, had any adverse effect on the proper counterterrorism investigations
of the U. S. government, when Kean has much the same sort of corporate
crony connections to exactly the same man.
posted 2:45 AMSaturday, December 28, 2002
I was afraid that the conflict of interest of the new chairman of Bush's
9-11 whitewash commission, Thomas Kean, was going to go completely unnoticed,
but Michel Chossudovsky, who writes excellent stuff which reminds me of
the work of Peter Dale Scott (no higher praise is possible), has written
a good article on the subject. I have a few comments: 1. The family ties
between Khalid bin Mahfouz and Osama bin Laden are still somewhat murky.
I have seen reference to both bin Mahfouz being married to bin Laden's
sister and bin Laden being married to bin Mahfouz's sister (I also recollect
a letter to the editor of the National Post by a lawyer for bin Mahfouz
denying at least one of these connections). In any event, it seems to
me to be more important that bin Mahfouz may be linked to Islamic charities
that have financed al-Qaeda. It's not that we know that bin Mahfouz is
so linked - Kean's problem is that part of his mandate as chairman could
lead him to uncover this connection, meaning that he would be forced to
reveal a connection between al-Qaeda and a partner of a corporation of
which he is a director.
2. Kean's conflict problem is actually two conflict problems. As chairman
of the commission, he will presumably have to swear some sort of oath
to uphold the truth, an oath which he won't be able to swear because of
Amerada Hess's connections, through the Delta Hess Alliance, to possible
financiers of al-Qaeda. On the other hand, as a director of Amerada Hess,
he also has a fiduciary duty to Amerada Hess and probably its shareholders,
a duty which would preclude him putting himself in a position where his
oath as chairman of the commission would force him to damage the corporate
interests of Amerada Hess. This damage would occur if the commission were
to discover that bin Mahfouz is a financier of al-Qaeda, a discovery which
would presumably mean, due to U. S. anti-terrorism laws, that Amerada
Hess would no longer be able to participate in the potentially very lucrative
Delta Hess Alliance. Kean breaches his duty as a director of Amerada Hess
just by putting himself in a position where information disadvantageous
to Amerada Hess might be found, even if such information is only inadvertantly
stumbled upon by a commission researcher (researchers are the most dangerous
people, as they have the tendency to go looking for truths they're not
supposed to find). In other words, he breaches his duty to Amerada Hess
simply by assuming a duty to the commission which could force him to reveal
truths about bin Mahfouz. Kean is putting himself in the position of looking
for a gas leak with a lighted match.
3. He might try to remove his conflict problem by resigning as a director
of Amerada Hess, but that wouldn't stop his fiduciary duty to the corporation
for acts taken while he was a director, nor would it erase his memory
of whatever he happens to know about bin Mahfouz due to his position as
a director. I suppose Amerada Hess might try to waive any duty Kean has
to them, but the shareholders would probably have something to say about
that.
4. It sounds horrible, but it is not out of the question that Bush picked
Kean because Kean was so completely conflicted in this matter that he
would act to cover up the potentially extremely embarrassing connections
between the Bush family and the bin Mahfouz and bin Laden families.
5. The sweet, sweet irony of all this is that Kean's conflict problems
may actually be worse than
Kissinger's.
Monday, December 23, 2002
The United States, in an announced change in policy, is planning to set
up eight to ten bases in Afghanistan in the next six months "in hopes
of boosting reconstruction efforts and regional security". "In
addition, the new bases will try 'to dampen regional tensions' and to
project the power of the central government in Kabul into the provinces,
Joe Collins, deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations,
said at a Pentagon briefing." Collins said that this reconfiguration
would not increase the size of the U. S. military presence in Afghanistan,
which currently stands at about 9,000 troops. However, another official
said the U. S. presence could increase if the Army Corps of Engineers
is "tapped for a major construction project", which he said
is being contemplated. A major construction project? Now, what could that
possibly be? Well, (insane) Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov, fresh
from an assassination attempt, has announced a summit to be held on December
26-27 between himself, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, and American
stooge Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, to discuss the building of a gas pipeline
linking Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan. This is the infamous
gas pipeline that crazed conspiracy theorists claimed was the real reason
for the American attack on Afghanistan, especially given that Afghanistan
seemed to have nothing to do with September 11, and since the Americans
have been noticeably unsuccessful at capturing al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan
or controlling the country. If a pipeline is to be built, bases will be
needed to protect the contruction workers and the built pipeline. Attacks
on workers, the pipeline, and these bases will keep the local warlords
entertained for years, and may even lead to the vietnamization of Afghanistan
for the American military. Of course, paying for these bases is in effect
a direct subsidy from the American taxpayers to the oily friends of the
Bush Administration who will benefit from the construction business and
from the gas in the pipeline.
911 Commission - Forgedda Boudit
Medium Rare
By Jim Rarey
12-29-2002
A cruel sham is being perpetrated on the American public and especially
on the families of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. One of the expectations
of the public is that the Commission established to investigate the attacks
will find out what the government (in particular intelligence agencies)
knew prior to the attacks. However, both the restrictions on the Commission
and the composition of its members are designed to prevent just that.
The Commission was established by the 2003 Intelligence Authorization
Act (H.R. 4628) to (1) conduct an investigation, (2) identify, review
and evaluate lessons learned, and (3) issue a report to the President
and Congress containing findings, conclusions and recommendations.
While the first part of Section 604 of the Act defining the Commission's
functions appears to give it a broad mandate of areas for investigation
(including intelligence agencies), a following provision limits its inquiry
into the 'intelligence community' to areas not covered by the 'Joint Inquiry'
of Congressional Intelligence Committees unless there is new information
not reviewed by the congressional investigation.
Commission members and staff will be required to have appropriate security
clearances before they are given access to classified information. This
probably means that any final report to the public will be 'sanitized'
of classified information, as is the report of the congressional 'Joint
Inquiry.' In other words, any meaningful information the Commission might
find (despite the restrictions on it) will not be made public. Committee
staff members are considered government employees and are subject to severe
penalties for leaking classified information.
Some public hearings may be held but obviously will not deal with classified
information. Each agency furnishing information to the Commission establishes
its own classifications. The Commission can issue subpoenas for
information or compelling testimony but only if at least six of the ten
members approve or both the chairman and vice chairman approve.
If a subpoena is ignored, a U.S. District Court can issue an order to
comply and if still ignored, cite the person or persons for contempt.
Alternatively, by majority vote the commission can issue a non-binding
request to a U.S. Attorney to bring the matter before a grand jury. U.S.
Attorneys report to the Attorney General, or a subordinate, in the Department
of Justice.
The Commission is required to issue its final report eighteen months
after the authorizing legislation went into effect.
If the limited scope of the commission is not enough, the membership
of the commission virtually guarantees that nothing meaningful will emerge.
In this writers opinion there are three general categories of persons
who should have been excluded from the commission. The first is anyone
who is a member of an organization that advocates abdicating U.S. sovereignty
in favor of governance by a regional or world body. The premier organization
pushing that concept for the last eight decades is the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR). Members of the CFR hold a significant number of high-level
government positions.
A second category would be anyone who has had involvement with the 'intelligence
community.' This would include members of congress who have been on intelligence
committees as well as some private sector members of advisory boards.
The rationale is that those persons likely have either been co-opted or
have become inured to accepting assertions of intelligence agencies at
face value.
The third criterion, which would mostly apply to government officials
and members of congress, is anyone who participated in a cover-up of illegal
activity related to organizations or groups involved in terrorism or the
related activities of drug distribution and money laundering.
COMMISSION MEMBERS
Thomas Kean
Then let's begin with the chairman of the commission Thomas Kean, former
New Jersey Governor and President of Drew University. When Kean was appointed
to replace severely conflicted Henry Kissinger, he asserted his only constituency
was the students at Drew.
Well, it turns out that is not exactly true. Kean sits on the
Board of Directors of Amerada Hess, one of the world's leading
independent oil and gas companies. The company is coupled with
Delta Oil, a Saudi Arabia company in a joint venture called Delta-Hess.
Delta-Hess in turn is a partner in Azerbaijan with a consortium developing
Caspian Sea oil resources.
Delta Oil is owned by the two Saudi families of Khalid bin Mahfouz and
Mohammed Hussein al Amoudi. Both are alleged to be major financial
backers of Osama bin Laden and have been named in a lawsuit by
families and survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bin Mahfouz
is Osama's brother-in-law. His sister married bin Laden.
Delta-Hess owns 20% of the Azerbaijan consortium. SOCOL, the state owned
Oil Company has 50% and Frontera owns the remaining 30%.
Frontera is headed by Bill White who was Deputy Secretary of Energy in
the first Clinton administration and the architect of Azerbaijans first
Caspian Sea offshore gas and oil consortium. Familiar names among its
Board of Directors and advisors include Lloyd Bentsen, former Senator
and Treasury Secretary and John Deutch, former Director of the CIA.
Kean also is co-chairman of Homeland Security Project, which had significant
input into the drafting of the Office of Homeland Security legislation.
The long-time member of the CFR also forgot to mention his role as general
partner in Quad Ventures LLC. Quad is a limited partnership operating
in the $815 billion education industry whose partners include; Citigroup,
J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch Community Development, Wells Fargo bank
and insurance giants Prudential Financial and Wachovia. Top officials
in most of those companies are also CFR members. Both Citigroup and Morgan
Chase are deeply involved in the Enron scandal. Citigroup received a slap
on the wrist when found to have laundered hundreds of millions of dollars
in drug money which some suspect helped fund terrorism.
Lee Hamilton
Commission vice chairman and former congressman Lee Hamilton was appointed
to replace former senate majority leader George Mitchell (CFR), who like
Kissinger declined to disclose potential conflicts of interest and resigned.
Hamilton, a CFR member since at least 1988, was chairman of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Select Intelligence Committee.
In 1987, House Speaker Jim Wright (who later resigned in disgrace) appointed
Hamilton to chair a committee investigating the Iran/Contra affair. When
a question was raised about CIA/Contra drug smuggling, the response was
release by Hamilton of a cursory review that concluded there was no truth
to the charges. The CIA recently released a report (that received almost
no publicity) admitting the drug connection.
Jamie Gorelick
Considered one of the fifty most powerful women in the country, CFR member
Jamie Gorelick is currently vice-chair of the giant mortgage lender and
insurer Fannie Mae. From March 1994 until she joined Fannie Mae in May
1997 she was Deputy Attorney General, the number two spot in Janet Renos
Department of Justice.
In May 1995, the Intelligence Community Law Enforcement Policy Board was
established to meet quarterly and discuss mutual concerns of the Attorney
General and Director of Central Intelligence. The board was co-chaired
by Gorelick and DCI George Tenet. Other members included all of the law
enforcement agencies, the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence
and Research and the Defense Department General Counsel.
This is the same time frame (spring of 1995) in which the Philippine government
apprised the FBI, CIA and State Department of Project Bojinka an Islamic
terrorist plot which included hijacking commercial airlines planes and
flying them into the Pentagon, World Trade Center towers and, several
other buildings.
The BCCI scandal involved a number of powerful individuals. Clark Clifford
and Robert Altman were the top two officers in First American, the new
name given Financial General Bankshares when it was taken over by BCCI
(known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International in the corridors
of Washington) with the help of the Jackson Stephens/Lippo Worthen Bank
and the Rose Law Firm.
First American is said to have been using the notorious PROMIS software.
When BCCI and First American were exposed, the legal defense team for
Clifford and Altman attracted a bevy of well-known names including Robert
Fiske (later the first 'independent counsel' investigating Whitewater
and Vince Foster's 'suicide'), Robert Bennett (later attorney for Bill
Clinton), and Jamie Gorelick.
In a somewhat related case in 1978, Financial General Bankshares sued
BCCI, two Jackson Stephens' companies (one was Systematics) and a number
of individuals. Two of the attorneys representing Systematics in the controversy
over PROMIS software were Webster Hubbell and Hillary Rodham.
In 1998, while at Fannie Mae, Gorelick served on Clintons Central Intelligence
National Security Advisory Panel as well as the President's Review of
Intelligence.
Richard Ben-Veniste
Ben-Veniste is a high-visibility Washington attorney and Democrat power
broker. He was Democrat counsel to the Senate Whitewater investigation
where he blocked inquiries about Webster Hubbell's hiring by the Lippo
group and others administered by Truman Arnold.
According to investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker, Ben-Veniste then
turned around and defended Arnold (the man he was supposed to be investigating)
before Ken Starr's Whitewater grand jury, for which he was roundly criticized.
Hopsicker also reveals that Arnold had furnished a $2 million airplane
to his friend Wally Hilliard for $1. Hilliard, Hopsicker says, owned the
Flight school in Venice, Florida where four of the Islamic terrorist pilots
were trained that flew the suicide missions on 9/11.
Another of Ben-Venistes clients was Barry Seal, the drug running CIA asset
of Iran/Contra and Mena, Arkansas notoriety. In fact, Hopsicker relates
Ben-Veniste told the Wall Street Journal, "I did my part by launching
him (Seal) into the arms of Vice President Bush who embraced him as an
undercover operative."
Fred Fielding
Fielding is another one who has been around the centers of power for a
while on the Republican side. In the Nixon administration he was a deputy
counsel working under John Dean. In the Watergate scandal he helped his
boss (Dean) handle Howard Hunt's safe full of documents. They wore rubber
gloves so as not to leave fingerprints. Fielding was not one of the twenty
or so Nixon associates (including John Dean) that went to jail over their
involvement.
Later Fielding served as White House Counsel to President Reagan. More
recently he was at least partly responsible for getting George W. Bush's
political mentor Karl Rove in hot water over failure to divest his stock
in Intel Corporation valued at over $100,000.
Fielding advised Rove, who was planning to divest all of his stock, to
hold onto it until a 'government certificate of divestiture' could be
obtained. The certificate would have allowed deferral of capital gains
taxes on stock sold. .
While he still held the stock, Rove met with Intel executives and Vice
President Chaney at which a proposed merger with a Dutch company was discussed.
This was a breech of administration ethics rules.
Fielding served on the Bush transition team in early 2001. According to
Clay Johnson, Director of Presidential Personnel and Deputy Chief of Staff,
the Vice President asked Fred Fielding, who had been President Reagan's
counsel, to come in and he volunteered to--as soon as we had a Cabinet
Secretary-to-be, he would sit down with that person and they'd have a
nice little chat for an hour or two. And then Fred would tell us whether
he was confident that there were no clearance problems or not. If there
was something that he thought might be problematic, he would explore it
further, and maybe they had to go get some information, whatever. Johnson
said the process now takes sixty days.
Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson was the longest serving governor in Illinois history completing
four terms in office leaving in 1991. He is currently chairman of the
large Chicago-based law firm Winston and Strawn. While he was governor,
sensational charges were leveled against him and the law firm by Chicago
author and investigator Sherman Skolnick.
Skolnick claimed that the First National Bank of Chicago had loaned (Communist)
China billions of dollars to be repaid in gold. When China defaulted on
the gold payments, according to Skolnick, the CIA and bank arranged for
massive amounts of high purity heroin to be smuggled into the U.S. in
lieu of the gold payments. Skolnick alleged shipments came in through
Joliet, just south of Chicago, and were supervised by Thompson and the
Winston and Strawn law firm. As with most claims of CIA involvement in
illegal drugs, nothing came of the allegations.
Thompson got caught in the middle of a messy political battle between
outgoing Governor George Ryan and Attorney General Jim Ryan, both Republicans.
Ryan was running against Democrat Rod Blagojevich, the victor and incoming
governor. At the same time AG Ryan was suing Governor George Ryan over
the pardoning of death row inmates.
George Ryan hired former governor Jim Thompson to defend against the lawsuit.
Blagojevich had railed in his campaign against the 26 years of Republican
corruption and mismanagement. That included 12 of the years when Thompson
was governor. To the astonishment of practically everyone, Blagojevich
appointed Thompson to lead his transition team.
John Lehman
John Lehman is an investment banker who has served in a number of government
positions including as Secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1987 under President
Reagan. His first government job was as special counsel and senior staff
member to Henry Kissinger on the National Security Council in the Nixon
administration.
Lehman currently serves on several boards of directors including those
of Ball Corporation, as chairman of OAO Technology Solutions, Inc. and
his own J.F. Lehman & Company. He is a former chairman of Sperry Marine
and investment banker with Paine Webber. Lehman served 25 years as a naval
aviator in the selected reserves.
Slade Gorton
Slade Gorton is a former senator from the State of Washington. After he
lost his reelection bid in 2000, he joined the Seattle Law firm of Preston,
Gates & Ellis, which specializes in environmental issues.
If jury selection rules were being used, Gorton would probably be dismissed
from consideration for the commission for cause. Two days after the 9/11
attacks he told a public-television audience there was nothing government
intelligence officials could have done to thwart the attack, according
to the Seattle Times. The Times quotes Gorton as saying, I doubt we can
expect to get too much inside information no matter what we do.
Gorton served two years on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He says
that experience and his personal friendship with Trent Lott were responsible
for his appointment by Lott.
Tim Roemer
Tim Roemer is a moderate Democrat congressman (at least compared to the
Democrat leadership) who is retiring from Congress at the end of this
year. He was one of the prime movers in the House championing creation
of the Independent Commission. He is credited with bringing the organization
representing survivors and families of victims of the 9/11 attacks into
the mix of support for the commission. Roemer is a member of the House
Intelligence Committee.
Max Cleland
Max Cleland is a one-term Senator from Georgia who lost his reelection
bid this year in a close contest. He is a
triple amputee from wounds received in Vietnam.
At the age of 28, Cleland was the youngest person and first Vietnam veteran
elected to the Georgia State Senate. In 1977, he became the youngest ever
head of the Veterans' Administration when appointed by President Jimmy
Carter.
In 1982 Cleland became the youngest person elected as Georgia Secretary
of State. He resigned that position in 1996 to run for the seat being
vacated by retiring U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. He was sworn in as a U.S. Senator
in 1997.
Barring (intentional) leaks, we will have to wait another 17 months to
see what the product of the commission will be. By that time the publics
attention will undoubtedly be focused on other things.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research and educational purposes.)
Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its entirety.
The author is a freelance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a former
newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs administrator
and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S. Constitution.
If you would like to receive Medium Rare articles directly, please contact
the author at jimrarey@ comcast.net.
"Ben-Veniste reportedly proved helpful in steering
the Committee away from the rocky shoals of Clinton's possible involvement
in the drug smuggling through Mena into the calmer waters of Presidential
blow-jobs."
-- Barry and the Boys, p. 330 (www.barryandtheboys.com)
