quote: A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.
She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".
Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".
In case you were wondering if American journalism is dead, here's the proof. I have yet to see this picked up in any American papers.
Stupid American journalists.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
First of all, this isn't news. I've been hearing for 2 years now that there were credible threats of an airplane-based terrorist attack by Al-Queada in June-July 2001.
Second, here's the Rice quote:
quote:Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack planes to try and free US-held terrorists.
Here's Edmond's statement about the knowledge the FBI had:
quote:There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers.
Now here's the article's summary about Edmond's problem with Rice's statement:
quote:Mrs Edmonds said that by using the word "we", Ms Rice told an "outrageous lie". She said: "Rice says 'we' not 'I'. That would include all people from the FBI, the CIA and DIA [Defence Intelligence Agency]. I am saying that is impossible."
Would someone please explain how Edmond's statement of the facts combined with Rice's quote in the Post editorial lead to this exact criticism? Rice clearly said no one knew about using airplanes as missles. Edmond's states that no one knew how the airplanes would be used. Sounds pretty cut and dried that Rice's statement is honest.
posted
I don't see why no one thought of terrorists using airplanes as missiles.
I mean, Tom Clancy thought of it in Debt of Honor... or maybe no one in government reads Clancy. Oh wait, they do, even before the books are finished being written, it seems.
Posts: 106 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Actually, after Dr. Rice stated that terrorists using planes as missiles was never entertained, she backed off that statement and agreed that it had been discussed as a possibility.
Actual quote for Dr. Rice and a further "clarification" apparently made sometime in March.
quote: Also in May 2002, Rice said "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center ... that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking." But since then, the Joint Congressional Inquiry into Sept. 11 has made clear that there was, in fact, extensive reporting by U.S. intelligence agencies about terror threats involving crashing airplanes into buildings. Indeed, at last week's hearings, Ben-Veniste said that Rice had corrected herself. "Dr. Rice told us privately that she wished to correct that statement which she had made publicly by saying to us that she misspoke, and that she ... would say that she could not have imagined using planes as missiles."
However, there is significant evidence that Stormy is still incorrect, which you know just thrills me.
One of the major quotes, "'Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,' the September 1999 report said."
So, the media isn't necessarily dead. It's just. . . well, it's something.
You know what frightens me even more? Not only are there thousands of papers/memos that Bush won't release to the commission (and they know this because someone from Clinton's administration told them there were thousands of documents "unduly held back by the Bush administration."
Add that to the fact that they will be vetting the report, supposedly for classified information, but I've seen and/or heard about what they've done to other reports from people like the NIH, and I just don't know what we'll be getting. They 9/11 commission says there will be surprises. I think the surprise will be if it comes out before the election without major redactions.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
If anyone is wondering, I am in no way going to argue that people in the Clinton administration shouldn't be dragged into this, too. I think it's kind of unfair that much of the formal scrutiny is being held on the Bush admin.
posted
and the game of pin the tail on the donkey (or elephant, as the case may be) continues, meanwhile, people who should be figuring out where to go and what will happen next have to waste their time trying to defend themselves from this crap.
be proud, Americans, and feel safe. We'll nail the bastards who let this happen on their watch and then nothing wrong will ever happen again...
posted
TAK, Part of the problem is that it seems to many of us that these people were highly concerned with covering their asses from the very beginning. The statement "No one could have conceived that the ywould run planes into buildings." was the administration line from just after the attacks.
This is a stupid statement. Either they are lying or they are acknowledging that they are incompetent. It's a very logical step that a group that embraces suicide tactics and is planning on hijacking airplanes inside the US (which despite our sexurity holes is much harder that hijacking in other places) could quite possibly be planning on using them to fly into buildings. As has already been brought up, Tom Clancy even wrote a book about it. Now we are getting information that some people in the intelligence community were also suggesting the possibility.
We've pretty much have three possibilities: mistakes were made, the people we have aren't good enough, or the terrorists are so smart that no one could have stopped this. I highly doubt that last one, even though that is the line that the administration has been trying to sell us. I don't mind people making mistakes (well, I do, actually, in that they betrayed the trust that we put in them), but I do mind people being unwilling to admit that they made mistakes. Without this step, you can't learn from the mistakes.
Of course, it's also possible that they are just not talented enough to do the job - a criticism that people have been leveling against President Bush for a long time. In which case, they have no business being in the positions they are. If they really feel that there was nothing that they could have or will be able to do to stop attacks like this, they have a responsibility to acknowledge this and step aside so that more competent people can take over.
Because they are either lying or incompetent and yet are determined to remain in their positions of responsibility, it becomes necessary to attack them in order to protect ourselves. As I've said in another thread, I don't much care about people getting punished for this. I am more concerned about preventing another attack. The current people have already said that there was nothing that they could have done to prevent the previous one. To me, that says that they are not going to look for the faults that led to it, either because the faults are based in the lack of ability of these people or because they are more concerned with covering themselves than my safety.
edit: Frankly, I think that the sticking you fingers in your ears and chanting "Bush can do no wrong" over and over again is much less likely to preserve our safety than a determined skepticism. That's probably why I prefer the later to the former method of dealing with this.
posted
I'm not doing anything of the sort, MrSquicky. I am saying that our horses were stolen and, far from trying to catch the thieves or even trying to slam the barn door shut after they're gone, we are sifting through the garbage looking for the receipt so we can know who to sue for the lock being broken.
Intelligence gathering is about information and having as many angles as possible. Of course *someone* thought of this. Picture the most outlandish goofiest terrorist scenario you can and I'll bet, with proper access, you could find intelligence estimates of the threat. The problem is just that: when you have a huge nation working overtime to produce threat estimates, stuff starts getting filtered out and, at several points along the line, people have to make decisions about what to take seriously and what not to. I have little doubt that, at some point, some mid-to-high-level bureaucrat said "this sounds like a Tom Clancy novel, that can't be credible" and threw it out. A mistake to be sure, but the vindicitiveness of this nation towards those mistakes is precisely why everyone is so involved in covering up rather than fixing things.
I mean, it's really senseless to be trying to kick someone in the crotch every chance you get and then complain that they are too busy covering their groin and not enough concerned with the rest of the world.
So, no, this is not support for the Bush administration... this is me saying "we reap what we sow" -- this behavior will result in a national government with no spine and which refuses to do anything by the light of day for fear of criticism and ended careers. It would certainly seem that we agree the US is well on the way to that.
[ April 05, 2004, 12:01 PM: Message edited by: T. Analog Kid ]
Posts: 2112 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
TAK, The thing is, I have no idea what actually happened in regards to the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. There's a whole range of possibilities for why we failed. Right now, we don't know. This is completely unsatisfactory.
The current explanation offered offered by the Bush administration is "There was nothing that we could do about it." As I pointed out, this doesn't speak to reality, but instead to either incompetence or lying. It also seems to me that President Bush's administration is putting a lot of effort into both covering itself and in trying to smear anyone who criticizes them and not all that much into actually figuring out what went wrong. It is only through strong pressure brought to bear on them that they agreed to allow the National Security Advisor give testimony to the commission.
While I am upset that the leader of my country is acting in a way I find very untrustworthy, I am even more concerned that all of this apologetics and covering is preventing us from fixing the failures that led to us not being able to stop the 9/11 attacks. If these are not fixed, we are, as the current administration has assured us, going to be attacked again. Even if they are not directly responsible for failing in the 9/11 attacks (and by virtue of being responsible for protecting the country, they are de facto at least indirectly responsible), they will be directly responsible for failing to stop other attacks. It seems to me that they are putting their desire to cover their collective asses over their responsibility to best serve the country and keep me from getting blown up.
All of the childish twisting isn't going to change this. All the denying that they could have done things different and lying about what actually went down isn't either. Both sides seem to me to be more concerned with using this as a partisan issue and not in fulfilling their responsibilities to the country.
And I think that people who are - like I see you doing - bindly excusing or supporting the President (Do you really think that the most likely explanation is that one solitary mid-level employee is responsible for this?) are doing pretty much the same thing. For them, the primary goal is supporting the President whether he's right or wrong. Whether or not we have another devestating attack seems to be of secondary importance.
I think that at every step, we should ask the question, "Is this making things better?" Right now, I don't see a lot of this. Not only that, people seem to be saying "Well, we can't expect them to do the right thing because it would be politically risky." I mean, dear God, people aren't even pretending that they're living up to the oaths that they swore. It's like the President's job is no longer even theoretically about upholding the constitution and defending the republic, and instead about whatever is going to get him reelected. That's the type of thing that's ultimately going to leave us open to another attack, not that we aren't strip searching 80 year old women when they try to get on a plane.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
T.A.K. I agree, the number one thing our Presidential Administration should be doing is preventing another attack from happening. Number two should be ensuring that those who were connected with this were punished. Way down on the list is defending their rears from Monday Morning Political QBs who want to lay blame so they can feel safe.
However, when this administration starts tooting their own horn on the safety and security they have brought about in our time of crisis, then determining what they did when does become an issue worthy of investigating.
The fact that the administration was not obsessed with terrorism before 9/11 should not be a shock to anyone. Those who try to make this seem like a breech of trust come off looking ridiculous.
The more President Bush attempts to define himself as the Anti-Terrorist President, and the more he tries to hide the obvious from us, the worse he looks.
It isn't his lack of skill in stopping 9/11 that people find frustrating. Most agree that it couldn't be stopped. Its his unyielding attempts to spin what happened, and horde the true data that I find frustrating.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Anyone who has any experience with data management quickly realizes that the problem is not lack of data, but TOO MUCH data.
If your company had to trace its internet use to find key information for a trial, there would be so much data, emails, URLs, caches, history, et cetera to sort through to find the "important" data.
Extend that to a national and international level, and it is not surprising that there was data that suggested an airplane attack. As there was data to suggest dirty bombs, dirty laundry, suicide attacks, et cetera a couple million times.
Until it happened, we had no precedent to determine what was/is important.
Posts: 1034 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Our national security agencies definitely do have experiene in evaluating threats.
Also, the issue is more with the administration denying any knowledge when they did have such knowledge, though the lack of proper evaluation of the knowledge is also of concern.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
And none of these points adress the facr that their are threats to this country that are stopped dead in their tracks before they get anywhere near a plane, or the White House. If you had 1000 credible threat and you stop 999 of them, oveall you afre doing pretty damn well. No one is completely responsible except for the terrorists who chose to do this.
That's not to say that we should ignore inconpetence, but that fixing the problem is far more important than finger pointing.
posted
I'll reiterate that, like you guys, I find spin doctoring distasteful and duplicitous. It's this need for affixing blame that causes it. I'm not defending the president or anything he's done... I'm not even discussing it. I *am* saying that this kind of blame-gaming is not productive and I would be saying that if it was Gore in the white house, too.
And, yes, I really do think it came down to one person or a small team saying "that's not a credible threat" and removing from the data stream, as is their job.
Posts: 2112 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
I'm siding with TAK on this one. Somewhere, sometime, a person in a grey suit with teflon-coated morals looked at the report and said, "Nope, that's not going to happen." and the file was tossed aside.
And once, again, TAK is right on the money. While we're working to assign the blame, we're not putting our full efforts into stopping future ones.
It didn't matter who was at the helm when the Titanic hit the iceberg, but that so very many people could be traced back and blamed for the accident, from the look-out to the guy who did the steel detailing work on the original spec plans.
Sadly, we have a government that is too concerned with shifting blames and CYA directives to actually embrace a problem and then fully solve it. The men in the grey suits syndrome...
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
The problem, TAK, Kwea, Sopwith, etc., is that the politicians have made 9/11 into a political issue. Much of Bush's campaign image and his criticisms of his opponent are based around 9/11.
I agree with you guys. 9/11 and the security of htis country, in an ideal world, are not political issues. Unfortunately, we live in this world. The decision has been made to make 9/11 a political issue by both Republicans and Democrats.
I am more than willing to not bring up 9/11 and terrorism as a factor in the coming presidential election if no one else is. Want to judge Kerry solely on things outside of terrorism? Fine.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
And the article is not couched in political terms, either, it's accusing the national security advisor of treason and conspiracy to commit terrorism. These are crimes punishable by (summary, in the case of treason) execution (though that hasn't happened in a long time) and not to be charged lightly.
So I, for one, am glad that the US press is not making a big deal of it.
Posts: 2112 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
I don't see the treason, and I don't see conspiracy to commit treason. I do see a conspiracy to cover up the truth.
So, TAK, do find there to be no way the administration could have known that there was an attack ranging anywhere possible to probable, and that they knew that the use of planes as missiles was a possibility and they had the pentagon and White House as targets? I don't see how you could possibly think it isn't possible. You are the one, after all who said that anyone could come up with the most "outlandish goofiest terrorist scenario" possible. Weren't you the one who also said that someone, somewhere, ignored it?
I still find it interesting that they are covering it up. What they should have done was to admit, "hell yeah we had some "idea" it might happen. Of course, we also have some "idea" of 100,000 other terrorist plots that could occur on any given day." But instead, knowing that they did have general information that a plane, being used as a missile could possibly be plot about to be carried out, but decided the threat was low and the cost effectiveness would put it in the ridiculous category, they decided to say it never occurred to anyone that it might happen. Which anyone who reads, or watches the movies knows is ridiculous.
Of course, the fact that they are using the war for politics is a whole separate thing. It takes Wag The Dog to a new level.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I think the administration knew that this would happen and put the nation in a state of fear, which it has. People who are afraid are easier to manage.
Patriotism, as well, is a tool--if you criticize the government, you must not be patriotic. The government can do no wrong, even as it squirrels away our rights under the guise of patriotism and protection.
It's all bs. Clinton was impeached for getting job from an intern. Bush should be impeached for letting 9-11 happen and for the entire Iraq war--since no wmd were found and will not be found.
I can feel people ready to jump on me. Go ahead. I'm not going to change my mind. Plus--I probably won't be posting for a while anyway. Getting real busy.
Posts: 463 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
It's very simple-- either there was a credible threat assessment and they ignored it completely, which is criminally negligent at best, or there was not, in which case they did nothing wrong and british weeklies are having cows over nothing and harping on this is only going to cause people to circle the wagons tighter, not get to any truth... which is my original point.
Posts: 2112 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
and like you said, the war is a whole seperate thing and I really don't want to go there with you... no offense, just trying to limit my involvement in these type of threads... Posts: 2112 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
Cover up what truth, Kayla? The truth is that the government probably knew that terrorists were tinkering with the idea of hijacking planes for suicide missions, but had no proof of a plan and no realistic reason to send the entire airline industry into a state of panic, which ruined a lot of airlines after 9-11, when there was no way to justify it beyond a bunch of maybes.
Posts: 346 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
TAK, I think that you're missing the alternative that has been suggested by Richard Clarke and a few other people, that the administration put a relatively low priority on terrorism in general and on al Queda specifically. To me, these are serious issues and not just something we can brush aside by saying, "Oh, without looking at all the evidence, I can still conclude that he is an out and out liar." Maybe he's telling the truth (or at least some of the truth) and maybe he's not. If the Bush Administration has their way, it seems to me that we'll never have enough information to judge.
I'm willing to accept that the mistakes - be they a direct result of Bush adminstration policy or not - that allowed the 9/11 attacks were understandable. I've no conception of how difficult it must be to deal with all the security threats that we are faced with. I'm not so much taking issue with the fact that mistakes where made as I am with the idea that they can deny that there were any mistakes and get away with it.
There were obviously mistakes. You can't wiggle out of that. The big hole in the middle of Manhattan and the destruction at the Pentagon are impossible to spin away, no matter how hard you try. By virtue of being in the position of head of responsiblity for keeping these things from happening, the President and his National Security Advisor bear a lot of the responsibility for these things happening, regardless of whether or not they got good info or whatever. It was their job to keep something like that from happening. Since it happened, they didn't fulfill their job. It's as simple as that. It may not be fair, but that's why we have a President, to take some freaking responsibility.
It is now their job to analyze what the mistakes were that led to this and to change things as much as necessary to keep them from happening again. It is not their job to cover their asses and to deny any responsibility (and I'm talking about responsiblity here, not necessarily blame). However, they seem to put the second thing at a much higher priority than the first.
I am seriously outraged at how politicans have turned keeping me and mine from betting blown up into a partisan issue. I am likewise outraged that people are going along with this, with Bush supporters going into full excuse and apologetics mode (the "it was the fault of this one guy somwhere" falls directly into this for me) and anti-Bush people trying to score as much political capital out of this as possible, all the while ignoring the bigger issue. People are acting like frigging children with some very important issues. "My side counldn't have possibly done anything wrong so we don't even need to look at the evidence." "Nu-huh, you're side is evil, so they planned the terrorists attacks as a power grab."
Responsiblity is turning into a joke issue. No one, not the politicians and not the voters, are willing to accept any of it. By saying "There was nothing we could have done." President Bush is wrong and is putting me and you in additional danger. Have the freaking integrity to stand up and say that he is wrong, even if you still support him on the whole. Have the decency to say that we should be able to expect the President of the United States to take responsibility. Make a stand for an actual principle and not just for a party. If people don't do this, even for the guy that they support, then it will never come to be.
posted
To make it perfectly clear, I'm not primarily concerned with blaming President Bush or anyone for the 9/11 attacks. I am specifically pissed at the way the Bush Administration has, to me, obviously been putting covering their asses above doing the right thing here and at the people who are willing to defend them doing this.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
You know what bothers me the most. It's that after having been in office for almost 8 months, the Bush Administration had just finished some type of security review. They claim that they inherited policies from Clinton that they were stuck with. It's as though they are trying to pin the blame on Clinton. However, after having read the speech they were to make that day on security, it seems that they didn't place much, if any, threat credibility to al-Qaeda or Bin Laden, and yet they still seem to think that since they had only been in charge for 8 months, it wasn't really their failure.
I'm not sure that National Security is something that should be left in the wind for 8 months during a power change in Washington. Maybe there should be some type of separate office for National Security that would remain unaffected by a new President.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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