9/11 CitizensWatch

By Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, January 31, 2004; Page A02

The White House, already embroiled in a public fight over the deadline for an independent commission’s investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is refusing to give the panel notes on presidential briefing papers taken by some of its own members, officials said this week.

The standoff has prompted the 10-member commission to consider issuing subpoenas for the notes and has further soured relations between the Bush administration and the bipartisan panel, according to sources familiar with the issue. Lack of access to the materials would mean that the information they contain could not be included in a final report about the attacks, several officials said.

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Bill Berkowitz – WorkingForChange

01.30.04 – While the Bush Administration never tires of reminding the American people that the president’s war on terrorism, his invasion of Iraq, and the Patriot Act I and II are all rooted in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it has tired of one little bitty aspect of this post-9/11 period: the investigation by the ten-member bi-partisan independent commission.
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By JAMES GORDON MEEK

DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Thursday, January 29th, 2004

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/159341p-139828c.html

WASHINGTON – An endless parade of bureaucrats denying there was any hint terrorists could use planes as flying bombs has infuriated federal

commissioners probing the Sept. 11 attacks, several told the Daily News.

Former Navy secretary John Lehman, a Republican on the panel, said he was “appalled” at the copouts by U.S. aviation, immigration and security officials,

and “almost lost it” when one after another testified under oath they never saw 9/11 coming.

“Most of the commissioners were angry,” Lehman said yesterday. “It’s the lack of accountability that’s got everybody furious.”
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January 29, 2004

The commission probing the 9/11 terror attacks is seeking a bit more time to complete its investigation. Instead of filing its report May 27, the deadline mandated by Congress, the panel would like an extension at least until July. Does anyone have a problem with that? We want a complete report, right? Well, uh….

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/159160p-139683c.html

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Well-documented White House & Government Deceptions and LIES surrounding the September 11th Attacks.

Money not enough: Ellen Mariani wants to know what went on beforehand

[Printed in the Manchester Union-Leader, Friday, December 26, 2003]

Derry (Associated Press) – A New Hampshire woman who filed the first lawsuit against United Airlines, relating to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks – and the first suit accusing President Bush of negligence beforehand – doesn’t want money, just answers.

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By Floyd J. McKay

Special to The Times

Wednesday, January 21, 2004, 12:00 A.M. Pacific

The American system of separation of powers and checks and balances gives us unique standing among the world’s governments.

No parliamentary system, and certainly no authoritarian system, has the elaborate controls of the Constitution of the United States. Those controls were put there because the Founders feared concentrated power.

Each branch of government plays a role in the checks and balances. Added to the executive, legislative and judicial is the role of a nongovernmental force, the news media. But the news media have only the power to expose, not to correct.

We are about to see, in a series of cases being heard by the Supreme Court, whether the judicial branch will assert its role in checking the extraordinary powers exerted by President Bush in the wake of 9-11.

It’s not surprising that news organizations are very much an active part of these cases. All involve unprecedented secrecy.
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Robert Novak’s suggestion in his December 11th editorial that Dean was “spinning wild conspiracy theories” about 9/11 is a coy distraction and gross distortion. While raising unsubstantiated rumor posed as theory is clearly not the most effective way for Gov. Dean to make his case, the record is clear that the President and his Administration were in fact warned repeatedly and in some detail, begging the question “what was done in response?”
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Jan. 24, 2004 | For months, the Bush administration and the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks have been locked in low-intensity warfare. The White House opposed creation of the commission, and after it reluctantly yielded, it sought to bar the commission from seeing reams of documents pertaining to the attacks. The stonewalling went on so long that some commissioners say they’re months behind in their work — and yet, the White House is insisting that the May 27 deadline for the commission’s final report shouldn’t be extended.
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First to stand up were five widows: Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie van Auken. Breitweiser’s husband was killed in his office at Fiduciary Trust on the 94th floor of the South Tower, while Casazza, Kleinberg and van Auken are Cantor-Fitzgerald widows. They began lobbying for answers early in 2002, navigating the labyrinth of American bureaucracy and hammering the bureaucrats for direct answers to direct questions. In September 2002, Breitweiser testified at the first televised public hearing before the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry (JICI) in DC.

Like many others, she wanted to know why, on May 16, 2002, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice stated that she didn’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.”

Breitweiser knows the historical facts say otherwise. She noted the following points in her statement. In her words:

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