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C-SPAN to Broadcast McKinney Congressional Briefing on 9/11
On July 22, Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) organized a day-long briefing on the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report one year later. The event included leading victims’ family members, former government and intelligence workers, academics and authors speaking on the flaws and weaknesses of the 9/11 Commission’s investigation, assumptions, omissions, conclusions and recommendations. It was filmed in entirety by C-SPAN and will be broadcast:
* Wednesday August 31 from 8:00 pm to 11:30 pm
* Friday, September 2 from 8:00 pm to 1:00 am
The Briefings is broken into two parts (see below):
The two-part, nine-hour Congressional briefing 9/11 CitizensWatch co-founder Kyle Hence lobbied for and his partner John Judge helped to organize with Rep. Cynthia McKinney concering remaining issues about 9/11 and the Commission’s report and recommendation will now air on the main C-SPAN channel at the same times and dates, not on C-SPAN2, which means it will reach a wider audience.
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The New York Times – Editorial — August 28, 2005
After four and a half years, we have come to expect the Bush administration to refuse to hold anyone of stature accountable for errors, misdeeds or even potential violations of the law. The bungling of the war in Iraq and the abuse of prisoners at military camps both come to mind. But the inspector general’s report on the failures of the Central Intelligence Agency before the 9/11 attacks elevates evasion of responsibility to a new level.
It took three years for the C.I.A. to produce the report – an inexcusably long delay, which rather conveniently skirted President Bush’s re-election campaign. Now the report has been sent to Congress only in a classified version, so the public, including the 9/11 victims’ families, is not allowed to see it.
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By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, St. Petersburgh Times — August 28, 2005
The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society – John F. Kennedy
It is axiomatic that secrecy is the handmaiden of mischief, especially by government. When we are facing a foreign threat, the government tends to toss around terms like “national security” as a justification for increased secrecy. But often, such an invocation is not as much about making our nation safe as protecting the government from embarrassment or challenge by critics.
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For more information contact: Sibel Edmonds, Director-National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, sedmonds@nswbc.org
The Following National Security Whistleblowers were turned away, refused, or ignored by the 9/11 Commission, even though they had direct & relevant information related to the Commission’s investigation:
John M. Cole (Senior Counterintelligence Operations Manager-FBI) – He notified the 9/11 Commission during its investigation and never received response; also his name & contact information were provided to the Commission as key witness (Program manager for Pakistan & Afghanistan; has relevant information to 9/11 terrorist attack) by others, but he was not contacted.
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[NOTE: Apology for the delay in posting this Release]
WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug 12 – Today Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA), Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, released the following response to a statement by the former 9/11 Commission regarding the ABLE DANGER operation.
“ABLE DANGER was about linkages and associations of individuals identified with direct links to Al-Qaeda and not about dates and times.
To clarify, ABLE DANGER was a Department of Defense planning effort, tasked to Special Operations Command (SOCOM) by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The task assigned to ABLE DANGER was to identify and target Al-Qaeda on a global basis and, through the use of cutting edge technology (data-mining, massive parallel processing, neural networking and human factors analysis) and enhanced visualization and display tools, present options for leaders (national command authority) to manipulate, degrade or destroy the global Al-Qaeda infrastructure.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-cia-sept-11-report,1,154358.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer – 8/25/05 – 8 minutes ago
The CIA’s independent watchdog has recommended disciplinary reviews for current and former officials who were involved in failed intelligence efforts before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, The Associated Press has learned.
CIA Director Porter Goss now must decide whether the disciplinary proceedings go forward.
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By Mark Ehrman — Los Angeles Times Magazine – Aug. 28, 2005
Anyone who types the words “9/11″ and “conspiracy” into an online search engine soon learns that not everybody buys the official narrative of what took place on Sept. 11, 2001.
As a professor emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, 66-year-old David Ray Griffin would seem to have more affinity for leather elbow patches than tin hats, yet after friends and colleagues prodded him into sifting through the evidence, he experienced a conversion. Now he’s spreading the bad news.
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[snip]
“There’s something very sinister going on here that really troubles me,” Weldon told FOX News on Thursday, blasting the Sept. 11 commission (search) for not taking the claims more seriously. He said some panel members were trying to smear Shaffer and Able Danger.
“What’s the Sept. 11 commission got to hide?” Weldon asked. “The commission is trying to spin this because they’re embarrassed about what’s coming out. In two weeks with two staffers, I’ve uncovered more in this regard than they did with 80 staffers and $15 million of taxpayer money.”
[snip]
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,166800,00.html
Fox News — Thursday, August 25, 2005
WASHINGTON — Aides to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (search), R-Pa., are actively discussing scheduling a hearing on “Able Danger” and the larger issue of information-sharing between the Pentagon and the FBI, FOX News has confirmed.
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Statement of September 11th Advocates
For Immediate Release — August 25, 2005
We are deeply disturbed to learn that an investigation of the CIA, conducted at the direction of the Joint House and Senate Congressional Intelligence Committees in 2002, will not be declassified and released as soon as possible.
This report presumably discusses failures within the CIA and identifies performance deficiencies among high-ranking CIA officials. The findings in this report must be shared with all members of Congress and with the American public to ensure that the problems identified are addressed and corrected, thus moving to restore faith in this agency.
We call for the immediate release of this report. To shield CIA officials from accountability and to continue to cover-up deficiencies in that agency puts the safety of our nation at risk. Four years post 9-11 this is truly unacceptable.
*****
September 11th Advocates
Kristen Breitweiser
Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken
[END]
By PHILIP SHENON — The New York Times — August 23, 2005
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 – An active-duty Navy captain has become the second military officer to come forward publicly to say that a secret intelligence program tagged the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a possible terrorist more than a year before the attacks.
The officer, Scott J. Phillpott, said in a statement on Monday that he could not discuss details of the military program, which was called Able Danger, but confirmed that its analysts had identified the Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta, by name by early 2000. “My story is consistent,” said Captain Phillpott, who managed the program for the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command. “Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000.”
His comments came on the same day that the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, told reporters that the Defense Department had been unable to validate the assertions made by an Army intelligence veteran, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and now backed up by Captain Phillpott, about the early identification of Mr. Atta.
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