Title: Revealed: Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld warned 9/11 Commission about ‘line’ it ’should not cross’
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25008.htm
By: By Sahil Kapur, Raw Story
Date: 03-17-2010
March 17, 2010 "Raw Story" -- Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.
The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.
In the message, the officials denied the bipartisan commission's request to question terrorist detainees, informing its two senior-most members that doing so would "cross" a "line" and obstruct the administration's ability to protect the nation.
"In response to the Commission's expansive requests for access to secrets, the executive branch has provided such access in full cooperation," the letter read. "There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross -- the line separating the Commission's proper inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government's ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks."
The 9/11 Commission, officially called the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was formed by President Bush in November of 2002 "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks" and to offer recommendations for preventing future attacks.
"The Commission staff's proposed participation in questioning of detainees would cross that line," the letter continued. "As the officers of the United States responsible for the law enforcement, defense and intelligence functions of the Government, we urge your Commission not to further pursue the proposed request to participate in the questioning of detainees."
FireDogLake's Marcy Wheeler speculates that this was an attempt by the Bush administration to ensure that its torture of certain detainees, which has since been widely documented, remained secret.
[W]hoever made these annotations appears to have been most worried that Commission staff members could make independent judgments about the detainees and the interrogations," Wheeler wrote on her blog. The official "didn't want anyone to independently evaluate the interrogations conducted in the torture program."
Eventually, the commission's co-chairs harshly criticized the administration for having purportedly "destroyed" tapes of its interrogations with terror suspects, as Raw Story reported last year.
9/11 Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton wrote that although US President George W. Bush had ordered all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the probe, "recent revelations that the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot."
"Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation."
They continued: “There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the CIA — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot.
"Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations," Kean and Hamilton wrote.
The letter can be found on page 26 of the ACLU's set of unveiled documents.
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
5 comments:
That's just the tip of the iceberg. The article "Truthers are Dangerous" documents dozens of senior officials, including commission members who have claimed that the commission report is flawed because key people lied to them or somehow prevented them from inquiring into certain areas. http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/03/proof-that-911-truthers-are-dangerous.html
Vatic's article (on which I'm commenting) cites only one area they were prevented from covering.
People have the misconception that congressmen, individually, are powerful. In many cases, it's the illusion of power that they enjoy, and they look better in the public eye if they perpetuate the myth. The Shadow Government is where the real power lies.
Vatic's article mentions just one area that the commission wasn't allowed to cover. That's just the tip of the iceberg. The article "Truthers are Dangerous" documents dozens of high officials, including commission members, who complained that they were unable to get the truth due to perjury from Pentagon officials and White House pressure. Check it out: http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/03/proof-that-911-truthers-are-dangerous.html
Are you talking about the real truthers or the disinformation bogus truthers what work for the cover up neocons?????
I started by going to the following link: http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/03/proof-that-911-truthers-are-dangerous.html
Then I checked the links that site offered. Some of these links led to blogs which may or may not have offered accurate information. I then copied and pasted their quotes to a search engine and used them to look for reliable sources. Some of the sources, in my opinion, are reliable. I'm not citing sources that I haven't verified.
Hmmm, does your answer mean you dont' know the difference or the fact that the perps who did 9-11 created a "controlled" opposition group and called them 9-11 truthers and they are not part of the original movement but have thus harmed the original movement through their actions and the real truther movement has been hurt by it?
As you know the 9-11 truth movement wasn't going away. It was harming any other attempt to do a massive false flag and use 9-11, muslims and terrorism for cover, so they had to do something.
You know that "facts" can be taken and perverted and so just researching the facts is fine, but please visit both sites and read what both sides have to say and especially the real 9-11 truth movement has to say. I am surpised you didn't both to be specific about how you researched exactly how the 9-11 truthers were dangerous and in what way????
I am curious to know. thanks.
Just curious as to your level of knowledge about the disinfo game played around this issue almost from the beginning.... to discredit the good guys.
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