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Kean as Head of the 9/11 Commission Leaves Little Doubt That The Bush Administration Continues It’s Lack of Interest In The Truth
By Breadandwine
How easy it is to sell tourism in New Jersey and how hard it is proving to get to the bottom of the intelligence lapses leading up to 9/11. After Dr. “Secrecy” Henry Kissinger’s resignation, President Bush picked former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean as Chairman of the 9/11 commission, best known for his TV ads promoting state tourism in his familiar New England accent: “New Jersey and you: Puh-fect together.” Embarrassing disclosures about intelligence lapses may or may not discourage tourism in the tri-state area but we are nowhere closer to the truth. According to The New York Times (Dec. 17, 2002) Kean has no law degree or background in investigations. The Associated Press (Dec. 16, 2002) observed that although as governor he went on some trade missions, Kean has had very little experience in the areas he will need to know — foreign affairs, intelligence and defense. It was not just a “nice idea” that the chairman should have such experience. It is specifically stipulated in the legislation establishing the commission that the commission members should have “significant depth of experience in such professions as” law enforcement, law, intelligence and foreign affairs. Kean isn’t even an attorney.
Kean comes from an old and wealthy New Jersey family that based its fortune in utilities and banking. (New York Times, Dec. 17, 2002.) Kean currently sits on the boards of at least three corporations with international reach. One is the Pepsi Bottling Group, involved with the sugar industry which for decades has been embroiled in the politics over sugar producer Cuba (and, in fact, competitor Coca Cola’s chief executive from 1981 to 1997 was the late Cuban exile Roberto Goizueta). The second corporation is Amerada Hess Corporation, the oil and gas company. (Associated Press, Dec. 16, 2002.) So with Kean there is involvement with utilities and oil and gas. Kean’s family and personal involvement with the energy industry may or may not influence decisions of his related to a region of the world with vast petroleum deposits, but it is certainly a glaring conflict of interest. Kean also sits on the board of directors of Aramark, a food services company that has business agreements with Saudi Arabia, and Hess has oil exploration facilities in Indonesia and Malaysia, which are home to terrorists (Newsday, Dec. 17, 2002). It is a disturbing and well-known fact that oil companies in areas with a significant threat of terrorism typically pay protection money to the terrorists, as they do in Colombia.
Absurdly, President Bush has publicly told the 9/11 commission and the chairman he appoints that he wants it to uncover the “methods” of the “enemy.” Thus, ridiculously, the commission — 10 people — is being told by Bush to do a job the multi-billion dollar C.I.A. was supposed to do, instead of finding out why they didn’t — which is, in fact, the whole reason Congress set up the commission in the first place. With this stated bias the President is implying that daring to challenge and question the CIA on its failure on 9/11 may stand in the way of the administration’s military objectives in the oil-rich Middle East — where the petroleum industry stands to reap billions if, for instance, it can get its hands on Iraqi oil once the Saddam regime is defeated. Consequently, it is the most gross conflict of interest for the chairman of the 9/11 commission to have ties to the energy industry. And it is a continuing “mystery” of the Bush Administration that everyone they appoint has to be involved with the oil industry. Even Kissinger reportedly had ExxonMobil and Arco as clients although he refused to confirm this. And whereas with Dr. Kissinger the fear was that he would lie to the commission about the CIA, of great concern with Kean is that, with his lack of relevant experience, it will be easy for the CIA to lie to him.
This does not, however, mean that Kean is conflict-free with respect to the intelligence community. You see, for the better part of a decade, Kean sat on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy, which has often been accused of acting as a surrogate for the CIA, not to gather intelligence but to support right wing groups and even coups overseas. According to USA Today (12/18/02), Kean was a member of the board of NED. NED board members hold 3-year terms. NED annual reports indicate that Kean was on the NED board at least from 1991 to 1998, inclusive.
Just this year, a New York Times exposé (April 25, 2002) revealed that the NED had played a role in an unsuccessful coup attempt in Venezuela. The Times charged that even the State Department expressed concern that recipients of $877,000 in NED money may have actively plotted to overthrow the Venezuelan government. One recipient was the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, which led work stoppages that galvanized opposition to the government. Moreover, the union’s leader, Carlos Ortega, worked closely with Pedro Carmona Estranga, the businessman who briefly took over from the democratically elected President Hugo Chávez in the failed overthrow. The NED also gave a grant of $339,998 to a foreign policy arm of the Republican Party, the International Republican Institute, which has an office in Venezuela. On April 12, 2002, that group publicly hailed Chávez’ ouster. The institute has close ties to the Bush Administration, which had also embraced the short-lived takeover. Lorne Craner, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, is a former president of the Institute. In fact, according to the Times, the Bush Administration, which made no secret of its disdain for Chávez, turned to the NED to help the opposition to Chávez.
The National Endowment for Democracy is not a private organization, although it bills itself as “non-governmental.” It is funded by the U.S. government and it was set up in the early 1980s under President Reagan in the wake of scandals involving the CIA’s funding of right wing groups and coups overseas. In short, to “sanitize” these disbursements, a new organization was set up as a stand-in for the CIA: The NED. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing the NED, was quite candid when he said of the NED in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” (Washington Post, Sept. 22, 1991.)
According to NED annual reports (1994-96), from 1994 to 1996, the NED awarded 15 grants, totaling more than $2,500,000 to the American Institute for Free Labor Development. Former State Department employee and investigative journalist William Blum has charged in Rogue State that the AIFLD is “an organization used by the CIA for decades to subvert progressive labor unions.” Blum charges that, in effect, the NED serves as a way of “laundering” CIA money. Blum charges that the NED funded rightist labor organizations to help them oppose unions which were “too militantly pro-worker.” Moreover, this has taken place not just in countries with a threat of communist takeover but in well-established democracies including Spain, Portugal and France. One can only begin to imagine how Americans would feel if France were to meddle in American internal political affairs. In 1984 NED funds were also used to aid a Panamanian presidential candidate backed by Manuel Noriega and the CIA. According to The New York Times (April 25, 2002), NED funds were also used to sway the outcome of elections in Chile in 1988. According to Blum, NED successfully manipulated elections in Nicaragua in 1990 and Mongolia in 1996 and helped to overthrow democratically elected governments in Bulgaria in 1990 and Albania in 1991 and 1992. In Haiti in the late 90’s, NED was busy working on behalf of right wing groups opposed to former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Right wing Cuban exile groups and media are also heavily supported. Especially disturbing among these disbursements to Cuban exile groups, between 1990 and 1992, the NED donated a quarter million dollars in American taxpayers’ money to the Cuban-American National Foundation, the ultra-fanatic anti-Castro Miami group. The CANF, in turn, financed Luis Posada Carriles, one of the most prolific and pitiless terrorists of modern times, who was involved in the blowing up of a Cuban airliner in 1976, which killed 73 people. In 1997, he was involved in a series of bomb explosions in Havana hotels. (New York Times, July 13, 1998.)
The endowment also played an important role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, funding key components of Oliver North’s shadowy “Project Democracy” network, which waged war without congressional authorization, and ran arms and drugs. At one point in 1987, a White House spokesman stated that those at NED “run Project Democracy.” (Washington Post, Feb. 16, 1987, and see also New York Times, Feb. 15, 1987, p.1.) Even the prominent, conservative, libertarian Cato Institute has attacked the NED (New York Times, April 25, 2002) and the Cato web site quotes Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota stating of the NED, “This is a demonstration that you can have the most egregious abuse in the world for taxpayers’ dollars.”
Kean has been hailed as “middle of the road.” Whatever that proves. What difference does it make? That is not a qualification stipulated in the letter or spirit of the legislation establishing the 9/11 commission. Would we be reassured if arsenic were labeled “middle of the road”? The question is: Is he qualified? Is Kean qualified to uncover the truth about 9/11? And it has to be asked: How could someone as “honorable” as Kean join an organization with such a past? How could someone as “honorable” as Kean allow his name to be associated with such a group? With many of the above activities having occurred while Kean was on the NED’s board of directors, either Kean approved of these NED entanglements, looked the other way or didn’t have a clue. Whichever of the three, it disqualifies him from serving as chairman of the 9/11 commission. Period.
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Because there is too much evidence and there are too many witnesses that will still be ignored by the “new” 9/11 commission, a group has been formed to push for an alternative forum. We are the Un-Congress Group. We believe it is absurd to think that Democrats are powerless when we still control nearly half the seats on Capitol Hill. That has to count for something. It is entirely legal and, we believe, entirely feasible politically for Democratic lawmakers to get together in informal, unofficial hearings and invite witnesses and whistle blowers who have been ignored to testify. This does not even require subpoena power because many witnesses who were never allowed to testify want to come forward and don’t need to be forced. And despite its drawbacks, F.O.I.A. can also be used to obtain many documents even without subpoena powers. We are calling on Democratic lawmakers to hold such informal hearings extensively over the next two years on a whole range of issues the GOP does not want discussed, including Enron, Harken Energy, election “irregularities,” Echelon and increased government surveillance powers and—9/11. Even where some hearings already exist, we want an alternative process to serve as a constant gadfly and to hold official commissions’ feet to the fire. Let the Republicans accuse and complain. It’s all they do and it’s what they will do anyway, so we might as well get our money’s worth. We are also convinced that money for such hearings could be raised by Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill, simply by their speaking with their wealthy contacts. A key figure in the DNC legal department has also assured us that such fund raising would be “trivially easy,” raising even a hundred thousand dollars “in an afternoon” (or much more over several days). He assured us that the publicity such unofficial hearings would generate for Democratic concerns, issues and office holders, and the fund-raising to support those hearings, would not violate the new restrictions on soft money. Even big contributors who will be restricted from giving as much under the new campaign rules will have no legal problem donating to the “Un-Hearings.”
We call these hearings the “un-hearings” because they will be unofficial and because they seek to challenge the GOP Congress. And since they will be unofficial, any Democratic lawmaker can participate regardless of which committees he currently sits on. So if you are currently sitting on some boring, dreary “sewer maintenance” committee—the GOP’s equivalent of sending you to Siberia—here is your chance to make a difference. The Un-Hearings are a bottom-up version of the top-down actions of “give-‘em-hell” Harry Truman who kept sending legislation to a right-wing GOP Congress that he knew they would reject—just to showcase how bad they were. The Republicans think they are king of the hill and can now tell Democrats to “be good little boys and run along now.” On issue after issue the GOP thinks it can tell us to shut up simply because it has razor thin majorities on Capitol Hill. But no one can silence a hearing process that is merely a public forum because it is protected by free speech.
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