9/11 Commission transcripts 3rd hearing finally ready

[gandalf]

http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing3/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-07-09.pdf

After round about 6 weeks the transcripts are ready.
Topic was: “TERRORISM, AL QAEDA, AND THE MUSLIM WORLD”

PANEL I: TERRORISM, AL QAEDA, AND THE MUSLIM WORLD
PANEL II: STATES AND TERRORISM
PANEL III: THE CHALLENGE WITHIN THE MUSLIM WORLD

I will try to scan the report in the next days for interesting details.
Perhaps somebody else can do that too, and post some interesting extracts here.

[gandalf]

1. Some interesting things

There are some intersting points mentioned in the transcript of the 3d
hearing.

Topic 1: The White House and other institutions are seriously
hindering the work of the commission.
The commission neither gets the documents it needs, nor does it get
the witnesses it needs to do its work properly.
Dr. Berger and Dr. Rice are obviously refusing to appear as witnesses,
even though the commission wants them to appear. (cf. p. 21)

Topic 2: The US several times in history nurtured as friends the same
groups they declared later terrorists
Senator Cleland describes how the United States supported several
times in recent history groups that were later declared terrorists.
First, US supported Ho Chi Minh during WWII, who became during the
Vietnam war the enemy.
Later, US supported the mujaheddin: "We are supporting the guys that
we now call the terrorists" (p. 27)
In the Iran-Iraq war "silently and tacitly" Saddam Hussein was
supported, who now is an enemy latent danger, like a ghost, but one that could be re-activated if
necessary; gandalf]

What does that mean? Is that only a proof of a very bad judgement in
choosing friends and allies? Or, even worse, does that mean that the
distinction between friend and enemy does not follow constant
standards, but is opportunisticilly made, depending on what is in the
US "national interest" at that time? In this case, the US would lack
every right to criticize other states, if they are constantly changing
moral standards, at one time neglecting the violation of human rights,
at the other time using it as an argument to remove a government.

Topic 3: "Iraq never posed a direct and immediate threat to the United
States" (Mr. GUNARATNA, p.28).

Topic 4: The invasion of the Iraq has "not reduced the threat of
terrorism to the United States in any way" (p. 28)

Rohan Gunaratna, Institute for Defense and strategic studies,
Singapore, a "distinguished expert" (Mr. Kean, p. 1)

[Chris R.]

2. Put Gary Hart on the 9-11 Commission

A group of us intend to protest at ground zero in Manhattan on 9-11 for the second anniversary of the terrorist attack. We intend to protest the incompetence of the Bush Administration in failing to prevent the attacks despite the warnings issued by the Hart-Rudman Commission, Senator Hart himself, and the FBI agents in the field who raised the alarm of Arabs seeking commercial flight training, but not being interested in how to take off or land an airliner. We also intend to circulate petitions to have Senator Hart fill a vacancy (Sen. Cleland is leaving) on the bipartisan 9-11 Commission, chaired by former New Jersey Governor Tom Keane. The 9-11 Commission is studying how 9-11 could have been prevented. The Bush Administration is stonewalling the Commission. All those who feel that the events 9-11 were the result of the incompetence of the Bush Administration are welcome to join us.

Below is part of an interview with Senator Hart from Buzzflash:

August 4, 2003
INTERVIEW ARCHIVES
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/08/04_hart.html

Senator Gary Hart Talks about Terrorism, the Bush Administration and What's Not Being Done to Prevent Further Attacks

"And that was our first recommendation to the President. And it was that failure to act -– to begin to do that -– that I think permitted this event to happen."

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

If anyone knows that the United States -– and the Bush Administration -– should have seen September 11th coming, it’s Gary Hart.

Former Colorado Senator Gary Hart co-chaired both the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, which issued three public reports forecasting the age of terrorism and outlined a new, post-Cold War national security policy, as well as the Council on Foreign Relations task force on homeland security, which recently released its report "America -- Still Unprepared, Still in Danger."

Many of the issues Hart presciently raised and discussed in the 1970s and 1980s -- including military reform, intelligence reform, energy independence, and a number of others -- have now begun to re-enter the arena of national debate. In the late 1990s, Hart's mastery of security issues and grasp of foreign policy led him to make multiple and tragically unheeded predictions -- one as late as September 5, 2001 -- that America would be attacked by terrorists using weapons of mass destruction.

No longer a "prophet without honor" in the wake of 9-11, Gary Hart believes the United States is still woefully unprepared to intercept and respond to attacks on American territory. Like a latter-day Paul Revere, he is continuing to provide direction to both his party and his country in an age marred by terrorism.

(Much of this introduction is excerpted from Senator Hart’s weblog )

In the light of the recently released 9/11 report, BuzzFlash turned to Senator Hart to provide some insight into America's war on terrorism.

* * *
. . .
BUZZFLASH: Now, you co-chaired the Hart-Rudman report, and it was officially released just about the time that the Bush Administration came into office. And it received some coverage –- not a tremendous amount -- but some media attention was given to it. And I have a CNN article in front of me from February 1, 2001, which says, in the introduction to an article about the Hart-Rudman report, "While few officials doubt the group’s research, some question whether these suggestions are possible and necessary." How did you feel at the time that the report received coverage, but pretty much died down as much news does after awhile if there’s no one to keep it alive?

HART: Well, first of all, there were three reports. The first was issued sometime before the one you mentioned. These are all public -– rolled out in news conferences with full notification to the press. And the first report said that America would be attacked by terrorists using weapons of mass destruction, and Americans would lose their lives on American soil, possibly in large numbers. The date of that report was September 15th, 1999 -– two years, almost to the day, before the attack on the World Trade Center. Furthermore, a second report came out in the spring of 2000, and the third one is the one that you mentioned. The first of fifty recommendations, all of which were eminently doable, was to create a National Homeland Security agency. And if CNN or anyone else was saying that it wasn't feasible, well, two years later, we had one finally created. So the question was: are you going to do it before the terrorists attack, or afterwards? And unfortunately, the Administration waited until well afterwards.

I would point out also that the so-called newspaper of record, the New York Times, didn't print one word about that final report. Keep in mind this wasn't just another federal commission. This was the most comprehensive review of U.S. national security since 1947. And so we weren't competing with a thousand other federal commissions. This was groundbreaking stuff, and we had spent two and a half years putting these recommendations and findings together.

. . .


BUZZFLASH: In a news story prior to the interview, we were looking back on the history of the recommendations from the Hart-Rudman reports. And one news story mentioned that you had tried to warn the Bush administration, I’m quoting from them, "Hart pleaded with the Bush Administration to take the Al-Qaida threat seriously, throughout the spring and summer of 2001, with Hart even meeting personally with Rice just one week before the Twin Towers were attacked." Do you have any comment about this interpretation of events?

HART: I’d put it differently. There were fourteen of us, and not all of us agreed or shared the same degree of urgency about this threat. We all concluded that it existed. We all concluded that it was going to happen. The question was: would it be sooner or later? I felt, and I think a few others felt, a higher degree of urgency about this. And in my case, I went around the country. Keep in mind the mandate of the commission required that it be dissolved by February 15th, 2001. We got an extension because there were Congressional committees that wanted testimony from us. But by and large, once we delivered the reports, as a body, we had pretty much completed our work.

But individually, I went around the country, gave speeches and urged people to pay more attention to this. I also urged reporters and journalists to pay more attention. One of the speeches I gave was in Montreal, ironically, to an International Air Transportation Association meeting. And the next morning, the Montreal papers’ headlines were: "Hart Predicts Terrorist Attacks on America."

BUZZFLASH: And when was that?

HART: That was the day I went down to Washington and met with Dr. Rice, whom I had known before. And I said, "Please get going more urgently on the issue of homeland security." And that was September the 6th, 2001 –- five days before the attack.

BUZZFLASH: Rice has said that Bush was briefed, I believe, on August 6th of 2001 -– if that’s not the exact date, it’s within a couple of days –- that there might indeed be serious bombings by Al-Qaida in the United States, or hijackings, but that they couldn't predict planes would be flown into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. Do you have any response to that?

HART: Our commission did not have the resources to give detailed projections as to how, when and where. But the fact is that for two years we had said this was going to happen, and one major step that needed to be taken was to coordinate existing federal assets, particularly our border control agencies -– Coast Guards, Customs and Border Patrol, and Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We were very explicit about that, and we had been. And that was our first recommendation to the President. And it was that failure to act -– to begin to do that -– that I think permitted this event to happen. No one believes in absolute security. But the goal is to make it as difficult for the attackers as possible, and we had not done that. There had been no –- to my knowledge -– no major step taken by this administration in the period between January and September to stop these attacks, including coordinating the databases and communication systems of the Board of Control Agency and the INS. Everybody since 9/11 that’s looked at the situation has said the porousness of that system is what permitted these people to do what they did. And the question is: what, if anything, did the administration do between January 31st and September the 11th? And the answer is: not very much.

Now a commission of fourteen people cannot substitute for the federal government of the United States. The President had the power. The President controlled the FBI and the CIA. And when the tragedy happened, no one was fired. Why is that? Why was there no accountability? So instead of pointing the finger at us, and say: well, if you’d just told us they were going to use airplanes, and that the target was the World Trade Center, and it was going to be September 11th, maybe we could have done something. That’s total nonsense.

BUZZFLASH: Well, we’ve pointed out on BuzzFlash on a number of occasions that when Rice mentioned that they knew of hijackings, but not hijackings into buildings, that this was beyond ridiculous, because the way you stop a hijacking into a building is the same way you stop a hijacking.

HART: Right.

BUZZFLASH: And so though the ultimate destination perhaps, according to her, was not known to them, the means of preventing it was the same.

HART: Yes. I was told very recently that there was somebody in the intelligence community that created a scenario that did involve the use of airplanes. I haven't seen that scenario or where it came from, but I didn't know it existed until somebody said it –- that it had been in one or more scenarios.

[Abe Linkman]

3. Kindly explain what you mean.....

when you say that "the events of 9-11 were the result of the incompetence of the Bush Administration". I'm anxious to hear your (substantive, please) explanation.

And, having Gary Hart on any Commission will only add a veneer of "objectivity" in ferreting out the truth. The Warren Commission had all kinds of highly respected members, too (though none whose fame had been marked by any kind of "Monkey Business" - at least to the public's knowledge).

This proposal also sounds like something that Karl Rove is behind.

[Chris R.]

4. The Hart-Rudman commission gave sufficient warning

Who is better to confront the Bush administration on terrorism than the man whose warnings went unheeded?

The Bush Administration was warned of the terrorist threat by the Hart Rudman commission, Senator Hart himself, and various FBI agents in the field. They did nothing to prevent it. Nothing. Hart is not really objective, since he is fact a witness to the incompetence. He personally warned Condeleezza Rice to do more on terrorism on Sept. 6, 2001. Purportedly, Rice is ducking the 9-11 commission.
Sen. Hart has stated that by failing to heed the warnings given that Bush "didn't so his job." Sen. Hart is the last person Carl Rove wants on the 9-11 Commission. If the Dems were smart they would draft Hart for President.

Below is an excerpt from the Montreal Gazette on September 5, 2001. This warning did not appear in the U.S. media. The U.S. media was to busy with 24/7 coverage of Gary Condit’s personal life to give us any real news:

TERROR RISK REAL: THOUSANDS WILL DIE ON US SOIL, SAYS EX-PRESIDENTAIL HOPEFUL, GARY HART.

Montreal Gazette
Wednesday, September 5, 2001
Section: News

Speaking before an international audience of aviation-industry representatives, former U.S. senator and presidential hopeful Gary Hart said there is a strong likelihood the United States will be hit by a major terrorist strike that will inflict thousands of casualties and wreak major changes in American society.

Hart said yesterday the projection was made by experts consulted by a U.S. national security commission he recently chaired on threats facing the US in the coming 25 years. "The conclusion was that, for the first time since 1812, Americans will lose their lives in large number on American soil by terrorists using weapons of mass destruction," he said.

He said that, in the aftermath of such a terrorist strike, there would be a massive outcry for the government to act, and an unprecedented crackdown by the authorities. "We will be spied on, our privacy will be gone; that will have a huge impact on our society."

Hart, along with Quebec Premier Bernard Landry, was a guest speaker at a dinner held by the local branch of a U.S.-based international law firm, Coudert Brothers, for which Hart is currently a special adviser. The occasion marked the launch of the firm's international aviation practice group.

Hart's speech was about the changes the world faces going into the 21st century, which he said will be dominated by increasing globalization, population shifts from poorer to richer countries, and a decline of nation states as the building blocks of the global community. "With increased globalization, that fundamental building block is beginning to disintegrate," he said.

He made no specific reference to Quebec or Canada, but suggested that different cultural groups across the world will seek to assert their identity outside their present national context. "All kinds of groups may or may not want to be separate, but to identify themselves as separate from the nation states into which they were cast by colonial or other historical circumstance."

The 21st century, he suggested, will be not so much a continuation of the 20th, but a revolutionary break from the recent past. "If you thought the 20th century was interesting, wait until you see the 21st," he said. "It will be like nothing we have seen in the past."