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TechnoratiJail Time for Tenet?
President George W. Bush used to complain that being president was "hard work," but he has gotten over that. Now he says it "has been a fabulous experience."
Why fabulous? Well, a good part of it has to do with his past.
When Bush screwed up royally -- whether in his personal or business affairs -- he had to suffer the humiliation of asking his father or his father's friends (sometimes Arab friends) to bail him out.
But now? Wow! As president, young George has found he can escape accountability altogether.
Now when he screws up royally, he need not call Dad; George W. Bush is himself in control of all the levers he needs to pull in order to bail himself out. Is this a great country or what?
An invertebrate Congress has been a big help. But his greatest asset limiting his liability has been the kind of folk he has gotten to work for him. The kind like Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, whom he has no problem asking to lie for him, when required.
For Bush's powers are formidable -- as he showed when Libby, convicted perjurer and obstructer of justice, was about to go off to prison. The president commuted Libby's sentence, sending a message to others who might be called on to lie for him to hang tough and count on commutation or pardon.
A president's unlimited power to pardon serves as the ultimate trump card to keep friends and associates out of jail.
Even so, one key aide, former CIA Director and Medal of Freedom winner, George Tenet, can be forgiven for being somewhat apprehensive these days. For he has lied under oath regarding what Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks and how early Bush knew it.
Concealing pre-9/11 warnings that Bush received might have seemed like the smart play during the president's first term when his popularity was high and few in Washington dared to stand up to him.
However, if the American voters choose to send vertebrates to the next Congress -- or if the Justice Department starts taking seriously its duty to require honest testimony from senior government officials -- Tenet may be looking at some jail time.
With the possibility of large changes in the political landscape early next year, all bets might be off.
Tenuous Tenet
As for Tenet's potential legal jeopardy, let's leave aside for now the obviously heinous -- like running George W. Bush's global Gestapo complete with secret prisons and torture chambers, a criminal enterprise that Tenet carved out of the operations directorate of the CIA.
Let's pick a case of simpler, more familiar white-collar crimes -- Libby-style perjury and obstruction of justice.
Credit to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, whose 35 Articles of Impeachment against Bush -- specifically Articles 33 and 34 relating to the catastrophe of 9/11 -- have freshened memories, stirred additional research and demonstrate why Tenet may be looking at some prison time.
Article 33 charges that the president "REPEATEDLY IGNORED AND FAILED TO RESPOND TO HIGH-LEVEL INTELLIGENCE WARNINGS OF PLANNED TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE US, PRIOR TO 9/11."
The text contains a devastating run-down of the many times President Bush was warned that an attack was coming and did nothing.
George Tenet did sound the alarm often and loudly. But as a retroactive glance at August 2001 shows, the president, literally, could not be bothered.
Tenet's own performance was hardly blameless. The 9/11 Commission found numerous screw-ups within the CIA, and Tenet's discharge of his statutory duty to coordinate the work of the entire intelligence community was abysmal.
It was his responsibility to ensure that the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies were sharing information freely on this priority issue. Sadly, Tenet preferred backslapping to holding the intelligence community to professional standards of work and conduct.
Article 33 of Impeachment shows that President Bush's inaction in the face of myriad warnings prior to 9/11 constitutes utter failure with respect to his Constitutional duties to take proper steps to protect the nation.
Those who remember Watergate and other misadventures will be aware, too, that the cover-up of wrongdoing constitutes an additional -- and often more provable -- crime, especially when it involves perjury and obstruction of justice.
That's where George Tenet comes in. Until now, Bush has managed to escape blame for his outrageous inactivity before 9/11 because his subordinates -- first and foremost, Tenet -- have covered up for him.
This is what is dealt with in Article 34 of Impeachment: OBSTRUCTION OF INVESTIGATION INTO THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001.
A Faustian Bargain
What did the president know, and when did he know it?
This double question, with Watergate antecedents, is the one that Bush and Cheney had to guard most carefully against.
By all appearances, they had little trouble enlisting a malleable-cum-guilty-conscience George Tenet in this effort at denial and obfuscation. And this helps to explain some of the more bizarre episodes of that time.
Faustian bargain? Call it mutual blackmail, if you prefer the vernacular.
Yes, Tenet gave the president enough warning to warrant, to compel some sort of action on his part. But Tenet's lackadaisical management of the CIA and intelligence community was at least as important a factor in the success of the attacks of 9/11.
The raison d'etre of the CIA had been to prevent another Pearl Harbor. Yet, 9/11 took more lives than the Japanese attack in 1941.
As before Pearl Harbor, significant pieces of intelligence lay around but analysts failed to put them all together.
It was long since clear to many in Washington that, had George Tenet stayed home long enough to tend to his knitting -- his management responsibilities -- instead of eternally hobnobbing abroad with kings and other potentates, 9/11 might well have been avoided, even with an indolent president.
Of course, Tenet should have been fired after 9/11. But President Bush needed Tenet, or at least Tenet's silence, as much as Tenet needed Bush, or at least Bush's forgiveness.
What developed might be described as a case of mutual blackmail disguised as bonhomie. Bush was keenly aware that Tenet had the wherewithal to let the world know how many warnings he had given the president -- reducing Bush to a criminally negligent, blundering fool.
Were that to happen, Bush would have to kiss goodbye the role of cheerleader/war president -- and so much else. Thus, Tenet had become critical to Bush's political survival.
And Tenet? All he needed was not to be blamed -- not to be fired. The bargain: I, George Bush, will keep you on and even praise your performance; you, George Tenet, will keep your mouth shut about all the warnings you gave me during the spring and summer of 2001. Tenet, it seems clear, agreed.
The bargain was no secret to insiders. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, still very much of the Washington scene, commented publicly that Tenet was so grateful that the president let him stay on as CIA director, that he would do anything for him.
Events proved Gingrich right. And there was even a Medal of Freedom in it for Tenet -- but, alas, eventual criminal liability as well.
Anatomy of a Deal
On Sept. 26, 2001, the president motored out to CIA headquarters, puts his arm around Tenet and told the cameras, "We've got the best intelligence we can possibly have thanks to the men and women of the CIA."
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, as was so often the case, had not been clued in.
On Sept. 23, Powell had promised a "White Paper" that would make a "persuasive case" that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. His announcement met immediate resistance from the White House, however, and, less than two weeks later, Powell actually apologized for his "unfortunate choice of words."
There would be no White Paper, he said; rather, the American people would have to rely on "information coming out in the press and other ways."
It became gradually clear why Powell reneged. The evidence against bin Laden could not be disclosed because there was simply too much of it available for the reading well before 9/11.
To reveal this would bring extreme political embarrassment and vitiate the Faustian bargain with Tenet.
Small wonder that the White House preferred a whitewash to a White Paper.
And this has been a constant since the fall of 2001. Administration obstructionism and intransigence has succeeded in hindering all subsequent investigations into what Bush and Cheney had been told prior to 9/11. Until now, at least.
Perjury, Obstruction of Justice
In his sworn testimony of April 14, 2004, before the 9/11 Commission, Tenet outdid himself trying to honor his bargain with Bush. The commissioners were interested in what the president had been told during the critical month of August 2001.
Answering a question from Commissioner Timothy Roemer, Tenet referred to the president's long vacation (July 29-Aug. 30) in Crawford and insisted that he did not see the president at all in August.
"You never talked with him?" Roemer asked.
"No," Tenet replied, explaining that for much of August he, too, was "on leave."
That same evening, a CIA spokesman called reporters to say that Tenet had misspoken, and that he had briefed Bush on Aug. 17 and 31, 2001. The spokesman played down the Aug. 17 briefing as uneventful and indicated that the second briefing took place after Bush had returned to Washington.
Funny how Tenet could have forgotten his first visit to Crawford, whereas in his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet waxed eloquent about the "president graciously driving me around the spread in his pickup and me trying to make small talk about the flora and the fauna."
But the visit was not limited to small talk.
In his book Tenet writes: "A few weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to make sure the president stayed current on events."
The Aug. 6, 2001 President's Daily Brief contained the article "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US." According to Ron Suskind's The One-Percent Doctrine, the president reacted by telling the CIA briefer, "All right, you've covered your ass now."
Clearly, Tenet needed to follow up on that.
Was Tenet again in Crawford just one week later? According to a White House press release, President Bush on Aug. 25 told visitors to Crawford, "George Tenet and I" drove up the canyon "yesterday."
Flora and Fawner?
If, as Tenet says in his memoir, it was the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB that prompted his visit on Aug. 17, what might have brought him back on Aug. 24?
I believe the answer is to be found in court documents released at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the fledgling pilot in Minnesota interested in learning to steer a plane but indifferent as to how to land it.
Those documents show that on Aug. 23, 2001, Tenet was given an alarming briefing, focusing on Moussaoui, titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." Tenet was told that Moussaoui was training to fly a 747 and, among other suspicion-arousing data, had paid for the training in cash.
The FBI arrested him on Aug. 16 on grounds he had overstayed his 90-day visa and the CIA was working on the case with the FBI. This might well have been what led Tenet to go back to Crawford on the 24th.
There is no indication that the president or Tenet ever followed up with senior FBI officials. Then-Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard has testified that he did not learn of it until the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001.
Things proceeded more quickly at the working level, at least for this discrete part of the problem. Tenet's analysts had learned about Moussaoui in a back-door message from the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis enlisting CIA's help in obtaining information on Moussaoui from French intelligence.
The Minneapolis case agent had already telephoned the FBI legal attaché office in Paris, which contacted the French government on Aug. 16 or 17.
With unusual speed, on Aug. 22 and 27, the French provided information that made a connection between Moussaoui and a rebel leader in Chechnya, Ibn al Khattab, and indicated that Khattab had a connection with Osama bin Laden.
Court documents from the Moussaoui case also show that on Aug. 30, 2001, CIA analysts were able to confirm to Tenet that Moussaoui had ties with radical fundamentalist groups and Osama bin Laden. This would have been good grist for Tenet's briefing of the president on Aug. 31 in Washington.
Nevertheless, in Tenet's sworn testimony before the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004, he said he had not mentioned Moussaoui to the president during August 2001. Tenet further testified that he did not report on Moussaoui at the cabinet-level meeting convened on Sept. 4 to discuss terrorism.
On May 6, 2007, when Tim Russert asked Tenet what the president knew and when he knew it, Tenet replied that "everything went silent" in August 2001.
Russert asked Tenet why he did not go directly to the president in July 2001 after he had warned then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice of the possibility of "spectacular, multiple, simultaneous attacks against US targets with little or no warning" and gotten the brush-off.
Tenet replied lamely "the president is not the action officer."
Tenet not only was, by statute, the president's principal foreign intelligence adviser but -- by all accounts -- enjoyed a backslapping rapport with him. Tenet also briefed the president six mornings a week.
It strains credulity to suggest that Tenet was afraid to go directly to George Bush for fear of appearing to be making some sort of end-run around his national security adviser on a terrorist threat about which Tenet's hair was said to be "on fire?"
Tenet at Breakfast on 9/11
No one wants to believe that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, could have been prevented, but we do a disservice to our country, and to one another, if we stay in denial.
No one wants to believe that President Bush had considerably more forewarning than he acknowledges, but it is very clear that he did. It is equally clear that George Tenet has been a prime mover in hiding the amount of intelligence available to Bush to act on.
Reviewing the evidence on May 26, 2002, Michael Getler, then-ombudsman for the Washington Post, alluded to one very telling sign leaping out of a conversation between George Tenet and former Sen. David Boren over breakfast on 9/11.
When an aide rushed up to tell Tenet of the attacks, Tenet's immediate reaction was "This has bin Laden all over it...I wonder if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training."
Getler notes for his readers that the reference is to Zacarias Moussaoui.
A few months after 9/11, the Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI did not tell the White House about Moussaoui until after Sept. 11. That may be true, particularly if, as noted above, then-Acting Director Thomas Pickard did not learn about Moussaoui until 9/11.
But the evidence is very strong that Tenet told Bush chapter and verse.
The extraordinary lengths to which Tenet has gone to disguise that has the former CIA director skating very close to perjury -- if not over the line.
Plus, if Tenet is held accountable after Bush leaves town to go back to Texas for good, there may be no one in the White House willing to pardon him.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC. A CIA analyst for 27 years, he worked on the President's Daily Brief under presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan.
Distributed by Consortiumnews.com
31 Comments so far
Show AllI just read the two articles recommended by Mike Corbeil above in this discussion. While interesting, they really are not surprising. I would recommend a couple of books for background on the subject of what the U.S. Government, Military and black budget groups like the C.I.A. are up to.
You should read "An American Dynasty" by Kevin Phillips. It's a biographical study of the Bush family, and it provides insight into just how evil and corrupt a family we are dealing with here. A couple of examples from that book are:
Prescott Bush financed the Nazis until he was forced to stop by Congressional action in 1943. He had funded Krupp Steel and I.G. Farben. I. G. Farben is the chemical company that built the conversion plants that turned coal into liquid petroleum, which fueled the Warmacht. I.G. Farben located one of its major plants near Auschwitz, Poland because of readily available slave labor. Our current President's grandfather, Prescott, financed these activities. I.G. Farben also produced the poison gas which was used at the death camps.
George H. W. Bush owned sugar plantations in western Cuba which were nationalized without compensation by Fidel after the Cuban revolution. This led to Bush and his C.I.A. mounting the Bay of Pigs operation and helps explain the dogged refusal to lift the asinine and punitive embargo against Cuba to this day. There are some mysterious connections between H.W. and the people linked to Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans.
George H. W. Bush owned United Fruit and supported the dictator Somoza in Nicaragua and later the Contras who murdered tens of thousands of people in an attempt to return the banana plantations to international capital.
Another interesting look at the evolution of the black budget privatization schemes which led to bloodsucking vampire companies like Halliburton can be found in Joseph Trento's "Prelude to Terror."
"Boom! The planes hit the towers and the shit hits the fan."
The trouble with the official story is that it doesn't make sense. The fires were going out. The towers were stable. We have tape of a FDNY Captain stating from the upper floors of tower 2 that he just needs "2 lines" to extinguish scattered fire and then the building suddenly loses all its structural integrity, is blown to smithereens and comes down in 10 seconds, nearly free fall speed.
Then a few minutes later Building One does the same thing.
And 7 hours or so later, Building Seven goes down at free fall.
Fire and gravity cannot cause buildings to disintegrate from top to bottom in seconds. Fire and gravity cannot cause hundreds of tons of steel to be ejected with an upward trajectory, and you can clearly see in the video that the Towers had huge streams of debris rocketing upwards and outwards from the buildings and then curving down to the streets below.
Gravity and fire can't do that. Fire cannot cause a uniform, sudden loss of structural integrity of a steel reinforced building. Gravity cannot cause debris to eject upwards. Gravity exerts force only one way - down.
So the official story and investigations cannot be true or complete.
Why have the investigations not been true or complete?
One thing I noticed from Mr. McGovern's article that I had not thought of before was that after a one month vacation, Bush headed to Florida to read "My Pet Goat" the next week, which is utterly ridiculous.
As President of the United States might he not have had more important matters to take care of?
Hey Colin Powell!
You're a real Unca Tom.
Covering whitey's ass
Since Vietnam.
You told some tall tales
At the UN.
You knew fukn well
What you were doing.
And hey Condi Rice!
Did you think it was nice
To try to scare us
With mushroom skies?
The smoking gun
Was the CIA note.
The one you forgot
And tried note to quote.
Hey Georgie Bush!
You took a long break.
Cut some brush.
Maybe danced with the snake.
Did you happen to read
What the CIA wrote?
Or were you too busy cramming
My Pet Goat?
And hey Toy Blair!
You say you meant well.
So how come you fear
You'll end up in hell?
A fine Catholic man
You claim to be.
But your name will be damned
For eternity.
Now hey Gordon Brown
What did you buy?
You let Tony sell you
Some pie in the sky.
You signed all the checks,
Bought all the bombs.
Gave my money away
For nothing but tombs.
So hey all of you!
Bet your butts over here.
Got something to tell you
That you gotta hear.
Ain't nothing but lies
When you say you do good.
If killing was right
Then kill you I would.
But I know that death
Is not mine to give.
I cannot give life.
I can only live.
And come the day
When we're dead and gone,
Your lies will have died
But my truth will live on.
There is a solution, should bush hand out blanket pardons by January 19th: Have the next president submit the International Criminal Court treaty to the Senate and have them ratify it. Bushco can pardon themselves all they want for ALL their criminal acts, but that will only have legal standing in this country. It's a simple matter, then, for Interpol to get some warrants and pick the criminals up and deposit them at the Hague. But... Anyone want to take bets on whether the next president, and the next Congress (especially the Senate) will have the guts to do this? I didn't think so.
the 2001 IS inside job
SO OUTSIDERs have to INVESTIGATE
SIMPLE [PERIOD]
Thanks, Mike Corbeil, for your links...
The 9/11 warnings that 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the US' were 'MANUFACTURED' by the Bush administration; it's the only logical explanation why they did NOTHING--they knew it was fake. Obviously.
I have a question about the 87 billion dollars being awarded to private contractors that are building the National and Interntional spy network.
How much of that money is going to warrentless spying???
Cointelpro tactics are being tought to the IAFF (International FireFighters),Citizen Crop,and local Neighborhood watch groups,TIPS programs.
Local and Federal agencys are training civilian groups to conduct warrentless 24/7 survielene on thousands of innocent Amercans accross this country. They need suspects To keep the money train going and to builD thier community watch groups using fear of these suspects.
Slander campaigns, and Cointelpro tactics are used to control and destroy thier targets while the local watch groups are desensitized to the torturous tactics.
Is this EAST Berlin? Is the Stazi Police here in America?
Please look into this Nation wide abuse of money and our constitutional rights by law enforemnet agencies using local watch groups to conduct illegal surveilence.
When did we as a nation decide to allow non-law enforcement volunteer groups to conduct warrentless survielence on Americans.
This is a direct result of the USA Patriot Act and King Georges CIA buddys.They are all over this country setting up these covert groups that attack innocent Americans for political and financial gain every day.
This is torture!!!! How many times do you have to hear that before you act.
Americans hate torture, and this government under the cloak of Patriotism has setup the biggest torture spy network in the world using law enforcement directing local community watch groups.
NO IMMUNIY for these groups ,Verizon ,Infragard,Citzen Corp, IAFF.
Some one cut off these funds to the CIA and FBI sponsered neighborhood TERRORIST TORTURE PROGRAMS NOW!!!!!!!
"Plus, if Tenet is held accountable after Bush leaves town to go back to Texas for good, there may be no one in the White House willing to pardon him."
DO NOT BE SO SURE OF THAT. I just read the whole article and there are a number of comments that I could make about some things in it, though mostly in terms of posing questions and adding some pieces of information that Ray McGovern did not mention, but which have been reported on for many years already.
And don't be so sure Bush is as guilty as Ray McGovern says.
RAY MCGOVERN might seriously make some revisions to his article after carefully learning of what's stated in the two articles linked in my first post of this page.
HE AND EVERYONE ELSE MUST MAKE THEMSELVES aware of what is said in those two articles. One is extraordinarily and strongly pertinent to what McGovern's article is about, and is by Stephen Lendman; while the other article is tangentially related, but still in importants respects, and is by Andrew G. Marshall.
MUCH OR ALL of what Stephen Lendman's article will turn the lights on across planet Earth with respect to what Ray McGovern's article is about and the conduct of George Tenet and G.W. Bush, but also the more real president in the White House and who has been employing the disguise of the VP title; and, yet, there's also much more, very much more.
NO ONE SHOULD MISS READING THOSE TWO ARTICLES, and this includes that people like Ray McGovern also need to read these; as well as to find out all they can about what the greatly courageous 30-year careered CIA discovered, has proven, and has exposed at ... great risk for or to her life. She told George Tenet and he said that he knew, but that they had better keep their mouths shut if they cared to continue living; and that's only not even a bare "fore-taste" of what Stephen Lendman provides on what this extraordinarily courageous CIA or former CIA agent or officer exposed.
I have a strong feeling that Ray McGovern would then make a few revisions to his article; for there's surely some strong eye-opening information for CIA professionals, former or veteran, and those still in these jobs. And like I said in my first post, the one with the two article links, DENNIS KUCINICH is all the more VINDICTATED ABOUT DEMANDING CHENEY TO BE IMPEACHED [FIRST], and then followed by Bush being impeached. Contrary to what Ray McGovern says, Bush is NOT powerful, it's the people who puppet Bush and sometimes keep him "out of the loop" who make Bush seem powerful; appearances are deceiving, always REMEMBER!
READ THOSE TWO ARTICLES; they're very important, i.e., CRUCIAL.
" JH June 13th, 2008 12:22 am
The better scenario is that Tenet refuses to go alone. Maybe he'll start squealing to save his backside. Then the whole stinking house of Bush will come crashing down. ..."
I respect what you're saying JH, but you clearly don't take the time to carefully read other posts and yours is a burier kind; one that buries what likely is the most important post in this page. And i suggest that people not do that; unless including a note in their posts and saying to make sure to read the articles linked in my first post in this page. Otherwise, you'll help to bury the post from view; for a lot of people then won't check it.
What Ray McGovern writes about George Tenet, and JH thinking that he could bring the whole house down; YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YET, until reading the articles linked in my first above post. Tenet is surely NOT going to testify on the most critical truths and crimes he KNOWS OF and which Stephen Lendman greatly wrote a mind-blowing, heart-clobbering, ... article.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA YET HOW BAD THE SITUATION REALLY IS until reading those two articles; though Lendman's is the one packing the stronger mind-blow, .... But both are very important and tell us about what's really happening in the topmost levels of the U.S. govt; and from or in two distinct respects, although they're probably not entirely unrelated to each other.
MAKE SURE TO READ THOSE.
If George Tenet can be charged with or for criminal conduct, and you're really interested in see how much more he can be charged for or with, then I emphasize reading Stephen Lendman's article in my above post; only, one up from this one. The same applies about Cheney and impeaching him.
I haven't yet read Ray McGovern's article, but what I did read of it does not speak of what Stephen Lendman's article is about. It represents a whole "new can" of hellish-worm doings.
The better scenario is that Tenet refuses to go alone. Maybe he'll start squealing to save his backside. Then the whole stinking house of Bush will come crashing down. The resulting campaign to invade Iraq was based on lies. There can be no stomach to justify remaining as an occupying force based on bush administration "reasoning." If we remain, it will be for the frank reason that we went in in the first place -- for their oil.
Bush is not powerful, really; it's that having the title of President and being puppet of the kind of elites that control and corrupt the U.S. govt, all of this combines to making Bush seem powerful. He's puppet; though sure is blood-cultist like former Pope John Paul II said in December 2002 or January 2003, when he added that he had also been wondering if Bush might be, or not, the antichrist, but which he was obviously not sure, while being sure in his view of Bush being blood-cultist.
As for the kind of people making U.S. presidents seem powerful, the following articles provide readers with some [strong] exposes on this topic; and the article by Stephen Lendman is not only very strong, it is crucial reading.
The rich elites want everything to themselves, and the following two articles provide important information of a very different kind about these people in terms of their doings of today.
Get ready for some serious "shock therapy" with Lendman's article. It's about major and top-U.S. govt corruption, involving boss-man VP Cheney, George Tenet, the CIA, the Halliburton-CIA operatives who aren't registered as members of the CIA, but who have been found to definitely be secretly referrable to as these types of operatives, majorly robbing U.S. taxpayers like most people have probably never heard of before and might've found difficult to imagine, and so on.
It was very dangerous for the courageous CIA agent who managed to be able to definitely learn of and prove all of this major criminality. And through what is revealed in Lendman's article on what she, this courageous and long-careered CIA agent or official, exposed is a strong illustration of why some people claimed years ago that Cheney had basically taken over authority of the presidential administration; by, and f.e., secretly having documents that are supposed to go to the president, at least first, redirected to Cheney's office, keeping Bush "out of the loop" about things a president just didn't need to know, Cheney evidently ruled, secretly.
Kucinich is all the more vindicated in having correctly ruled that Cheney had to be the first one to be impeached, for he [is] definitely more dangerous than Bush, who is mister puppet; with mister puppeteer lurking in the background as VP. I had a strong suspicion that Cheney would not want to be president, for he strategically needed plenty of secrecy in order to be able to carry on his major Halliburton machinations; and the most dangerous of dangerous and elite criminals are those who operate secretly.
" Exposing Bush Administration Corruption
by Stephen Lendman
Global Research, June 11, 2008"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9288
"Barack O'Bilderberg: Picking the President
by Andrew G. Marshall
Global Research, June 9, 2008"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9270
Many machinations of 'Mal' kind go on and are going on, while corporate msm "news" media keeps many of us very ignorant sheople; although many or most of them wouldn't know what's revealed in Lendman's above article, but while more certainly knew of the Bilderberg Group's recent annual meeting in the USA.
It's not to say that I can personally accuse Barack Obama of having committed a wrong, as described of his (and Billary's) secret doings, which seriously stunned the press people traveling with Obama's campaign; stunned and fuming with anger. Andrew Marshall also doesn't say that Obama committed any wrongs; only presenting the fact that he, and Hillary Clinton, certainly seem to have secretly sped off to a secret meeting with the B. Group.
I'd need more information before being able to form a definitive view, and these types of details are, for now anyway, secret; but, Obama, Billary, etcetera, will also make sure of keeping what they discussed in secret from everyone other than themselves.
While some may be members of both groups, the Bilderberg Group ... dwarfs the power of AIPAC, and unlike the latter, the B.G. is HIGHLY, very highly secretive. Again, that is also how the very most dangerous people operate; and we should not forget this. They certainly have ways of guaranteeing that anyone leaking what the B.G. dictates is never to be leaked will never get another chance to repeat the leaked information; permanent silencing is easy for them to ensure.
John Perkins, author of 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man', did not mention the B.G. in the interview that I read the transcript of at Democracy Now!; but what he said is relevant to the above.
Pearl Harbor was partially an inside job, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. There is no evidence, direct or circumstantial, that 9/11 is any different.
Betrayal of the USA (the land and its people, not often POTUS) has a long history in the US military. Many of these traitors are considered honorable men by officers, e.g. R. E. Lee.
Forget it. Tenet needs to have no worries... as long as American Sheeple continue supporting the Dem Party, aka Complicit Party.
"When Bush is sworn in, the outgoing national security advisor Sandy Berger thrusts the whole mess on to Condi Rice during the transition, telling her Osama's plots are now her number 1, most immediate worry - the biggest threat out there that will be keeping her up worrying at night."
Yet Condi testified at the 9/11 hearings that she had "never heard of al Qaeda" until after 9/11. Lies, conspiracy, false flag job? - You make the call.
Best Case Senario - Bush is an imbecile who didn't prevent 911 attack
Second Best Case Senario - Bush knowingly ALLOWED 911 attack to happen in order to pave the way for invasion of Iraq, and enrichement of oil biddies
Third Best Case Senario - Bush planned a false flag attack to allow above
Worst Case Senario - The rest of government was also in on it.
I always like to look to MOTIVE in cases like this....
Q: What did Bush and his cronies stand to gain from 911?
A: $5/Gallon gas and the enrichment of all his buddies, the looting of the US national treasury, carte blanche in inacting his fascist regime, etc...
Tenet needs to testify under oath--And those with whom he lied to--the president and vice president
"A case of mutual blackmail disguised as bonhomie" - Now that's what I call hitting the nail squarely, with nuance. Well said, and well done, Ray McGovern.
"No one wants to believe the attacks of September 11, 2001 could have been prevented, but we do a disservice to our country, and to one another, if we stay in denial." Amen.
Reflect on the immediate back story: in the waning days of the Clinton administration, Richard Clarke had a whole national security team focusing specifically upon Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda's use of Afghanistan as a sanctuary (with the blessings of the Taliban and the Pakistani ISI) for plotting terrorist attacks on American soil. The frustrations of the Clinton White House trying to work around, through, and with the Saudis and the Pakistanis to address this growing threat are painstakingly detailed in Steven Coll's fine book Ghost Wars.
When Bush is sworn in, the outgoing national security advisor Sandy Berger thrusts the whole mess on to Condi Rice during the transition, telling her Osama's plots are now her number 1, most immediate worry - the biggest threat out there that will be keeping her up worrying at night. Richard Clarke keeps lobbying and emailing the new Bush national security team to set up a principals meeting to treat an imminent Al Qaeda terror attack as an urgent priority. No such meeting is convened.
During this same late January through August, 2001 time frame, NSA starts a clandestine warrantless electronic monitoring project through the US telecoms, and DIA simultaneously has some sort of "Able Danger" military intelligence team working domestically to gather up what sure seems to resemble the high jackers' profiles and daily surveillance monitoring.
Yes, yes, yes - the CIA's left hand doesn't get coordinated with the FBI's right hand on Mossaoui in Minnesota, visas, watch lists, and the tips about flight schools in Arizona and Florida, etc., etc. But from what we now have painfully learned about the Cheney-and-Rumsfeld power grab inside the beltway during the early months of the Bush regime, aren't there pretty compelling reasons to surmise that the civilians (including even Tenet) were being elbowed aside in favor of the Pentagon's intelligence pros?
Ray is right that on the bureaucratic legal flow chart, George Tenet as head of the CIA should have had access to all of that, and he should have discharged his legal duty to keep George Bush informed. The prospect of Mr. Tenet questioned under oath about the contradictions between his 911 Commission testimony and his own book could indeed be historically pivotal.
Yep, Tenet briefed Bush in Crawford.
And Tenet also undoubtedly reassured him the situation was all under control, because there was a crack intelligence team - humint and hi tech electronic - monitoring the evil conspirators every move, along with some assistance from reliable foreign intelligence services.
Boom! The planes hit the towers and the shit hits the fan. The Pentagon people in particular dropped the ball, but George Tenet eventually sort of threw himself upon a rubber sword in order to protect Bush, Cheney, himself, and the agency tasked to prevent another Pearl Harbor, picking up a Medal of Freedom in the process. Helping fix the intelligence around the Iraq invasion policy decision was a big part of that dance.
As my daddy used to say, the wheels of often justice grind slow, but they also grind fine.
Bill from Saginaw
fakedemocracy: The one thing that you have neglected in your theory is the fact that Communism was 'created' by the same people that 'created' fascism. Two sides of the same coin to divide people and unite them against a common cause...
KaneJeeves asked: "The thing I don't know is what the motivation would be. Any ideas? It can't simply be oil."
Well, it was the "New Pearl Harbor" that was needed to put the PNAC plan into action. Plain and simple. Something that would "Change the world"... notice how after 9/11 the media was filled with statements like "The world has changed. The post 9/11 world. The world is different. 9/11 changes everything"... and people bought it... hence the war in Afghanistan for the UNOCAL pipeline... the War in Iraq for oil and regional presence... The war in Somalia for regional presence... etc...
Personally, I believe that Bin Laden is a patsy and had nothing to do with 9/11... Tenet isn't guilty about covering up intelligence relating to Bin Laden, nor would it have prevented 9/11 from happening... Now, lets talk Neo-con/CIA/Mossad connections to 9/11 and we have something. McGovern, as much as I respect the man, is running on the assumption that 9/11 was the work of "Arab Terrorists"... which of course, seems highly improbable, given the outstanding inconsistencies, 7 years later.
(BTW, don't tell Jake Newton that I'm questioning 9/11... I just don't have the energy for him today. Heh.)
George Tenet had an easy out at the time, if he'd only been quick on his feet..
"Oh, you're quite mistaken; the President didn't get his information from my CIA. It must have been the Culinary Institute of America."
Who knows, he might actually have been able to get more reliable information from a respected cooking school.
fakedemocracy - I think you may be right. China is exactly what Russia needs, and they *are* neighbors afterall. That would also explain being in cohoots with Bin Laden too. If I'm not mistaken he and his ilk hate communism/Russia/China just as much as the neocons.
KaneJeeves-
I don't think the motivation is simply oil. What do neocons hate the most? I think historically they have always hated the communists, and still do. They hate anything that might hinder their freemarket global empire. And old enemies still work for them... justifying the biggest military contracts for the biggest over-hyped weapons systems.
I think the neocons felt something must be done to further extinguish any resurgance of post Cold War Russia... to be 'proactive' and kick them some more while they were down. The evidence of this pops up in many different forms. First, we invaded Afghanistan which is on the southern border of Russia, even though the hijackers where from Saudi Arabia. Remember 'war by proxy'... a central theme of the Cold War. Second, we are pushing hard to develope missile defense against who? A cave dweller who manages to launch a single missile from his mountain hideout? Iran who has 0 nuclear missiles? Give me a break. Missile defense is being located in Poland, Czech and Britian inorder to guard western Europe against the guys who actually have missiles, lots of them, and those guys are ofcourse the communists. Third, a couple weeks ago Bush rallied NATO to include Georgia and Ukrain into NATO. Putin was having none of it... and neither were the other semi-sane members of NATO. That attempt by Bush to include former Soviet states into NATO is extremely telling of his true motivations. Try to find that story in the American press- it is virtually censored.
And don't forget, the Russians aren't the only communists that make the neocons lose alot of hair follicles. China is on the rise in a big way. They are part of the nuclear club capable of hitting the US. In 1999 they stole our most advanced plans for miniturized nuclear warheads... giving them the blueprints to upgrade the missile capabilities from 3 warheads per missile, to 15 warheads per missile. The Chinese have shot down satellites, attempted to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan connecting Iran to China, aggressively pursued oil deals with Venezuela and Africa, pointed alot of missiles at Taiwan, and conducted unprecedented joint military exercises with their former enemy- Russia. Additionally, don't forget that China also borders Afghanistan... just like Russia. I bet the neocons would love to park some missile defense trucks in those afghani mountains right in both of the commies backyards. Infact, US military doctrine says that US forces will be protected by missile defense in their theater of operations. Remember all the hype about North Korea? North Korea is located on the eastern coastal side of China and Russia- the perfect position to put some more missile defence to guard the west coast of the United States.
Yeah- so the motivation I think is that the Cold War never really ended, as demonstrated by the neocons actions. It is the lens through which they view the world, it is their safety blanket, and it is their piggy bank. They wont say it though... because it's much easier to blame it all on a boogieman with an anonymous cave address... rather then antagonize the commies directly. Oil does play a part- in that we want to keep China's hands off the spiggot and we want to keep our humvee fuel tanks full for the next expedition. But mostly, the neocon motivation is a nightime bed wetting fear of communist prosperity. Real braniacs and 'Uniters' these guys are.... but I say they're nothing more than missile pimps and treasonous extremists.
Taking them all off to prisons would be wonderful for the illusion of "justice".
Mr. Bush, is as was his father before him, and his Grand Father, a "Muppet" .I am sure that Kermit and the others will forgive my use of them as a comparative, but they would need the same thing Mr. Bush and the others need in order to complain---that is "someone else's hand, and voice, placed in the provided cavity at the back, with sufficient assistance with thin black sticks to manipulate the hands.
Muppets will only work when someone else uses the "provided cavity at the back", without those "helping hands", they are mere shelf decorations.
Find a way to either stop putting "Muppets" in office, OR stop the "helping hands", otherwise, we will continue to have the same , perhaps not as comically absurd as Mr. Bush, who I assure you is NOT acting.
McGovern's case is entirely circumstantial, but as a former spook, he probably knows whereof he speaks.
I swear, someday we'll find out that the neocons and Bin Laden were actually in cohoots.
Think of it. Prior to Bush, if you were a neocon planning something you knew for sure would involve the president commiting impeachable offenses, what would be the best way to avoid his impeachment? Impeach Clinton. Then subsequent impeachment could easily be written off as simple revenge by the Dems.
And if you were in cohoots with the Bin Laden family, and wanted Osama to be the fall guy, you'd have to make consessions to them: guarantee to get them all out of the country safely, promise to come close but never actually get Osama, etc.
The thing I don't know is what the motivation would be. Any ideas? It can't simply be oil.
Powell and Rice clearly stated in early 2001 that Saddam was not a threat, and a year later were warning that he was minutes away from killing us all two times over.
Shouldn't those two traitors be looking at hard time just for that simple, total lie?
It's no wonder the conspiracy buffs think 9/11 was a false flag attack. What I have long suspected, and stories like this do nothing to dissuade me from, is that the Bush junta knew damn well something was coming, and deliberately turned a blind eye to it because they expected to exploit it for their own purposes, as implied by the PNAC manifesto (and as they have so successfully done ever since). They probably had no clue just how devastating the attack would be, but they knew something was coming. And George's answer was, of course, "bring it on."
Bush, by the way, is not the idiot he appears to be. That's a cultivated appearance intended to curry favor with the anti-intellectuals who so adore him. He's far more dangerous than the buffoon he allows us to pretend he is.
Tenet's job with regard to the 9/11 attacks was to arrange the under-the table payoffs for the job and steer suspicion to Bin Laden. He knew exactly what was going to happen, when it was going to happen, who was involved, and how it was going to pay out. He is one of the 9/11 conspirators and a key player.
McGovern sez: "... if the American voters choose to send vertebrates to the next Congress — or if the Justice Department starts taking seriously its duty to require honest testimony from senior government officials — Tenet may be looking at some jail time."
That's a couple of mighty big IFs.
IF the Justice (sic) Department ever returns to its constitutional role, Tenet would hardly be the biggest fish to fry.
In fact, there wouldn't be enough jail space available to stash this criminal syndicate. Although I hear there are some fine institutions located beyond U.S. borders.