Art Pottery, Politics and Food
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
 
Posted today as a Newsweek Web Exclusive is a Micheal Isikoff and Mark Hosenball article headlined, The Secrets of September 11:

…As White House political aides plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the…September 11 terror attacks, administration officials are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events relating to the attacks. At the center of the dispute is a more-than-800-page secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry detailing…provocative, if unheeded warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during the summer of 2001…By refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions, the administration has essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of this month…In (Democratic Sen. Bob) Graham’s view, the Bush administration isn’t protecting legitimate issues of national security but information that could be a political “embarrassment,” the aide said. Graham, who last year served as Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, recently told Newsweek: “There has been a cover-up of this.” The tensions over the release of 9-11 related material seems especially relevant—if not ironic—in light of recent reports that the president’s political advisers have devised an unusual re-election strategy that essentially uses the story of September 11 as the liftoff for his campaign. The White House is delaying the Republican nominating convention, scheduled for New York City, until the first week in September 2004—the latest in the party’s history…sources who have read the still-secret congressional report say some sections would not play quite so neatly into White House plans. One portion deals extensively with the stream of U.S. intelligence-agency reports in the summer of 2001 suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning an upcoming attack against the United States—and implicitly raises questions about how Bush and his top aides responded. One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and prophetic…Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist strike “in the coming weeks”… “The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.”
The substance of that intelligence report was first disclosed at a public hearing last September by staff director Hill. But at the last minute, Hill was blocked from saying precisely who within the Bush White House got the briefing…
Photo: Twin-Towers.net

- posted by Sean @ 7:39 PM
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