NYT: 9/11 Panel Plans Hard Questions for the F.B.I. and Justice Dept.

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/06/politics/06PANE.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

Current and former leaders of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are expected to come under criticism from the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at public hearings next week, with Attorney General John Ashcroft and Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I. director, being called to account for their agencies' failures before the attacks, panel officials say.

Commission members say the hearings will bolster what will almost certainly be a major recommendation of the panel's final report this summer: an overhaul of domestic counterterrorism programs, possibly through creation of a domestic counterintelligence agency separate from the F.B.I. The Bush administration has said it opposes such a move.

Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Freeh have defended their efforts before Sept. 11 in testimony to other investigators and in other forums.

Again on Monday, a Justice Department spokesman, Mark Corallo, said, "I don't think anyone can argue with the fact that this president and this attorney general have made preventing terrorist attacks their No. 1 priority, and that was true before Sept. 11, 2001, and it is true today."

But the chairman of the commission, Thomas H. Kean, said Justice Department and F.B.I. officials could expect "some very hard questions" at the hearings.

[NMDemDist2]

1. Ding Dong the witch is dead

It seems dissent and questions to our leaders are back in vogue

'bout time I'd say! :shrug:

[Eye and Monkey]

2. IT would be nice if they had some hard questions for Chimpo-Cheney

[sangha]

3. This makes me nervous

When you truly want to blast someone, you don't tell them in advance. It sounds like PR

[countmyvote4real]

4. I agree.

They are telegraphing that the questions posed should be perceived as hard.

[Malva Zebrina]

17. Yes , I think it is another PR staged event

has all the signs and symptoms -- manufactured by the same company who hung the "Mission Accomplished" banner and dressed little George up in a pilot costume.

[hatrack]

5. Will they ask Ashcroft why he stopped flying commercial in 7/01?

Will they ask why John O'Neill was forbidden to go after the bin Laden/al Qaeda connections?

Barring that, I'm debating whether to vacate one nostril at a time or both together at this proudly trumpeted PR blitz for the "tough" questions coming up in next week's exciting hearings.

The 9/11 Hearings - Must-See TV!!

[Occulus]

9. "I'm debating whether to vacate one nostril at a time or both together"

ROFL that's funny stuff

[TroglodyteScholar]

16. Not likely...

When Bob Kerrey was on the O'Franken Factor, they asked about this and he said they'd seen no evidence to support the claim.

[Malva Zebrina]

18. Bob Kerrey is out of it

His main thrust is to sell himself, and how no one paid attention to him during the Clinton years when he wanted to go to war. He just keeps beating that same drum--it is inappropriate-

[teryang]

6. Is this a Saturday Night Live skit?

"Hard questions"

[Nlighten1]

7. Here is the big question they will be asking...

"What would you do for a Klondike bar?"

[Occulus]

10. What about

"Where's Waldo?"

[yardwork]

8. Where is Ashcroft, anyway?

Has anyone seen him lately? Did he go home from the hospital?

[DoYouEverWonder]

15. Yeah, he's back

He must have done one of those 30 day detox programs like his buddy Rush. Now he's good as new.

[DeepModem Mom]

11. There's some pretty amazing stuff in this article --

Ashcroft had little interest in terrorism, and rejected calls for more funding. If I read correctly, he went along with a "White House" plan to cut an emergency request AFTER 9/11:

"Commission officials said their evidence showed that Mr. Ashcroft had taken little interest in counterterrorism before Sept. 11 and, days before the attacks, had rejected pleas from senior F.B.I. officials for more money for counterterrorism even as intelligence agencies warned of an imminent, possibly catastrophic, terrorist attack.

They said the commission may make public a series of internal memorandums written by Thomas J. Pickard, who was the F.B.I. acting director in the summer of 2001, criticizing what he perceived to be Mr. Ashcroft's disinterest in counterterrorism. Mr. Pickard, who did not return phone calls seeking comment, is also expected to testify next week.

Mr. Ashcroft may also be confronted with an internal administration budget document, dated Oct. 12, 2001, showing that he had gone along with a WHITE HOUSE PLAN to sharply cut an emergency F.B.I. request for $1.5 billion in extra counterterrorism money after the attacks."

Also, the issue of Freeh's being more interested in nailing Clinton is raised:

"Commission officials said that evidence gathered by the commission showed that Mr. Freeh had become so involved in managing a handful of criminal investigations, most prominently the investigation of the 1996 bombing of American military barracks in Saudi Arabia, and in other STRUGGLES WITH THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE that the potential for a domestic terrorist attack by Al Qaeda received relatively little attention."

A final note -- I am not anti-religious, and am a church member, but this is what happens when what my mother used to call "religious nuts" are put in high positions in government: the fundamentalist Ashcroft and Opus Dei Freeh. I am enraged after reading this article, pairing these two --

[leftchick]

12. I did not know Freeh was Opus Dei.....

shit, they are everywhere!

[DeepModem Mom]

13. Am. Catholic article: Freeh, Scalia, Thomas, Hanssen, and OD --

"Twenty years ago, if you’d asked everyone around you in the pews at church what they knew about the Catholic organization, Opus Dei, the majority of Catholics would likely have responded, “Opus who? Never heard of them.” All of that changed several weeks ago, however, when Newsweek and other periodicals in this country revealed that accused spy, Robert Phillip Hanssen, who could face the death penalty for his acts of treason, is a member of Opus Dei who sends his children to Opus Dei schools. Immediately following that revelation, stories began to surface in the press claiming that FBI Director, Louis Freeh and Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are also Opus Dei members. Opus Dei denies that Freeh, Scalia and Thomas are members, though Freeh sends his son to the Opus Dei School, The Heights, and Scalia’s wife is reported to regularly attend Opus Dei functions. Robert Hanssen, Justice Scalia and Louis Freeh also all worship at St. Catherine of Siena parish in Great Falls, Virginia, where the Tridentine Latin Mass is offered, rather than the new order of the Mass declared by Paul VI. What’s unusual in these stories is not that Opus Dei claims members in the corridors of power in this country--a rigidly class-bound organization, Opus Dei has always sought the majority of its members from the upper classes--but that the revelations were made at all, since Opus Dei has always been characterized by a secretiveness that would rival that of the CIA. And yet, the organization runs its own schools and colleges and selects and trains its priests from within its own ranks."

http://taconline.org/2001/2001-04/Henningsen401.htm

[Triana]

14. Couple things from recent news:

Whether the 9-11 Commission will actually really hammer As*crust and Freeh on these items remains to be seen but they have surfaced in recent reports and again, in the one above:
__

NEWSWEEK: In the Months Before 9/11, Justice Department Curtailed Highly Classified Program to Monitor Al Qaeda Suspects in the U.S.
Sunday March 21, 10:51 am ET

'They Came in There With Their Agenda and was not on it,' Says Former Counterterrorism Chief Clarke of Bush Administration

NEW YORK, March 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Newsweek has learned that in the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called "Catcher's Mitt" to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States, after a federal judge severely chastised the FBI for improperly seeking permission to wiretap terrorists. During the Bush administration's first few months in office, Attorney General John Ashcroft downgraded terrorism as a priority, choosing to place more emphasis on drug trafficking and gun violence, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas in the March 29 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 22).

Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief of the national-security staff, tells Newsweek that at an April 2001 top-level meeting to discuss terrorism, his effort to focus on Al Qaeda was rebuffed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said, "Who cares about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?" The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam Hussein.

In the meeting, says Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie Mylroie, a controversial academic who had written a book advancing an elaborate conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Clarke says he tried to refute Wolfowitz. "We've investigated that five ways to Friday, and nobody believes that," Clarke recalls saying. "It was Al Qaeda. It wasn't Saddam." A spokesman for Wolfowitz describes Clarke's account as a "fabrication." Wolfowitz always regarded Al Qaeda as "a major threat," says this official.

Clarke tells Newsweek that the day after 9/11, President Bush wanted the FBI and CIA to hunt for any evidence that pointed to Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Clarke recalls that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was also looking for a justification to bomb Iraq. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld was arguing at a cabinet meeting that Afghanistan, home of Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps, did not offer "enough good targets." "We should do Iraq," Rumsfeld urged.

Six days after the president's request, Clarke says, he turned in a classified memo concluding that there was no evidence of Iraqi complicity in 9/11-nor any relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The memo, says Clarke, was buried by an administration that was determined to get Iraq, sooner or later. In his new book, "Against All Enemies," Clarke portrays the Bush White House as indifferent to the Qaeda threat before 9/11, then obsessed with punishing Iraq, regardless of the what the evidence showed about Saddam's Qaeda ties, or lack of them.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040321/nysu007a_1.html

********************

bu$hit CUT Anti-Terror Funds After 9-11

In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows.

The document, dated Oct. 12, 2001, shows that the FBI requested $1.5 billion in additional funds to enhance its counterterrorism efforts with the creation of 2,024 positions. But the White House Office of Management and Budget cut that request to $531 million. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, working within the White House limits, cut the FBI's request for items such as computer networking and foreign language intercepts by half, cut a cyber-security request by three quarters and eliminated entirely a request for "collaborative capabilities."

The document was one of several administration papers obtained and given to The Washington Post by the Center for American Progress, a liberal group run by former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks.

The documents are being released as Clinton and Bush administration officials prepare to testify this week about their counterterrorism efforts before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. They add to an already vigorous debate in which Bush officials and former Clinton aides are blaming each other for failing to take the terrorist threat seriously enough.

...

"A draft of Ashcroft's "Strategic Plan" from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs."

By contrast, Janet Reno's number one goal was fighting terrorism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13541-2004Mar21.html