September 11 hearings begin:
Bush, Congress seek whitewash of government role
By the Editorial Board
5 June 2002
A joint session of the House and Senate Intelligence committees began
taking testimony behind closed doors June 4 on the performance of US
intelligence agencies in the period leading up to the September 11
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
These hearings are a travesty of democracy: they are being held
largely behind closed doors, with the evidence, testimony and even
the findings to be kept secret. Those in charge of the probe, both
Democrats and Republicans, have long opposed any serious
investigation into the unanswered questions about September 11 that
continue to pile up. Instead, they hope to use the hearings to rubber-
stamp measures that will greatly expand the police and spying powers
of the FBI and CIA.
Congress stalled the initiation of hearings for months, in part
because of opposition from the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA and
FBI, which resisted turning over documents or providing witnesses to
testify, in part because the Democrats and Republicans in Congress
feared—for good reason—that a serious investigation would explode the
official pretense that September 11 took the US government completely
by surprise.
The long delay is itself an indication that a massive political cover-
up is under way. It has taken longer to convene an official
congressional hearing on September 11 than it did to clean up the
millions of tons of rubble from the destruction of the World Trade
Center.
The Bush administration only shifted its position and began
cooperating with the probe after deciding that the congressional
committees, which have longstanding and close relations to the
intelligence agencies, would be easy to monitor and control. The
White House has consistently opposed the appointment of a bipartisan
commission modeled on the Warren Commission that investigated the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy, feeling that such a probe
might pose greater political risks.
Bush intervened Tuesday, in advance of the first session of the
hearings, to inject a note of intimidation and issue implicit
warnings against any serious probe of the government's role in the
events of last September. He denounced proposals for an independent
commission in comments during a visit to the National Security
Agency, the top-secret communications interception branch of the
intelligence establishment. He flatly denied that the US government
could have prevented the terrorist attacks that killed more than
3,000 people, and warned that too broad an investigation into
September 11 would be disruptive.
"I'm concerned about distractions," he said. "I want the Congress to
investigate, but I want a committee to investigate, not multiple
committees to investigate. Because I don't want to tie up our team
when we're trying to fight this war on terror. So I don't want our
people to be distracted." He suggested that investigation by any
panel except the intelligence committees might "jeopardize our
intelligence-gathering capacity."
Reports of advance warnings
However, the evidence that has come to light in recent weeks suggests
that the CIA and FBI failed to prevent September 11, not because they
had insufficient information, but because high-level officials in
both agencies intervened to protect the suicide hijackers. The
congressional hearings began amid a flood of reports demonstrating
that US intelligence agencies had considerable advance warning and
inside information about the September 11 attacks. Among the major
revelations of the past week:
Newsweek magazine reported that the CIA had identified two of the
future suicide hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, as
early as January 2000. The agency linked the two Saudi men to Al
Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and learned that they had entered the
United States, but did not issue an alert seeking their arrest or
questioning for 18 months.
The Washington Post reported June 4, citing CIA sources, that the FBI
also knew the identities of Alhazmi and Almihdhar from January 2000,
despite bureau claims that it only learned of them from a CIA
bulletin in August 2001.
USA Today reported June 4 that the 350,000 pages of documents turned
over by the CIA to the congressional intelligence committees include
memos describing Al Qaeda's intention to launch attacks in the United
States; reports discussing the possibility of suicide attacks with
airplanes and possible attacks on the Pentagon, World Trade Center
and other targets; and electronic intercepts as late as September 10
of Al Qaeda members discussing the upcoming attack. The newspaper
also reported that US operatives had infiltrated both Al Qaeda and
the Taliban.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told the New York Times, in an
interview made public June 4, that Egyptian intelligence agents had
penetrated Al Qaeda and learned of unspecified plans for a major
terrorist attack in the United States, information they passed on to
US officials the week before September 11.
The case of Alhazmi and Almihdhar raises fundamental issues about the
nature of the September 11 conspiracy. US intelligence agencies knew
the two men had entered the United States after an Al Qaeda
conference in Malaysia, and permitted them to conduct activity
undisturbed for the next 18 months.
They rented apartments, set up bank accounts, obtained credit cards
and driver's licenses, took flying lessons, all using their real
names. Alhazmi was even listed in the San Diego phone book. During
this 18-month period, Alhazmi and Almihdhar met at least six of the
future September 11 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, the alleged
ringleader, and Hani Hanjour, the alleged pilot of the plane that
struck the Pentagon. Almihdhar left the US to travel in the Middle
East and Southeast Asia, renewed his visa after it had expired, and
returned to the US unchallenged, on July 4, 2001.
The conduct of Alhazmi and Almihdhar during this period strongly
suggests that they were being protected. Why else would supposed
members of a terrorist organization pledged to the destruction of the
US government act in such a carefree fashion? They made no effort to
conceal their whereabouts. They did not behave as though they feared
police surveillance, exposure or apprehension.
In the media reporting of these revelations, and in the reactions of
congressional Democrats and Republicans, September 11 is presented as
a colossal failure of the intelligence apparatus. But the cascade of
new information has shattered the alibis and evasions of official
Washington. It is not a matter of terrorists "slipping through the
cracks," or intelligence agencies "failing to connect the dots."
There is growing reason to believe that at least some of the
September 11 hijackers had ties to American intelligence agencies.
They were not overlooked. They were shielded.
A rigged investigation
No such issues will be raised before the joint congressional
investigation into September 11. Both the personnel of the committee
and the procedures it has adopted demonstrate that both parties in
Congress, together with the White House, seek to protect the power
and authority of the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies.
Most of the committee staff was hand-picked by its first staff
director, L. Britt Snider, the former CIA inspector general and a
longtime crony of CIA Director George Tenet. Snider was forced out
under murky circumstances last month, but the new director is equally
reliable from the standpoint of the national security apparatus:
Eleanor Hill, former chief counsel to the Pentagon under Clinton's
Secretary of Defense William Cohen.
The Republican co-chairman of the committee, Porter Goss, is a
Florida congressman who was himself a CIA spy. He worked for two
years in Army intelligence, then served 10 years as a CIA clandestine
services officer before retiring because of illness, whereupon he
began his political career. One of his early political sponsors was
the then-governor, Democrat Bob Graham, who appointed him to a local
political office. Graham, now a US senator, chairs the Senate
Intelligence Committee and co-chairs the joint committee.
According to Goss's congressional web site, he has "professional
experience and a longstanding interest in Central America" as well as
Haiti. During the years that Goss was a CIA operative, 1962-1971,
these countries were ruled by brutal US-backed dictatorships,
including the notorious Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and Francois
Duvalier in Haiti.
The committee's twice-weekly hearings will be held for the most part
behind closed doors, in a locked, soundproofed room, except when
selected top officials, such as FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA
Director George Tenet, are called to testify. The huge number of
documents turned over by the CIA and FBI remain classified, and even
much of the committee's final report is expected to be kept secret.
This process—secret testimony, secret evidence, secret findings—makes
a mockery of democratic principles, but it is business as usual for
the spy agencies. Next week the House and Senate take up the spending
authorization bill for intelligence activities. According to the
rules of the House of Representatives, members will vote on the
budget without being allowed to see it or know its contents. Only
members of the Intelligence Committee, who have been cleared by the
CIA and FBI, will be informed of what they are voting on.
Much of the press and many leading congressmen know that the
congressional investigation is a fraud, an effort to cover up the
behind-the-scenes involvement of US intelligence agencies in
September 11. Their refusal to expose this, whether out of fear of
retaliation or out of loyalty to the state apparatus, makes them
complicit in criminal actions by the American government against its
own citizens.
Despite the demolishing of one set of official lies after another,
the American press draws no conclusions about the credibility of the
White House, CIA and FBI, and obediently parrots the latest
falsehoods put out by the Bush administration to replace those which
have been discredited. The media reports utter absurdities with a
straight face: that FBI agents do not have access to e-mail, or are
barred from going on the Internet, or are routinely frustrated in
their investigations because of excessive delicacy about infringing
on democratic rights.
A report in the New York Times technology section June 3 serves to
refute all such fictions. The article cites the annual wiretap report
issued by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts,
noting that in 2001, every single one of the 1,491 applications by
federal police agencies to wiretap phones was granted. Since 1991, of
the 12,661 requests for wiretapping submitted to the courts, all but
three were authorized. So much for the claims that the Zaccarias
Moussaoui investigation was suppressed because of fears of opposition
from the special federal court dealing with intelligence spying—whose
criteria are even less restrictive than those of the regular courts.
No confidence can be placed in either the congressional
investigation, the proposed bipartisan commission, or the corporate-
controlled media to conduct a serious investigation into the
September 11 tragedy or to oppose the sweeping attacks on democratic
rights which the Bush administration has carried out, citing the
terrorist attack as justification. Such an exposure can only come
about through the independent political mobilization of the working
class, in the United States and internationally.
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