Members.....does it disturb you that the news reports influence some of us to conclude
that at the least. Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al engaged in attempts to first prevent
a 9/11 Commission type investigation of the 9/11 attacks ? That Bush first
refused to let Rice testify under oath to the 9/11 Commission, and relented
because of negative political feedback ? That Rice testified under oath before
the commission that the warnings from the CIA were of an "historical" nature,
and that the she and the administration could not have "imagined" that terrorists would stage attacks on buildings using hijacked airliners ?
How about the fact that, although Clinton was completely cooperative with
the 9/11 Commission and agreed to testify under oath, Bush's conditions to
appear before the Commission included requirments that Cheney appear with
him, that neither would testify under oath, and that the appearance be of
limited time, no recording or transcription of the meeting would be permitted,
and that the Commission members notebooks were to be confiscated at the end of the appearance and examined by the White House
officials before being returned ?
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/politics/30BUSH.html?ei=5007&en=143c20525a30a3d3&ex=1398657600&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=all&position=">http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/politics/30BUSH.html</a>
Why do some of you continue to almost reflexively appear to not only unquestioningly trust and defend Bush and his administration, but you do
not seem yet inclined to do your own research to confirm the accuracy of the information and opinions that you provide in your posts on these threads ?
Quote:
<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0402-01.htm">Whistleblower the White House wants to silence speaks to The Independent
by Andrew Buncombe in Washington</a>
A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.
Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds [CBS]
She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".
Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege"............
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Quote:
<a href="http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=104&ItemID=7171">Privileged Torture by William Fisher February 04, 2005</a>
New York - The Justice Department has again asserted “state secrets privilege” in seeking to dismiss a lawsuit by Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was detained in the United States in 2002 and sent against his will to Syria, where he says he was tortured until his release a year later.
The privilege was invoked “in order to protect the intelligence, foreign policy and national security interests of the United States,” wrote Acting Attorney-General James B. Comey in legal papers filed in the Eastern District of New York.
“Litigating... plaintiff's complaint would necessitate disclosure of classified information,” according to Comey, including disclosure of the basis for detaining him in the first place, the basis for refusing to deport him to Canada as he had requested, and the basis for sending him to Syria.
<b>He was never charged with any crime.</b>
Arar, who has been home in Ontario for more than a year, is being represented by the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a New York-based civil rights advocacy organisation
“Maher Arar's is a very significant case,” said his attorney, Barbara Olshansky, in a statement.
“It involves the torture and arbitrary detention of an innocent man seized and removed on the basis of uncorroborated and incorrect information, and puts to the test this administration's commitment to the eradication of torture.”
This is the third time the Department of Justice has invoked the “state secrets privilege” in recent years.
In 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) successfully used the statute to move for dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer who alleged that he was the victim of racial discrimination by the agency. That case is on appeal.
The state secrets privilege was invoked again in 2004 to block a lawsuit brought by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) whistleblower <b>Sibel Edmonds.</b>..........
................Last July, the court dismissed her case when outgoing Attorney-General John Ashcroft invoked the state secrets privilege. Her appeal will be heard in April.
The Justice Department's Inspector General conducted a classified investigation and concluded that Edmonds' allegations “were at least a contributing factor in why the FBI terminated her services.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a Washington-based human rights advocacy group that is defending Edmonds, has been sharply critical of the government. It said the district court “relied on the government's secret evidence but denied Edmonds the opportunity to prove her case based on non-sensitive evidence.” That approach, it added, “made a mockery of the adversarial process and denied Ms. Edmonds her constitutional right to a day in court.” The organisation said “the government has relied on the state secrets privilege to cover up its own negligence”, citing a 1948 Supreme Court case in which “the government claimed that disclosing a military flight accident report would jeopardise secret military equipment and harm national security.”
However, release of the accident report -- nearly 50 years later -- revealed that the cause of the crash was faulty maintenance of the B-29 fleet..............
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Read the rest (click the link in the above quote box.).....and if you are still puzzled (outraged, angry with
me...) because I compare our government; this government....to facists,
do your own research, or rebut my referenced opinions with your own.
Quote:
<a href="http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0501/final.pdf">A Review of the FBI's Actions in Connection With Allegations Raised By Contract Linguist Sibel Edmonds (January 2005; Unclassified Summary) .pdf file...page - 36</a>
Edmonds also alleged that the FBI retaliated against her by terminating
her services as a CL. We concluded that Edmonds' allegations were at least a
contributing factor in why the FBI terminated her services. We recognize that
the FBI Whistle blower regulations do not apply to Edmonds because she was a
contractor rather than an FBI employee. We also recognize that her varied and
insistent allegations of misconduct may have been frustrating, and that not all
of her allegations were true. However, many of her allegations had a basis in
fact, and the way the FBI responded to her allegations contributed to her
persistent claims. Moreover, we believe the FBI should not discourage
employees or contractors from raising good-faith allegations of misconduct or
mismanagement and the FBI's termination of Edmonds' services may
discourage others from raising such concerns.
With regard to Edmonds' other allegations of misconduct, most were not
supported by the evidence we reviewed. However, she did raise a valid concern
about unnecessary travel for certain linguists.
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