~The Un-Congress
Group~
Promoting
Unofficial Congressional Action to Confront
Bush
Administration Policies and Scandals
*What’s Wrong With The “New” 9/11 Commission?*
EVERYTHING!
By Breadandwine
Republican
Domination for Starters—
When
the “new!” 9/11 commission was
first proposed, we were assured that it would BOLDLY go where no previous 9/11 commission
had gone before. But, to
paraphrase Martin Luther King, we are rapidly seeing that this “new!” historic
commission is somehow well on the way to not making history. The central question the commission
will not answer
correctly is, “What did the C.I.A. know and when did they know it?
And why should they? The
commission will be under the de facto control of the Republicans.
Stunted
Subpoena Power
The
“new!” 9/11 commission will have ten members, five Democratic and five
Republican. It will require six
votes to authorize a subpoena.
Sounds bipartisan, sort of.
In fact, it means that at least one Republican on the commission will
have to sign off on every single subpoena Democrats want. The Democrats will have to play
“Mother, may I” for every line of inquiry they want to pursue with subpoenas. Even if one of the Republicans on the
commission is a “maverick” sometimes willing to go out on a limb, there is very
little likelihood that he will have the mindset to pursue such contentious
allegations as the charge that C.I.A. inaction ahead of 9/11 was willful and
deliberate. The C.I.A. has a long
and well-documented history of supporting terrorist groups. Do you really think even one Republican
on the commission will be willing to explore this “controversial” fact? Most of
the Western intelligence agencies have allies in the terrorist world. It is a dirty little secret that
breaking those ties could expose those agencies to the simple retaliation of
those terrorists going public with those ties to discredit the intelligence
agency that broke them. These messy entanglements need to be explored instead
of being swept under the rug. In
addition, the Bush family itself has had extensive, even labyrinthine ties to
the C.I.A. (and Nazis) going back more than half a century. How can the full truth be pursued when
Republican allies of President Bush on the commission will seek to protect this
special interest?
Neither
should a majority of the commission be required to agree with the charge of
willful C.I.A. inaction on 9/11 before even
examining it. Setting the bar at
six votes for a subpoena promotes a “collegial” atmosphere that will, in fact,
encourage going along, in order to get along. “Going along” is not a recipe for placing the truth
uppermost. The families of
those murdered on 9/11 deserve better than a luvvy-duvvy inside-the-Beltway
attitude of “Let’s not go there.”
Those who have not lived through the suffering of those families have no
right to suppress or paper over persistent questions and unaddressed
allegations and evidence in the interest of a one-way comity with those
supporting an administration that stands at great risk should its own failure
or culpability on 9/11 be explored.
The commission should have been allowed at least a certain number of
subpoenas to be issued on the initiative of a minority of the commission. Invariably requiring six votes for a
subpoena is tantamount to saying that “the truth is only what the majority
thinks it is.” Our society
respects the right of minorities to have their own opinion, and the commission
should have been designed to explore minority queries with greater
open-mindedness in its quest for the truth.
The
Commission Will Be Headed By A Bush Appointee
Intelligence
lapses on 9/11 occurred on President Bush’s watch and the buck stops with
him. It is unconscionable that an
investigation that must go wherever the facts lead and may tarnish his
administration, should be headed by a chairman he himself will appoint. We have seen a long parade of hard
right wing Bush appointments. For
instance, we saw just recently that the Pentagon had begun a project to keep
tabs on millions of Americans called “Total Information Awareness,” a huge
digital dragnet intended to unjustifiably monitor the lives of millions of
law-abiding citizens, including their personal credit card and bank transactions. The New York Times and The Washington Post both denounced the project. Vice President Al Gore also denounced it and called it a
“Big Brother-type approach.” Now,
who has been appointed to head up this project? Retired Real Admiral John Poindexter—convicted in the
Iran-Contra scandal of five felony counts of lying to Congress, destroying
official documents and obstructing a congressional investigation into the
matter. And GUESS WHAT—the whole project—“Total Information Awareness”—was
Poindexter’s idea. THIS IS WHY WE CAN NOT
ALLOW AN “INDEPENDENT”
INVESTIGATION OF 9/11 TO BE HEADED BY A BUSH APPOINTEE.
The
Bush Appointee Will Be Henry Kissinger
Moreover,
we have now learned that, in fact, the man appointed by President Bush to head up the
9/11 commission will be none other than Henry Kissinger. Kissinger has a long list of
credentials relating to the intelligence establishment and its affiliates that
pose the specter of a conflict of interest. He served in the U. S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps and was once a captain in the Military Intelligence
Reserve. He was a consultant to
the Rand Corporation, a member of President Bush (Senior)’s President’s Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board and his role as Secretary of State placed him in
the center of intelligence activity, as America’s diplomatic service is used,
in part, by the C.I.A. as a front for espionage, as its personnel have
diplomatic immunity. (Same with
other countries—they all use their diplomatic services for espionage.)
Kissinger’s
role in the C.I.A.-backed coup
that toppled the leftist Chilean leader Salvadore Allende has long been well-documented.
Winston Churchill spoke well when he said, “The inherent vice of
capitalism is the unequal distribution of blessings. The inherent ‘virtue’ of socialism is the equal distribution
of miseries.” However, Allende was
democratically elected. He
was murdered and the coup replaced him with General Augusto Pinochet,
implicated in a reign of “night and fog” terror that “disappeared” countless
Chilean citizens for years after the coup. The fact remains that the C.I.A. and the U. S. could
have pressured Pinochet
to end the
bloodbath and this
was not done. “Nacht und nebel” or the “night and
fog” disappearance of people by the state, was perfected under Nazi Germany—the
country Kissinger fled in 1938—but one wonders what he learned from that
nightmare. Of the coup in Chile,
Kissinger once famously uttered, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch
a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.” Kissinger’s anti-democratic statements
place him in
good company: The man who appointed him to head the 9/11 commission is
president because his brother kept blacks away from the polls with police
roadblocks.
Meanwhile,
documents recently released by the C.I.A. strengthen previously-held suspicions that Kissinger was actively involved
in the establishment of Operation Condor, a C.I.A.-facilitated covert intelligence plan involving six
Latin American countries including Chile, to assassinate thousands of political
opponents. And Baltazar Garzon,
the Spanish judge who pursued the extradition to Spain of General Pinochet
while the former Chilean dictator was in London, is now seeking to question
Kissinger about the deaths of Spanish nationals tortured and murdered as part
of Operation Condor.
Kissinger is also wanted by a French judge in connection with Operation
Condor’s murder of French citizens.
Moreover,
Kissinger is known for an obsession with secrecy and when he left office in
1977 he deposited most of
his personal papers in the U. S.
Library of Congress, where they will remain sealed until five years
after his death. With Kissinger’s
appointment to head the commission why should we now expect him to pursue the
openness and truth he does not practice?
And with his open support for coups and juntas, why should we now expect
him to defend against terrorism the very democratic ideals he could not even
preach?
And
then there is the little matter of Cambodia. In the Nixon Administration Kissinger, as national security
adviser, was “the architect of secret bombing,” a critical, staunch supporter
of the ineffective, indiscriminate, brutal and largely secret carpet bombing of
Cambodia that involved deceiving Congress and falsifying records, and much of
this activity, in coordinating with ground forces in Cambodia, violated the
Cooper-Church Amendment limiting
U. S.
involvement in Cambodia. In other
words, Kissinger was directly supporting the deceiving of Congress on a crucial
foreign policy matter.
And
this man is now supposed to give us up the truth about 9/11. The Bush
Administration must be absolutely desperate to hide something about 9/11 if they are hiring as
their gatekeeper someone who is as much of an insider as the murderous,
Machiavellian and lying Henry Kissinger.
Sabotage
Investigating
the C.I.A. is not a task for naïve, pro-intelligence eager beavers who
foolishly think a love for the C.I.A. is a prerequisite for patriotism. C.I.A. director William Colby himself
once testified before Congress of the vast array of dirty tricks and sabotage,
of assassinations and hiring of the Mafia, in which the C.I.A. was regularly
engaged. If evidence is damaging
to the C.I.A., the C.I.A. knows how to fight back—their way. Even
during the tenure of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the ‘70s,
a C.I.A. agent was fired after being accused of breaking into the committee’s
safe. The C.I.A. will tell you
that they don’t do this anymore, they don’t do that anymore, when in fact, it
is often that merely the location of a C.I.A. project or even just its name or
the plaque on the door that has been changed. It is standard procedure that
agents on particularly “sensitive” assignments “resign” from the agency before
undertaking the task, and are then paid on the side.
The
C.I.A. gets away with such things because Democrats on Capitol Hill are busy
with more important matters—like raising the minimum wage a dollar. Of course, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
In the 2002 congressional elections, the Democratic Party officially
denounced vast election rigging by the Republicans. Apparently, the economy made
the Republicans do it.
Meanwhile, the committee system on Capitol Hill necessitates that each
legislator has his own chores and thus, “The C.I.A. is not my department.” The buck is thus passed to the
intelligence committees.
However,
each intelligence committee member must take an extra oath—an oath of secrecy—which
effectively keeps him silent. What
genuine critic of the C.I.A. would want that? The original intent of the intelligence committees as
watchdogs is thus turned on its head.
It’s a Catch-22. For all intents and purposes, Congress
is allowed to criticize the C.I.A.—but only if they shut up. Thus, instead of the entire Congress
watching the C.I.A., only a tiny handful of legislators do—ones who have stars
in their eyes for the C.I.A. The
C.I.A. is thus almost completely insulated from effective oversight. Meanwhile, the C.I.A. sends over to the
intelligence committees briefing officers who regularly snow and swamp the
committees with “show and tell.”
They tell them, “Guess what’s happening in Borneo! Guess what’s happening in
Swaziland! Guess what’s happening
in Kamchatka!” The one thing they don’t tell them is: Guess what’s
really happening in C.I.A. headquarters? Guess what’s happening in the C.I.A.? But the
committee members are all terribly flattered to be included in these one-sided briefings and fancy themselves to be almost a part of the C.I.A. They are swamped with years of false assumptions,
intelligence party line and hype—and have no conception of the extent to which
they are missing the other side to the story.
Even
civilian-appointed directors of
the C.I.A. have been snowed by this “briefing-itis.” The C.I.A. had its own director, John Deutsch, appointed by
President Clinton, constantly running around like a chicken without a head
worrying about reports concerning the rest of the world. The analysts and the covert operators
are two separate sides to the C.I.A., two very different cultures. Despite his making some important
firings, the C.I.A. had its own director, Deutsch, largely believing himself to
be “analyst-in-chief.” The need to
get administrative control over a huge, anti- democratic and dangerous
organization with staggering access to official and unofficial sources of funds
was never allowed to get enough attention.
Now,
the 9/11 commission is to hold meetings with a quorum of only six of its members.
Just six. This may
be okay for some other commissions.
For a commission investigating the intelligence community it is an
instant invitation to sabotage. If
a Democratic commission member’s mother falls ill, or his car breaks down or gets
towed over some minor violation—or—his plane
is grounded because of engine
trouble, the commission
will be under the effective control of the Republicans. Do you really believe that on
days when matters critical to the C.I.A. are discussed by the commission, that
there will always be five Democrats present? What country do you really think you’re living in?
The
Giant Wild Goose Chase
In
the legislation establishing the 9/11 commission, the stated mandate of the
commission includes investigating “relevant facts” relating to a long list of
issues many of which would send the commission on lengthy diversions and
distractions. Among the
issues so specified are: Diplomacy, immigration, border patrol,
nonimmigrant visas, commercial aviation, the flow of assets to terrorist
organizations and a review of the activities of state and local
governments. In short, the
commission’s work has been larded up with tasks that have nothing to do with
the intelligence failures of 9/11.
We are reminded of the assertion of President Eisenhower that, “To kill
an issue, broaden it.” The real
issue then gets buried.
Moreover,
in announcing his selection of Henry Kissinger to head the commission,
President Bush made clear the priorities he expected Kissinger to pursue, which
he specified were understanding terrorism, not uncovering intelligence
mistakes. Said Bush, carefully
underscoring his words with emphatic stress, “This commission will help me and
future presidents understand the methods of America’s enemies and the nature of
the threat we face.” Thus,
absurdly, Bush directed the commission and its chairman—ten people—to do a job
the multi-billion dollar C.I.A.
was supposed to do, instead of finding out why they didn’t. Don’t find out what’s happening in the
C.I.A., mind you. Go find out
what’s happening in Borneo.
This
does not mean that the commission will pay no attention to intelligence
matters. The legislation
establishing the commission specifically states that “When investigating facts
and circumstances relating to the intelligence community, the Commission shall
first review the information compiled by, and the findings, conclusions, and
recommendations of, the Joint Inquiry.”
Sounds very “thorough.” And
it probably would be, if the Joint Inquiry into 9/11 by the intelligence
committees had actually focused on the right issues and witnesses. In fact, many witnesses never got to
testify, and any witness daring to suggest or show evidence that the 9/11
intelligence failure was in any way deliberate was shoved aside. Practically the only line of thought
tolerated to any great extent was that the intelligence failures of 9/11 were,
sort of, the result of a failure of the C.I.A. and F.B.I. to communicate. That’s all.
In
fact, the C.I.A. has vast communication capabilities. Technologically, it has the best communication system in the
world. It also has a whole
department just for writing books. The C.I.A. and Pentagon also have elaborate
involvement with Hollywood and a whole program for assisting film makers in
making films favorable to them.
(Military equipment, for instance, from tanks to planes, is loaned out
to friendly film makers for a tiny fraction of the real cost.) The C.I.A. also has a vast infrastructure
for spreading disinformation and for influencing the reporting of news
organizations all over the world and in the United States. It has had plants on the editorial
boards of major news organizations and has had many “pet journalists” in its
pocket. It is well-known that The Washington Times is owned by the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun
Moon (the “Moonies”). Less well-known is the fact that the Unification Church, with
its many newspapers worldwide, is largely a front for the South Korean intelligence
agency and Japanese fascists, acting as proxies for the C.I.A. (This according to the massively
documented The Secret War Against The Jews by John Loftus, pp. 303, 577-578.)
Additionally, the C.I.A. has the ear of the President every day in
morning briefings. But no. In advance of the 9/11 attacks there
was an innocent bureaucratic failure to communicate. Who can believe this? We
have already mentioned above the great inadequacy of Congress’s intelligence
committees. Now making their inquiry the starting point for the new inquiry, while
seeming “prudent,” will nevertheless foster the same faulted “stars in their
eyes” mindset. The new commission
will be snowed under by all the original false assumptions.
The
legislation creating the commission also states that “The Commission is authorized to secure directly from
any executive department, bureau, agency, board, commission, office,
independent establishment, or instrumentality of the Government, information,
suggestions, estimates, and statistics for the purposes of” the
commission and “departments and agencies of the United States may provide to
the Commission such services, funds, facilities, staff, and other support as
they may determine advisable.” Again, this is a recipe for swamping the
commission with useless information, trivia and diverting data to detour the
commission from the real questions—almost the investigatory equivalent of a
filibuster. In short, this is a
mandate for snowing the commission under a mountain of endless distractions—what
we called above, “briefing-itis.”
If
there is one interesting footnote to this wild goose chase it is the mandate of
the commission to investigate the flow of assets to terrorist
organizations. Now, not that
the commission would ever have the wisdom, courage, awareness and historical background (uh—what is that?) to pursue
this, but the C.I.A. has had vast, intricate, labyrinthine connecti0ns to
terrorist groups for decades—including the very people from Afghanistan who
attacked the U. S.
The C.I.A. has funneled billions of dollars into these groups to fight the Soviets—and
for many other much less noble and more self-serving purposes. How is it that with such vast, intimate contact and
connections with terrorists, the C.I.A. still—um, just had no idea, really—what was coming on 9/11?
Just
one of the leading authors who has established the most incestuous, self-serving, even fascistic connections between the
C.I.A., Nazis and terrorist groups is the highly respected John Loftus, author
of The Secret War Against The Jews, mentioned above (co-authored by Mark Aarons). Loftus is a frequent consultant to 60 Minutes. A former prosecutor in the Justice
Department’s Nazi-hunting
division, Loftus’ book is also a who’s who of famous Republicans who secretly
sold out America for the C.I.A.—and for the most reactionary foreign
interests.
No—Democrat—should be without this book. The book, 600 pages, is meticulously indexed and massively
documented with over 100 pages of footnotes and is based on hundreds of interviews with
intelligence personnel and thousands of declassified and F.O.I.A.-released documents. Loftus’ charges of the most blood-curdling links between the C.I.A. and terrorist
groups—a total cesspool—can NOT simply
be dismissed in the interest of “collegiality.” Just a few of his vast and many charges:
1.
George Bush (Senior) as
C.I.A. director and later as Vice President, worked closely with British intelligence in backing
P.L.O. and Syrian terrorist and drug king Monzer Al-Kassar, despite his being behind many terrorist acts,
including the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship, on which the disabled
wheelchair-bound American Leon
Klinghoffer was thrown overboard to his death.
2.
During the ‘80s the
C.I.A. established close ties with terrorist thug Abu Iyad despite his
continuing terrorist acts against Israel.
3.
U. S. intelligence
actually sent arms to the terror-sponsoring
Libyan dictator Mu’ammar Gadhafi in direct violation of American law and
policy.
4.
The C.I.A. brought over
to its Virginia headquarters for intensive training many leading P.L.O.
figures, including Saeb Erakat, Sari Nusseibeh, Hanna Seniora, and Hanan
Ashrawi, as well as lower ranking P.L.O. figures.
5.
The C.I.A. is RIGHT NOW concealing from the American public vital information
about a near-universal, safe and
non-toxic antidote to biological
weapons that could and should be in every American medicine cabinet at a cost
of only pennies per bottle. It
even works on “designer” bacteria.
The existence of this antidote was obtained by Loftus via F.O.I.A. The completely safe drug was
developed by the Czechs, suppressed by the Russians and then kept secret from
the American people by—the C.I.A.
Because
there is too much evidence and there are too many witnesses that will still be
ignored by the “new” 9/11
commission, a group has been formed to push for an alternative
forum. We are the Un-Congress
Group . We believe it is absurd to think that
Democrats are powerless when we still control nearly half the seats on Capitol
Hill. That has to count for
something. It is entirely legal
and, we believe, entirely feasible politically for Democratic lawmakers to get
together in informal, unofficial hearings and invite witnesses and whistle blowers who
have been ignored to testify. This
does not even require subpoena power because many witnesses who were never
allowed to testify want to come forward and don’t need to be forced. And despite its drawbacks, F.O.I.A. can
also be used to obtain many documents even without subpoena powers. We are calling on Democratic lawmakers
to hold such informal hearings extensively over the next two years on a whole
range of issues the GOP does not want discussed, including Enron, Hearken
Energy, election “irregularities,” Echelon and increased government
surveillance powers and—9/11. Even
where some hearings already exist, we want an alternative process to serve as a
constant gadfly and to hold official commissions’ feet to the fire. Let the Republicans accuse and
complain. It’s all they do and
it’s what they will do anyway, so we might as well get our money’s worth. We are also convinced that money for
such hearings could be raised by Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill, simply
by their speaking with their wealthy contacts. A key figure in the DNC legal department has also assured us
that such fund raising would be “trivially easy,” raising even a hundred
thousand dollars “in an afternoon” (or much more over several days). He assured us that the publicity
such unofficial hearings would generate for Democratic concerns, issues and
office holders, and the fund-raising
to support those hearings, would not violate the new restrictions on soft money. Even big contributors who will be
restricted from giving as much under the new campaign rules will have no legal
problem donating to the “Un-Hearings.”
We
call these hearings the “un-hearings”
because they will be unofficial and because they seek to challenge the GOP
Congress. And since they will be
unofficial, any Democratic lawmaker can participate regardless of which
committees he currently sits on.
So if you are currently sitting on some boring, dreary “sewer
maintenance” committee—the GOP’s equivalent of sending you to Siberia—here is your chance to make a
difference. The Un-Hearings are a bottom-up version of the top-down actions of “give-‘em-hell”
Harry Truman who kept sending legislation to a right-wing GOP Congress that he knew they would reject—just
to showcase how bad they were. The
Republicans think they are king of the hill and can now tell Democrats to “be
good little boys and run along now.” On issue after issue the GOP thinks it can
tell us to shut up simply because it has razor thin majorities on Capitol
Hill. But no one can silence
a hearing process that is merely a public forum because it is protected by free
speech.
For further information—
Contact: Breadandwine
