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Kean & Hamilton Reached? -
Meet The Press
An analysis of the Meet the Press transcript below.

By Joseph Ehrlich
SenderBerl & Sons
4-4-4


We think so. After all, suddenly it is understandable to these political icons that a White House so beset with so many problems and issues in September 2001 (so many the President just had to run off and read with second graders), the Bush administration just could not deal with every contingency. This is from the same set of panel members who said that didn't believe that the events of 9-11 had to happen. We suppose that sufficient reward was put before them to straighten out their perspectives to the political realities at hand.
 
It very disheartening. However, these two were the ones Bush and Cheney wanted to exclusively meet. So perhaps other panel members might still remember what service to the country and their office entails.
 
Just remember that the focus is not whether or not Al-Qaeda and terrorism were major items of central interest. Focus must be on the facet that Clarke's efforts to protect the country under intelligence relating to domestic attacks were sandbagged and that we went from the highest state of alert domestically to one that left the barn door open on 9-11 for the events to unfold for history.
 
We didn't need Al-Qaeda or terrorism to be front page because aside from the inescapable fact that we just had gone off that high alert, we have a trillion dollar military defense system to intervene when planes go off transponder. Would they push this malarkey upon us if those planes had nuclear payloads? Of course not.
 
Don't forget the NSA is there to protect our nation and anticipate our needs. She is not there to sabotage efforts to protect our nation against the very attacks that concern this country's terrorism chiefs. Someone had better clearly explain how we went from the highest state of alert to de facto no alert. Someone better explain how the welcome mat for terrorists opened during Bush's term and why he felt so self assured about hanging around the Booker T. Elementary School once Andrew Card told him that America was under attack. Many also want to know why Card didn't stay by the President's side just in case he had a question about what was happening. But history records that the President was more concerned about his mission with second graders during a non election year when he traveled to Florida after being criticized for being away from Washington all of August 2001.
 
Washington knows the truth. The Congress and the Democratic leaders all know the truth. They have honed political instincts and 9-11 to them represents an opportunity to grasp for themselves the riches of this obscene agenda. When we are lucky enough to have a person with inside information tell us that Condy Rice surely knew about the plans of terrorists to use planes to drive them into buildings, we see Kean and Hamilton say that she is among the many persons supplying the panel with information. Because of foreign press interest in her - highlighting that the US media is avoiding this important story - they are rushing looking into it. This entire political structure smells.
 
The Bush administration was asleep at its post on 9-11 - the important question whether it represented negligence or a deliberate intentional deed. If this country put its guard down to allow and assure the success the events of 9-11 so that Bush according to Rice could do more than swat at flies, then its time to take this president and his cohorts to task.
 
In this regard, the Commission better answer whether these terrorists could have commandeered two planes with precision into the World Trade Center based on flight school lessons, why one, two, three four planes off transponder did not trigger an immediate launch of a prepared response to defend this country. There was de facto no response to an attack that could have been so much worse than it was - that it was 3000 rather than 30000 or 300000 or even 3000000 therefore is attributable to luck or strange coincidence and all we can tell you if were the higher numbers no one would tolerate the feeble rationalizations seen to day by these two on Meet the Press. However, in respect to the 3000, what is the difference? Our position to protect this country should be the very same regarding 3000 than 3000000.
 
When we hear the White House say that was no way that this country or this administration could have prepared for the vents of 9-11, we get angry for that type of big lie bespeaks the need of this country to have committed trillions over decades to national defense.
Don't you see the lies get bigger and bolder since JFK - TWA Flight 800, Princess Diana, and now 9-11? You are the victim. So sit around passive and you will get what the N.W.O. believes you well deserve.
 
What the American people better not forget that is that for six weeks this country was on the highest alert ever.
 
There is one line of questions this panel had better pursue.
 
In view of the highest state of alert in US history during the six weeks in the summer of 2001, what would have been the difference had the 9-11 attack taken place during this six-week period of time?
 
Answers to this line would show that there was no response on 9-11 and that the state of readiness WOULD have intervened in the events of 9-11 (accounting why the enemies within waited until this heightened level unknown to the terrorists abated).
 
There was a sense of urgency during that period of time. How do you account from moving to a state of urgency to one of complacency and de facto neglect?
 
Call and write this panel. Tell them you are watching and expecting them to ask the incisive questions. Tell them if they softball Rice, they better first tell the American people they now have developed a conflict of interest and are not discharging their duty. They know 9-11 needn't have happened but it was allowed to happen and they better not sweep it under the rug.
 
From Meet the Press transcript:
 
MR. HAMILTON: Well, I'm not sure that it is. Let's take the question raised by Mr. Clarke's testimony. He said that the Bush administration put an important priority on al-Qaeda and terrorism but not an urgent one. Well, how do you draw that line between important and urgent? That's a very subjective kind of a judgment and it can easily be colored by your own biases, by your own position, if you would. That's very typical, it seems to me, of the kinds of differences we confront here.
 
SenderBerl: Misdirection, deflection. The issue must center on the high level of alert for the six weeks, the basis therefor, the reason it was lowered and the degree it was lowered. Tack on to this that we had a trillion dollar defense system to preclude attack on our country, with a system structured to respond to four planes off transponder and there was no response at all. Of course at any time couple on the issues regarding the President's more than weird behavior at the Booker T. Elementary School and there is much the 9-11 panel needs to answer as fiduciaries for the USA.
 
MR. KEAN: I think that's probably fair and probably right, but I think they were skeptical about a number of things at that point. No question, there was a period in the summer when people refer to it as their hair being on fire, there were so many threats of one kind coming in, but most of them, in all honesty, were not threats to this country, they were threats to things abroad. And we put a barricades around our United States embassies. We tried to protect our American citizens over there. We did a number of actions in that area. Did we do enough at home? No, but I think to your question, there was some skepticism, no question about it.
 
SenderBerl: When we heard this we knew Kean was compromised. If he says something like this on national television he had better explain before making such a statement why this country was on the highest alert ever one that could not be sustained for more than six weeks apparently and how he can justify such a high state of alert unless someone in a high position had intelligence that supported a domestic attack.
 
MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post wrote this in May of last year: "On July 5 of [2001]...the White House summoned officials of a dozen federal agencies to the Situation Room." 'Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon'," said "Richard Clark," the terrorism czar. "The group included the Federal Aviation Administration"--"the Coast Guard"--the--"FBI, Secret Service"--"Immigration and Naturalization Service."
 
"Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer nonvital travel, put off schedule exercises and place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. For six weeks [in the summer of 2001], at home and overseas, the U.S. government was at its highest possible state of readiness - and anxiety - against imminent terrorist attack."
 
Congressman Hamilton, it sounds like people in the White House really expected something big to happen and really did ring the alarm bell.
 
MR. HAMILTON: Yes. I think they did and especially Mr. Clarke at that. That's kind of a high watermark in the summer when the chatter on the intelligence lines was very high, a lot of reports coming in at that moment about possible terrorist activity. And there wasn't any question that there was a sense of urgency at that point and may have been the high watermark prior to, of course, September 11 in terms of the government being keyed up, ready to go and ready to act.
 
SenderBerl: You see that Russert understands and sees that these two have been compromised and it is only confirmed by Hamilton's lame answer. These people should be hung until they fess up to the truth.
 
MR. RUSSERT: It says they were on high alert for six weeks, canceling vacations, the whole bit. And then, did we let our guard down before September 11th?
 
MR. KEAN: We did a bit, because the threat level went down. All these tremendous things that were coming over stopped coming over, and we weren't getting the level of threat that we got, and as that threat level went down and people had been sort of at the ready all along, they did let down their guard a bit. There's no question about it. We were not at the state of readiness on September 11th that we'd been back in August.
 
SenderBerl: You knowif we didn't know better we would think that Kean spent the day with Condoleezza Rice. This is why the Constitution warned us to be on guard against enemies foreign and domestic.
 
MR. RUSSERT: Why do you think that is?
 
MR. KEAN: I think when the chatter went down, when they didn't hear all these people talking to each other so much, there were other priorities out there. You can't keep people sort of at the ready constantly, day after day after day after day, and I think gradually they had a plan. They had a meeting, as you know, just before September 11th. They thought they were operating on some of these things, but the actual tension relaxed as the chatter relaxed.
 
SenderBerl: Russert is a professional. He does his job, and then it is up to you and you and you to listen and act. He asks the right questions for a television journalist and he shows he knows that these people are among the low of the low, but he has to leave it to others to see the handwriting on the wall. Thus, we do what he cannot do but it is up to you to do the next step - holler loudly! By the way, how come not one representative of the families of 9-11 victims that prepared the questions for Rice and Bush have been invited onto these shows?
 
MR. HAMILTON: That no one has been let go?
 
MR. RUSSERT: Yeah.
 
MR. HAMILTON: Not really. First of all, government's not very good at that. not just this government but many governments, in holding people strictly accountable. Secondly, I think the problem is really more systemic in nature. The more I look at it, the more I see kind of systemwide problems rather than individual responsibility. That doesn't mean the commission will not make criticism. We may make criticisms--I don't know--of individual people. But what I'm quite sure is, we will find somewhere along the line that there were a lot of problems. A government has to manage huge amounts of data, not all of it in English. Millions and millions of bites of data come into the government all the time, and analyzing those, collecting them and disseminating--very, very tough job, and it takes systems analysis and management to an extraordinary degree.
 
SenderBerl: If you are not nauseated by this type of whitewash before the formal whitewash then there's nothing we can say that will bring light to you.
 
MR. RUSSERT: There's a report in a British newspaper, The Independent, about a former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance, says she's provided information to the panel investigating the attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qaida's plan to attack the U.S. with aircraft months before the strike happened. Sibel Edmonds is her name. She said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission and provided information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting an attack using aircraft was months away, that terrorists were in place. Is she credible?
 
MR. KEAN: We've had all her testimony. It's under investigation. I can't say--we're certainly not there that she's credible or uncredible yet.
 
MR. HAMILTON: We've talked to her.
 
MR. KEAN: Yeah.
 
MR. HAMILTON: We've talked to people she has identified. We've looked at documents. Look, the commission gets leads by the dozens, every day. I had a dozen of them last week. And we do our level best to follow up on all of them. In this case, and several others that have been prominent in the European press, we have been very, very careful in our research. We're not totally completed with it, as the governor has mentioned.
 
SenderBerl: Do we have to say a word here?
 
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman, you think September 11th could have been prevented?
 
MR. HAMILTON: Well, there's a lot of ifs. You can string together a whole bunch of ifs. And if things had broken right in all kinds of different ways, as the governor has identified, and many more, and, frankly, if you'd had a little luck, it probably could have been prevented. But we'll make a final judgment on that, I believe, when the commission reports.
 
MR. RUSSERT: The widows and widowers of the victims of September 11 have been a driving force in the creation of this commission and its investigation. Kristen Breitweiser testified in September of 2002 and posed some questions. And I'd like to play her testimony and come back and talk about it.
 
(Videotape, September 18, 2002):
 
MS. KRISTEN BREITWEISER (9/11 Widow): One thing remains clear from this history. Our intelligence agencies were acutely aware of an impending domestic risk posed by al-Qaeda. A question that remains unclear is how many lives could have been saved had this information been made more public. How many victims may have taken notice of these Middle Eastern men while they were boarding their plane? Could these men have been stopped? Could the devastation of September 11 been diminished in any degree had the government's information been made public in the summer of 2001?
 
(End videotape)
 
SenderBerl: The question should have been do you think 9-11 could have been prevented had the heightened alert status been maintained for another month? Another better form of question would have been do you think the military national defense system should have been keyed and one would imagine it was keyed to sending up planes to intercept a number of planes off transponder (under military planning of various modes to implement nuclear attack upon major cities). Why then was there no response particularly when the military and national defense system knew we were just taken off the highest alert level in US history?
 
MR. RUSSERT: And it should be said, those of us in the media did not focus on al-Qaeda in the summer of 2001. In fact, in the 2000 presidential election, I believe terrorism was mentioned twice in the presidential debates. So everyone had a much different mind-set pre-September 11.
 
MR. HAMILTON: And it's very important that the commission keep that in mind. That is to say, we have to try to put ourselves into the place of the policy-maker back then facing not one, but dozens of threats at that time, and try to understand whether or not they acted reasonably under those circumstances; not the circumstances now, when we're looking back, and it's so very clear.
 
SenderBerl: Hamilton shows he is inept here because you don't apply standards that would apply to an everyday citizen to the National Security Advisor and those charged with protecting the country. Gee, if nuclear threats become diminished is that a rationalization to allow the military to stand down from monitoring against a launch of nuclear weapons against the USA?
 
We think we have made our point. If you don't tell them that you are on to them, they will have no respect or regard for you and you will be victimized yet again.
 
End APRIL 4 9:30 PM. Sender, Berl & Sons Inc.


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