- What we saw in the 9/11 Commission hearing with Condoleeza
Rice is a brilliantly conceived and orchestrated exercise in reverse psychology.
The major objective of the hearing (a cooperative effort between the administration
represented by Rice and the commission itself supposedly representing the
public) was to convince the public that, based on the "intelligence
information it had, no one could have foreseen the use of hijacked commercial
airliners in suicide attacks on U.S. landmarks.
In order to guarantee the largest possible viewing audience for the televised
and scripted "show commission chair Thomas Kean announced it was asking
Rice to appear at a public hearing under oath. Rice and the administration
fought that saying Rice would appear before the commission but not in public
and not under oath. This led to a pr blitz in the media stoked by perceived
Bush enemies and proponents of the Bush knew in advance theorists.
Eventually the administration "capitulated and agreed to let Rice
testify for two and a half hours before the commission in public and under
oath. Those who remember the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris
should recognize this ploy as coming straight out of his story about Brer
Rabbit and the Tar Baby, where Brer Rabbit pleaded not to be thrown into
the briar patch (his only sure avenue of escape). Brer Fox, intent on doing
as much damage to Brer Rabbit as he could, then threw him into the briar
patch from which the wily Brer Rabbit scampered to safety.
Rice was in trouble comparable to being stuck on the tar baby because of
her widely quoted statement that no one (in the administration) could have
imagined the use of commercial airplanes as missiles as was done on 9/11.
She quickly backed off from that statement saying I should have said "I
couldn,t have imagined that explaining that several people had explained
to her that at least some were aware of that kind of threat Of course she
was never asked who those people were.
Having whetted the public,s appetite for what some saw as the "public
lynching of Condi Rice, the TV networks then took the almost unheard of
step of preempting all of their soaps to telecast the hearing live. The
stage for the big show was set.
To understand what unfolded during the hearing, the reader should be familiar
with the 1995 three-phase terrorist plot code named "Bojinka. An exposition
of the details of the plots and the background is available in this author,s
June 18, 2002 article "Bojinka The Dog That Didn,t Bark available
at the URL at the end of this article
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- Although that code name was not mentioned, the entire
thrust of Rice,s testimony and commission questioning was focused on denying
any knowledge of the details of that plot concocted by Ramzi Yousef, convicted
mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the WTC which later planned to hijack
commercial airlines and fly them into U.S. landmarks. Specifically named
as targets in the documentation recovered by Philippine authorities (and
furnished to the FBI, CIA and State Department in 1995). were the Pentagon,
World Trade Center and the Sears Tower in Chicago.
As called for in the script (each commissioner had a carefully prepared
"brief from which most of the questions were taken. Richard Ben Veniste
was chosen to apparently "trap Rice into admitting to the existence
of an intelligence report that contained warnings of possible hijackings.
He asked her to give the title of the President,s daily briefing (PDB)
presented to Bush on August 5, 2001 at his ranch in Texas by CIA Director
George Tenet. Rice, feigning reluctance, disclosed the title as "Bin
Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.
Rice admitted that the document did mention the possibility of hijacked
airliners but only in the context of obtaining hostages to trade for convicted
terrorists. . She maintained that throughout her testimony. Several commissioners
and the Chair challenged Rice to have the PDB declassified. She would not
commit to that. However, with remarkable speed the White House declassified
the PDB and copies appeared in the media by the weekend.
Far from being the "smoking gun critics were expecting, the PDB backed
Rice,s testimony about potential hijackings to get hostages (from an uncorroborated
and unidentified "source). However, the PDB did say that the FBI saw
patterns of "suspicious activity in the country consistent with preparations
for hijackings.
Over the period of five years, from 1996 to 2001, the FBI made numerous
inquiries about suspected bin Laden associates taking pilot training in
at least four flight schools in Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Florida. The
last inquiry took place at the Airman Flight School in Norman Oklahoma
just three weeks before the Sept. 11 disaster.
The administration has admitted that during the summer of 2001, many reports
of a catastrophic terrorist strike were circulating. While the taking of
hostages hardly qualifies as "catastrophic, anyone familiar with the
details of the third phase of the Bojinka plot would have immediately recognized
the preparations to execute it.
Who should have recognized the threat? Certainly Richard Clarke who supervised
John O,Neill the FBI,s Al Quaeda expert in New York who was involved in
the capture and prosecution of Ramzi Yousef for the first phase of Bojinka
to blow up 11 airliners simultaneously over the Pacific. Clarke admitted
as much when he said analysts should be forgiven for "forgetting about
the plot, which was six years old.
Also, DIA Director Tenet and Commission member Jamie Gorelick almost certainly
knew about Bojinka.
From March 1994 until she joined Fannie Mae in May 1997 Gorelick was Deputy
Attorney General, the number two spot in Janet Reno,s Department of Justice.
In May 1995, the Intelligence Community Law Enforcement Policy Board was
established to meet quarterly and discuss mutual concerns of the Attorney
General and Director of Central Intelligence. The board was co-chaired
by Gorelick and DCI George Tenet. Other members included all of the law
enforcement agencies, the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence
and Research and the Defense Department General Counsel.
This is the same time frame (spring of 1995) in which the Philippine government
apprised the FBI, CIA and State Department of "Project Bojinka an
Islamic terrorist plot which included hijacking commercial airlines planes
and flying them into the Pentagon, World Trade Center towers and, several
other buildings.
It beggars belief that Bojinka was not discussed at that meeting especially
since one part of the plot was to fly an explosive laden small plane (not
a hijacked airliner) into CIA headquarters. That should have gotten Tenet,s
attention.
In another unprecedented step, the White House released a transcript of
the 42-minute "background briefing given selected reporters shortly
after the conclusion of the Rice hearing. It emphasized several times that
the only mention of hijacking was in the context of obtaining hostages.
Since 9/11 the insiders, propaganda and disinformation assets in the New
York Times and Washington Post have brazenly maintained that project Bojinka
did not include hijacking commercial airliners to fly them into U.S. landmarks.
For instance, Mathew Brzezinski the Washington Post,s intelligence expert
(nephew of Zbigniew Brzezinski) published the following, "No one
imagined something like this possible, and there was no US precedent to
justify heightened security. Bojinka was about blowing planes up not hijacking
them.
Nicholas D. Kristof, intelligence "expert for the New York Times,
published a full-length article that was syndicated widely to other newspapers
purporting to explain Operation Bojinka, which entirely omitted the third
phase about the hijacking of airliners.
So far, the media, government, and the 911 commission have succeeded
in "dodging the bullet. Before the commission ends its "mandate
and issues its report the public and the families of the victims of 9/11
should demand the commission obtain answers from the relevant officials
(as well as commissioner Jamie Gorelick) in the format made famous by Howard
Baker in the Watergate hearings, "What did they know about Bojinka
and when did they know it?
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- (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.)
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- Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its
entirety.
- Past Medium Rare articles back to October 2001 are archived
at:
- http://www.worldnewsstand.net/MediumRare/Archives.htm
The author is a freelance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a former
newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs administrator
and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S. Constitution.
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please contact the author at jimrarey@comcast.net.
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