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Congressman Dennis Kucinich Submits Articles of Impeachment Which Include 9/11 Issues

June 12th, 2008

Ed. Note: Dennis Kucinich has compiled a comprehensive list of issues which serve as grounds for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Articles No. 33-35 deal directly with 9/11 issues which the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative is designed to provide redress for through the creation of an authentic investigation.

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September 11th Advocates ('Jersey Girls') Comment on the Release of Philip Shenon's Book

February 6, 2008
Coleen Rowley*

As someone also motivated by the need for the truth about 9/11, as well as aware of the way conflicts of interest have a way of covering up truth, let me add my thanks to Philip Shenon on the release of his new book. Also let me share this recent comment forwarded to me by Monica Gabrielle of the September 11th Advocates:

*****

Philip Shenon's new book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, serves to justify our suspicions and the concerns of the Family Steering Committee, that we attempted to publicly air during the course of the 9/11 Commission's tenure.

One of the most egregious revelations put forth by Mr. Shenon is the fact that Philip Zelikow was hired as the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, despite his direct ties to the Bush administration. In 2000-2001 he served as a member of Condoleezza Rice's National Security Council (NSC) transition team, where he was allegedly the "architect" of the decision to demote Richard Clarke and his counter terrorism team within the NSC. Furthermore he was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) from 2001-2003, where Zelikow drafted most of the 2002 "National Security Strategy of the United States," creating the pre-emptive Iraq war strategy. These areas were within the scope of the Commission's mandate and as such were of critical importance to determine what, if any, impact they had on the government's ability to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

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* Colleen Rowley was the FBI field agent who sent warnings to headquarters regarding Zacarias Moussaui. Colleen was chosen as Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" in 2002 along with two other women who were whistleblowers. Her warnings were ignored by FBI brass along with 70 similar warnings from FBI agent Harry Samit.

9/11 widows call for new investigation after revelations of White House, commission ties
Nick Juliano
Published: Tuesday February 5, 2008

The widows whose political activism was largely responsible for the establishment of a commission to investigate the September 11 attacks say a new book revealing the backstory of the 9/11 Commission proves that their initial concerns about its executive director were correct and demonstrate the need for another investigation.

Philip Shenon, who covered the proceedings for the New York Times, has written a new book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, which was released Tuesday. The book reveals the close ties between commission executive director Philip Zelikow and White House advisers Karl Rove and Condoleezza Rice.

The Commission also reveals that aside from one staff member, no one on the 9/11 investigative panel reviewed what was perhaps the most robust treasure trove of pre-9/11 intelligence on al Qaeda -- records from the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic surveillance and codebreaking for the US Intelligence Community.

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Stonewalled by the C.I.A.
By THOMAS H. KEAN and LEE H. HAMILTON
January 2, 2008, Washington
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.

When the press reported that, in 2002 and maybe at other times, the C.I.A. had recorded hundreds of hours of interrogations of at least two Qaeda detainees, we went back to check our records. We found that we did ask, repeatedly, for the kind of information that would have been contained in such videotapes.

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CIA Destroyed Two Tapes Showing Interrogations
By Mark Mazzetti
The New York Times
Friday 07 December 2007

Washington - The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency's custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.
The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects - including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody - to severe interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks, several officials said.

In a statement to employees on Thursday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, said that the decision to destroy the tapes was made "within the C.I.A." and that they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value.

The destruction of the tapes raises questions about whether agency officials withheld information from Congress, the courts and the Sept. 11 commission about aspects of the program.

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Christie blasts Rudy on WTC air
BY ADAM NICHOLS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Posted Saturday, June 23rd 2007, 10:25 AM

In an upcoming interview with WNBC-TV, former head of the EPA Christie Whitman says former Mayor Rudy Giuliani blocked her efforts to force WTC workers to wear respirators.

Former Environmental Protection Agency boss Christie Whitman says she urged Ground Zero workers to wear respirators, but then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani blocked her efforts.

She also said city officials didn't want EPA workers wearing haz-mat suits because they "didn't want this image of a city falling apart."

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FBI's 9/11 Saudi Flight Documents Released
By Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 22 June 2007

Newly released documents reveal the FBI suspected that a plane hired to transport members of the bin Laden family from the United States back to Saudi Arabia might have been chartered by Osama bin Laden himself. The documents raise new questions about the FBI investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

Truthout reviewed the 224 pages of newly released documents over the past two days.

A heavily redacted FBI report on the incident begins by describing a private jet that was hired to pick up members of the bin Laden family that were in the US eight days after the 9/11 attacks. "The plane was chartered either by the Saudi Arabian Royal Family or Osama bin Laden," according to the declassified pages of the FBI investigation titled PENTTBOMB (page 3).

Subsequent references to the chartered flight in the released documents state that it was "chartered by the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, DC" (page 106). The possibility that the flight was arranged or paid for by Osama bin Laden was not addressed again in the subsequent 221 pages released by the FBI.

The FBI report was prepared in response to an October 2003 Vanity Fair magazine article by Craig Unger which raised questions about the FBI procedures after 9/11 that allowed six planes of Middle Eastern nationals to fly out of the United States. Most of the people on these planes were members of the Saudi Royal family, the wealthy rulers of Saudi Arabia, who have high-level contacts with the Bush administration.

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Senators Want CIA to Release 9/11 Report
Thursday May 17, 2007 10:16 PM
By Associated Press Writer Katherine Shrader

WASHINGTON (AP) - A bipartisan group of senators is pushing legislation that would force the CIA to release an inspector general's report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The CIA has spent more than 20 months weighing requests under the Freedom of Information Act for its internal investigation of the attacks but has yet to release any portion of it.

The agency is the only federal office involved in counterterrorism operations that has not made at least a version of its internal 9/11 investigation public.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and two other intelligence committee leaders - chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and senior Republican Kit Bond of Missouri - are pushing legislation that would require the agency to declassify the executive summary of the review within one month and submit a report to Congress explaining why any material was withheld.

The provision has been approved by the Senate twice, but never made into law.

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New Details on F.B.I. Aid for Saudis After 9/11
NY Times, March 27, 2005
By Eric Lichtblau

WASHINGTON, March 26 - The episode has been retold so many times in the last three and a half years that it has become the stuff of political legend: in the frenzied days after Sept. 11, 2001, when some flights were still grounded, dozens of well-connected Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, managed to leave the United States on specially chartered flights.

Now, newly released government records show previously undisclosed flights from Las Vegas and elsewhere and point to a more active role by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in aiding some of the Saudis in their departure.

The F.B.I. gave personal airport escorts to two prominent Saudi families who fled the United States, and several other Saudis were allowed to leave the country without first being interviewed, the documents show.

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Rumsfeld, Ashcroft Received Warning of al-Qaida Attack Before 9/11
By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
McClatchy Newspapers
Monday 02 October 2006

Washington - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.

Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report.

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