Her agenda will be to obfuscate and thus it is imperative for the 9-11 Commission to ask questions from which it will be difficult to escape the truths reflected by the realities taking place in connection with 9-11.

For your interest and possible benefit, we quickly drafted questions within the parameters of a Commission Hearing that even if known should prove difficult for Dr. Rice to fashion an escape. After she testifies, we will review and see whether the Commission pursued these lines. Remember, if the Commission is subsequently seen as soft, then we will assume that Bush has relinquished on more than having Condoleezza appear to testify publicly under oath! Otherwise, keep in mind that the Commission was allowed to pursue its agenda understanding it was obligated in the end to whitewash the truths behind 9-11.

However, if you keep up a calling and writing campaign there is a chance that history will be made. Perhaps it has been your efforts to date that has in fact emboldened the commission to tackle the Bush administration as it has done!

Question.  In July and August 2001, you placed the country on heightened alert. Would that statement be accurate and fair to say?

Comment: She will say yes unless she wants to say it was due to Clarke and Tenet.

Question: Did you say in March 2004 "In June and July, when the threat spikes were so high, we were at battle stations?" Is this statement true and accurate?

Question:  On September 11, 2001, is it true Dr. Rice, that unfortunately and regrettably the country was not on this heightened state of alert?

Comment: She has no choice but to say yes. 

Question: Richard Clarke was one of the people in the current administration who was consistently vigilant in pushing for a strategy to deal with the events that unfolded the morning of 9-11, isn’t that so Dr. Rice?

Comment: She would be hard pressed to say anything but yes.

Question: The President requested that such a strategy be prepared, didn’t he? Did Richard Clarke have such a strategy prepared for submission to the President?

Comment: Hard pressed to say anything but yes.

Question: Was that strategy operative during the heightened alert status of July and August 2001?

Comment: Anything Dr. Rice answers here dooms the administration in terms of malfeasance for the events of 9-11.

Question:  Dr. Rice, as part of your responsibilities as the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States of America, were you obliged to familiarize yourself with the dangers and threats of domestic terrorism?

Comment: She should say yes.

Question: Do you NOW recognize that part of that threat was the deployment of aircraft to strike major buildings and landmarks in the US?

Comment: She has to say yes. There is no need to pursue the issue further with her. She has just admitted to a major failure to meet the standard of the office she holds. If people can’t understand her failure to know, then they have to ask her whether she relied on someone else during this period to make decisions as the NSA including handling the pursuits of Richard Clarke for a strategy to deal with the threat of imminent domestic terrorism.

Question: In your position of NSA, and in terms of your obligation to become fully familiar with what you need to know within the ambit of your responsibilities, would you say that one aircraft off transponder in the New York City or Washington D.C. area would be reason for concern?

Comment: She may say yes or no. If no, then the inquiry should be would her answer be the same or different if there was reliable intelligence of imminent domestic terrorism? If she still says no, then she is incompetent. Needless to say that the logic becomes more concrete and sure with two three and four planes off transponder, as the case on 9-11.

Question: As the National Security Advisor, do you believe that it is part of your responsibility to anticipate threats regarding terrorism?

Question:  If these proceedings were televised Dr. Rice and we all received notice that we were under attack by terrorists, right this moment, would you suggest we leave this room?

Question: Has your office prepared or helped prepare a strategy to protect the vital interests of the United States?

Question: Dr. Rice is it fair to say that part and parcel of protecting the vital interests of the United States includes protecting the President of the United States?

Comment: Without another question, you have Rice with her own answers supporting our position that the President remaining at Booker Elementary was proof positive of complicity by the Bush administration.

Question: Richard Clarke said the following:

“ Every day George Tenet was going in to see the president in the Oval Office.  Because George Tenet, the director of Central Intelligence, now gives the president his daily briefing.  And almost every day the president was hearing from George Tenet that there's an impending al-Qaeda attack.  As far back as February, George Tenet testified before the Congress that al-Qaeda was the major national security threat.  And yet, they have 100 meetings before they get around to dealing with it.”

Dr. Rice is anything he said false or inaccurate and if so could you clarify it for us?

Question: Richard Clarke said the following:

“Dr. Rice called me and said, "The president wants a strategy."  And I said, "Well, you know the strategy was what I sent you on January 25, and it's been stuck in these low-level committees."  And she said, "Fine.  I'll deal with that." Well, she didn't deal with it until September.”

Dr. Rice is anything he said false or inaccurate and if so could you clarify it for us?

Question: Dr. Rice did George Tenet every say to you in substance "Something is going to happen."  If so, could you tell us to your best recollection when and how the United States dealt with that warning from the CIA director? By the way, did he often generate alarms of this order and magnitude?

Question: Dr. Rice did the President on or about August 6, 2001, receive a briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane?

Question: Dr. Rice was the White House told in July 2001 that terrorists had explored using airplanes as missiles?

Question:  Are you aware of conflict of interest standards?

Question: Is it customarily fair for judges in a court case to even avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest?

Question: During your tenure as National Security Advisor did you have an opportunity to speak with oil companies regarding their opinion about matters of public interest? Did any conversation at all encompass events in the Middle East?

Question: Did any US oil company ever suggest that the United States would be better off not making a military incursion into Iraq?

Question: Were our air and shorelines on 9-11 under an above average level of monitoring for terrorism or attack?

Question: Dr. Rice, is the country better off because 9-11 took place? Did we make lemonade out of the lemons we were handed? Would this be the case if the Iraqis had welcomed invading troops with open arms?

Question: On March 19, 2003, the attack on Iraq commenced at 9:00 PM and the President addressed the nation at approximately 10:15 PM. At 6:00 AM you confronted President Bush with the bad news that Saddam had survived the bunker buster bombs. In view of what you learned regarding 9-11, did you anticipate that US troops were at great risk for WMD attack between 9:00PM and 6:00 AM the next morning when clumped together in Northern Kuwait? Had they been subject to such attack would the catastrophe have been beyond your imagination to anticipate? Was the fact that Saddam survived the bunker buster attack beyond your imagination? How long exactly was it before the Commander in Chief authorized the troops to move from their clustered positions in Northen Kuwait?

END MAR 30 04 11:00PM SENDER, BERL & SONS INC.

"The Myth of Bush as Hero" http://www.barbrastreisand.com/statements.html#bushashero

Posted on March 29, 2004

Finally ... finally we can talk about what's really going on. Rather than accept the myth that 9/11 turned President Bush into a "hero" ... former counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke has bravely spoken out to tell us the real story - that Bush did not treat terrorism as an urgent issue. And that going to war in Iraq, in addition to tragically costing us so many lives, has diverted money and resources away from where they should have been focused - on dismantling al Qaeda and strengthening our homeland security.

We now know that the Bush White House never made counterterrorism a priority leading up to September 11th. In fact, on April 30, 2001, the new administration released the government's annual report on terrorism, with a noted change: extensive mention of bin Laden, which previous terrorism reports contained, had been left out. A Bush State Department Official reportedly told CNN at that time that the U.S. government under Clinton had made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden.

In fact, Bush never even held a cabinet level meeting devoted to terrorism until the week before the attack. While FBI agents were fielding concerns about non-citizens in flight school uninterested in learning how to land planes, and the CIA was aware that potential terrorists had entered the United States, because terrorism was not a priority in the high levels of the federal government these discussions were never elevated to a place where the information could be shared across departments, where the appropriate people would have an opportunity to connect the dots...

Here is a brief timeline (much of the information is from the Center for American Progress) of some of the more egregious warnings of looming terrorism that Bush overlooked as he spent the first eight months in office planning tax cuts for the wealthy, devising a way to invade Iraq, and taking long vacations out at his ranch in Crawford, Texas:

1) A 1999 report prepared by the Library of Congress for the National Intelligence Council specifically theorized that al Qaeda could fly airplanes into buildings - so we know that the scope of the attack was not entirely beyond anyone's imagination.

2) In early 2001, a surge of al Qaeda activity and plans for attacks against American "interests" were noted, including by Israeli intelligence agencies.

3) Also in early 2001, the Bush administration departed from Clinton's policy of tracking money to terrorist organizations. (Was Bush trying to protect the Saudi royal family?)

4) In July 2001, U.S. and Italian officials were warned that al Qaeda may use planes as missiles at a Genoa summit of industrialized nations.

5) On August 6, 2001, while on vacation in Crawford, the president received a one and a half page briefing advising him that al Qaeda was capable of a major strike against the U.S., and that the plot could include the hijacking of American airplanes. And then what did the president do with this important information? He went fishing - bringing new meaning to the phrase, "Gone Fishin'"!

6) In July, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines because of a "threat assessment."

7) Newsweek has reported that on September 10th, 2001, a number of Pentagon officials canceled travel plans for the next morning due to security concerns, and "that as many as 10 to 12 warnings" were issued before 9/11 - "more than two of the warnings specifically mentioned the possibility of hijackings."

8) Also on September 10th (as I posted in a statement on November 21, 2002), Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected the FBI's request for a $58 million increase for their counterterrorism budget to pay for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators. He did that despite the fact, discovered later by a Congressional investigation, that the FBI had only one analyst monitoring al Qaeda and a severe shortage of Arabic translators.

Soon after September 11th, Condoleezza Rice said, "I don't think anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." And now Bush says, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people." Did he really say this? I heard it on the radio but I couldn't believe my own ears. Indeed, the scope of the horror of 9/11 is beyond the realm of what even the most savvy threat assessors may have thought possible.

However ... as the brief timeline above shows, THE PRESIDENT WAS REPEATEDLY WARNED that al Qaeda was planning some sort of attack, and that the attack may involve airplanes. So these are my questions:

-WHY DIDN'T OUR GOVERNMENT DO MORE TO BEEF UP SECURITY AT AIRPORTS AND ON AIRPLANES?

-WHY WEREN'T WARNINGS ISSUED TO THOSE ENTRUSTED TO PROTECT OUR FLIGHT SECURITY?

-ISN'T LEADERSHIP ABOUT ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY, ANTICIPATING THE UNFATHOMABLE, HEEDING WARNINGS AND FIRMLY ACTING UPON THEM?

-WHEN THE PRESIDENT RECEIVED A MEMO THAT HIJACKINGS OF AMERICAN PLANES MIGHT OCCUR, SHOULDN'T HE HAVE IMMEDIATELY TAKEN ACTION?

I DO BELIEVE THAT EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN THAT TRULY CARES ABOUT THIS COUNTRY, AND LEARNS THE FACTS, WOULD HAVE TO SERIOUSLY ASK THESE QUESTIONS ... AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT IN NOVEMBER!

Focus: The key dynamic regarding Clarke's testimony is not that Bush shifted resources too early from Al-Qaeda to Iraq, to weaken the war against terrorism, because, on the historical dimension, this can be argued to be nothing more than an error in presidential judgement, but the fact that Clarke was jumping up and down for a presidential response to the IMMINENT MAJOR TERRORISM KNOWN FORTHCOMING against the United States of America; that he was deliberately denied direct presidential contact; that his efforts to communicate with the President concerning his concern and alarm, ultimately shared in by Tenet, was deliberately stifled; that the President thereby knowingly and willingly never implemented a formal strategic design, only relenting for a period of several weeks in elevating the American defensive shield, with the terrorism of 9-11 not so coincidentally taking place only days after the heightened defenses were not only diminished but severely and inexplicably dropped to a degree making America nearly totally vulnerable, days before the President changed his schedule to travel to Florida to read with second graders, after criticism for being away from the White House for the entire month of August. Couple this with the fact that the Secret Service did not implement its own protocol to protect the President, and that it allowed him to remain there for an extended period of time, a publicly known location, to speak to the nation on television, and that the American trillion dollar military alert defensive response system failed to send up a single jet plane to defend this nation, when four American planes went off transponder, military and civilian intelligence fully aware of the implications thereof, ESPECIALLY AFTER HAVING JUST GONE OFF HEIGHTENED DEFENSIVE ALERT, speaks to exactly where the focus of Clarke's testimony should lie. Further couple this with Paul O'Neill's admission, supported by Richard Perle, that the Bush administration was sitting with plans in hand to implement a design for world domination and control (first stop OPEC) and just waiting for an act of major domestic terrorism, then you have the slam dunk case that 9-11 was allowed to happen and that the Bush administration knew what was about to take place and wanted it to take place and was complicit thereby therein. If the White House for a second thought the President was in danger, the President would have been whisked away from the Booker Elementary School. His staying there was proof positive that they knew the parameters of the terrorism in play that day and that it would not put the President at risk when seated with the second graders in Florida at the Booker Elementary School.

RUSSERT: 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."Did Dr. Rice instruct you to organize that meeting?MR. CLARKE:  No.  I told her I was going to do it.  And I had already been doing it two weeks before, because on June 21, I believe it was, George Tenet called me and said, "I don't think we're getting the message through.  These people aren't acting the way the Clinton people did under similar circumstances."  And I suggested to Tenet that he come down and personally brief Condi Rice, that he bring his terrorism team with him.  And we sat in the national security adviser's office.  And I've used the phrase in the book to describe George Tenet's warnings as "He had his hair on fire."  He was about as excited as I'd ever seen him.  And he said, "Something is going to happen."RUSSERT:  But you kept your guard up for six weeks, through the end of August.  Why didn't you stay on high alert through September 11th?  And you regret this day that you didn't because you may have stopped that attack