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Gold9472
06-11-2005, 01:49 PM
Errors & Omissions in 9/11 Commission Report

This is a letter from Michael Wright to Harvard professor Ernest May, who was a senior advisor to the 9/11 Commission

(Gold9472: Thanks to Todd Fahey for this story... who the hell is Todd Fahey?)

June 10, 2005

Dear Professor May:

I am writing in response to your article in The New Republic of May 23, 2005.

The 9/11 Commission report left many questions unanswered and gave erroneous information about some matters.

For example, the LA Weekly reported that Zacarias Moussaoui met with Mohammed Atta and another Middle Easterner, probably Marwan Al-Shehhi, in an Oklahoma City motel, during the summer of 2001:

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/36/news-crogan.php

Former State Department terrorism expert Larry Johnson confirmed that this meeting happened during an interview with O'Reilly (May 11, 2002). I have a recording of this broadcast.

The 9/11 Commission report (pp. 246-47) discusses Moussaoui's activities during that period. They write: "KSM also states that Moussaoui had no contact with Atta, and we are unaware of evidence contradicting this assertion."

They were aware of evidence "contradicting this assertion." In an email to the Commission in September 2003, I made them aware of this evidence. At this website, you can hear the voice of Commission staff member John Tamm, as he was speaking to my answering machine, in respones to my email. See the entry of December 28, 2004:

http://www.bushbusiness.com/Wright_OP.htm

Question 1: Why did the 9/11 Commission choose to ignore this evidence?...

[click below for a penetrating set of questions;
& if you enjoyed this exclusive letter to SiaNews, please peruse the SiaNews/FriendsOfLiberty archives]

In his April 2004 testimony, George Tenet lied to the Commission and denied that he had met with Bush in August 2004. "He's in Texas and I'm either here [in Washington] or on leave for some of that time," Tenet said in response to a question from commissioner Tim Roemer. "In this time period, I'm not talking to him, no." This is from the Commission's transcript of his testimony, as reported by BBC, and as I have printed out from the Commission website:

http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3625781.stm

On page 262, the Commission report confirms that Tenet visited Bush in Crawford, Texas, on August 17. In the same paragraph they misrepresented his April testimony and spared him the accusation of having committed perjury. They pretended as though Tenet was suffering from impaired memory, and wrote that he "does not recall" any discussions with Bush during this period.

Question 2: Why did the Commission protect Tenet from being charged with perjury?

Question 3: Why did Tenet lie about this?

I'll offer some informed speculation. One of the more useful achievements of the Commission was in making public the famous CIA briefing of August 6, 2001. The press in 2004 said very little about the memo's most enormous blunder, although Rice was discussing it in 2002. The document incorporated the erroneous expectation that any hijacked aircraft would be landed for making demands while negotiating over hostages. No suicide crashes into buildings were expected. This was obviously a grave mistake. I suspect Tenet was lying in order to distance himself from responsibility for this.

Question 4: Why was there no probe into the motives for this lie by Tenet?

In 2002, former FBI agent Coleen Rowley gained fame for her expression of righteous outrage over the fact that in August 2001, when Moussaoui was in custody, the FBI headquarters obstructed the request of the Minneapolis agents to search Moussaou's computer. She argued convincingly that there was adequate evidence that Moussaoui was a terrorist. If this fact had been properly recognized, the search warrant would have been enabled.

The Commission admitted that a "maximum U.S. effort to investigate Moussaoui" at that time "might have brought investigators to the core of the 9/11 plot" and possibly derailed it (p. 276). What was derailed instead was an effort which could have spared the nation the agony of 9/11.

Rowley, who said in her letter that she suspected that "improper political reasons" possibly accounted for the August 2001 obstruction, did not appear before the Commission. The Commission's failure to hear from Rowley is all the more inexcusable in light of the fact that it was her 2002 letter protesting the obstruction of the search warrant request which inspired Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle to call for the appointment of such a panel.

Question 5: Why did Rowley not testify before the Commission, and why did the Commission not probe to see what the "improper political reasons" were?

Question 6: Was pressure put on Rowley to accept early retirement from the FBI?

It is widely known that former U.S. Senator David Boren is the patron and mentor of George Tenet. Not long after 9/11, TIME reported that Boren and Tenet were having a "leisurely breakfast" together in a Washington hotel on the morning of the attack. After his resignation from the Senate in 1994, Boren became president of the University of Oklahoma, in Norman, where Moussaoiu spent six months in 2001 in preparation for terrorist activities.

Not so well known is the fact that during the summer of 2001, Boren arranged for top CIA agent David Edger to be appointed to OU as a "visiting professor." Earlier, Edger had been director of U.S. intelligence activities in Germany. This gave him responsibility for surveillance over the Hamburg Al Qaeda cell. I documented these facts from several sources, including the Norman newspaper and an OU publication, and informed the Commission in September 2003. They seem to have ignored this. I believe it is a fair
conclusion that the inner circle of the U.S. intelligence community was the Boren-Tenet-Edger trio.

Question 7: Why did the Commission not probe deeply into the activities of this trio?

Both LeFigaro of France and The Guardian of London reported that two months before the attack bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days of treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent. Bin Laden was not captured.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,584444,00.html

Question 8: Why did the Commission not explore the question of why Bin Laden was not captured at that time?

TIME (June 3, 2002) reported about events when Moussaoui was in custody in August 2001, and the Minneapolis agents wanted to search his computer. TTheir report stated that the CIA denied that Moussaoui was an Al Qaeda member. This false statement enabled the suppression of the search warrant and the consequent 9/11 attack. I personally questioned Tenet about this when he made a speech at OU during March 2005. He disputed the TIME report and left the false impression that the CIA was being honest with the FBI in August 2001. You can see the video of this lie, online at this website (Ma7 12 entry):

http://www.bushbusiness.com/Wright_OP.htm

Question 9: Why did the Commission fail to probe deeply into this August 2001 episode of misconduct by Tenet?

There were 19 hijackers, yet the Moussaoui indictment only reports specific events of airline ticket purchases for 14 of them. For United Flight 93, it only reports only one of four. The Commission devotes only three sentences to the ticket purchases (p 249).

Questions 10, 11, and 12: Where were the other five tickets purchased? Why did the indictment not report them? Why did the Commission not probe into this peculiar omission of evidence?

Numerous news organizations have reported the fact that University of Oklahoma student Hussein Al-Attas drove Moussaoui from Oklahoma to Minnesota in August 2001. According to The Wall Street Journal (February 4, 2002), Moussaoui was recruiting Al-Attas to the jihad in Chechnya. For some reason, the Commission decided to conceal Al-Attas from view. On page 247 they write: "On August 10, shortly after getting the money from Binalshibh, Moussaoui left Oklahoma with a friend and drove to Minnesota."

Question 13: Why did the Commission delete Al-Attas from history?

Your response to my inquiries would be most appreciated. I encourage you to see today's news articles about the CIA having obstructed an important communication, 20 months before 9/11. A CIA supervisor blocked a memo intended to alert the FBI about two known Al-Qaeda operatives who later become 9/11 hijackers. This LA Times has quoted Justice Department investigator Glenn Fine as saying that there were "significant failures, both systemic and individual."

Question 14: How many episodes of this kind of "failure" do you have to see, before the line is crossed from incompetent bungling into gross and criminal misconduct?

I am very curious to know who this CIA supervisor was, and how close he was to Boren,
Tenet, and Edger.

Sincerely,

Michael P. Wright
Norman, Oklahoma

Gold9472
03-17-2006, 04:40 PM
bump