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Fried Rice: Condi's Coming 9/11 Firestorm

February 11, 2005

On the same day that the North Korean announcement of its nuclear weaponry put the Bush administration on the defensive, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice got a double-dose of blowback from her 9/11 dissembling.
First, the release of a previously classified report by the National Archives shows that the FAA had been warned repeatedly of the threat of terrorist hijackings between April and September, 2001. Even a slew of redactions, the Auugust 2004 report (which the administration held up) details 52 intelligence warnings to FAA. Some airport and airline officials were even briefed on the threat. These warnings included five that mentioned hijackings and two that mentioned suicide operations, according to the New York Times.
Perhaps even more explosive, the famous January 25, 2001 Richard Clarke memo stating "we urgently need" a meeting of the Bush administration principals was released. (Clarke's Clinton era strategy document, distributed with the 1/25/01 memo, was also released.)
The contradictions are clear and glaring. In 2004, then NSA director Rice tried to torpedo Clarke's testimony stating in a March 22, 2004 Washington Post op-ed that "No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration." Compounding Rice's woes is her earlier statement during a May 16, 2002 press briefing:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking."

Clearly, Senators Boxer and Dayton were right about the new Secretary of State. Apparently, Dayton was "lied to repeatedly" and Boxer was correct to state that Rice's loyalty to the President "overwhelmed your respect for the truth."
In any event, for the next several days at least, North Korean nukes will be the least of Condi's problems.
Note: You can access the FAA report, the Clarke memo to Rice, his strategy document and a host other critical 9/11 documents in the Perrspectives Document Library. For an analysis of the failures of the American national security establishment under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, see "Cognitive Dissonance, Terrorism and 9/11."

2 comments on “Fried Rice: Condi's Coming 9/11 Firestorm”

  1. To be fair to Rice -- and I really hate to -- her WP article did not say, "No al-Qaeda threat was turned over...". It said, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over...". Slightly different matter. Of course, the strategy document looks like a plan to me, so the result is the same, but still.

  2. They've redacted a ton of info to cover selves.
    Bush I Sec. of State James Baker represents Sauds against 9-11 victims. he's also in charge of handling Iraq's debt finance.
    The information left, that is currently out includes two mentions of planes as weapons in hijackings.
    See also the Gathering of Eight in Rome the same year well before 9-11 where SAM misslies were kept on the President's hotel roof in case of such an event, and the hotel he slept in at Florida on 9-10-o1.
    Find more loopholes for Good Germans to ease their conscience. You are Weimar republicans.


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Jon Perr
Jon Perr is a technology marketing consultant and product strategist who writes about American politics and public policy.

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