Ben-Veniste admits 9/11 Commission knew about Tenet briefings

[enough]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/3/04418/8102

Ben-Veniste admits 9/11 Commission knew about Tenet briefings
by jennifer poole
Mon Oct 02, 2006 at 09:44:18 PM PDT

9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste "confirmed to McClatchy Newspapers" today that George Tenet had given secret testimony to the 9/11 Commission in January 2004 about his attempts to convince the White House about the urgency of the threat from bin Laden in the summer of 2001. Tenet told the 9/11 Commission he was willing to testify publicly about the briefings he'd given Rice -- and Ashcroft and Rumsfeld! -- in July 2001, and he'd even showed the commissioners slides from the PowerPoint presentation he'd prepared for the July briefings.

Ben-Veniste did NOT explain why the 9/11 Commissioners left these briefings out of their report -- or why he (as late as yesterday) was still lying about what the 9/11 Commission knew. Instead he:

referred questions about why the commission omitted any mention of the briefing in its report to Zelikow, the report's main author. Zelikow didn't respond to e-mail and telephone queries from McClatchy Newspapers.

snip>

Both Ben-Veniste and 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow gave the NY Times strong denials yesterday, in a story entitled, "9/11 Panel Members Weren't Told of Meeting," that the 9/11 Commission knew anything about the Rice briefing. Apparently, these quotes below were all lies:

snip>

Why did Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste go along with the coverup? Why was he still lying yesterday? Why did he stop lying today? Was it just the early version McClatchy story that made him realize the gig was up? (the first version of the story I saw earlier tonight didn't have the Veniste acknowledgment, just three senior intelligence agency officials confirming that Tenet's 2004 secret testimony to the 9/11 Commission took place.

What else did the 9/11 Commission lie about?

snip> much more


Links to all articles are provided in the dKos story.

[bullimiami]

1. he doesnt have to explain. its obvious. it was designed to be a whitewash.

[AzDar]

2. How very "Warren Commission" of them. n/t

[KoKo]

3. Wouldn't one think it's serious business for Ben Veniste to lie? He's

a highpowered respected DC Lawyer...yet he lied to the NYT's? What could be going on here? Were they threatened? That could be the only reason that he would lie. Was he set up?

Does anyone in DC even care what they say anymore? Is there no truth? Who will hold him accountable? :banghead:

[BuyingThyme]

4. You're going to prison, B-V.

[jayfish]

9. They Should Be Hung For Treason.

They covered this information up through a Presidential election cycle that, if the information had been know, would have allowed the American people pass judgment. Treasonous.

Jay

[BuyingThyme]

10. I'm against capital punishment, but if that's the appropriate

sentence...

[DoYouEverWonder]

17. I'd like to let them

at least explain themselves first before we condemn them.

Maybe guys BV had to keep their mouths shut in order to get the inside story and had to wait for the right time to come out?

[jayfish]

18. The Right Time?

Like after the 2008 election? I'm sure that would have been perfect for them.

Jay

[DoYouEverWonder]

20. WTF do you think is going on the last few days?

The dam has broken and the tsunami is coming.

I think there are at least a few DEMS who managed to get inside the Bush machine and they are starting to come out.

Timing is everything and the time is now, not two years from now. You're not going to recognize American two years from now, but I do believe the changes will be for the better.

[jayfish]

24. Drip Drip Drip.

Still relatively dry here. The only place I'm hearing any of this is here at DU. I have severely limited my sources of news as of late but come on.

Jay

[nam78_two]

40. if only/nt

[HereSince1628]

5. Typical pattern...Lie when it breaks, slip out an adjustment in the quiet

But I think the question of what was used to compromise Ben-Viniste is one that needs be answered.

[BelgianMadCow]

28. I wholly agree - why keep a lid on it for 5 years?

He said he was outvoted and that it was left out due to the sensitive nature.

This is the heart of the matter, and the commission neglects reporting it. Because of the sensitive nature? Really now...

What is your take on Ben-Veniste and his integrity? Could this have been part of some vote bartering or something?

[HereSince1628]

29. I don't know, IIRC he was the one who force Condi to reveal the Aug 6

memo title. From that episode we might think he really was trying to get the truth out.

It seems the Aug 6 memo was just 4 weeks after the July 10 warning meeting. If the CIA works like other bureacracies, I would think, based on the short time between them, that the content of the memos was very similar. Was the Aug 6 memo an attempt to get around Rice's dismissive attitude toward the warning in July?

[BelgianMadCow]

30. Well if he had a big hand in forcing the pdb, that says a lot

about his character. Still is one of the major pointers / eyeopeners.

Thanks for your reply! :hi:

[Tin Man]

33. You are right - it was Ben-Veniste that put Condi on the hotseat...

transcript of Condoleeza'a public testimony before 911 Commission here:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/08/rice.transcript/

And although Condi testified that Bush directed the preparation of the Aug 6 PDB entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US", I'd have to agree that it's far more plausible that the CIA prepared the PDB of its own accord, in order to leapfrog Rice and warn Bush directly.

[nuxvomica]

6. Didn't the staff want to include more in the report?

I recall hearing when the report was published it left out a lot of things the staff had wanted to include but they were overidden by the commissioners. I've always wondered about that.

[KeepItReal]

7. This is the smokin gun, IMHO

1) Tenet actually did his job and warned Bush & Co in the summer before 9/11 that Al Qaeda was definitely gonna attack the U.S.

2) Condi, Rummy, and Ashcroft ignored the CIA warnings (ok not so much Ashcroft, since he stopped flying commercial aircraft just then).

3) The 9/11 Commission knew about Tenet's warning and chose not to include it in the muthaf*ckin "report"


So it's official: Having that August 6, 2001 PDB titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the U.S." was not the first and only chance that summer Bush & Co. had to get off their asses and protect us, after all.

[indepat]

25. Thank God our $30 billion intelligence apparatus did not fail us. Our

elected officials and their minions were just focused on other priorities and couldn't be bothered: besides it would take a Pearl Harbor-type event to get their entire PNAC agenda fully implemented, including passage of the already-written most un-American The USA Patriot Act (nominated as one of ten best misnomers of all time) and bombardment, invasion, and occupation of Iraq at an ultimate cost of possibly trillions of dollar and making favored contractors wealthy beyond their wildest imaginations. Moreover, the President and the First Lady had a very good year in 2001.

[acmejack]

8. What a surprise!

Wonder what else they didn't bother telling us?

[mike_c]

11. "Mr. Ben-Veniste, tear down this wall!"

Oops, busted!

[BelgianMadCow]

12. Ben-Veniste started coming out with the whitewash truth a week ago

from the first comment on dkos, it has also been on DU :
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/26/what-did-bush-do-about-the-cole/#more-10536

BLITZER: Now, I read this report, the 9/11 Commission report. This is a big, thick book. I don’t see anything and I don’t remember seeing anything about this exchange that you had with the president in this report.

BEN-VENISTE: Well, I had hoped that we had — we would have made both the Clinton interview and the Bush interview a part of our report, but that was not to be. I was outvoted on that question.

BLITZER: Why?

BEN-VENISTE: I didn’t have the votes.

BLITZER: Well, was — were the Republican members trying to protect the president and the vice president? Is that what your suspicion is?

BEN-VENISTE: I think the question was that there was a degree of confidentiality associated with that and that we would take from that the output that is reflected in the report, but go no further. And that until some five years’ time after our work, we would keep that confidential. I thought we would be better to make all of the information that we had available to the public and make our report as transparent as possible so that the American public could have that.
--------------------------

I remember him as being very pitbull-like during the hearings. I'm surprised someone like him kept a lid on it for so long.

on edit : and why a lid for five years?? makes no sense.

[gWbush is Mabus]

13. THIS IS THE BIGGEST NEWS IN 5 YEARS!

now if we could only get the republican media to report it.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

14. Zelikow was the one who prepared the report & of course he left this out.

Why wouldn't he, when he was a tool of Bushco? The family members wanted him off of the commission to no avail.

[Tin Man]

23. You mean Zelikow, Chief Advisor to Condoleeza AND Exec Dir of 911 Comm?

Why would he intentionally omit from the 911 Report info regarding the Tenet briefing given to his boss, Condoleeza Rice on July 10, 2001? :shrug:




:sarcasm:

[EFerrari]

36. No one could ever imagine that he did it on purpose. n/t

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

51. Yep! That Zelikow! Independent Commission, my ass.........

[magellan]

15. There are no honest politicians.

There are only statesmen and criminals. It would seem we've gotten to the point where our entire government is sorely lacking in the former and infested with the latter.

It really is no wonder to me anymore why so many Americans don't bother to vote.

[BelgianMadCow]

16. I find no link to the actual statement of Ben-veniste in the dkos post

and a "McClatchy Ben-Veniste 9/11" google yielded none either.

Anyone?

[enough]

It's in the McClatchy article. Link:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15663391.htm

The headline refers to another significant element of the story: "Rumsfeld, Ashcroft said to have received warning of attack"

snip from the article>

Ben-Veniste confirmed to McClatchy Newspapers that Tenet outlined for the 9/11 commission the July 10 briefing to Rice in secret testimony in January 2004. He referred questions about why the commission omitted any mention of the briefing in its report to Zelikow, the report's main author. Zelikow didn't respond to e-mail and telephone queries from McClatchy Newspapers.

snip>

[BelgianMadCow]

26. Thanks!

I didn't click it because of the different headline...

[blm]

19. Because Dem ESTABLISHMENT did NOT want Kerry in the oval office.

They wanted Mr. BCCI out of DC, not in the White House.

[Little Star]

31. What is BCCI?

Its not in the glossary.

[blm]

37. BCCI was the first TERRORIST bank that Kerry investigated and exposed

during the Bush1 administration. Most of DC was involved in trying to stop the investigation.

It is at the root of EVERYTHING going on today.

[nam78_two]

41. Good that you keep mentioning it...

:toast:
Amazing how that whole chapter and Kerry's heroic role in it is virtually unknown...

I guess we have the fair and brilliant media in this country to thank for that....

BCCI holds the key to a lot...

[blm]

42. Not just the media - why did Bill Clinton refuse to mention it in his book

and close the books on it when he took office?

[Little Star]

46. OK youse guys

Where can I read up on this? Know any web sites or maybe some good DU threads? Thanks

[blm]

47. Search Octafish threads or journal - he and H2O Man cover this alot.

.

[blm]

44. here's an article to get you started. But once started it's hard to ignore

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.sirota.html


Follow the Money

How John Kerry busted the terrorists' favorite bank.
By David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin

Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, with attractive branch offices, a traveler's check business, and a solid reputation for financing international trade. It had high-powered allies in Washington and boasted relationships with respected figures around the world.
All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed.

By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing. As Kerry's investigation revealed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, BCCI was interested in more than just enriching its clients--it had a fundamentally anti-Western mission. Among the stated goals of its Pakistani founder were to "fight the evil influence of the West," and finance Muslim terrorist organizations. In retrospect, Kerry's investigation had uncovered an institution at the fulcrum of America's first great post-Cold War security challenge.



More than a decade later, Kerry is his party's nominee for president, and terrorist financing is anything but a back-burner issue. The Bush campaign has settled on a new strategy for attacking Kerry: Portray him as a do-nothing senator who's weak on fighting terrorism. "After 19 years in the Senate, he's had thousands of votes, but few signature achievements," President Bush charged recently at a campaign rally in Pittsburgh; spin that's been echoed by Bush's surrogates, conservative pundits, and mainstream reporters alike, and by a steady barrage of campaign ads suggesting that the one thing Kerry did do in Congress was prove he knew nothing about terrorism. Ridiculing the senator for not mentioning al Qaeda in his 1997 book on terrorism, one ad asks: "How can John Kerry win a war if he doesn't know the enemy?"

>>>>>>

[Little Star]

48. Thanks, blm.

I cannot believe I never heard about this before now. Since 2000 I have been a political junky. I lurked on DU many years before joining. I also read many other Dem blogs. How the heck could I have missed this? Scary. If I, the political junky, can miss this, its no wonder many people don't get the info they need to make an informed voting decision.

[blm]

49. Kerry wrote a book pub. in 1997 warning about the global terror networks

as a growing threat to the world. The New War. He used his experience tracking the terror funds in IranContra and even more so in BCCI.

Al Qaeda was still in its forming stage when Kerry wrote his book, but the way they financed their group was the same as other terror networks.

The imnportant thing for BushInc and for many establishment Dems was to keep BCCI out of the 9-11 story, and THAT is why the 9-11 commission was told to start at 1998 for their investigation and testimony.

Giving BCCI any press or consideration would have opened up the real can of worms AND given Kerry credit that BushInc did NOT want him enjoying from the press - so the given storyline was that "Dems are weak on terror" ..."Clinton did nothing for 8 years"....and all Democrats were saddled with that, including Kerry.

If this country had a REAL press corps, BCCI would have been the focus of renewed, INTENSE interest IMMEDIATELY after 9-11.

[sam sarrha]

21. if they told ONE 'truth' at all, the whole bag of rancid shit would Unzip

[mom cat]

22. The cover up is all coming apart at the seams! Time for a truly

INDEPENDENT investigation!

[RedEarth]

27. .....KR

[originalpckelly]

32. LOOK AT THIS THREAD, I FOUND THE ANSWER!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2294509

[enough]

45. That is interesting - thanks for the post.

[RedEarth]

34. The creditbility of this commission is shot to hell...

I personally always felt there was a lot that wasn't made public and needless to say that is the case......tragic....maybe the rest of the country will wake up now.

[Tin Man]

39. I'm with you.

It's becoming painfully evident the 911 Commission intentionally omitted significant events that contributed to the success of the attacks.

[kentuck]

35. And where does Zelikow work now?

anybody know?

[Tin Man]

38. Zelikow is now Condi's "right hand" at the Dept of State - coincidence?

Philip Zelikow, Counselor of the Department, is a principal officer who serves the Secretary as a special advisor and consultant on major problems of foreign policy and who provides guidance to the appropriate bureaus with respect to such matters. The Counselor conducts special international negotiations and consultations, and also undertakes special assignments from time to time, as directed by the Secretary.

http://www.state.gov/s/c/

[young_at_heart]

43. I wonder if the widows will make a ruckus?

Actually, the entire country should be making a ruckus.

[springhill]

50. As a matter of fact..........

I recall reading that the commission was furious that they did not have this information. What a crock!

[blm]

52. Good point - - what's with the dog and pony shows if everything is on the

up and up like they want us to believe?

[librechik]

53. kick n/t

[robertpaulsen]

54. Kick this to the top!

:kick:

[helderheid]

55. K & R

[happydreams]

56. Maybe he and the rest of the 9/11 Commission were told not to.

Given "an offer they couldn't refuse".

[DesertRat]

57. kick

:kick:

[bobbie]

58. Amazing, the deals that are cut in DC, by our employees...

kick

[Bluebear]

59. One word: DISGRACEFUL nt

[tiptoe]

60. kick