The recent hubbub around Condoleezza Rice's testimony to the 9/11 panel is only the latest chapter in the administration's foot dragging about investigating the attack.
In January of 2002 President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney urged Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle not to push for an investigation into the events of Sept. 11, according to Daschle on Meet the Press.
In mid 2002, George W. Bush opposed the creation of the commission to investigate the attacks of 9-11 until he got the right to name its chairman. He appointed Henry Kissinger. After Kissinger quit two weeks later over his refusal to release his client list (which probably included powerful Saudis), Bush selected former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean to head the commission.
Immediately, the White House began stonewalling the commission's requests for information. An August 6, 2001 President's Daily Brief (PDB) discussed bin Laden. The White House refused to release to the committees the contents of of that briefing. In May 2002 Condoleezza Rice claimed this PDB only included information about bin Laden's methods of operation from a historical perspective and contained no specific warnings. But a source in the intelligence community told the commission that the materials prepared for the briefing indicate that bin Laden was planning attacks within the United States, that Al Qaeda maintained a support structure here and that information obtained in May 2001 indicated that a group of bin Laden supporters were planning attacks in the United States, contradicting Rice's claim.
A congressional joint intelligence committee report released in July 2003 had 28 pages blacked out by the administration. These pages dealt with the Saudi role in international affairs leading up to 2001.
When the independent 9/11 commission tried to review records of the Congressional 9/11 joint intelligence inquiry, it was told it could not see the material until the Administration had vetted it. Commissioners were granted access only after complaining and then only if they were willing to view the materials in a secured office in a House annex.
In March of 2003, Time Magazine reported that the White House ignored a request made by Kean to boost his budget by $11 million. Kean had sought the funding as part of the $75 billion supplemental spending bill that the president had just requested to pay for the war with Iraq.
The Commission's requests for documents related to the pending case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged ''20th hijacker'' who was arrested before the attacks, have so far been ignored.
Even as the PATRIOT act reduces privacy in our own lives, the Bush administration makes their own actions and knowledge more and more secret.
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