cheney admits that he lied about 911 8 ways obama worse than bush

7/28/2019 Cheney Admits That He Lied About 911 8 ways Obama worse than Bush

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KC & Associates Investigations Research Associates

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Triste cosa es no tener amigos, pero ms triste ha de ser no tener enemigos porque quin no

tenga enemigos seal es de que no tiene talento que haga sombra, ni carcter que impresione, ni

valor temido, ni honra de la que se murmure, ni bienes que se le codicien, ni cosa alguna que se

le envidie. A sad thing it is to not have friends, but even sadder must it be not having any

enemies; that a man should have no enemies is a sign that he has no talent to outshine others,

nor character that inspires, nor valor that is feared, nor honor to be rumored, nor goods to be

coveted, nor anything to be envied. -J ose Marti

From the desk of Craig B Hulet?

Dad Furious After Finding This Crayon-Written Paper in Florida 4th-Graders Backpack:

I Am Willing to Give Up Some of My Constitutional Rightsto Be Safer

Cheney Admits that He Lied about 9/11 What Else Did He Lie About?

Obama Turns Blind Eye to Crimes Obama administration has again resisted calls forgovernment investigations and has gone to court to block lawsuits that demand release of

torture evidence

8 Ways Obama Is As Bad -- Or Worse -- Than Bush On Civil Liberties
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2/22

Ever since the Warren Commission concluded that a lone gunman assassinated President John F.

Kennedy, people who doubt that finding have been widely dismissed as conspiracy theorists,despite credible evidence that right-wing elements in the CIA, FBI, and Secret Serviceand

possibly even senior government officialswere also involved. Why has suspicion of criminalwrongdoing at the highest levels of government been rejected out-of-hand as paranoid thinking

akin to superstition?

Conspiracy Theory in Americainvestigates how the Founders hard-nosed realism about the

likelihood of elite political misconductarticulated in the Declaration of Independencehas

been replaced by todays blanket condemnation of conspiracy beliefs as ludicrous by definition.

Lance deHaven-Smith reveals that the term conspiracy theory entered the American lexicon ofpolitical speech to deflect criticism of the Warren Commission and traces it back to a CIA

propaganda campaign to discredit doubters of the commissions report. He asks tough questionsand connects the dots among five decades worth of suspicious events, including theassassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, the attempted assassinations of George Wallace and

Ronald Reagan, the crimes of Watergate, the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal, the disputed

presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, the major defense failure of 9/11, and the subsequentanthrax letter attacks.

Sure to spark intense debate about the truthfulness and trustworthiness of our government,Conspiracy Theory in America offers a powerful reminder that a suspicious, even radically

suspicious, attitude toward government is crucial to maintaining our democracy.

Cheney Admits that He Lied about 9/11

What Else Did He Lie About?

The New York Times Maureen Dowdwritestoday:

In a documentary soon to appear on Showtime, The World According to Dick Cheney,[Cheney said] I got on the telephone with the president, who was in Florida, and told him not tobe at one location where we could both be taken out. Mr. Cheney kept W. flying aimlessly in

the air on 9/11 while he and Lynn left on a helicopter for a secure undisclosed location, leaving

Washington in a bleak, scared silence, with no one reassuring the nation in those first terrifying

hours.

I gave the instructions that wedauthorize our pilots to take it out, he says, referring to the jetheaded to Washington that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. He adds: After Id given the order, itwas pretty quiet. Everybody had heard it, and it was obviously a significant moment.
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When they testified together before the 9/11 Commission, W. and Mr. Cheney kept up a pretensethat in a previous call, the president had authorized the vice president to give a shoot-down order

if needed. But the commission found no documentary evidence for this call.

In other words, Cheney pretended that Bush had authorized a shoot-down order, but Cheney now

admits that he never did. In fact, Cheney acted as if he was the president on 9/11. *

Cheney lied about numerous other facts related to 9/11 as well. For example, Cheney:

Falselylinked Iraq with 9/11(indeed, the entiretorture program was aimed atestablishing such a false linkage; and Cheney is the guy whopushed for torture,

pressured the Justice Department lawyers to write memos saying torture was legal, and

made the pitch to Congress justifying torture. The former director of the CIA said

Cheney oversaw American torture policies)

Falsely claimed that spying on Americans, torture, the Patriot Act, the Afghanistan war,the Iraq war and the war on terror were all necessitated by 9/11 whenall of them

started or were planned before 9/11

Falselystated that an attack such as 9/11 was unforeseeable, when Al Qaeda flyingplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon was something which American

military and intelligence servicesand our alliesknew could happen

Falselypretended that he was out of the loop during the 9/11 attacks Falselyblamed others for 9/11, when Cheney was in charge of all of Americas counter-

terrorism exercises, activities and responses on 9/11. Seethis Department of Stateannouncementandthis CNN article

And when Cheney was apparentlyresponsible for letting the Pentagon get hit by anairplane(confirmedhereand here)

And wasinstrumental in squashing a real investigation into 9/11* Indeed, Cheney initiated Continuity of Government plans on 9/11 whichessentially nullified

Americas constitutional form of government.

Cheney Admits to War Crimes, Media Yawns, Obama Turns the Other Cheek

On Sunday, in anexclusive interviewwith Jonathan Karl of ABC News This Week, Cheney

proclaimed his love of torture, derided the Obama administration for outlawing the practice, and

admitted that the Bush White House ordered Justice Department attorneys to fix the law around

the administrations policy interests.
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4/22

I was a big supporter of waterboarding, Cheney told Karl, as if he were issuing a challenge to

officials in the current administration, including President Barack Obama, who said flatly last

year that waterboarding is torture, to take action against him. I was a big supporter of the

enhanced interrogation techniques

The former vice presidents declaration closely follows admissions he made in December 2008,about a month before the Bush administration exited the White House, when he said he

personally authorized the torture of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the

waterboarding of three so-called high-value prisoners.

I signed off on it; others did, as well, too, Cheneysaidin an interview with the right-wing

Washington Times about the waterboarding, a drowning technique where a person is strapped to

a board, his face covered with a cloth and then water is poured over it. It is a torture technique

dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition.

The US has long treated waterboarding as a war crime and has prosecuted Japanese soldiers forusing it against US troops during World War II. And Ronald Reagans Justice

Departmentprosecuteda Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get

confessions.

But Cheneys admissions back then, as well as those he made on Sunday, went unchallenged by

Karl and others in the mainstream media. Indeed, the two major national newspapersThe New

York TimesandThe Washington Postcharacterized Cheneys interview as a mere spat between

the vice president and the Obama administration over the direction of the latters

counterterrorism and national security policies.

The Times and Post did not report that Cheneys comments about waterboarding and his

enthusiastic support of torturing detainees amounted to an admission of war crimes given that the

president has publicly stated that waterboarding is torture.

Ironically, in March 2003, after Iraqi troops captured several US soldiers and let them be

interviewed on Iraqi TV, senior Bush administration officialsexpressed outrageover this

violation of the Geneva Convention.

If there is somebody captured, President George W. Bush told reporters on March 23, 2003, I

expect those people to be treated humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be

treated as war criminals.

Nor did the Times or Post report that the enhanced interrogation techniques Cheney backed

was, in numerous cases, administered to prisoners detained at Guantanamo and in detention

centers in Iraq and Afghanistan who were innocent and simply in the wrong place at the wrong

time. The torture methods that Cheney helped implement as official policy was alsodirectly

responsible for the deathsof at least 100 detainees.
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5/22

Renowned human rights attorney and Harpers magazine contributor Scott Hortonsaid, Section

2340A of the federal criminal code makes it an offense to torture or to conspire to torture.

Violators are subject to jail terms or to death in appropriate cases, as where death results from the

application of torture techniques.

In addition to Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder said during his confirmation hearing lastyear that waterboarding is torture.

Dick Cheney wants to be prosecuted. And prosecutors should give him what he wants, Horton

wrote in a Harpers dispatch Monday.

Karl also made no mention of the fact that the CIAs own watchdog concluded in a report

declassified last year that the torture of detainees Cheney signed off on did not result in any

actionable intelligence nor did it thwart any imminent attacks on the United States. To the

contrary, torture led to bogus information, wrongful elevated threat warnings, andundermined the

war-crimes chargesagainst Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker in the 9/11attacks because the evidence against him was obtained through torture.

Karl also failed to call out Cheney on a statement the former vice president made during his

interview in which he suggested the policy of torture was carried out only after the Bush

administration told Justice Department attorneys it wanted the legal justification to subject

suspected al-Qaeda prisoners to brutal interrogation methods.

Cheney told Karl that he continues to be critical of the Obama administration because there

were some things being said, especially after we left office, about prosecuting CIA personnel that

had carried out our counterterrorism policy or disbarring lawyers in the Justice Department who

hadhad helped us put those policies together, and I was deeply offended by that, and I

thought it was important that some senior person in the administration stand up and defend those

people whod done what we asked them to do.

In aninterviewwith Karl on December 15, 2008, Cheney made a similar comment, which Karl

also allowed to go unchallenged, stating that the Bush administration had the Justice

Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you

could not cross.

Bushs Key Line of Defense Destroyed

Those statements, both on Sunday and in his December 2008 interview with Karl, destroys a key

line in the Bush administrations defense against war crimes charges. For years, Cheney and

other Bush administration officials pinned their defense on the fact that they had received legal

advice from Justice Department lawyers that the brutal interrogations of war on terror

detainees did not constitute torture or violate other laws of war.
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6/22

Cheneys statements, however, would suggest that the lawyers were colluding with

administration officials in setting policy, rather than providing objective legal analysis.

In fact,as I reportedlast year, an investigation by the Department of Justices Office of

Professional Responsibility (OPR) determined that DOJ attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee

blurred the lines between attorneys charged with providing independent legal advice to the WhiteHouse and policy advocates who were working to advance the administrations goals, according

to legal sources who were privy to an original draft of the OPR report.

That was a conclusion Dawn Johnsen reached. Johnsen was tapped a year ago by Obama to head

the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), where Yoo and Bybee worked, but her confirmation has

been stuck in limbo.

In a 2006 Indiana Law Journalarticle, she said the function of OLC should be to provide an

accurate and honest appraisal of applicable law, even if that advice will constrain the

administrations pursuit of desired policies.

The advocacy model of lawyering, in which lawyers craft merely plausible legal arguments to

support their clients desired actions, inadequately promotes the Presidents constitutional

obligation to ensure the legality of executive action, said Johnsen, who served in the OLC under

President Bill Clinton. In short, OLC must be prepared to say no to the President.

For OLC instead to distort its legal analysis to support preferred policy outcomes underminesthe rule of law and our democratic system of government. Perhaps most essential to avoiding a

culture in which OLC becomes merely an advocate of the Administrations policy preferences is

transparency in the specific legal interpretations that inform executive action, as well as in the

general governing processes and standards followed in formulating that legal advice.

In a 2007UCLA Law Review article, Johnsen said Yoos Aug. 1, 2002, torture memo is

unmistakably an advocacy piece.

OLC abandoned fundamental practices of principled and balanced legal interpretation, Johnsen

wrote. The Torture Opinion relentlessly seeks to circumvent all legal limits on the CIAs ability

to engage in torture, and it simply ignores arguments to the contrary.

The Opinion fails, for example, to cite highly relevant precedent, regulations, and evenconstitutional provisions, and it misuses sources upon which it does rely. Yoo remains almost

alone in continuing to assert that the Torture Opinion was entirely accurate and not outcomedriven.

The original draft of the OPR report concluded that Yoo and Bybee violated professional

standards and recommended a referral to state bar associations where they could have faced

disciplinary action and have had their law licenses revoked.
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The reports findings could have influenced whether George W. Bush, Cheney and other senior

officials in that administration were held accountable for torture and other war crimes. But two

weeks ago,it was revealedthat officials in Obamas Justice Department backed off the earlier

recommendation and instead altered the misconduct findings against Yoo and Bybee to poor

judgment, which means neither will face disciplinary action. The report has not yet been

released.

For his part, Yoo had alreadyadmittedin no uncertain terms that Bush administration officials

sought to legalize torture and that he and Bybee fixed the law around the Bush administrations

policy.

AsI noted in a report last year, in his book, War by Other Means: An Insiders Account on the

War On Terror, Yoo described his participation in meetings that helped develop the

controversial policies for the treatment of detainees.

For instance, Yoo wrote about a trip he took to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with other senioradministration officials to observe interrogations and to join in discussions about specific

interrogation methods. In other words, Yoo was not acting as an independent attorney providing

the White House with unbiased legal advice but was more of an advocate for administration

policy.

The meetings that Yoo described appear similar to thosedisclosedby ABC News in April 2008.

The most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific

details of exactly how high-value al-Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the CIA, ABC

News reported at the time, citing unnamed sources.

The high-level discussions about these enhanced interrogation techniques were so detailed,these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographeddown to thenumber of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al-Qaeda suspects

whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning,

called waterboarding, according to unnamed sources quoted by ABC News.

Torture Preceded Legal Advice

If ABCs Karl had a firmer grasp on the issues he queried Cheney about he would have known

that as recently as last week, three UK high-court judges released seven paragraphs of a

previously classified intelligence document that provedthe CIA tortured Binyam Mohamed, a

British resident captured in Pakistan in April 2002 who was falsely tied to a dirty bomb plot,

months before the Bush administration obtained a memo from John Yoo and Jay Bybee at the

Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) authorizing specific methods of torture to

be used against high-value detainees, further undercutting Cheneys line of defense.
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8/22

The document stated bluntly that Mohameds treatment could readily be contended to be at the

very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities.

Obama Turns A Blind Eye to Crimes

Under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the treatment of Mohamed and the clearrecord that the Bush administration used waterboarding and other brutal techniques to extract

information from detainees should have triggered the United States to conduct a full

investigation and to prosecute the offenders. In the case of the USs refusal to do so, other

nations would be obligated to act under the principle of universality.

However, instead of living up to that treaty commitment, the Obama administration has time and

again resisted calls for government investigations and has gone to court to block lawsuits that

demand release of torture evidence or seek civil penalties against officials implicated in the

torture.

Though its true, as Vice President Joe Biden stated Sunday on Meet the Press, that Cheney is

rewriting history and making factually, substantively wrong statements about the Obama

administrations track record and approach to counterterrorism, its difficult, if not near

impossible, to defend this president from the likes of Cheney because he has steadfastly refused

to hold anyone in the Bush administration accountable for the crime of torture.

Case in point: last week the Obama administration treated the disclosure by British judicial

officials of Mohameds torture as a security breach and threatened to cut off an intelligence

sharing arrangement with the UK government.

In what can only be described as astunning responseto the revelations contained in the

intelligence document, White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said the [UK} court's judgment

will complicate the confidentiality of our intelligence-sharing relationship with the UK, and it

will have to factor into our decision-making going forward."

"We're deeply disappointed with the court's judgment today, because we shared this information

in confidence and with certain expectations," LaBolt said, making no mention of Mohamed's

treatment nor even offering him an apology for the torture he was subjected to by the CIA over

the course of several years. Mohamed was released from Guantanamo last year and returned to

the UK.

As an aside, as revelatory as the disclosures were, news reports of Mohamed's torture were

buried by the mainstream print media and went unreported by the cable news outlets,

underscoring how the media's interest in Bush's torture policies has waned.

The Obama administration's decision to ignore the past administration's crimes has alienated

civil liberties groups, who he could once count on for support.
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9/22

Last December, on the day Obama received a Nobel Peace prize, Jameel Jaffer, director of the

ACLUs National Security Project,told reporters"on every front, the [Obama] administration is

actively obstructing accountability. This administration is shielding Bush administration officials

from civil liability, criminal investigation and even public scrutiny for their role in authorizing

torture.

Cheneys Attacks Unfounded

That being the reality is what makes Cheneys claim on Sunday that the Obama administration is

attempting to prosecute CIA personnel that had carried out our counterterrorism policy or

disbarring lawyers laughable.

Last year, Holderexpanded the mandate of John Durham, a federal prosecutor from Connecticut

appointed by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate the destruction of CIA

torture tapes, to include a preliminary review of less than a dozen torture cases previously

closed by Justice Department attorneys for unknown reasons. That hardly amounts to aprosecution. Its not even an investigation.

And disbarring lawyers, a clear reference to Yoo and Bybee, which is beyond the scope of the

Justice Department watchdogs authority to begin with, is no longer a possibility given that the

OPR report reportedly does not recommend disciplinary action.

In a statement, the ACLU said, to date, not a single torture victim has had his day in court.

As Jane Mayerreportedin a recent issue of the New Yorker, Holders limited scope

authorization to Durham did not go over well with the White House and Obamas Chief of Staff

Rahm Emanuel made sure Holder knew where the administration stood.

Emanuel worried that such investigations would alienate the intelligence community Mayer

wrote. Emanuel couldnt complain directly to Holder without violating strictures against

political interference in prosecutorial decisions. But he conveyed his unhappiness to Holder

indirectly, two sources said. Emanuel demanded, Didnt he get the memo that were not re-

litigating the past?

9/11 Contradictions: When Did Cheney Enter the Underground Bunker?

With regard to the morning of 9/11, everyone agrees that at some time after 9:03 (when the

South Tower of the World Trade Center was struck) and before 10:00, Vice President Dick

Cheney went down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), sometimes simply

called the bunker, under the east wing of the White House. Everyone also agrees that, once

there, Cheney was in chargethat he was either making decisions or relaying decisions from

President Bush. But there is enormous disagreement as to exactly when Cheney entered the

PEOC.
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10/22

According to The 9/11 Commission Report, Cheney arrived shortly before 10:00, perhaps at

9:58(The 9/11 Commission Report[henceforth 9/11CR], 40). This official time, however,

contradicts almost all previous reports, some of which had him there before 9:20. This difference

is importantbecause, if the 9/11 Commissions time is correct, Cheney was not in charge in the

PEOC when the Pentagon was struck, or for most of the period during which United Flight 93

was approaching Washington. But if the reports that have him there by 9:20 are correct, he wasin charge in the PEOC all that time.

Minetas Report of Cheneys Early Arrival

The most well-known statement contradicting the 9/11 Commission was made by Secretary of

Transportation Norman Mineta during his public testimony to the 9/11 Commission on May 23,

2003. Saying that he arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 AM, Mineta reported that he then

overheard part of an ongoing conversation, which had obviously begun before he arrived,

between a young man and Vice President Cheney. This conversation was about a plane coming

toward Washington and ended with Cheney confirming that the orders still stand. WhenCommissioner Timothy Roemer later asked Mineta how long after his arrival he overheard this

conversation about whether the orders still stood, Mineta replied: Probably about five or six

minutes. This would mean, Roemer pointed out,about 9:25 or 9:26.

This is a remarkable contradiction. Given the fact that Cheney, according to Mineta, had

been engaged in an ongoing exchange, he must have been in the PEOC for several minutes

before Minetas 9:20 arrival. If Cheney had been there since 9:15, there would be a 43-minute

contradiction between Minetas testimony and The 9/11 Commission Report. Why would such an

enormous contradiction exist?

One possible explanation would be that Mineta was wrong. His story, however, is in line

with that of many other witnesses.

Other Reports Supporting Cheneys Early Arrival

Richard Clarke reported that he, Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice had a brief meeting shortly after

9:03, following which the Secret Service wanted Cheney and Rice to go down to the PEOC.

Rice, however, first went with Clarke to the White Houses Video Teleconferencing Center,

where Clarke was to set up a video conference, which began at about 9:10. After spending a few

minutes there, Rice said, according to Clarke: Youre going to need some decisions quickly.

Im going to the PEOC to be with the Vice President. Tell us what you need. At about 9:15,Norman Mineta arrived and Clarke suggested he join the Vice President (Against All Enemies,

2-5). Clarke thereby implied that Cheney was in the PEOC several minutes prior to 9:15.

In an ABC News program on the first anniversary of 9/11, Cheneys White House

photographer David Bohrer reported that, shortly after 9:00, some Secret Service agents came

into Cheneys office andsaid, Sir, you have to come with us. During this same program, Rice

said: As I was trying to find all of the principals, the Secret Service came in and said, You have


11/22

to leave now for the bunker. The Vice Presidents already there. There may be a plane headed for

the White House. ABCs Charles Gibson then said: In the bunker, the Vice President is joined

by Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta (9/11: Interviews by Peter Jennings,

ABC News, September 11, 2002).

The 9/11 Commissions Late-Arrival Claim

The 9/11 Commission agreed that the vice president was hustled down to the PEOC after word

was received that a plane was headed towards the White House. It claimed, however, that this

word was not received until 9:33. But even then, according to the Commission, the Secret

Service agents immediately received another message, telling them that the aircraft had turned

away, so [n]o move was made to evacuate the Vice President at this time. It was not until just

before 9:36 that the Secret Service ordered Cheney to go below (9/11CR 39). But even after he

entered the underground corridor at 9:37, Cheney did not immediately go to the PEOC. Rather:

Once inside, Vice President Cheney and the agents paused in an area of the tunnel that had asecure phone, a bench, and television. The Vice President asked to speak to the President, but it

took time for the call to be connected. He learned in the tunnel that the Pentagon had been hit,

and he saw television coverage of the smoke coming from the building. (9/11CR 40)

Next, after Lynne Cheney joined her husband in the tunnel, the Commission claimed, Mrs.

Cheney and the Vice President moved from the tunnel to the shelter conference room after the

call ended, which was not until after 9:55. As for Rice, the Commission added, she entered the

conference room shortly after the Vice President (9/11CR 40).

The contradiction could not be clearer. According to the Commission, Cheney, far from

entering the PEOC before 9:20, as Mineta and others said, did not arrive there until about 9:58,

20 minutes after the 9:38 strike on the Pentagon, about which he had learned in the corridor.

Cheneys Account onMeet the Press

The 9/11 Commissions account even contradicted that given by Cheney himself in a well-

known interview. Speaking to Tim Russert on NBCsMeet the Press only five days after 9/11,

Cheney said: [A]fter I talked to the president, . . . I went down into . . . the Presidential

Emergency Operations Center. . . . [W]hen I arrived there within a short order, we had word the

Pentagons been hit. Cheney himself, therefore, indicated that he had entered the PEOC prior to

the (9:38) strike on the Pentagon, not 20 minutes after it, as the Commission would later claim.

Dealing with the Contradictions

How did the 9/11 Commission deal with the fact that its claim about the time of Cheneys arrival

in the PEOC had been contradicted by Bohrer, Clarke, Mineta, Rice, several news reports, and

even Cheney himself? It simply omitted any mention of these contradictory reports.


12/22

Of these omissions, the most important was the Commissions failure to mention Norman

Minetas testimony, even though it was given to the Commission in an open hearingas can be

seen by reading the transcript of that session (May 23, 2003). This portion of Minetas testimony

was also deleted from the official version of the video record of the 9/11 Commission hearings in

the 9/11 Commission archives. (It can, however, be viewed on the Internet.)

During an interview for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2006, Hamilton was asked

what Mineta told the Commission about where Dick Cheney was prior to 10 AM. Hamilton

replied: I do not recall(9/11: Truth, Lies and Conspiracy: Interview: Lee Hamilton, CBC

News, 21 August 2006). It was surprising that Hamilton could not recall, because he had been

the one doing the questioning when Mineta told the story of the young mans conversation with

Cheney. Hamilton, moreover, had begun his questioning by saying to Mineta: You were there

[in the PEOC] for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the Vice President. And

Minetas exchange with Timothy Roemer, during which it was established that Mineta had

arrived at about 9:20, came immediately after Hamiltons interrogation. And yet Hamilton, not

being able to recall any of this, simply said, we think that Vice President Cheney entered thebunker shortly before 10 oclock.

Obliterating Minetas Problematic Testimony

To see possible motives for the 9/11 Commissions efforts to obliterate Minetas story from the

public record, we need to look at the conversation he reported to the Commission. He said:

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who

would come in and say to the Vice President, The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles

out. And when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the Vice

President, Do the orders still stand? And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck

around and said, Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?

Minetas story had dangerous implications with regard to the strike on the Pentagon, which

occurred at 9:38. According to the 9/11 Commission, the military did not know that an aircraft

was approaching the Pentagon until 9:36, so that it had at most one or two minutes to react to

the unidentified plane approaching Washington (9/11CR 34). That claim was essential for

explaining, among other things, why the Pentagon had not been evacuated before it was struck

a fact that resulted in 125 deaths. A spokesperson for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, when

asked why this evacuation had not occurred, said: The Pentagon was simply not aware that this

aircraft was coming our way (Newsday, Sept. 23, 2001). Minetas testimony implied, bycontrast, that Cheney and others knew that an aircraft was approaching Washington about 12

minutes before that strike.

Even more problematic was the question of the nature of the orders. Mineta assumed, he

said, that they were orders to have the plane shot down. But the aircraft was notshot down. Also,

the expected orders, especially on a day when two hijacked airliners had already crashed into


13/22

buildings in New York, would have been to shoot down any nonmilitary aircraft entering the

prohibited airspace over Washington, in which civilian flying is prohibited at all times

(Pilots Notified of Restricted Airspace; Violators Face Military Action, FAA Press Release,

September 28, 2001). If those orders had been given, there would have been no reason to ask if

they still stood. The question made sense only if the orders were to do something unusualnot

to shoot the aircraft down. It appeared, accordingly, that Mineta had inadvertently reportedCheneys confirmation of stand-down orders.

That Minetas report was regarded as dangerous is suggested by the fact that the 9/11

Commission, besides deleting Minetas testimony and delaying Cheneys entrance to the bunker

by approximately 45 minutes, also replaced Minetas story with a new story about an incoming

aircraft. According to The 9/11 Commission Report, here is what really happened:

At 10:02, the communicators in the shelter began receiving reports from the Secret Service of an

inbound aircraft. . . . At some time between 10:10 and 10:15, a military aide told the Vice

President and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out. Vice President Cheney was asked forauthority to engage the aircraft. . . . The Vice President authorized fighter aircraft to engage the

inbound plane. . . . The military aide returned a few minutes later, probably between 10:12 and

10:18, and said the aircraft was 60 miles out. He again asked for authorization to engage. The

Vice President again said yes. (9/11CR 41)

The 9/11 Commission thereby presented the incoming aircraft story as one that ended with an

order for a shoot down, not a stand down. And by having it occur after 10:10, the Commission

not only disassociated it from the Pentagon strike but also ruled out the possibility that Cheneys

shootdown authorization might have led to the downing of United Flight 93 (which crashed,

according to the Commission, at 10:03).

Given the fact that the 9/11 Commissions account of Cheneys descent to the bunker

contradicted the testimony of not only Norman Mineta but also many other witnesses, including

Cheney himself, Congress and the press need to launch investigations to determine what really

happened. Cheney may be guilty of war crime Vice-president accused of backing torture.

Claims on BBC by former insider add to Bush's woes

Vice-president Dick Cheneys burden on the Bush administration grew heavier yesterday after a

former senior US state department official said he could be guilty of a war crime over the abuse

of prisoners.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell from 2002 to

2005, singled out Mr Cheney in a wide-ranging political assault on the BBCs Today

programme.

Mr Wilkerson said that in an internal administration debate over whether to abide by the Geneva

conventions in the treatment of detainees, Mr Cheney led the argument that essentially wanted


14/22

to do away with all restrictions.

Asked whether the vice-president was guilty of a war crime, Mr Wilkerson replied: Well, thats

an interesting questionit was certainly a domestic crime to advocate terror and I would suspect

that it is an international crime as well. In the context of other remarks it appeared he was

using the word terror to apply to the systematic abuse of prisoners.

The Washington Post last month called Mr Cheney the vice-president for torture for his

demand that the CIA be exempted from a ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of

detainees.

Mr Wilkerson, a former army colonel, also said he had seen increasing evidence that the White

House had manipulated pre-war intelligence on Iraq to make its case for the invasion. He said:

You begin to wonder was this intelligence spun? Was it politicised? Was it cherry-picked? Did,

in fact, the American people get fooled? I am beginning to have my concerns.

Mr Cheney has been under fire for his role in assembling evidence of weapons of mass

destruction. Mr Wilkerson told the Associated Press that the vice-president must have sincerely

believed Iraq could be a spawning ground for terrorism because otherwise I have to declare him

a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.

Such charges have kept the Bush administration on the defensive for several months. Mr Bush

yesterday repeated his earlier assertion that the US does not torture and thats important for

people around the world to realise. He is also due to make the first of a series of speeches today,

outlining his plan to defeat the insurgency and pave the way for US withdrawal. The White

House will also publish a declassified version of its war plan.

But it has now emerged that two justice department memos listing permissible interrogation

methods have been kept secret by the White House, even from the Senate intelligence

committee. The New Yorker recently quoted a source who had seen a memo as calling it

breathtaking.

The document dismissed virtually all national and international laws regulating the treatment of

prisoners, including war crimes and assault statutes, and it was radical in its view that in wartime

the president can fight enemies by whatever means he sees fit, the magazine reported.

One technique allegedly used by the CIA in questioning suspects is waterboarding (strapping adetainee to a board and submerging it until the prisoner believes he or she is drowning). The

White House is accused of defining torture so narrowly as to exclude such methods. But James

Ross, a legal expert at Human Rights Watch said such a narrow definition was at odds with

international norms.


15/22

Waterboarding is clearly a form of torture. It has been used since the Inquisition. It was a well-

known torture technique in Latin America, Mr Ross said.

Human Rights Watch this year called for a special counsel to investigate any US officialsno

matter their rank or positionwho took part in, ordered, or had command responsibility for war

crimes or torture, or other prohibited ill-treatment against detainees in US custody.

The report focused on the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, for his alleged command

responsibility for abuses at Abu Ghraib, but Mr Wilkerson argued Mr Cheney was ultimately

responsible.

The US is a signatory to the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture, which bans inflicting severe

pain or suffering, whether physical or mental. Such practices are also a crime under US federal

law.

Dad Furious After Finding This Crayon-Written Paper in Florida 4th-Graders Backpack:

I Am Willing to Give Up Some of My Constitutional Rightsto Be Safer

Apr. 12, 2013 8:35amMadeleine Morgenstern

The words are written in crayon, in the haphazard bumpiness of a childs scrawl.

I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure.

Theyre the words that Florida father Aaron Harvey was stunned to find his fourth-grade son had

written, after a lesson in school about the Constitution.
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16/22

Aaron Harveys son wrote as part of a school lesson, I am willing to give up some of my

constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure. TheBlaze has redacted the childs

name.

Harveys son attends Cedar Hills Elementary in Jacksonville, Fla. Back in January, a local

attorney came in to teach the students about the Bill of Rights. But after the attorney left, fourth-grade teacher Cheryl Sabb dictated the sentence to part of the class and had them copy it down,

he said.

The paper sat unnoticed in Harveys sons backpack for several months until last week, when his

sons mother almost threw it away. The words caught her eye in the trash, and she showed it to

Harvey, who said he was at a loss for words. He asked his son, who said Sabb had spoken thesentence out loud and told them to write it down. Harvey said he asked some of his sons

classmates and got a similar answer.

Everybody has their opinions, Harvey told TheBlaze. I am strongly for proper education, for

the freedom of thought so you can form your own opinion and have your own free speech in thefuture [but] the education is, when was the Constitution drafted, when was it ratified, why did

this happen, why did we choose to do thisall these things, why did they particularly choosethose specific rights to be in our Bill of Rights.

Kandra Albury, a spokeswoman for Duvall County Public Schools, which includes Cedar Hills,told TheBlaze she didnt know what prompted Sabb to have students write the sentence.

She said the principal had fielded one parents concern about the lesson in January, but it wasnt

Harvey. She said Thursday the district and principal were checking into what had happened.

Harvey, rather than asking the school for answers when he found the paper, wrote his concerns inan email, which was then forwarded to TheBlaze. He said he did it that way because he wasnt

sure he would have gotten a straightforward answer if he asked the school directly.

He said he just wants to see a proper, unbiased education system and doesnt want any kind of

religion or politics brought into the classroom.

I believe in our Constitution. I am a veteran, I served for six-and-a-half years proudly and I

served to protect our rights, he said. Now whenever I have someone coming in and trying topollute my childs mind with biased opinionstheres no education in that.

Update, 11:36 a.m.: Harvey told TheBlaze he received a call from the school Friday morning thatfeatured the principal, guidance counselor and Sabb. He was told the sentence came during the

lesson with the lawyer, that Sabb had nothing to do with it, and that Harveys son wrote it on

his own free will.

Harvey said he had spoken to a girl in the class who specifically said Sabb handpicked students

to write the sentence.


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All the children are pointing at the teacher, Harvey said Friday. They [the school] told me that

my son wrote that on his own free willtheres no way he knew how to write that on his own

free will. He likes to use some big words to flourish[but] if he was going to put together asentence that political Im sure it would be more jumbled than a nice sentence like that.

Florida School District Responds to Childs Give Up Some of My Constitutional RightsAssignment: A Review and Investigation Will Occur

Apr. 12, 2013 4:20pmMadeleine Morgenstern

Aaron Harveys son wrote as part of a school lesson, I am willing to give up some of my

constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure. TheBlaze has redacted the childs nameat Harveys request.

A school district in Jacksonville, Fla., said Friday it will review and investigate what happened

after a father charged that his fourth-grade son was instructed to write that he waswilling togive up some of [his] constitutional rightsas part of a classroom activity.

A local attorney taught a lesson about the Constitution to fourth-grade students at Cedar HillsElementary School in January. Last week, Aaron Harvey found a crayon-written paper that had

been in his sons backpack that read, I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in

order to be safer or more secure. Harveys sontold himthat his teacher, Cheryl Sabb, hadinstructed some students to write the sentence after the lesson was over.

The lesson taught by the attorney was part of Justice Teaching, a program started by formerFlorida Supreme Court Chief Justice R. Fred Lewis that puts legal professionals in Florida

schools to teach about the American legal system and the Constitution.

The Justice Teaching activity on constitutional rights that was conducted at Cedar HillsElementary School is consistent with our efforts to broaden civics-based education and develop

critical thinking skills among our students, Dr. Nikolai P. Vitti, superintendent of Duval CountyPublic Schools, said in a statement to TheBlaze. The lesson builds awareness of First

Amendment rights through a partnership with an association of local attorneys. Our possible

concern rests with a follow-up activity that may have been conducted after the lesson. A reviewand investigation will occur to determine the facts of that assignment.

According to a description of the lesson provided to TheBlaze, the objective was to teachstudents about the five rights enumerated in the First Amendment.

Harvey told TheBlaze earlier Friday that school district officials had told him the sentence cameduring the lesson portion with the attorney, but that his sonwrote it on his own free will.

Harvey said there was no way his son wrote that on his own, and said he had heard from his

son and at least one other child that the sentence came directly from the teacher.

A Duval County Public Schools spokeswoman identified the attorney who taught the lesson as

Carrington Madison Mead, a Jacksonville lawyer. Mead did not immediately return a request forcomment from TheBlaze.
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8 Ways Obama Is As Bad -- Or Worse -- Than Bush On Civil LibertiesDespite a rare court victory on Friday, Obama's legacy is dismal.

March 18, 2013 |

Civil libertarians won a rare court victory against the Obama Administrations War on Terror

on Friday when a U.S. District Court blocked the FBI from ordering telecom companies to turn

over their customers data, such as e-mails and other records, and blocked FBI gag orders on this

domestic spying program.

In today's ruling, the court held that the gag order provisions of the statute violate the First

Amendment and that the review procedures violate separation of powers, Electronic Frontier

Foundation lawyers, who brought the suit, said. Because those provisions were not separable

from the rest of the statute, the court declared the entire statute unconstitutional.

This is the second time in recent months that civil libertarians have won a court victory over the

Obama administration, although it is all but certain that it will appeal and seek to suspend the

ruling. Last fall, a federal court suspended a section of a major defense bill that gave the

government permission to arrest people who were suspected of speaking with alleged terrorists,

which included several journalists who sued. However, another federal court reinstated that

provision pending appeal.

What is appears to illustrate is there are probably duel U.S. Pakistani nationals or maybe U.S.

Afghan nationals who are being detained in military facilities and denied due process,said

Chris Hedges, an ex-foreign correspondent who sued.
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What these developments underscore is that the Obama Administration barely differs from the

George W. Bush Administration when it comes to the War on Terrorism. While the Obama

Administration has not continued specific tactics used by his predecessor, such as CIA black

sites and specific torture techniques known as enhanced interrogation, it has gone further than

Bush in other areas, such as with targeted assassinations using drones, and expanding the

domestic national security state.

There are the two War on Terror presidents,wrote Glenn Greenwald recently. George Bush

seized on the 9/11 attack to usher in radical new surveillance and detention powers in the

PATRIOT ACT, spied for years on the communications of US citizens without the warrants

required by law, and claimed the power to indefinitely imprison even US citizens without

charges in military brigs.

His successor,Barack Obama, went further by claiming the powernot merely to detain citizens

without judicial reviewbut to assassinate them (about which the New York Times said: It is

extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing). He

has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, dusting off [Woodrew] Wilsons Espionage

Act of 1917 to prosecute more then double the number of whistleblowers than all prior

presidents combined. And he has draped his actions with at least as much secrecy, if not more so,

than any president in US history.

Lets go through these and other areas that, as the National Journalsaid, should result in an F

for Obama when historians assess his civil liberties record.

This February, BillMoyers.com published a list of eight contrasting the Obama and Bush

Administrations on civil liberties. On six of the eight areas, Obama expanded or codified his

predecessors policies:

1. Patriot Act is renewed on May 27, 2011: Obamasigns a renewal of several of the Patriot

Acts most controversial segments, including the use ofroving wiretaps, the governments

expanded access to business records, and the lone wolf provision, which allows surveillance of

individuals not affiliated with any known terrorist organization.

2. Wiretaps and Data Collections: On December 30, 2012, Obama signs a five-year extension of

the FISA Amendments Act. Provisions for more oversight and public disclosure failed to pass
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Congress. (This is the law that the Electronic Frontier Foundation challenged and won a U.S.

District Court injunction against last week. The administration has 90 days to appeal.)

3. Obama Abandons Plans To Close Gitmo: On March 7, 2011, Obama signs an executive order

creating a system of indefinite detention at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Congress had recently

passed a bill effectively preventing the president from moving Guantanamo detainees to the U.S.,

and has since passed additional restrictive legislation. In January 2013, Obama administration

reportedly is closing the State Department office responsible for shutting Guantanamo and

resettling detainees.

4. CIA Black SitesClosed: On Jan. 21, 2009, in his first day in office, Obama orders the

closure of CIA prisons. Reports ofrendition, proxy detention by other countries, and black site

prisons run by the military in Afghanistan emerge during Obamas first term. (If these siteshave been closed, this would be a civil liberties victory.)

5. Targeted Killings: The Administration has developed a targeted killing playbook, In

October 2012, The Washington Postreports the Obama administration is tightening the process

for approving kills or captures and concentrating it in the White House. At least initially, the CIA

will not be boundby the new rules. (Bush never publicly asserted a presidential right to execute

citizens abroad, but Obama claimed that authority and has exercised it in the September 2011

strike on New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki.)

6. Drone strikes, civilian deaths: On April 30, 2012: Obama counterterrorism adviser John

Brennan admits that some number of civilians have died from strikes. On May 29, 2012: The

New York Times reports that the Obama administration counts all military-age males in a drone

strike zone as enemy combatants unless they are proven innocent after the fact. The numbers of

civilian deaths claimed by officials are inconsistent with one another, and considerably lower

than independent counts.

7. Enhanced interrogationtorture: The Obama White House banned these techniques upon

taking office. January 22, 2009: Obamabans all abusive interrogation techniques and obliges the

CIA and all U.S. agencies to comply with the Geneva Conventions and Army guidelines for

interrogation.

8. Military commissions: Congress codified military commissions, which is a justice system that

does not fall under the U.S. Constitution. December 31, 2011: Obamasigns a bill codifying the
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administrations stanceon military commissions and detention of terror suspects as justified by

the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. February 2012: The seventh conviction of

a detainee in front of the military commission at Guantanamo.

In six of these eight categories, Obama extended or expanded the Bush Administrations war on

terror doctrines. But this is not even the full list of major civil liberties abuses under Obama,

according to The Atlantics Wendy Kaminer, whose recent piece after Obamas second inaugural

said, Kelly Clarksons musical paean to liberty seemed more sincere.

9-13. Kaminerlists another five areas where the Obama Administration is worse that Bush, bring

the total to 11 areas where Obama has failed to uphold civil liberties. Civil libertarians have

been cataloguing and futilely litigating the gross abuses of post-9/11 era for years, she writes,

then ticking off another five categories:

They include, but are probably not limited to, summary detention and torture; the prosecution of

whistleblowers; surveillance of peaceful protesters; the criminalization ofjournalism and

peaceful human-rights activism; extensive blacklisting that would have been the envy of Joe

McCarthy; and secrecy about a shadow legal system that makes the president's We the people

trope seem less inspirational than sarcastic. Precisely because civil libertarians have focused on

these abuses, they're old news.

Indeed, the Administrations response to the Wikileaks case and prosecution of leaker Bradley

Manning, its surveillance of Occupy Movement protesters, the sections in the National Defense

Authorization Act that allow the U.S. military to arrest suspected terrorist on U.S. soil (which he

signed into law, despite White House misgivings), and lack of transparency on many of these

programs despite campaign pledges to the contrary, pose an undeniable conclusion: on national

security, Obama and Bush are more alike than not.
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Craig B Hulet was both speech writer and Special AssistantforSpecial Projects to Congressman

Jack Metcalf (Retired); he has been a consultant to federal law enforcement DEA, ATF&E of

Justice/Homeland Security for over 25 years; he has written four books on international relations

and philosophy, his latest is The Hydra of Carnage: Bushs Imperial War-making and the Rule of

Law - An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire. He has appeared on over 12,000

hours of TV and Radio:The History ChannelDe-Coded; He is a regular on Coast to Coast

AM w/ George Noory and Coffee Talk KBKW; CNN, C-Span ; European Television "American

Dream" and The Arsenio Hall Show; he has written for Soldier of Fortune Magazine,

International Combat Arms, Financial Security Digest, etc.; Hulet served in Vietnam 1969-70,

101st Airborne, C Troop 2/17th Air Cav and graduated 3rd in his class atAberdeen Proving

Grounds Ordnance SchoolMOS 45J20 Weapons. He remains a paid analyst and consultant in

various areas of geopolitical, business and security issues: terrorism and military affairs. Hulet

lives in the ancient old growth Quinault Rain Forest.

cheney admits that he lied about 911 8 ways obama worse than bush

Documents