GARY HART&RUDMAN WARNED CONDI ..

GARY HART&RUDMAN AND THE U.S. Commission on National Security WARNED CONDI RICE

FROM MY FILES..FLY

April 6, 2004

GARY HART SAYS U.S. Commission on National Security( HART/ RUDMAN REPORT ) WARNED and fully briefed Rice and other senior Bush administration officials regarding the urgency of its conclusions.

http://archive.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/04/06/commission/print.html

A Paul Revere no one wants to hear from
I co-chaired a national security panel that warned the Bush administration the terrorists were coming. Why hasn't the 9/11 commission called any of us to testify?

Editor's note: The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century was created by President Bill Clinton in October 1998, with the approval of the congressional leadership. It was a bipartisan commission with a three-year life and a mandate to review threats to national security and opportunities to avoid those threats and to report to the next president of the United States in early 2001. It completed the most comprehensive review of U.S. national security since 1947.

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By Gary Hart

April 6, 2004

SNIP:

Now that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- the so-called 9/11 commission -- is moving toward completion of its deliberations and preparation of its final report, I am increasingly asked what information our earlier commission, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, has provided the 9/11 commission and why that information has not been made public. When told that the 9/11 commission has not asked for any public testimony from us, most people are incredulous. If the 9/11 commission is really trying to find out what was known and when it was known, they ask, why would your national security commission's warnings and recommendations not be of direct relevance and urgent interest? Didn't you publicly and privately warn the new Bush administration of your concerns about terrorism? Didn't you specifically recommend a new national homeland security agency? Why wouldn't all this be of central importance to the work of the 9/11 commission? The simple answer to all these questions is: I don't know why we have not been asked to testify.

Since the U.S. Commission on National Security officially ceased to exist as of the summer of 2001, I cannot speak for the other 13 commissioners. But I have been waiting for many months to hear from the 9/11 commission, fully expecting a request for public testimony from members of our earlier commission, and have heard nothing.

To my knowledge, few if any members of the media have asked the 9/11 commission these questions either. Why would a commission investigating the events leading up to 9/11 not want to know what an earlier commission learned about potential terrorist attacks and what recommendations it gave to the new administration? This would seem to any reasonable person to be of intense interest to the press and the public the media serves. Apparently not. Apparently the politics of whether National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice will testify under oath and the drama of personal assaults on chief terrorism advisor Richard Clarke exhaust media attention. It is difficult to know, or to understand, why this is so.

In this connection it is important to note that the U.S. Commission on National Security based its conclusions about the inevitability of terrorist attacks in part on testimony from Clarke, and fully briefed Rice and other senior Bush administration officials regarding the urgency of its conclusions.



EDIT: HIGHLIGHT EMPHASIS MINE..FLY

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FROM BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW WITH GARY HART

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/08/04_hart.html

Senator Gary Hart Talks about Terrorism, the Bush Administration and What's Not Being Done to Prevent Further Attacks

"And that was our first recommendation to the President. And it was that failure to act -– to begin to do that -– that I think permitted this event to happen."

HART: That was the day I went down to Washington and met with Dr. Rice, whom I had known before. And I said, "Please get going more urgently on the issue of homeland security." And that was September the 6th, 2001 –- five days before the attack.
BUZZFLASH: Rice has said that Bush was briefed, I believe, on August 6th of 2001 -– if that’s not the exact date, it’s within a couple of days –- that there might indeed be serious bombings by Al-Qaida in the United States, or hijackings, but that they couldn't predict planes would be flown into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. Do you have any response to that?

HART: Our commission did not have the resources to give detailed projections as to how, when and where. But the fact is that for two years we had said this was going to happen, and one major step that needed to be taken was to coordinate existing federal assets, particularly our border control agencies -– Coast Guards, Customs and Border Patrol, and Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We were very explicit about that, and we had been. And that was our first recommendation to the President. And it was that failure to act -– to begin to do that -– that I think permitted this event to happen. No one believes in absolute security. But the goal is to make it as difficult for the attackers as possible, and we had not done that. There had been no –- to my knowledge -– no major step taken by this administration in the period between January and September to stop these attacks, including coordinating the databases and communication systems of the Board of Control Agency and the INS. Everybody since 9/11 that’s looked at the situation has said the porousness of that system is what permitted these people to do what they did. And the question is: what, if anything, did the administration do between January 31st and September the 11th? And the answer is: not very much.

Now a commission of fourteen people cannot substitute for the federal government of the United States. The President had the power. The President controlled the FBI and the CIA. And when the tragedy happened, no one was fired. Why is that? Why was there no accountability? So instead of pointing the finger at us, and say: well, if you’d just told us they were going to use airplanes, and that the target was the World Trade Center, and it was going to be September 11th, maybe we could have done something. That’s total nonsense.



SNIP:

BUZZFLASH: As a final question, Bush and the Attorney General and Vice President Cheney have said and/or implied that to challenge them on how they’re conducting the war on terrorism is, in essence, unpatriotic. Do you have any thoughts about that?

HART: Of course, it’s nonsense. This is kind of the last refuge of scoundrels –- to say that anybody who disagrees with you is unpatriotic. It’s almost not worthy of response. Anybody who says "my way or the highway," including the President of the United States, or any party that says "we define patriotism and if you don't agree with us, you’re unpatriotic," hasn't read the Constitution or doesn't have a clue about what the history of this country’s about.