Thursday, October 26, 2006

Jersey girls continue press for truth (guest post by Uranus)

How about this? You have to hand it to the Jersey girls, they don't give up. In a story published today by Truthout, old friend Jason Leopold says the ladies want the privileged information Bob Woodward revealed in his book State of Denial:

In a letter posted on petitononline.com, Patty Casazza, Monica Gabrielle, Mindy Kleinberg, and Lorie Van Auken said that details of the meeting have been confirmed by the State Department and the White House warrants declassification of documents related to the meeting. The widows take issue with Woodward's exclusive access to officials' knowledgeable about the Rice/Tenet meeting and the possibility that he may have been privy to classified documents and transcripts in order to craft a narrative for his book.

"If Bob Woodward can have access to this information, why can't we, as American citizens and victims' family members?" Van Auken wrote in an email to Truthout, adding that the families of the thousands of people who perished on 9/11 are entitled to know what Bush administration officials knew prior to the 9/11 attacks and when they knew it. "Given that much of the July 10, 2001, meeting has already been made public ... it is unacceptable to continue to keep these documents and transcripts hidden from the American public's view."

The widows, in their online petition addressed to the media and members of Congress, renewed their call for the declassification of the redacted 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry Into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, and the CIA Inspector General's Report, "CIA Accountability With Respect to the 9/11 Attacks."

[...]

Woodward, who has a knack for gaining exclusive access to high-level political officials and classified documents, wrote in his book that on July 10, 2001, Tenet briefed Rice about a looming attack against the US by al-Qaeda - which according to Woodward was the first known instance that an administration official was provided with specific details about the terrorist organization's intentions. Woodward wrote that Rice did not take Tenet's July briefing seriously when Tenet and Cofer Black, then the CIA's chief of counterterrorism, met with her at the White House.

In the book, Woodward added that Tenet and Black considered the briefing the "starkest warning they had given the White House" on the threat posed by Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. But, Woodward wrote, Tenet and Black believed Rice gave them "the brush-off."

The 9/11 Commission had this information, but didn't put it in its report. Why not? I guess if you want something done right, you need some women to do it.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

"If Bob Woodward can have access to this information, why can't we, as American citizens and victims' family members?" Van Auken wrote in an email to Truthout

cuz they'd only use the info to further enjoy their husbands' deaths?

«—U®Anu§—» said...

Bless 'em. I love how these girls don't just go away. I wish more people would be as active as they are. It's happening. It's very slow.

lukery said...

thnx uranus - great post. i didnt know that they had done this.

«—U®Anu§—» said...

Always a pleasure. The template sure doesn't like my browser, or maybe I'm just an idiot. I have to monkey with it quite awhile to get it cleaned up.

I liked these two items in the news today: "Quiet Revolution," a 22-minute film from Alliance for Justice about the extreme conservative agenda, and this article by Daniel Ellsberg about his regrets about the Pentagon Papers and our upcoming, inevitable war with Iran.

The papers were published the year I registered with Selective Service, and all that is pretty close to my heart.

lukery said...

uranus - what browser do you use? it seems to work fine for me in all the browsers.

do you work in html mode? or 'compose' (wysiwyg) mode?

«—U®Anu§—» said...

I use IE6. I write it in compose and then clean it up in HTML. Strangely, it likes to rewrite the HTML. But, with a little rigging I can get it to work. I tried to update to IE7 a long time ago when it was still beta and ended up wiping the drive. They're still monkeying around with that version. I've used other browsers and don't really care about them, but it's been awhile and I'd be willing to try something else.

lukery said...

that sounds painful.

i think what it does is when you copy something from IE, it actually includes some of the 'embedded' html.

IE sux anyway - you should dump it.

i use Opera and firefox. i blog in firefox, but mostly surf in Opera. when i copy from opera, it doesnt grab any of the html, but when i copy something from a firefox window, it grabs some of the html.

Anonymous said...

Uranus: I use IE6.

tsk tsk tsk *shakes head mournfully* you don't have to, y'know...y'can't disable IE but you can use any other browser that won't crash or make you be constantly updating security patches or whatever. too lazy to go link-whore myself for one...bah to IE.