Live 9/11 Commission Thread [testifying today Freeh, Reno, Ashcroft]

April 13, 2004 | Vanity

[Peach]

9/11 Commission. Now on C-Span.

Chairman Thomas Kean has asked the audience to refrain from clapping.

Louie Freeh, former FBI director, up at 9:30.

Business matters being taken care of now by the Commission.

[Carolinamom]

Somebody here described Kerrey has having neoNero hair!

[Cosmo]

Ramesh Ponnoru at NRO is wondering whether or not there will be a backlash from the decassification of the Gorelick memo!

--Not if folks at NRO and other news outlets do their jobs, Ramesh

[kabar]

Ashcroft should have responded to Roemer that we should have had a more robust response after the East Embassy bombings. We didn't need the USS Cole to pursue a more aggessive strategy.

[Howlin]

Back to the same, USS Cole attack. He's got Ashcroft on the defensive here. "Why not go after Al Qaeda?"

Of course, we'll never see anybody in the Clinton administration asked that question.

[Pukin Dog]

Roemer got nothin.

[cyncooper]

Thanks--just back from getting my daughter.

No time to go to The Corner!

[Trust but Verify]

He looks like an alien. Who has a head shaped like that? Like a lightbulb.

[pragmaticgal]

In the Army, MON stands for Memorandum of Notification. Could be the "MON" they're referring to?

[LisaFab]

It's confusing. IMHO, Kerrey won't hit AG too hard, were fellow Senators together--a very elite club.

[fight_truth_decay]

In Chapter 17 of his book, Weinberger, more eloquently than I ever could, sums up the true national security failings and fallout of the Clinton presidency. And he does if from "outside the walls".

He rues the depth which Commander in Chief Clinton cut into the military muscle of this country. He corroborates the weak and the reckless employment of the U.S. military forces for largely domestic political gain. And he describes the severely reduced U.S. capability that President George W. Bush has inherited.

The larger picture he offers is that which I saw up close and personal. The challenging future he paints is the one I also see.The conclusions he draws are the ones I had already internalized as I walked out the East Wing gate that last time. Through the experiences that I witnessed and have documented, and from the lessons that Mr. Weinberger urges us to relearn, may this nation recover and never again have our national security interests treated with so much disdain and so little understanding.

With permission of the publisher, I offer this excerpt from Casper Weinberger's In the Arena on "the Dangers We Still Face."

pg 152, Dereliction of Duty by Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson Carrier of the "Nuclear football."

[Howlin]

No way. He's going with the "Clinton was going to assassinate OBL" story. He and Fineman have already talked about it at lunch today!

[sinkspur]

"Robert Dies came to the FBI from IBM..."

Bobby Dies, my regional manager in IBM back in the early 80s.

[cyncooper]

Thanks.

Well! Calm and cool facts trump spin every time, is the way I see it.

[Desdemona]

Roemer wanted someone to go on the record, I guess, to say something about military action. Only one problem - that wasn't Ashcroft's place.

Kerrey is letting him talk. Amazing.

This is all very weird.

[mass55th]

"Somebody here described Kerrey has having neoNero hair!"

Kerrey reminds me of actor Tony Randall.

[mystery-ak]

Whatever is in ths MON, the rats think they have a gotcha moment coming with the AG.

[ken5050]

surely you jest, m'dear..the Dem senators, dare I say it, "crucified" him at his confrimation hearing...

[mombonn]

Like a lightbulb

So let's ask, "watts happening?"

[lonestar]

So the then-FBI director considered that war was declared on us but DID NOT draft a plan to deal with terrorists, at least in this country? Too busy following Reno's orders to go after Microsoft and Elian Gonzales.

Hey! She had already taken care of the threat to modern civilization--the Branch Davidians.

[bcoffey]

<>He called it an "MOR" I think. Dont know what that's supposed to stand for.....

Probably "Memo of Record," that is, a memo that isn't addressed to anyone in particular but is put in the files to record, for example, minutes of a meeting.