Posted on 04/14/2004 8:07:55 AM PDT by tgslTakoma
This morning before the start of the 9/11 Commission hearings, Kristinn went to the hearing room to meet with some of the 9/11 family members about the 1996 Gore Airline Safety Commission.
He went down there this morning because the 9/11 Commission had not talked about the Gore Airline Safety Commission in public, and it needed to be brought to the attention of the families.
He got down there about 8:30am. The hearing room only had a few dozen people in it, a far cry from the crowds that had been there last week for White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's testimony.
Kristinn spoke with Commission Chairman Thomas Kean as he entered the room surrounded by reporters. The reporters wanted to know when President Bush and Vice President Cheney would give their joint testimony before the Commission. Kean said that he could not tell them.
Kristinn asked Kean if the Commission had covered the 1996 Airline Safety Commission, chaired by Vice President Gore. Kean said that they had. He said that it had been brought up with Vice President Gore during his testimony and that it would be covered during the FAA hearings, later.
Kristinn gave a copy of a report on the Gore Commission, with two attachments, to Kean. The report was co-written several years ago by a DC Chapter member. Of the two attachments to the report, one was the decision by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, ordering the Gore Commission to allow Victoria Cummock access to Commission documents that they denied her when she served on the Commission. The second attachment was a World Net Daily article from October 2001 reporting that Mrs. Cummock was still being denied access to classified material, in violation of the court order.
Kristinn went to the front of the hearing room and met with three of the 9/11 families. They asked for copies of the documents Kristinn had, and they commented that 9/11 would probably have been prevented if the Gore Commission's recommendations had been acted on. They knew who Victoria Cummock was, but were not well-versed in the story of her travails in the Gore Commission.
One of the family members suggested that he also speak with the Family Liason with the Commission, Ellie Hartz. Kristinn went outside the hearing room and spoke with Ms. Hartz. She accepted a copy of the documents, and they talked for a few minutes.
Kristinn explained to Ms. Hartz that while the DC Chapter of Free Republic is a partisan group and has no love for Clinton or Gore, they are also a "let the chips fall where they may" group. He said that he understood, after eight years of trying to hold Clinton and Gore accountable, how difficult it is to get the government to open itself up to accountability to the public.
They also talked about how the 9/11 family members have been conducting themselves during the hearings. Ms. Hartz acknowledged that it was becoming a problem, but that the family members were very emotionally involved. Kristinn told her that the family members are losing support from the American public because of how they have been acting during the hearings and because of what they have been saying to the media in interviews. Kristinn was trying to be as diplomatic as possible while making the point.
Another family member came up and interrupted the conversation because the hearing was about to start. Kristinn had to head off to work so he started making his way out of the building.
But on his way out he saw Michael Isikoff and gave him a copy of the Gore Commission documents.
:-)
Now Towmmy Dashle AND his wife are deeply saddened.
Yes but don't check any foreigner coming in.....we need all the votes we can get. Remeber the immediate issuance of voter cards for them.
I have been SO aggravated that this information has been seemingly ignored in all the debates about why 9/11 happened. This is all I talk about with anyone when the subject comes up.
It all comes down to this: terrorists, like any other criminals, seek the least risky methods and places to commit their crimes, with the the highest probability of success. E.g., lock your car and house, and the burglars will probably stay away because they will simply go find a car or house that is unlocked. Well, our airports and airplanes were essentially unlocked doors on 9/11. It's very hard to catch a criminal before he commits a crime; but it is easy to lock the door or otherwise make it harder for him to commit the crime.
The Al Qaeda planners knew, from Pan Am 103 to TWA 800 to EgyptAir 990, and later through "casing" flights taken by the 9/11 hijackers themselves (as described by James Woods who saw them on Flight 11 two weeks before 9/11) , that their plans to hijack several planes and fly them into important buildings had a high likelihood of succeeding. So, instead of pointing fingers at the people who didn't catch the terrorists - some of whom were here on legal visas and had no criminal or terrorist background or connection - shouldn't we be asking WHY WERE THE DOORS UNLOCKED????
bump!
In our book, "First Strike," James Sanders and I make this arguably prophetic comment:
John Kerry seemed to have his sights on Al Gore's Achilles' heel. After the events of Sept. 11, the story of how Al Gore helped subvert the investigation into TWA 800 and undermine airport security may yet prove to be a career-killer. Kerry's "slips" may have put Gore out of the race even before he got in.
Two weeks after advanced copies of "First Strike" started circulating around Washington, Gore withdrew from the presidential race. His withdrawal shocked Washington. It did not shock Sanders and me. We expected it. Kerry plays hardball, too.
While I have your attention, Chris, there is one other person you need to put on the spot. Her name is Jamie Gorelick, former deputy attorney general under the figurehead, Janet Reno. You probably know her. Last week, UPI reported that the high-level 9-11 panel on which she sits "was rocked Thursday by the bizarre revelation that two of its senior officials were so closely involved in the events they are investigating that they have had to be interviewed as part of the inquiry." One of the two was Gorelick.
On Aug. 22, 1996, just a few days before the start of the Democratic National Convention, Ms. Gorelick oversaw a critical Justice Department meeting with the FBI. Immediately after this meeting, as it happened, all serious inquiry into the fate of TWA 800 came to an end.
On the next day, for instance, the FAA began to inquire whether any dog-training exercises had ever taken place on the plane that would become TWA 800. On the same day, as CNN reported, the FBI now claimed publicly for the first time that the explosive residue found along the right wing "could have been brought on the plane by a passenger and was not part of a bomb." Likewise, after the meeting, the FBI would do no more eyewitness interviews, at least not for the next two months. The Bureau only did a handful after that – and all of those for the wrong reasons.
So Gore and Gorelick in collusion? What were they hiding? The Iraqi link?
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