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Relatives of the Sept. 11 victims ripped into Condoleezza Rice yesterday after she insisted the Bush administration had no clue the U.S. would be attacked. "Shame," Terry McGovern, a New Yorker whose mother was killed, yelled at the national security adviser during Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission. Other relatives ridiculed Rice's assertion that she had no idea that Osama Bin Laden's men would hijack planes and crash them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. "How could she not know that?" asked Kristen Breitweiser, who lost her husband in the attacks. She noted that several similar threats were made,...

9/11 widow recounts her role as an activist In her new book, “Wake-Up Call,” Kristen Breitweiser tells how the terrorist attacks transformed her from a stay-at-home mom into a government critic.

by Mark Finkelstein September 7, 2006 - 12:23 A few months back, 9/11 widow Kristin Breitweiser suggested that former CIA Director George Tenet and named FBI agents are as deserving of the death penalty as Zacarias Moussaoui. You might think that with opinions like that, Breitweiser has made her liberal bones. Apparently not enough to suit Ann Curry's taste. On this morning's Today show, Curry found Breitweiser's comments on Ann Coulter insufficently bitter, and tried to lure her into even a more avid condemnation of the conservative commentator. Curry began with this bouquet: "From your grief, you have drawn strength....

Jersey Girl Kristen Breitweiser is releasing a biographical political screed late this summer conveniently timed to cash in on the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 (which her husband was killed in) and to influence the November elections.The book, "Wake-Up Call: The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow," is being published September 6, 2006 by Warner Books with a reported first printing of 150,000 copies.The publisher's blurb on Amazon.com gives this description of the book : "Sweets, I'm OK. I'm OK. Don't worry. It's not my building," said Kristen Breitweiser's husband on the phone from his...

What a moron. Ann Coulter, that is. After calling a group of 9/11 widows "harpies" who seem to be "enjoying their husbands' deaths" in her new book, the conservative pundit has gone too far. She even added: "And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy..." Huh? Ugly is the only way I can describe what Coulter has written. Now I understand why Time magazine put her on the cover a few years ago and made her look...

For two hours, truth once again became a virtue in Washington, DC. The second-annual Ron Ridenhour Awards--sponsored by the Fertel Foundation and The Nation Institute and named after the whistle-blower who exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam--honored New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh, author Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and housewife-turned-activist Kristin Breitweiser for their achievements in "truth-telling." Breitweiser found herself widowed at age thirty when her husband Ron died at Tower Two of the World Trade Center on September 11. Along with four other widows (nicknamed the "Jersey Girls"), Breitweiser fought tirelessly for the 9/11 Commission, in spite of initial opposition...

by Mark Finkelstein May 4, 2006 'Today' had two 9/11 family members on as guests this morning to react to yesterday's jury determination of life in prison rather than the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui. That the family member who expressed general support for the process was relatively unknown, whereas the bitter Bush administration critic, Kristin Breitweiser, is a household commodity, is indicative of MSM coverage in the years since 9/11. Ironically, it was the family member that was disappointed in the verdict who expressed pride in America and the process, whereas Breitweiser, who got the verdict she preferred, remained...

by Mark Finkelstein May 3, 2006 Imagine you're a US Senator. A citizen has just suggested that the CIA Director and named FBI agents merit the death penalty as much as convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. Do you: A. condemn such an outrageous comment? B. move on to another topic? C. congratulate the citizen for making "an absolutely accurate point"? If you're Joe Biden [D-DE], the answer, incredibly, is 'C'. Here's how it went down. In a 'Hardball' devoted to reactions to today's jury decision giving life in prison to Moussaoui, both Rudy Giuliani and Biden had expressed regret that Moussaoui...

sacrifice -- n. Forfeiture of something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim. -- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition To be credibly called a sacrifice, whatever is lost must meet two criteria in regards to the person losing it. First, it must have significant value to them. Second, it must be willingly given; the term 'sacrifice' necessarily implies that it is the result of a choice about competing values. Consequently, we can say that a loss is not a sacrifice if it does not meet these conditions....

TAMPA - With details emerging Thursday that the Sept. 11 commission omitted crucial information from its final report last year, a group of 9/11 widows called for creation of a new independent panel. "I'm very disturbed, and I want to get some answers," said Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband, Ronald, died in the World Trade Center. "I want to know what the truth is." Her organization, the September 11th Advocates, or the Jersey Girls, was instrumental in pushing for creation of the Sept. 11 commission. On Thursday, the now-disbanded commission became embroiled in controversy, after acknowledging it omitted crucial information about...

Mr. Rove, the first thing that I would like to address is Afghanistan - the place that anyone with a true “understanding of 9/11” knows is a nation that actually has a connection to the 9/11 attacks. One month after 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan, took down the Taliban, and left without capturing Usama Bin Laden - the alleged perpetrator of the September 11th attacks. In the meantime, Afghanistan has carried out democratic elections, but continues to suffer from extreme violence and unrest. Poppy production (yes, Karl, the drug trade) is at an all time high, thus flooding the world market...

How do we have an Administration lecturing Newsweek about "journalistic standards"--the failure to get on the record confirmation before printing a story -- when we went to war in Iraq on similar sloppy standards. Anybody remember Curveball? Or have we all forgotten the Senate Intelligence Report on WMD that discusses how our entire Intelligence Community and President Bush were duped by one bad allegedly "crazy" source who provided "dead wrong" intelligence?

WASHINGTON - Three decades before Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center with planes, a secret presidential panel warned that Islamic terrorists might blow up U.S. jetliners or contaminate cities with radioactive "dirty bombs." The Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism, formed by President Richard Nixon, even asked the advice of a young prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani testified in 1976 that the Justice Department, where he was a top official, "must take a more active position in combating terrorism," according to once-classified documents unearthed by The Associated Press and released yesterday. Giuliani urged easing legal restrictions on domestic intelligence -...

Two items this morning. Many years ago, when the Ayatollah Khomenei was first coming to power, a senior partner in the law firm where I worked figured out early that the guy was bad news. He had a running joke with his wife. He would take the cover of Time Magazine with Khomenei's picture and hide it in various places she would find it. Open the cereal cabinet in the kitchen: there he was. Pull back the bedcovers: the Ayaltollah gracing your pillow. I'm starting to feel the same way about 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser. The ubiquitous and vaguely ominous...

Need more evidence that the Kerry campaign is a little nervous about New Jersey? John Edwards made an appearance in the Garden State yesterday. And according to Steve Kornacki of PoliticsNJ.com — I checked that site daily back when I was writing for the Bergen Record — Edwards' appearance had some major glitches. The 1,000 or so Kerry-Edwards loyalists who had overstuffed a ballroom at the Robert Treat hotel in downtown Newark had been advised to arrive at 3:00, with Edwards's slated to appear at 4:00. It’s customary for politicians to be late, and when Bonnie Watson Coleman, the Democratic...

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 28 -- Before Sept. 11, 2001, all Kristen Breitweiser wanted in the way of worldly responsibility was to tend to her garden and care for her infant daughter, Caroline. "After watching my husband get murdered on live worldwide television," she said, everything changed. On Tuesday, the 33-year-old New Jersey widow was stumping in swing states with Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards for the second day in a row. [snip]She fought back a fear of flying born out of the World Trade Center disaster and overcame her jitters about public speaking to become a blunt instrument of...

John Edwards to campaign in New Jersey September 27, 2004, 11:17 AM EDT NEWARK, N.J. -- Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards will campaign in New Jersey for the first time on Tuesday, joined by one of the Sept. 11 widows who said earlier this month she was supporting John Kerry. Edwards and Kristin Breitweiser will attend an afternoon rally at the Robert Treat Hotel here and then he will attend a fund-raiser at the Hilton Hotel in East Brunswick.

Among the activist leaders of 9/11 families' groups it is safe to say that Debra Burlingame - whose brother, Charles, was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon - is not a uniformly popular figure. Ms Burlingame, a staunch Democrat, has become the first public 9/11 "dissident" - a vocal critic of the "blame game" being played over the al-Qaeda attacks - and an unlikely defender of George W Bush. For good measure, the outspoken former lawyer describes some of the bereaved 9/11 families as America's "rock stars of grief". "I've practically been thrown out of meetings,"...

There was a previous post about an article that originally appeared in the NY TIMES. While doing a key word search about families offended by the recent Bush ads, I found this story -- Anger at terror images in Bush ads .....By Richard Stevenson, Jim Rutenberg..... Santa Clara..... March 6, 2004 Included in that article attributed to Stevenson and Rutenberg was this: "Kelly Campbell, co-director of a non-partisan group called September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows....." Unfortunately, the site used Stevenson's work and combined it with work from a WASHINGTON POST author named Paul Fahri. THE AGE, where the story...

<p>Americans are beginning to tire of them.</p> <p>Wednesday, April 14, 2004 12:01 a.m.</p> <p>"I watched my husband murdered live on TV. . . . At any point in time the casualties could have been lessened, and it seems to me there wasn't even an attempt made."</p>