- WASHINGTON -- Reporters for
the major papers may have missed the first page of the biggest story since
the 9/11 attacks. When his resignation becomes effective July 11, 2004,
CIA Director George Tenet will no longer be covered by Executive Privilege.
He may then be compelled to testify about what he as a Director of Central
Intelligence told the President regarding several matters about which both
he and Bush have thus far displayed a startling lack of candor.
-
- Tenet will no doubt be pressed to truthfully answer what
he said to George W. Bush in the weeks before the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. Owing to his perjury before the 9/11 Commission,
Tenet has also forfeited his qualified immunity on topics relevant to his
meetings with the President in August and early September 2001. This will
give potential prosecutors enormous leverage. In exhange for his true testimony
about this, and what he knows about the Bush White House's illegal outing
of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, we should expect Tenet to ask
for and receive immunity from prosecution.
-
- Tenet's perjury and resignation presents Congressional
investigators and a special prosecutor with an unexpected opportunity later
this summer to finally get to the truth of what the President was actually
knew and when he knew it. This is also, of course, the Bush White House
and the Republican's worst nightmare.
-
- The widely-known but as yet unspoken truth in Washington
is that Tenet committed perjury in his April 14 statements before the 9/11
Commission. The CIA Director raised his right hand and was sworn-in before
that official inquiry. He stated repeatedly he had not met with President
Bush in August 2001. When given several opportunities by Commission members
to correct or retract his story during his sworn testimony, he did not
do so. It wasn't a momentary memory lapse or slip of the tongue. Tenet
lied repeatedly under oath. That is the very definition of perjury. But,
within hours it was apparent that public records contradicted Tenet's statement
about his meetings with Bush. CIA aides called reporters later that afternoon
and offered that Tenet had "misspoken." The alternative explanation
given was that Tenet had "temporarily forgotten," and that is
what was reported in the newspapers. The story was all but buried.
-
- The Washington Post put the story on page A12 as, Forgotten
Briefings of August 2001. [Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12951-2004Apr14.html]
-
- AP reported it as a two-inch story, Tenet Misspoke About
Not Meeting Bush. [Available at: http://www.khou.com/sharedcontent/nationworld/
washingtonprint/041404cckttwwashTenet911.1265794e4.html]
-
- The New York Times did a somewhat better job, squeezing
it into the middle of front-page story. [April 15, 2004, Philip Shenon
and Eric Lichblau, THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE OVERVIEW; Sept. 11 Panel
Cites C.I.A. For Failures in Terror Case] NYT columnist Maureen Dowd is
the only major journalist to have followed up with a comment. In her column
on the op-ed page the next day, "Head Spook Sputters", Dowd wrote:
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- " I'm not sure whether Mr. Tenet - a mystifyingly
beloved figure even though he was in charge during the two biggest intelligence
failures since Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs - has a faulty memory,
which is scary. Or if he's fuzzing things up because he told the president
more specifics than he wants to admit. But in a town where careers are
made on face time with the president, it's fishy that the head spook can't
remember a six- hour trip to Crawford ... " [Available at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0717FA3F5F0C768DDDAD0894DC404482
]
-
- * The story doesn't end there. It turns out that the
CIA compounded Tenet's lie with a misrepresentation of its own, and everybody
who is anybody in the national media missed that fact. Later in the afternoon
of April 14th, Agency spokespersons, Bill Harlow and Anya Guilsher, gave
information to reporters that omitted a key Tenet-Bush meeting held on
August 24, 2001. They told the media that Agency records showed Tenet met
Bush only on August 17 and 31, and then on at least six occasions in September
prior to Tuesday, the 11th. [AP report reproduced below, available at:
http://www.khou.com/sharedcontent/nationworld/
washingtonprint/041404cckttwwashTenet911.1265794e4.html]
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- Nonetheless, no one in the major media, except Ms. Dowd,
even tried to connect the dots. As Dowd points out, the FBI arrested the
so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui on August 17, the first of
the dates Tenet "forgot". But, even that isn't the whole truth.
-
- In a previously overlooked August 25 White House transcript,
the President referenced meeting with Tenet "yesterday" to discuss
"a very important subject" at Bush's Crawford, TX ranch. [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010825-2.html]
The fact is, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Rice, and and the newly appointed Chair of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Myers were all present with the President
on August 24. [Also, see, White House press posting for August 24: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010824.html
]
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- Here's the kicker: the Flt. 77 hijackers had been watchlisted
on 8/23, the day before Bush had the previously undisclosed 6-hour roundtable
with his national security team in Crawford. In a verbatim transcript,
the President is quoted during an impromptu walking tour of Bush's Crawford,
TX ranch that he had met the day before with CIA Director and newly appointed
members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and National
Security Advisor Rice were also present at a Presidential press conference
in Crawford on the 24th, according to the White House press notice issued
that day.
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- In the August 25 transcript, the President Bush states
to reporters and visitors:
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- THE PRESIDENT: " ... Yesterday, we spent -- well,
they arrived at 10:00 a.m. It took a while to get the press conference.
We got back here at about 11:30 a.m. and met until 5:15 p.m. I think they
left. That's the longest meeting I've had in a long time, on a very important
subject ...
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- Q When you have those business meetings, like the Joint
Chiefs briefing, do you like to keep it separate from the living quarters
on the ranch?
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- THE PRESIDENT: Actually, you know, what we call the governor's
house, the place where you all came out during the -- that's where we went.
Condi and Karen Hughes stayed there. And right across the street from that
is a -- it's a nice looking government doublewide. (Laughter.) And that's
where the mil aide, the nurse, the WHCA head, the doc, they stay.
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- The CIA briefings, I have on our porch, the end of our
porch looking out over the lake. When Tenet came up, that's where we visited,
out there.
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- You know, everybody wants to see the ranch, which I'm
proud to show it off. So George Tenet and I -- yesterday, we piled in the
new nominees for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice Chairman and
their wives and went right up the canyon. [emphases added]"
-
- * The "very important subject" discussed for
almost six hours by Bush with his core national security team would likely
have been the CIA's action the day before placing four wanted Al-Qaeda
terrorists on the "watchlist" of persons to be detained if located
in the US. On August 23 the Agency sent "cables to the State Department,
the FBI, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, requesting that
'four bin Laden related individuals' including Almidhar and Alhazmi, be
placed on the watchlist." (Washington Post, A8, September 21, 2002)
Two of those - Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi - subsequently led the
hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 that slammed into the Pentagon.
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- The pair had been the subject of CIA-directed surveillance
since at least late 1999, when they were followed by the CIA to an Al-Qaeda
planning session in Kuala Lumpur, at which they were observed meeting with
a ranking terrorist operations director and Mohamed Atta's roommate, Ramzi
Binalshibh, who subsequently wired money to them from Germany. Binalshibh
also sent funds to Zacarias Moussaoui, who in August 2000 stayed at the
same Al-Qaeda safehouse in Malaysia while on his way to the United States.
On August 17, 2001 Moussaoui was arrested by the FBI at a Minnesota flight
school.
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- If Tenet did not take the opportunity of his meetings
to discuss Al-Qaeda with the President, he committed one of the worst acts
of derelection of duty in CIA history. Former DCI George Tenet is generally
held to be a thorough and responsible intelligence executive. It is simply
implausible that Tenet and Bush did not discuss the 9/11 hijackers when
they met in Crawford on August 17 and then, again, on August 24, both dates
coinciding with important developments in the Al-Qaeda operation.
-
- A special prosecutor needs to be appointed to investigate
CIA Director Tenet's apparent perjury on April 14 and the Agency's material
misrepresentation of fact in its statement the next day. The former CIA
Director and the President need to reveal publicly, and under oath, what
was discussed at their numerous meetings in the weeks before 9/11, and
why there has been an effort to conceal this.
-
- Ironically, when Tenet misspoke, he opened the door to
answering the question: "What did George W. Bush know, and when did
he know it?"
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- COPYRIGHT 2004, MARK G. LEVEY http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=21917
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