|
Where’s the Outrage?
Spring 2006*
With my new radio show, I have not had the time to write my newsletter. A monthly newsletter is more than I can tackle at this time. Quarterly, may be more realistic.
Do you remember that TV clip in faded color with Vince Lombardi, the famous Hall of Fame coach of the Green Bay Packers, furiously pacing up and down the sideline exclaiming, “What the h%## is going on out there?” When I look at the political scene, I feel like Coach Vince.
This week we learned that our President may have authorized the leak of CIA agent’s Valerie Plame’s name to the press. This is the same President who has railed against White House leaks and promised that no lawbreakers will remain on his staff.
# # # # #
Tom DeLay has announced that he will not seek re-election. DeLay blames “liberal democrats” for his downfall. Let’s see…. DeLay’s very close friend Jack Abramoff has been found guilty of illegal lobbying practices. Two of the congressman’s former aides have been indicted and are cooperating with prosecutors. A third DeLay aide has plead guilty and it looks like Congressman Bill Ney (R-Oh) is the next target of the investigation. Of course, none of these events could have caused DeLay to step down. It was the liberal democrats.
# # # # #
The President has told us, in a press conference several weeks ago, that it is tough in Iraq, but he is confident of victory. The press, he tells us, is just reporting the bad news and none of the good. Well, we know that thousands of airplanes land at hundreds of airports across the US every day. This is not news. The plane that has a near miss or crashes makes the news. We all know this. The fact that our soldiers have erected a new school in Iraq is nice; but the ceiling fans in that school were originally supposed to be a nice air conditioning unit. Government contractors took so much money out of the project that the school only gets a cheap fan… now, that’s news. Other news in Iraq has not been good. Five months after their historic general election, the Iraqis have finally formed a new government but have yet to pass a single law or done anything to prove that they can govern.
All of this political gridlock is playing out against the background of ongoing violence in Iraq. Another bomb was exploded, destroying a mosque, killing seventy and injuring hundreds. Every week there is a new atrocity. Suicide bombers. Roadside explosives. The UN embassy is attacked. A busload of children is blown up. All the while Donald Rumsfeld is telling us that Iraq is not undergoing a civil war. And all the while the casualty list of American soldiers in Iraq gets longer. Are the American people becoming numb to the violence? Perhaps they should visit websites such as www.newslink.com/uscasualties.htm, where they can find the names of those who have died “in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom,” or www.thefinalrollcall.us/, where they can see the faces of the fallen. Are we becoming accustomed to the insanity of this debacle? How many Americans know that Russia was giving Saddam intelligence information--troop movements and other satellite information--during the initial phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom? I thought Putin was someone our President could “do business with.”
# # # # #
The immigration debate is less a debate than it is a World Wrestling Federation exhibition. The House passed a measure back in December that is really nothing more than building a 700-mile wall along the Mexican border. The House seems to be posturing very much like WWF performers do prior to matches, daring the Senate to pass anything other than an enforcement bill. The Senate bill sponsored by majority leader Bill Frist, was an enforcement bill much like the House bill—look what happened to that. McCain-Kennedy proposed a compromise bill which was more comprehensive. There appeared to be a deal in the making. Then the American people got body-slammed. Republicans came out pointing fingers at the Democrats. The Democrats called foul and accused the Republicans of killing the deal. The bottom-line is that there is no referee for this free-for-all, except us, the citizens. Thankfully, the least likely among us have stood up. More rallies with tens of thousands in the streets of Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago and many other cities across our county. Non-violent marches. We have told our Senators to deal and to do so now. Our President has gotten behind the bandwagon so that he could lead us. His primetime speech was a jewel of tepidness. It was meant to please the right, the left and the middle. As far as I can tell it pleased nobody. The real fight is going to happen behind closed doors where no snooping reporters or angry protesters can influence the outcome. The compromise between the House and Senate versions of this immigration bill will truly be where the rubber meets the road.
“What the h$#* is going on out there [in Washington]?”
- The budget deficit continues to climb in spite of promises of fiscal restraint. Congress recessed without passing any portion of the budget (if the budget is not passed, more than likely Congress will spend more and not less money). The House did pass a measure to raise the debt ceiling...again.
- Iran and Washington are staring each other down waiting for the other to blink first.
- Condolezza Rice echoing her Iraq rhetoric, “Iran is currently the greatest threat to the US.”
- The Iranian Ambassador to the US gloats, “We can cause the US pain!”
I just have one question, “Where are the adults?”
* with writing assistance from Catherine Ross, PhD.
# # # # #
In the past few weeks Americans have been debating one of the latest weapons the Bush administration is launching against terrorism: “warrant-less surveillance.” Besides the fact that this activity seems peculiar—if not illegal—in a free country with a Bill of Rights, I have a couple of simple questions to ask. Why this tactic? Aren’t the terrorists smart enough not to use open phone lines? Would this kind of intelligence gathering prior to September 11, 2001, have helped to prevent that tragedy?
Consider how the CIA and other government agencies charged with national security handled surveillance of just two of the 9/11 terrorists, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who died on Flight 77, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11 th. The reason the handling of their cases is particularly interesting is that, compared to the other hijackers, these two men spent more time in the United States than any of the other terrorists--close to twenty months before September 11 th .
None of the information you are about to read is classified. It has all been published in a number of venues, including magazines, books, government web sites, and newspapers such as The San Diego Union-Tribute, a paper that has been especially aggressive about bringing information about the 9/11 attack to light.
Early in January 2000, an Al Qaeda summit took place at the weekend house of Yazid Sufaat, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sufaat is a successful Malaysian businessman, who sympathizes with various terrorist causes. Many of the suspected or proven terrorists the CIA had been following at that time showed up at the retreat. Among them were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were well known to the CIA. The agency knew that they fought the Serbs in the Bosnian war and had also fought in Chechnya. It knew these men had both traveled to Afghanistan several times and trained with bin Laden. The CIA was also aware that these two men took the bayat--the formal act of swearing loyalty to bin Laden and his jihad. So, you would think that the CIA would be keeping an eye on them, especially when they turned up at a terrorist summit half way around the world in Malaysia.
The CIA did take pictures of the meeting at Sufaat’s house; and they allowed the Malaysian secret service to place listening devices in the residence. But somehow, the most powerful spy network in the western world was not able to discern exactly what was discussed at this meeting or why al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were there. It is speculated that the bombing of the USS Cole, which took place later that year, on October 12, 2000, was discussed. It is conceivable that plans for September 11 th were discussed at this meeting as well. We just don’t know.
After the meeting in Malaysia, the CIA lost track of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. The two men turned up in Los Angeles later in January 2000 without the FBI being notified and without the CIA following them.
Omar al-Bayoumi is one of the more intriguing characters in the 9-11 story. He is a Saudi national (entered the US on a student visa as an Egyptian resident) who was probably a spy for the Saudi government, charged with keeping an eye on Saudi university students in the U.S. He was also a conduit in which money flowed from Saudi Arabia to local mosques and Saudi citizens in the San Diego area. It was al-Bayoumi who brought the two terrorists to San Diego, where he lived in a large Muslim community. By February of 2000 al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were living in San Diego, endeavoring to blend into that multicultural city.
While in San Diego al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi took flying lessons. The flight instructor reported that the two young men failed miserably in their attempts to learn to fly. He nick-named them, “dumb and dumber.” Incredibly, while the CIA was not paying attention to or sharing information about these men, the FBI had an informant in the San Diego community. This was Abdussattar Shaikh, a professor at San Diego State University who rented out rooms in his house to make extra money. Two of his boarders were al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi. The professor was a devout Muslim and a leader in the Muslim community. Might he have had a private conversation with the young men? Is it possible the hijackers told Professor Shaikh of their plans? Did Shaikh tell the FBI anything about these two men? We do not know. Professor Shaikh is now in the FBI witness protection program and has been relocated. Neither the 9-11 Commission nor the House and Senate Joint Inquiry into the Intelligence failures of 9-11 have been given access to the professor by the Bush Administration.
It is hard to understand why the CIA paid so little attention to these two well known terrorists. Or why the CIA did not call their presence to the FBI’s attention. It is even harder to understand why the agency did not place al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi on the State Department’s terrorist watch list, especially after Al-Hazmi left the U.S. in June of 2000, and traveled to various sites in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, where, we now believe, he was recruiting muscle for the 9/11 hijacking. Al-Hazmi returned to the United States, and easily entered the country via New York City, undetected. Why? Because the CIA had not given his name and picture to the State Department, which would have surely detained, questioned, and perhaps deported or arrested him on the spot.
The failure to keep these two men under surveillance and to notify the State Department of their existence and suspicious activities are two more examples breakdowns in our intelligence system, breakdowns that might have alerted us to the plans for 9/11.
So, back to the original question, when there are so many other opportunities to keep track of terrorists that our CIA and FBI have not utilized, why does the president need to eavesdrop on American citizens in order to protect us?
Why not stick to the recommendations from the 9-11 Commission and the House and Senate Joint Intelligence Inquiry such as:
- Unifying the intelligence community under a new National Intelligence Director
- Developing a comprehensive strategy for dealing with Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda.
- Improving the organization of the intelligence community, especially those branches that are charged with combating global terrorists with targets inside the United States
- Developing a mechanism to share information between all the participants in counterterrorism
- Equipping the intelligence agencies with computers and software in order to integrate investigations in different cities
- Increasing the size of the agencies so they can more efficiently and effectively handle the large volume of foreign-language data that has become a major part of the war on terrorism
- unifying strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamist terrorists across the foreign-domestic divide with a National Counterterrorism Center
# # # # #
Recent News:
- The death of Coretta Scott King should cause thoughtful Americans to think back at how far we have come. It should also remind all of us of how far we have to go.
- The President’s annual State of the Union address seemed to please no one. Republicans did not get anything that they could rally behind. Democrats really did not get anything that they could rally against. The president’s most memorable line from the speech may be “America is addicted to oil.” (The line is just too easy for me to comment on therefore I’m just going to leave it.)
- New Orleans continues to languish in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. In spite of promises of a complete cleanup and restoration, the government appears to be mired in stagnation. Unless you live in the devastated area, it just does not seem that lawmakers on Capitol Hill really care about the Gulf Coast.
* with writing and editing assistance by Catherine Ross, PhD.
|
