Why has Bush and the White House consistently denied receiving intelligence reports warning of Al Qaeda operating in the U.S. AND of its increased activities betraying the growing threat of attacks?
WHY?
Because they are trying to use their post attack warfare as cover to appear strong and mask their dismal failure to protect America while rushing to serve their corporate backers post the election. When Bush dumped the Hart - Rudman Commission on National Security (a three year bipartisan effort to prepare for such as the 9/11 terrorist attack) prior to the attacks he claimed Cheney was reviewing the military and national security in general. He was doing no such thing. He was engaged in secret meetings with the energy industry's top corporate owners and lobbyists to rewrite the nation's energy policies to serve them. This failure of Bush as a leader is unforgivable. His lack of intellectual acumen along with his lack of foreign, domestic and military prowess leaves the American public with only one choice come this November. Vote Bush out and put John Kerry into the White House to begin the long work of repairing the great damage wrought by this right wing extremist administration.
April 11, 2004 NY TIMES
Pre-9/11 Secret Briefing Said That Qaeda Was Active in U.S.
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, April 10 — The classified briefing that President Bush received 36 days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks reported that the Al Qaeda terrorist network had maintained an active presence in the United States for years, was suspected of recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York and could be preparing for domestic hijackings.
But the briefing did not point to any specific time or place of attack and did not warn that planes could be used as missiles.
After releasing the "President's Daily Brief" on Saturday evening, White House officials said that none of the information given to the president at his ranch in Texas on Aug. 6, 2001, was later found to be related to the attacks. But the page-and-a-quarter-long document showed that Mr. Bush was given more specific and contemporary information about terrorist threats than the White House had previously acknowledged. [Text, Page 17.]
As recently as Thursday, the White House described the brief only as a "historical" account of Al Qaeda activity.
The declassification of the document, which was released under pressure from the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, is likely to fan the already fierce debate about whether Mr. Bush and his team acted aggressively enough to confront the threat posed by Al Qaeda in the weeks and months before the Sept. 11 attacks. [News analysis, Page 17.]
The president's critics are likely to embrace the specific and unresolved nature of some of the warnings — particularly a reference to "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks" — as a further indication that Mr. Bush had ample information about a domestic threat, and should have pressed for further action after the briefing. But the White House and its allies were already asserting late Saturday that the document described a threat that had existed for at least three years, that alerts had already been sent out by the Federal Aviation Administration, and that the F.B.I. and C.I.A. were already pursuing any credible leads.
"Since there was no threat reporting, no new action was required," said Sean McCormack, the spokesman for the National Security Council.
The White House also summarized its argument on Saturday in a "fact sheet" — twice as long as the intelligence document itself — to advance its interpretation of the document's meaning.
The release on Saturday marked the first time a President's Daily Brief has been made public while the president who received it was still in office. White House officials, speaking not for attribution, insisted its contents were "underwhelming" given all the speculation and conspiracy theories that have swirled around it. But the document itself is striking for both the familiarity of some of the information and its specificity in warning Mr. Bush that he faced a potent threat within United States borders.
For example, it warned that a foreign intelligence service — its name is blacked out — determined that Mr. bin Laden told followers "he wanted to retaliate in Washington." It warned that "Al Qaeda members — including some who are U.S. citizens — have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks."
White House officials said they were not authorized to say what Mr. Bush said in response to that part of the briefing, or the rest of its contents. Some commission members have openly questioned why there was no apparent follow-up by the president or his staff about how well those members were being identified and tracked, or whether they were on watch lists, particularly as they came and left the country. According to accounts provided by White House officials, no precautions beyond a general F.A.A. alert were taken to deter hijacking.
The reference to "patterns of suspicious activity" is particularly notable, because it is tied directly to an F.B.I. investigation of "recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." A portion of that sentence was revealed during testimony Thursday by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, before the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ms. Rice argued that most of the material in the report was old. For example, a report included the assertion from a clandestine source, dating to 1998, that a bin Laden cell in New York "was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks."
The document also said that the C.I.A. had "not been able to corroborate" reporting from 1998 that Mr. Bin Laden wanted to hijack an American airliner to gain the release of Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
At the hearing of the Sept. 11 commission, Ms. Rice, one of the closest aides to Mr. Bush, said the information in the briefing had been requested by the president after several months of intelligence reports warning of a possible attack, most likely abroad.
The briefing also referred to a telephone warning in May 2001 to the American Embassy in the United Arab Emirates, in which a caller reported that supporters of Mr. bin Laden were "in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives." A senior official said Saturday evening that embassies received many such calls, and that the investigation into this one was inconclusive.
At the time that Mr. Bush was briefed, while on vacation at his home in Crawford, Tex., the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were actively pursuing leads on the surveillance of Federal Plaza in New York as well as the call to the embassy in the United Arab Emirates, the officials said. At some point after the briefing, two Yemeni nationals involved in apparent surveillance of Federal Plaza were interviewed by the F.B.I., which determined that the incident was "tourism related," the White House official said.
Nonetheless, neither of those investigations were complete at the time Mr. Bush received the briefing from a C.I.A. official in the living room of his ranch. Senior administration officials said Saturday night that even if those investigations had been completed faster, there was nothing revealed in them that would have deterred the Sept. 11 hijackings. Moreover, they noted, by the time Mr. Bush received the briefing, the spike of terror warnings had declined, and there had been no attack where it had been most feared: at a meeting of Western leaders in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001.
"No one was standing down," one senior official said. "But by the time the president hears this, a lot has already happened."
For nearly two years, ever since the White House first acknowledged the existence of the classified briefing item, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," the White House had sought to shut the door on its disclosure. The President's Daily Brief, prepared six days a week by the C.I.A., is one of the government's most highly classified documents.
Until late last year, the White House had insisted that not even members of the independent commission could see the documents, and relented only under an agreement in which most commissioners saw only portions of them.
Repeatedly, top White House officials, while refusing until Saturday to release the Aug. 6, 2001, document to the public, have insisted that although it might have addressed Mr. bin Laden's determination to strike inside the United States, it contained nothing substantially new. In her testimony before the commission, Ms. Rice described the document as reporting primarily "historical information based on old reporting."
On Saturday night, White House officials sought to reinforce that message, but acknowledged that in the 17-sentence document, the two sentences referring to the surveillance of the federal buildings in New York and the call to the embassy in the United Arab Emirates could be considered "closer to the present time." One official called it "recent."
In a background briefing for reporters and the accompanying fact sheet, White House officials said that none of the information relating to the "patterns of suspicious activity" cited by the C.I.A. had later been determined to be deemed related to the Sept. 11 attacks. It is only in retrospect, they argued, that the disparate pieces of evidence in the report seem to point toward what happened five weeks later. "Remember, this is just one report in a stream of reports — and the others pointed overseas," one official said.
The officials said that it remained unclear, however, whether the May 15 call to the embassy in the United Arab Emirates, which had not previously been disclosed, might have been a credible warning. They said the caller did not say where or when the attacks might occur, but that the call nevertheless prompted a May 17 meeting by the Counterterrorism Strategy Group, run at the time by Richard A. Clarke, to review the information.
Still, the White House fact sheet said, "We had no information, either before or after 9/11, that connects the caller's information with the 9/11 attacks."
The White House said that the surveillance of Federal Plaza in May 2001, which has previously been publicized, was of concern as late as August 2001 because the site was home to the courthouse where Mr. Rahman had been convicted.
The release of the document was itself historic; the few that have been released came only years after the president who received them left office. It has been produced by the C.I.A. for presidents since the 1960's.
The only items deleted from the version of the document that was made public were the names of foreign intelligence services that had provided information used in the report, White House officials said.
Ms. Rice and other White House officials have said that the Aug 6. assessment of the threat Mr. Bin Laden posed inside the United States was prepared in response to questions Mr. Bush had raised at previous briefings. In her testimony on Thursday, Dr. Rice told the commission, "I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States," referring to the possibility of domestic strikes by Al Qaeda.
Still, she added, "I don't remember the Al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about."
Asked directly if she had ever informed the president of intelligence suggesting that Qaeda terrorists were already in the United States and planning for attack, Ms. Rice said in her testimony that she could not remember.
In a background briefing for reporters and its fact sheet, the White House sought to minimize the significance of the document.
"The P.D.B. article did not warn of the 9/11 attacks," the White House said in the fact sheet. "The article advised the president of what was publicly well-known: that bin Laden had a desire to attack inside the United States."
While the White House would not describe what, if anything, Mr. Bush did with the information in the briefing, senior officials said their reading of it was that nothing beyond the efforts already under way appeared to be justified at the time.
Among other information presented in the Aug. 6 briefing, Mr. Bush was told that the F.B.I. was "conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related," according to the document. Ms. Rice disclosed that information in her testimony last week, as evidence that the government was on guard against the possibility of terrorist attacks. It is not clear how the F.B.I. came to that number, and some officials have said in recent days that it may have overstated their activity.
________________________________________________________________________
Saturday, April 10, 2004
April, 2004 issue of the American Prospect
W.'s Second Term: If you Think the First is Bad...
by Robert B. Reich
Musings about a second Bush term typically assume another four years of the same right-wing policies we've had to date. But it'd likely be far worse. So far, the Bush administration has had to govern with the expectation of facing American voters again in 2004. But suppose George W. Bush wins a second term. The constraint of a re-election contest will be gone. Knowing that voters can no longer turn them out, and that this will be their last shot at remaking America, the radical conservatives will be unleashed.
A friend who specializes in foreign policy and hobnobs with subcabinet officials in the Defense and State departments told me that the only thing that's stopped the Bushies from storming into Iran and North Korea is the upcoming election. If Bush is re-elected, "[Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld are out of the box," he said. "They'll take Bush's re-election as a mandate to wage the 'war on terror' everywhere and anywhere."
The second term's defense team will be even harder line than the current one. Colin Powell will go. Condoleezza Rice will take over at the State Department. Rumsfeld will consolidate power as the president's national-security adviser. Paul Wolfowitz will run the Defense Department.
Domestic policy will swing further right. A re-election would strengthen the White House's hand on issues that even many congressional Republicans have a hard time accepting, such as the assault on civil liberties. Bush will seek to push "Patriot II" through Congress, giving the Justice Department and the FBI powers to inspect mail, eavesdrop on phone conversations and e-mail, and examine personal medical records, insurance claims, and bank accounts.
Right-wing evangelicals will solidify their control over the departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services -- curtailing abortions, putting federal funds into the hands of private religious groups, pushing prayer in the public schools, and promoting creationism.
Economic policy, meanwhile, will be tilted even more brazenly toward the rich. Republican strategist Grover Norquist smugly predicts larger tax benefits for high earners in a second Bush administration. The goal will be to eliminate all taxes on capital gains, dividends, and other forms of unearned income and move toward a "flat tax." The plan will be for deficits to continue to balloon until Wall Street demands large spending cuts as a condition for holding down long-term interest rates. Homeowners, facing potential losses on their major nest eggs as mortgage rates move upward, might be persuaded to join the chorus.
In consequence, Bush will slash all domestic spending outside of defense. He will also argue that Social Security cannot be maintained in its present form, and will push for legislation to transform it into private accounts. Meanwhile, the few shards of regulation still protecting the environment and the safety of American workers will be eliminated.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will surely step down from the Supreme Court, possibly joined by at least one other jurist, opening the way for the White House to nominate a series of right-wing justices, a list that could easily include Charles Pickering Sr. and William Pryor Jr. After Chief Justice William Rehnquist resigns, Bush may well nominate Antonin Scalia for the top slot -- opening the way for Scalia and Clarence Thomas to dominate the Court. Such a court will curtail abortion rights, whittle down the Fourth and Fifth amendments, end all affirmative action, and eliminate much of what's left of the barrier between church and state.
Karl Rove and Tom DeLay, meanwhile, will have four more years to fulfill their goal of transforming American democracy into a one-party state. Congressional redistricting across the nation will make Texas' recent antics seem a model of democratic deliberation. Automated voting machines will be easily rigged, with no paper trails to document abuses. Changes in campaign-finance laws will permit larger "hard money" donations by corporate executives and federal contractors who have benefited by Republican policies.
Finally, the Federal Communications Commission will allow three or four giant media empires -- all tightly connected to the Republican Party -- to consolidate their ownership over all television and radio broadcasting.
Nothing is more dangerous to a republic than fanatics unconstrained by democratic politics. Yet in a second term of this administration, that's exactly what we'll have.
______________________________________________________________
W.'s Second Term: If you Think the First is Bad...
by Robert B. Reich
Musings about a second Bush term typically assume another four years of the same right-wing policies we've had to date. But it'd likely be far worse. So far, the Bush administration has had to govern with the expectation of facing American voters again in 2004. But suppose George W. Bush wins a second term. The constraint of a re-election contest will be gone. Knowing that voters can no longer turn them out, and that this will be their last shot at remaking America, the radical conservatives will be unleashed.
A friend who specializes in foreign policy and hobnobs with subcabinet officials in the Defense and State departments told me that the only thing that's stopped the Bushies from storming into Iran and North Korea is the upcoming election. If Bush is re-elected, "[Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld are out of the box," he said. "They'll take Bush's re-election as a mandate to wage the 'war on terror' everywhere and anywhere."
The second term's defense team will be even harder line than the current one. Colin Powell will go. Condoleezza Rice will take over at the State Department. Rumsfeld will consolidate power as the president's national-security adviser. Paul Wolfowitz will run the Defense Department.
Domestic policy will swing further right. A re-election would strengthen the White House's hand on issues that even many congressional Republicans have a hard time accepting, such as the assault on civil liberties. Bush will seek to push "Patriot II" through Congress, giving the Justice Department and the FBI powers to inspect mail, eavesdrop on phone conversations and e-mail, and examine personal medical records, insurance claims, and bank accounts.
Right-wing evangelicals will solidify their control over the departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services -- curtailing abortions, putting federal funds into the hands of private religious groups, pushing prayer in the public schools, and promoting creationism.
Economic policy, meanwhile, will be tilted even more brazenly toward the rich. Republican strategist Grover Norquist smugly predicts larger tax benefits for high earners in a second Bush administration. The goal will be to eliminate all taxes on capital gains, dividends, and other forms of unearned income and move toward a "flat tax." The plan will be for deficits to continue to balloon until Wall Street demands large spending cuts as a condition for holding down long-term interest rates. Homeowners, facing potential losses on their major nest eggs as mortgage rates move upward, might be persuaded to join the chorus.
In consequence, Bush will slash all domestic spending outside of defense. He will also argue that Social Security cannot be maintained in its present form, and will push for legislation to transform it into private accounts. Meanwhile, the few shards of regulation still protecting the environment and the safety of American workers will be eliminated.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will surely step down from the Supreme Court, possibly joined by at least one other jurist, opening the way for the White House to nominate a series of right-wing justices, a list that could easily include Charles Pickering Sr. and William Pryor Jr. After Chief Justice William Rehnquist resigns, Bush may well nominate Antonin Scalia for the top slot -- opening the way for Scalia and Clarence Thomas to dominate the Court. Such a court will curtail abortion rights, whittle down the Fourth and Fifth amendments, end all affirmative action, and eliminate much of what's left of the barrier between church and state.
Karl Rove and Tom DeLay, meanwhile, will have four more years to fulfill their goal of transforming American democracy into a one-party state. Congressional redistricting across the nation will make Texas' recent antics seem a model of democratic deliberation. Automated voting machines will be easily rigged, with no paper trails to document abuses. Changes in campaign-finance laws will permit larger "hard money" donations by corporate executives and federal contractors who have benefited by Republican policies.
Finally, the Federal Communications Commission will allow three or four giant media empires -- all tightly connected to the Republican Party -- to consolidate their ownership over all television and radio broadcasting.
Nothing is more dangerous to a republic than fanatics unconstrained by democratic politics. Yet in a second term of this administration, that's exactly what we'll have.
______________________________________________________________
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Claim vs. Fact: Condoleezza Rice's Opening Statement
April 8, 2004
CLAIM: "We decided immediately to continue pursuing the Clinton Administration's covert action authorities and other efforts to fight the network."
FACT: Newsweek reported that "In the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called 'Catcher's Mitt' to monitor al-Qaida suspects in the United States." Additionally, AP reported "though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months," thus terminating the reconnaissance missions started during the Clinton Administration. [Sources: Newsweek, 3/21/04; AP, 6/25/03]
CLAIM: "The strategy set as its goal the elimination of the al-Qaida network. It ordered the leadership of relevant U.S. departments and agencies to make the elimination of al-Qaida a high priority and to use all aspects of our national power -- intelligence, financial, diplomatic, and military -- to meet this goal."
FACT: 9/11 Comissioner Jamie Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]
CLAIM: "We bolstered the Treasury Department's activities to track and seize terrorist assets."
FACT: The new Bush Treasury Department "disapproved of the Clinton Administration's approach to money laundering issues, which had been an important part of the drive to cut off the money flow to bin Laden." Specifically, the Bush Administration opposed Clinton Administration-backed efforts by the G-7 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that targeted countries with "loose banking regulations" being abused by terrorist financiers. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration provided "no funding for the new National Terrorist Asset Tracking Center." [Source: "The Age of Sacred Terror," 2003]
CLAIM: "We moved quickly to arm Predator unmanned surveillance vehicles for action against al-Qaida."
FACT: According to AP, "the military successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001" but the White House "failed to resolve a debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate the armed Predators" and the armed Predator never got off the ground before 9/11. [Source: AP, 6/25/03]
CLAIM: "We increased funding for counterterrorism activities across several agencies."
FACT: Upon taking office, the 2002 Bush budget proposed to slash more than half a billion dollars out of funding for counterterrorism at the Justice Department. In preparing the 2003 budget, the New York Times reported that the Bush White House "did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators" and "proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants." Newsweek noted the Administration "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism." [Sources: 2001 vs. 2002 Budget Analysis; NY Times, 2/28/02; Newsweek, 5/27/02]
CLAIM: "While we were developing this new strategy to deal with al-Qaida, we also made decisions on a number of specific anti-al-Qaida initiatives that had been proposed by Dick Clarke."
FACT: Rice's statement finally confirms what she previously – and inaccurately – denied. She falsely claimed on 3/22/04 that "No al-Qaida plan was turned over to the new administration." [Washington Post, 3/22/04]
CLAIM: "When threat reporting increased during the Spring and Summer of 2001, we moved the U.S. Government at all levels to a high state of alert and activity."
FACT: Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush Administration "did not give terrorism top billing in their strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI." Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001, said during the summer, terrorism had moved "farther to the back burner" and recounted how the Bush Administration's top two Pentagon appointees, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, "shut down" a plan to weaken the Taliban. Similarly, Gen. Don Kerrick, who served in the Bush White House, sent a memo to the new Administration saying "We are going to be struck again" by al Qaeda, but he never heard back. He said terrorism was not "above the waterline. They were gambling nothing would happen." [Sources: Washington Post, 3/22/04; LA Times, 3/30/04]
CLAIM: "The threat reporting that we received in the Spring and Summer of 2001 was not specific as to...manner of attack."
FACT: ABC News reported, Bush Administration "officials acknowledged that U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes." Dateline NBC reported that on August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." Rice herself actually admitted this herself, saying the Aug. 6 briefing the President received said "terrorists might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft." [Sources: ABC News, 5/16/02; NBC, 9/10/02]
____________________________________________________________________________
April 8, 2004
CLAIM: "We decided immediately to continue pursuing the Clinton Administration's covert action authorities and other efforts to fight the network."
FACT: Newsweek reported that "In the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called 'Catcher's Mitt' to monitor al-Qaida suspects in the United States." Additionally, AP reported "though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months," thus terminating the reconnaissance missions started during the Clinton Administration. [Sources: Newsweek, 3/21/04; AP, 6/25/03]
CLAIM: "The strategy set as its goal the elimination of the al-Qaida network. It ordered the leadership of relevant U.S. departments and agencies to make the elimination of al-Qaida a high priority and to use all aspects of our national power -- intelligence, financial, diplomatic, and military -- to meet this goal."
FACT: 9/11 Comissioner Jamie Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]
CLAIM: "We bolstered the Treasury Department's activities to track and seize terrorist assets."
FACT: The new Bush Treasury Department "disapproved of the Clinton Administration's approach to money laundering issues, which had been an important part of the drive to cut off the money flow to bin Laden." Specifically, the Bush Administration opposed Clinton Administration-backed efforts by the G-7 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that targeted countries with "loose banking regulations" being abused by terrorist financiers. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration provided "no funding for the new National Terrorist Asset Tracking Center." [Source: "The Age of Sacred Terror," 2003]
CLAIM: "We moved quickly to arm Predator unmanned surveillance vehicles for action against al-Qaida."
FACT: According to AP, "the military successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001" but the White House "failed to resolve a debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate the armed Predators" and the armed Predator never got off the ground before 9/11. [Source: AP, 6/25/03]
CLAIM: "We increased funding for counterterrorism activities across several agencies."
FACT: Upon taking office, the 2002 Bush budget proposed to slash more than half a billion dollars out of funding for counterterrorism at the Justice Department. In preparing the 2003 budget, the New York Times reported that the Bush White House "did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators" and "proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants." Newsweek noted the Administration "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism." [Sources: 2001 vs. 2002 Budget Analysis; NY Times, 2/28/02; Newsweek, 5/27/02]
CLAIM: "While we were developing this new strategy to deal with al-Qaida, we also made decisions on a number of specific anti-al-Qaida initiatives that had been proposed by Dick Clarke."
FACT: Rice's statement finally confirms what she previously – and inaccurately – denied. She falsely claimed on 3/22/04 that "No al-Qaida plan was turned over to the new administration." [Washington Post, 3/22/04]
CLAIM: "When threat reporting increased during the Spring and Summer of 2001, we moved the U.S. Government at all levels to a high state of alert and activity."
FACT: Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush Administration "did not give terrorism top billing in their strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI." Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001, said during the summer, terrorism had moved "farther to the back burner" and recounted how the Bush Administration's top two Pentagon appointees, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, "shut down" a plan to weaken the Taliban. Similarly, Gen. Don Kerrick, who served in the Bush White House, sent a memo to the new Administration saying "We are going to be struck again" by al Qaeda, but he never heard back. He said terrorism was not "above the waterline. They were gambling nothing would happen." [Sources: Washington Post, 3/22/04; LA Times, 3/30/04]
CLAIM: "The threat reporting that we received in the Spring and Summer of 2001 was not specific as to...manner of attack."
FACT: ABC News reported, Bush Administration "officials acknowledged that U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes." Dateline NBC reported that on August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." Rice herself actually admitted this herself, saying the Aug. 6 briefing the President received said "terrorists might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft." [Sources: ABC News, 5/16/02; NBC, 9/10/02]
____________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
U.S. Terrorism Policy Spawns Steady Staff Exodus
By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism.
Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1/2 years since the attacks.
Some also left because they felt President Bush had sidelined his counterterrorism experts and paid almost exclusive heed to the vice president, the defense secretary and other Cabinet members in planning the "war on terror," former counterterrorism officials said.
"I'm kind of hoping for regime change," one official who quit told Reuters.
The administration's handling of the battle against terrorism is a key issue for the presidency, and could be key to Bush's re-election effort.
Similar charges were made by Bush's former counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who told the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the administration ignored the al Qaeda threat beforehand and was fixated on Iraq afterward. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice ( news -web sites ) testifies before the 9/11 panel on Thursday.
"Iraq has been a distraction from the whole counterterrorism effort," said the former official, adding the policy had frustrated many in the White House anti-terrorism office, about two-thirds of whom have left and been replaced since Sept. 11.
The administration vehemently denies the accusations, and says it is making strong progress in the global war on terror.
HIGH TURNOVER
Roger Cressey, who served under Clarke in the White House counterterrorism office, said: "Dick accurately reflects the frustration of many in the counterterrorism community in getting the new administration to take the al Qaeda issue seriously."
Cressey left the office in November 2001, when he became chief of staff of the White House's cybersecurity office until September 2002.
The attrition among all levels of the Office for Combating Terrorism began shortly after the attacks and continued into this year. At least eight officials in the office -- which numbers a dozen people -- have left and been replaced since 9/11. Several of the officials were contacted by Reuters.
The office has been run by four different people since the attacks, and at least three have held the No. 2 slot.
"There has been excessively high turnover in the Office for Combating Terrorism," said Flynt Leverett, who served on the White House National Security Council for about a year until March 2003 and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.
"If you take the (White House) counterterrorism and Middle East offices, you've got about a dozen people ... who came to this administration wanting to work on these important issues and left after a year or often less because they just don't think that this administration is dealing seriously with the issues that matter," he said.
Rand Beers, a former No. 2 in the office who quit last year over the administration's handling of the war on terrorism, told Reuters the turnover had been "unusually high" since the hijacked airliner attacks in New York and Washington.
"And one of the reasons is frustration with the way counterterrorism policy has been conducted, including the focus on Iraq," said Beers, who now serves as a foreign policy adviser for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who hopes to unseat Bush in November.
The White House denied there had been unusually high turnover, saying staff tended to be on limited assignments from other federal agencies. A senior administration official said it was "absolutely untrue" Iraq was diverting attention from overall counterterrorism efforts.
Another official said it was wrong to link all the numerous departures to policy concerns over Iraq.
Several current and former officials said burn out from job stress also contributed to high turnover in the office, as did frustration among some staff about the limits of their influence over policymaking in general. Many National Security Council staffers only stay 18 months to two years.
One current counterterrorism official said while the Iraq campaign had been a "huge resource drain," this held true for all major events that compete for scarce resources.
"There's a problem of too few counterterrorism staffers to begin with ... and with the focus on any big issue like Iraq, it is a distraction from the overall counterterrorism effort," the official said.
___________________________________________________________________________
By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism.
Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1/2 years since the attacks.
Some also left because they felt President Bush had sidelined his counterterrorism experts and paid almost exclusive heed to the vice president, the defense secretary and other Cabinet members in planning the "war on terror," former counterterrorism officials said.
"I'm kind of hoping for regime change," one official who quit told Reuters.
The administration's handling of the battle against terrorism is a key issue for the presidency, and could be key to Bush's re-election effort.
Similar charges were made by Bush's former counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who told the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the administration ignored the al Qaeda threat beforehand and was fixated on Iraq afterward. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice ( news -web sites ) testifies before the 9/11 panel on Thursday.
"Iraq has been a distraction from the whole counterterrorism effort," said the former official, adding the policy had frustrated many in the White House anti-terrorism office, about two-thirds of whom have left and been replaced since Sept. 11.
The administration vehemently denies the accusations, and says it is making strong progress in the global war on terror.
HIGH TURNOVER
Roger Cressey, who served under Clarke in the White House counterterrorism office, said: "Dick accurately reflects the frustration of many in the counterterrorism community in getting the new administration to take the al Qaeda issue seriously."
Cressey left the office in November 2001, when he became chief of staff of the White House's cybersecurity office until September 2002.
The attrition among all levels of the Office for Combating Terrorism began shortly after the attacks and continued into this year. At least eight officials in the office -- which numbers a dozen people -- have left and been replaced since 9/11. Several of the officials were contacted by Reuters.
The office has been run by four different people since the attacks, and at least three have held the No. 2 slot.
"There has been excessively high turnover in the Office for Combating Terrorism," said Flynt Leverett, who served on the White House National Security Council for about a year until March 2003 and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.
"If you take the (White House) counterterrorism and Middle East offices, you've got about a dozen people ... who came to this administration wanting to work on these important issues and left after a year or often less because they just don't think that this administration is dealing seriously with the issues that matter," he said.
Rand Beers, a former No. 2 in the office who quit last year over the administration's handling of the war on terrorism, told Reuters the turnover had been "unusually high" since the hijacked airliner attacks in New York and Washington.
"And one of the reasons is frustration with the way counterterrorism policy has been conducted, including the focus on Iraq," said Beers, who now serves as a foreign policy adviser for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who hopes to unseat Bush in November.
The White House denied there had been unusually high turnover, saying staff tended to be on limited assignments from other federal agencies. A senior administration official said it was "absolutely untrue" Iraq was diverting attention from overall counterterrorism efforts.
Another official said it was wrong to link all the numerous departures to policy concerns over Iraq.
Several current and former officials said burn out from job stress also contributed to high turnover in the office, as did frustration among some staff about the limits of their influence over policymaking in general. Many National Security Council staffers only stay 18 months to two years.
One current counterterrorism official said while the Iraq campaign had been a "huge resource drain," this held true for all major events that compete for scarce resources.
"There's a problem of too few counterterrorism staffers to begin with ... and with the focus on any big issue like Iraq, it is a distraction from the overall counterterrorism effort," the official said.
___________________________________________________________________________
U.S. Terrorism Policy Spawns Steady Staff Exodus
By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism.
Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1/2 years since the attacks.
Some also left because they felt President Bush had sidelined his counterterrorism experts and paid almost exclusive heed to the vice president, the defense secretary and other Cabinet members in planning the "war on terror," former counterterrorism officials said.
"I'm kind of hoping for regime change," one official who quit told Reuters.
The administration's handling of the battle against terrorism is a key issue for the presidency, and could be key to Bush's re-election effort.
Similar charges were made by Bush's former counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who told the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the administration ignored the al Qaeda threat beforehand and was fixated on Iraq afterward. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice testifies before the 9/11 panel on Thursday.
"Iraq has been a distraction from the whole counterterrorism effort," said the former official, adding the policy had frustrated many in the White House anti-terrorism office, about two-thirds of whom have left and been replaced since Sept. 11.
The administration vehemently denies the accusations, and says it is making strong progress in the global war on terror.
HIGH TURNOVER
Roger Cressey, who served under Clarke in the White House counterterrorism office, said: "Dick accurately reflects the frustration of many in the counterterrorism community in getting the new administration to take the al Qaeda issue seriously."
Cressey left the office in November 2001, when he became chief of staff of the White House's cybersecurity office until September 2002.
The attrition among all levels of the Office for Combating Terrorism began shortly after the attacks and continued into this year. At least eight officials in the office -- which numbers a dozen people -- have left and been replaced since 9/11. Several of the officials were contacted by Reuters.
The office has been run by four different people since the attacks, and at least three have held the No. 2 slot.
"There has been excessively high turnover in the Office for Combating Terrorism," said Flynt Leverett, who served on the White House National Security Council for about a year until March 2003 and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.
"If you take the (White House) counterterrorism and Middle East offices, you've got about a dozen people ... who came to this administration wanting to work on these important issues and left after a year or often less because they just don't think that this administration is dealing seriously with the issues that matter," he said.
Rand Beers, a former No. 2 in the office who quit last year over the administration's handling of the war on terrorism, told Reuters the turnover had been "unusually high" since the hijacked airliner attacks in New York and Washington.
"And one of the reasons is frustration with the way counterterrorism policy has been conducted, including the focus on Iraq," said Beers, who now serves as a foreign policy adviser for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who hopes to unseat Bush in November.
The White House denied there had been unusually high turnover, saying staff tended to be on limited assignments from other federal agencies. A senior administration official said it was "absolutely untrue" Iraq was diverting attention from overall counterterrorism efforts.
Another official said it was wrong to link all the numerous departures to policy concerns over Iraq.
Several current and former officials said burn out from job stress also contributed to high turnover in the office, as did frustration among some staff about the limits of their influence over policymaking in general. Many National Security Council staffers only stay 18 months to two years.
One current counterterrorism official said while the Iraq campaign had been a "huge resource drain," this held true for all major events that compete for scarce resources.
"There's a problem of too few counterterrorism staffers to begin with ... and with the focus on any big issue like Iraq, it is a distraction from the overall counterterrorism effort," the official said.
_____________________________________________________________________
By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism.
Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1/2 years since the attacks.
Some also left because they felt President Bush had sidelined his counterterrorism experts and paid almost exclusive heed to the vice president, the defense secretary and other Cabinet members in planning the "war on terror," former counterterrorism officials said.
"I'm kind of hoping for regime change," one official who quit told Reuters.
The administration's handling of the battle against terrorism is a key issue for the presidency, and could be key to Bush's re-election effort.
Similar charges were made by Bush's former counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who told the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the administration ignored the al Qaeda threat beforehand and was fixated on Iraq afterward. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice testifies before the 9/11 panel on Thursday.
"Iraq has been a distraction from the whole counterterrorism effort," said the former official, adding the policy had frustrated many in the White House anti-terrorism office, about two-thirds of whom have left and been replaced since Sept. 11.
The administration vehemently denies the accusations, and says it is making strong progress in the global war on terror.
HIGH TURNOVER
Roger Cressey, who served under Clarke in the White House counterterrorism office, said: "Dick accurately reflects the frustration of many in the counterterrorism community in getting the new administration to take the al Qaeda issue seriously."
Cressey left the office in November 2001, when he became chief of staff of the White House's cybersecurity office until September 2002.
The attrition among all levels of the Office for Combating Terrorism began shortly after the attacks and continued into this year. At least eight officials in the office -- which numbers a dozen people -- have left and been replaced since 9/11. Several of the officials were contacted by Reuters.
The office has been run by four different people since the attacks, and at least three have held the No. 2 slot.
"There has been excessively high turnover in the Office for Combating Terrorism," said Flynt Leverett, who served on the White House National Security Council for about a year until March 2003 and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.
"If you take the (White House) counterterrorism and Middle East offices, you've got about a dozen people ... who came to this administration wanting to work on these important issues and left after a year or often less because they just don't think that this administration is dealing seriously with the issues that matter," he said.
Rand Beers, a former No. 2 in the office who quit last year over the administration's handling of the war on terrorism, told Reuters the turnover had been "unusually high" since the hijacked airliner attacks in New York and Washington.
"And one of the reasons is frustration with the way counterterrorism policy has been conducted, including the focus on Iraq," said Beers, who now serves as a foreign policy adviser for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who hopes to unseat Bush in November.
The White House denied there had been unusually high turnover, saying staff tended to be on limited assignments from other federal agencies. A senior administration official said it was "absolutely untrue" Iraq was diverting attention from overall counterterrorism efforts.
Another official said it was wrong to link all the numerous departures to policy concerns over Iraq.
Several current and former officials said burn out from job stress also contributed to high turnover in the office, as did frustration among some staff about the limits of their influence over policymaking in general. Many National Security Council staffers only stay 18 months to two years.
One current counterterrorism official said while the Iraq campaign had been a "huge resource drain," this held true for all major events that compete for scarce resources.
"There's a problem of too few counterterrorism staffers to begin with ... and with the focus on any big issue like Iraq, it is a distraction from the overall counterterrorism effort," the official said.
_____________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
The Buck Doesn't Stop
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, April 6, 2004; Page A21
What happened March 25 was that one Washington institution quoted another to ask a third about accountability. The questioner was PBS's Jim Lehrer, who cited the late James Reston of the New York Times to ask Donald Rumsfeld why no one in Washington ever resigns for just being wrong. Rumsfeld, oozing cockiness, turned the personal into the theoretical and waltzed away from the question. I don't blame him. If, say, a Japanese government had performed as badly as the Bush administration has, there would be no one left to turn out the lights.
In his questioning of Rumsfeld, the nimble Lehrer brought up Lord Carrington, the British defense minister at the time Argentina seized the Falkland Islands. Carrington admitted he had underestimated the threat and his resignation was therefore in order. If Rumsfeld had applied that rule to himself, he would be thrice gone -- once for Sept. 11, 2001; once for the absence of WMD in Iraq; and once more for not having enough troops in Iraq. If he were his own subordinate, he would fire himself.
But from the president on down, no one in this administration ever admits a mistake or concedes having been wrong. Dick Cheney, whose slogan should be "Wrong Where It Matters," nonetheless takes to the stump to lambaste John Kerry. After all, the vice president is the very man who warned us, assured us, promised us that we must go to war with Iraq because, among other things, that nation had an ongoing nuclear weapons program. None has yet been found -- and no apology from Cheney has yet been issued. He was mistaken or dishonest. We await his choice.
In his interview with Lehrer, Rumsfeld made the point that the United States does not have the British cabinet system or the Japanese culture regarding shame and accountability. For all the talk about the buck stopping in this place called "here," it usually never stops at all. But demanding resignations begs the question. It is not heads the American people want, it is humility.
That is what's so lacking in the Bush administration. The real reason -- the terribly secret reason -- the administration was oh-so-slow to recognize the terrorist threat was precisely the quality so abundant in Rumsfeld: smugness. The Bushies knew it all. The very fact that the Clinton team told them to make terrorism job one led them to denigrate it: What did those Clinton jerks know?
Instead, the Bush team had its eye on the ball -- missile defense and, of course, China and Russia. Missile defense was considered crucial, and opposition to this Reagan-era program was deemed both ideological and shortsighted. But it turned out that the "missiles" that struck the United States had the logos of American and United airlines on their fuselages, and no star wars system could have stopped them. It would have taken hard spy work and, as they say, boots on the ground in Afghanistan. It would have taken a little humility.
That quality is precisely what commended the not-terribly-humble Richard Clarke to many of the Sept. 11 families: He apologized. He was sorry for what happened and sorry that his efforts had not somehow managed to avert a calamity. Lehrer cited Clarke's example to Rumsfeld, who just didn't get it. In fact, he recited all the reasons why Sept. 11 was really not his -- or anyone else in the Bush administration's -- fault. In spirit, he echoed Bush, who once said, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people." Yes, and had Custer known he was attacking so many Indians, he might have chosen to wash his hair that day instead.
What is so perturbing about this administration is not that no one of note has resigned or been fired -- and some of them certainty deserve the ax -- but that there is not the slightest hint that anyone (except Colin Powell) appreciates that mistakes were made not out of sheer bad luck but because the assumptions, driven by ideology, were so bad.
Terrorism, not missile defense, should have been the top priority; al Qaeda was and remains the threat, not Iraq. (That explains why Saddam Hussein is in jail while bin Laden is still on the loose, having slipped the noose in Afghanistan because the Pentagon left the job to locals.) Iraq was going to be a cakewalk -- the Middle Eastern version of the liberation of Paris -- and somehow that has not happened. In another country, some officials would quit in shame. In this one they can't even quit being smug.
______________________________________________________________________________
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, April 6, 2004; Page A21
What happened March 25 was that one Washington institution quoted another to ask a third about accountability. The questioner was PBS's Jim Lehrer, who cited the late James Reston of the New York Times to ask Donald Rumsfeld why no one in Washington ever resigns for just being wrong. Rumsfeld, oozing cockiness, turned the personal into the theoretical and waltzed away from the question. I don't blame him. If, say, a Japanese government had performed as badly as the Bush administration has, there would be no one left to turn out the lights.
In his questioning of Rumsfeld, the nimble Lehrer brought up Lord Carrington, the British defense minister at the time Argentina seized the Falkland Islands. Carrington admitted he had underestimated the threat and his resignation was therefore in order. If Rumsfeld had applied that rule to himself, he would be thrice gone -- once for Sept. 11, 2001; once for the absence of WMD in Iraq; and once more for not having enough troops in Iraq. If he were his own subordinate, he would fire himself.
But from the president on down, no one in this administration ever admits a mistake or concedes having been wrong. Dick Cheney, whose slogan should be "Wrong Where It Matters," nonetheless takes to the stump to lambaste John Kerry. After all, the vice president is the very man who warned us, assured us, promised us that we must go to war with Iraq because, among other things, that nation had an ongoing nuclear weapons program. None has yet been found -- and no apology from Cheney has yet been issued. He was mistaken or dishonest. We await his choice.
In his interview with Lehrer, Rumsfeld made the point that the United States does not have the British cabinet system or the Japanese culture regarding shame and accountability. For all the talk about the buck stopping in this place called "here," it usually never stops at all. But demanding resignations begs the question. It is not heads the American people want, it is humility.
That is what's so lacking in the Bush administration. The real reason -- the terribly secret reason -- the administration was oh-so-slow to recognize the terrorist threat was precisely the quality so abundant in Rumsfeld: smugness. The Bushies knew it all. The very fact that the Clinton team told them to make terrorism job one led them to denigrate it: What did those Clinton jerks know?
Instead, the Bush team had its eye on the ball -- missile defense and, of course, China and Russia. Missile defense was considered crucial, and opposition to this Reagan-era program was deemed both ideological and shortsighted. But it turned out that the "missiles" that struck the United States had the logos of American and United airlines on their fuselages, and no star wars system could have stopped them. It would have taken hard spy work and, as they say, boots on the ground in Afghanistan. It would have taken a little humility.
That quality is precisely what commended the not-terribly-humble Richard Clarke to many of the Sept. 11 families: He apologized. He was sorry for what happened and sorry that his efforts had not somehow managed to avert a calamity. Lehrer cited Clarke's example to Rumsfeld, who just didn't get it. In fact, he recited all the reasons why Sept. 11 was really not his -- or anyone else in the Bush administration's -- fault. In spirit, he echoed Bush, who once said, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people." Yes, and had Custer known he was attacking so many Indians, he might have chosen to wash his hair that day instead.
What is so perturbing about this administration is not that no one of note has resigned or been fired -- and some of them certainty deserve the ax -- but that there is not the slightest hint that anyone (except Colin Powell) appreciates that mistakes were made not out of sheer bad luck but because the assumptions, driven by ideology, were so bad.
Terrorism, not missile defense, should have been the top priority; al Qaeda was and remains the threat, not Iraq. (That explains why Saddam Hussein is in jail while bin Laden is still on the loose, having slipped the noose in Afghanistan because the Pentagon left the job to locals.) Iraq was going to be a cakewalk -- the Middle Eastern version of the liberation of Paris -- and somehow that has not happened. In another country, some officials would quit in shame. In this one they can't even quit being smug.
______________________________________________________________________________
As California goes, so goes the nation? Interesting how the Republican base is shifting...
Poll finds Bush is losing support across California
Carla Marinucci, SF Chronicle Political Writer
Tuesday, April 6, 2004
A new poll shows President Bush's approval ratings in California have plummeted, even in the state's most GOP-dominated conservative areas.
With the Iraq war taking a difficult turn and questions raised at home about the administration's terrorism policy, the poll by the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University released Monday puts Bush's state approval ratings at just 38 percent, while 50 percent disapprove.
That's a dramatic change from the start of the year, when 49 percent of Californians approved of the job the president was doing, and 40 percent disapproved.
Even more telling may be the downward shift in public opinion in the nation's most populous state regarding Bush's handling of the war on terror and the war in Iraq -- two areas that Republicans have touted as the president's strengths.
The poll shows that on Iraq, just 36 percent of Californians now approve of his handling of the war, compared to 54 percent who do not. In January, 47 percent of Californians approved, and 43 percent disapproved. In two key GOP base areas, the Central Valley and Southern California counties outside Los Angeles, including Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside, Bush held just a 1 percent margin of support, the poll showed.
On the economy, the president's numbers are not much better: 35 percent of California residents approve of his handling, and 53 percent disapprove, the poll showed.
The poll of 1,023 California adults is part of the quarterly California Consumer Confidence Survey by the SJSU policy institute, which regularly tracks the opinions of state residents on a wide range of consumer issues. This survey, between March 29 and April 2, was taken during a week in which former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke criticized the Bush administration's anti-terrorist efforts in testimony before the Sept. 11 commission -- testimony that received extensive media coverage.
The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Portions of the poll focusing on Bush's handling of such key issues as the economy, the war and terrorism were released Monday. They suggest that even in conservative bastions, "if the war on terrorism and his handling of the war in Iraq are the centerpieces of (Bush's) presidency ... then in California at least, he's found wanting by people throughout the state,'' said Phil Trounstine, director of the SJSU Survey and Policy Research Institute.
While the poll doesn't intend to track voting preferences, it does strongly suggest that Bush's marks are falling among "average citizens" concerned with issues that affect their daily lives, according to Trounstine - - a former San Jose Mercury News political writer and former adviser to then- Gov. Gray Davis who now heads the SJSU consumer research institute.
Trounstine said that perhaps the "single most damning problem" for Bush is results on the question: Generally speaking, do you believe that what President Bush tells the American people is true?
More Californians, 48 percent, said no to the question -- and 42 percent said yes. In the heavily Democratic Bay Area, 56 percent said they did not believe the president, and 33 percent said they did.
In two GOP strongholds, Bush got barely passing marks: in the Central Valley, 50 percent said they believe what the president says is true, and 37 percent said they did not; in the Southern California GOP strongholds, 50 per cent said they believed the president, and 43 percent did not.
"We've seen historically that when the White House develops a credibility problem, it's very difficult to recover,'' said Trounstine.
Among other findings of the poll:
-- Bush's approval ratings even in conservative areas have shifted downward in the past three months. In Southern California counties other than Democratic-leaning Los Angeles, the president's approval-disapproval rating today is 44-44, an even split; in January, he held overwhelmingly positive 58- 31 percent ratings.
-- In the Silicon Valley, Bush's approval rating has gone from 40 percent to 29 percent in the current survey. On his handling of the economy, Bush got a 61 percent disapproval rating in January of this year; the most recent survey shows that 64 percent of Silicon Valley residents now disapprove of his economic approach.
-- Asked if the war in Iraq has made America less safe, 46 percent said yes, 28 percent said no, and 19 percent said it had no effect. Only in the Central Valley, by 35 to 30 percent, do Californians feel safer because of the war.
Republicans caution that the poll of California consumers measures shifting opinion but doesn't narrow its focus to California's registered voters -- who will decide the 2004 election.
Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen said the bottom line is the critical question that wasn't asked: "Even if you're not pleased with Iraq ... are you still willing to vote for (Democratic presidential candidate) John Kerry?''
Still, "the numbers are really surprising -- even for California,'' says Whalen. But, he argues, they may simply show "how much California is out of the mainstream from the rest of the country,'' which has continued to support Bush on the issue of terrorism and Iraq.
__________________________________________________________________________
Poll finds Bush is losing support across California
Carla Marinucci, SF Chronicle Political Writer
Tuesday, April 6, 2004
A new poll shows President Bush's approval ratings in California have plummeted, even in the state's most GOP-dominated conservative areas.
With the Iraq war taking a difficult turn and questions raised at home about the administration's terrorism policy, the poll by the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University released Monday puts Bush's state approval ratings at just 38 percent, while 50 percent disapprove.
That's a dramatic change from the start of the year, when 49 percent of Californians approved of the job the president was doing, and 40 percent disapproved.
Even more telling may be the downward shift in public opinion in the nation's most populous state regarding Bush's handling of the war on terror and the war in Iraq -- two areas that Republicans have touted as the president's strengths.
The poll shows that on Iraq, just 36 percent of Californians now approve of his handling of the war, compared to 54 percent who do not. In January, 47 percent of Californians approved, and 43 percent disapproved. In two key GOP base areas, the Central Valley and Southern California counties outside Los Angeles, including Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside, Bush held just a 1 percent margin of support, the poll showed.
On the economy, the president's numbers are not much better: 35 percent of California residents approve of his handling, and 53 percent disapprove, the poll showed.
The poll of 1,023 California adults is part of the quarterly California Consumer Confidence Survey by the SJSU policy institute, which regularly tracks the opinions of state residents on a wide range of consumer issues. This survey, between March 29 and April 2, was taken during a week in which former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke criticized the Bush administration's anti-terrorist efforts in testimony before the Sept. 11 commission -- testimony that received extensive media coverage.
The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Portions of the poll focusing on Bush's handling of such key issues as the economy, the war and terrorism were released Monday. They suggest that even in conservative bastions, "if the war on terrorism and his handling of the war in Iraq are the centerpieces of (Bush's) presidency ... then in California at least, he's found wanting by people throughout the state,'' said Phil Trounstine, director of the SJSU Survey and Policy Research Institute.
While the poll doesn't intend to track voting preferences, it does strongly suggest that Bush's marks are falling among "average citizens" concerned with issues that affect their daily lives, according to Trounstine - - a former San Jose Mercury News political writer and former adviser to then- Gov. Gray Davis who now heads the SJSU consumer research institute.
Trounstine said that perhaps the "single most damning problem" for Bush is results on the question: Generally speaking, do you believe that what President Bush tells the American people is true?
More Californians, 48 percent, said no to the question -- and 42 percent said yes. In the heavily Democratic Bay Area, 56 percent said they did not believe the president, and 33 percent said they did.
In two GOP strongholds, Bush got barely passing marks: in the Central Valley, 50 percent said they believe what the president says is true, and 37 percent said they did not; in the Southern California GOP strongholds, 50 per cent said they believed the president, and 43 percent did not.
"We've seen historically that when the White House develops a credibility problem, it's very difficult to recover,'' said Trounstine.
Among other findings of the poll:
-- Bush's approval ratings even in conservative areas have shifted downward in the past three months. In Southern California counties other than Democratic-leaning Los Angeles, the president's approval-disapproval rating today is 44-44, an even split; in January, he held overwhelmingly positive 58- 31 percent ratings.
-- In the Silicon Valley, Bush's approval rating has gone from 40 percent to 29 percent in the current survey. On his handling of the economy, Bush got a 61 percent disapproval rating in January of this year; the most recent survey shows that 64 percent of Silicon Valley residents now disapprove of his economic approach.
-- Asked if the war in Iraq has made America less safe, 46 percent said yes, 28 percent said no, and 19 percent said it had no effect. Only in the Central Valley, by 35 to 30 percent, do Californians feel safer because of the war.
Republicans caution that the poll of California consumers measures shifting opinion but doesn't narrow its focus to California's registered voters -- who will decide the 2004 election.
Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen said the bottom line is the critical question that wasn't asked: "Even if you're not pleased with Iraq ... are you still willing to vote for (Democratic presidential candidate) John Kerry?''
Still, "the numbers are really surprising -- even for California,'' says Whalen. But, he argues, they may simply show "how much California is out of the mainstream from the rest of the country,'' which has continued to support Bush on the issue of terrorism and Iraq.
__________________________________________________________________________
New Report Reveals $6 Trillion in Hidden Spending in Bush Budget
Who is Going to Pay for the Bush $6 Trillion Spending Spree?
April 05, 2004
Widening the White House’s growing credibility gap, a new report released today by John Kerry for President reveals that President Bush has proposed or passed $6 trillion in new, unpaid initiatives during the first three years of his administration. The report shows that while the President and administration officials have publicly touted their commitment to fiscal discipline, they were quietly pushing trillions of dollars in unpaid proposals that have resulted in skyrocketing deficits and contributed to state budget deficits across the country.
Relying on specific proposals that President Bush has actually proposed or signed into law and official cost estimates, today’s report exposes the Bush administration for abandoning any semblance of fiscal discipline and turning the nation’s record surpluses into record deficits.
“President Bush has mortgaged the fiscal health of the country and left future generations burdened by a mountain of debt,” said former Clinton administration Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman. “In the end, taxpayers will get stuck with the bill for George Bush’s recklessness with increased state taxes and higher costs in areas like education. If a family managed their household budget like this, they’d lose their house, their car, and any hope of building a brighter future for their children.”
President Bush and administration officials have long maintained that they are committed to fiscal discipline. In 2002, Bush said “if Congress will not show spending restraint, I will enforce spending restraint.” And in a recent radio address, the President proposed making spending limits the law, saying “budget limits must mean something.”
Yet as today’s report shows, these comments were just more examples of empty rhetoric and political posturing by the Bush White House. The White House’s reckless tax cut for the wealthiest Americans will cost Americans over $2.2 trillion in the next decade alone and its plan to privatize Social Security costs $1.4 trillion. The Bush White House has pushed a Medicare prescription drug plan that represents a giveaway to big drug companies without providing any real relief to seniors.
The $6 trillion figure is actually conservative since it does not even count what the Bush tax cuts have cost to date and excludes the true costs of many of their other plans, like the Mars mission.
Bush’s economic recklessness has had serious consequences outside of Washington. While the President has racked up $6 trillion in new spending without a penny to pay for it, Governors across the country have been struggling to balance their budgets. With no help available from the federal government, states have been forced to increase taxes and make cuts in spending.
“When it comes to spending, this administration’s rhetoric does not match the reality,” Altman said. “In public, this President professes to be a fiscal conservative, but in truth, he has pushed $6 trillion in new spending without ever paying for a penny of it. That’s reckless, and it’s the American people who will pay in the end. It’s time we put our country back on the path to fiscal responsibility by electing a new President.”
A fact sheet and today’s report are below.
Fact Sheet:
GEORGE W. BUSH’S UNPAID BILLS TOTAL OVER $6 TRILLION
WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR THE BUSH $6 TRILLION SPENDING SPREE
George W. Bush rejected ten strong years of fiscal discipline, in which new spending was accounted for and tax cuts were offset by decreases in spending. Instead he has run up a spending bill that will increase the deficit by more than $6 trillion over the next ten years alone. His tax cuts, expansion of entitlement programs and spending has grown into a $6 trillion bill over the next ten years. It is not a bill he plans on paying for. He’s leaving it for the taxpayers and their children.
BREAKING PROMISES AGAIN AND AGAIN: BUSH SAYS HE’S FOR LIMITING SPENDING
Bush Proposes Paying for Spending. To assure that Congress observes spending discipline, now and in the future, I propose making spending limits the law. This simple step would mean that every additional dollar the Congress wants to spend in excess of spending limits must be matched by a dollar in spending cuts elsewhere. Budget limits must mean something, and not just serve as vague guidelines to be routinely violated.” [Bush Radio Address, 1/31/04] But George Bush hasn’t paid for a penny of his over $6 trillion bill.
Bush Pledged to Cut Spending – But Instead He has a $6 Trillion Bill. During a radio address, George Bush pledged to cut spending. Bush said, “If Congress will not show spending restraint, I will enforce spending restraint. For the good of our economy, for the good of the people who pay taxes, my administration will spend what is truly needed, and not a dollar more.” [Bush Radio Address, 8/17/02]
Bush Pledged to Save Money to Pay Down the Debt – Now That Money Is Part of His $6 Trillion Bill. During a debate with Senator John McCain, then Governor George W. Bush said he would pay down the debt. Bush said, “I believe we’ve got $4 trillion over 10 years; $2 trillion of which will go to save Social Security and pay down the debt; $1 trillion available for debt repayment and other programs; and $1 trillion over a 10-year period, for a meaningful, substantial real tax cut to the people.” [Associated Press, 1/26/00]
TOTALING UP THE SPENDING – $6 TRILLION. Bush’s unpaid initiatives total to $4.9 trillion in the next decade alone, with debt service costs they will increase the deficit by $6.5 trillion over ten years. It is a bill that the Bush Administration has decided to ignore and tack onto their skyrocketing deficit. Someone has got to pay Bush’s $6.5 trillion spending spree –the American taxpayers and their children
$2,227 Billion in Enacted Tax Cuts. The Bush Tax Cuts that have already been enacted when extended over the next ten years will total to $2,227 billion in the next ten years [Joint Committee on Taxation]
$243 Billion in Other Tax Cuts. Bush has proposed other tax cuts, such as his flawed health care plan that will help the wealthiest and healthiest Americans. These additional tax cuts cost an additional $243 billion over the next ten years.
$1,427 Billion Social Security Privatization. George Bush has proposed privatizing Social Security and creating individual retirement accounts. This plan will not only put the fiscal future of America’s seniors in doubt, it will also cost the American taxpayers an additional $1,427 billion. [Council of Economic Advisors, Economic Report of the President, 2004]
$887 Billion in Other Mandatory Spending. Bush has proposed other spending such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit that his own actuaries said was more expensive than he budgeted for. Other plans such as Mars and Missile Defense will also cost money.
$1,642 Billion in Interest on the Debt. As anyone who has ever had a credit card knows, racking up huge debt costs even more, because you have to pay interest. The additional costs of the Bush plans for interest on the debt costs $1642 billion over the ten year period.
$6 Trillion is a Conservative Number. It doesn’t include the real cost of his Mars initiatives or the energy bill he has promised to sign. It doesn’t include some of his other tax plans he wanted to pass or what his tax cut for the wealthy has already cost in the early years. It doesn’t include defense or Iraq. Basically, American taxpayers cannot afford another four years of George W. Bush.
Report:
REPORT ON MORE THAN $6 TRILLION OF UNPAID BUSH INITIATIVES
BUSH HAS PRESIDED OVER A RECKLESS SPENDING EXPLOSION
April 5, 2004
Perhaps the most harmful fiscal policy decision made by the Bush Administration has been to completely disregard any attempt to propose or pass new initiatives with offsetting savings to ensure that they do not explode the deficit. While there may be occasional, justifiable exceptions not paying for a specific proposal, President Bush’s utter abandonment of any sense of fiscal discipline or even the slightest effort to pay for new initiatives represents a stunning reversal from the accepted practice in the 1990s, and has had highly damaging consequences for our nation’s fiscal position. He has presided over a spending explosion – proposing or signing into law over $6 trillion in unpaid for initiatives just in 2005 to 2014 alone. That doesn’t even count the costs of the early years of the tax cut or his plan to repeal the corporate AMT.
SUMMARY OF THE REPORT
1. President Bush Has Proposed or Signed Into Law New, Unpaid Initiatives That Increase the Deficit By $6.5 Trillion from 2005-14. The report attached shows that President Bush has either proposed or passed entitlement and tax proposals that total $4.8 trillion from 2005-14, with debt service costs these initiatives would increase the deficit by $6.5 trillion over ten years. President Bush has not proposed any offsets to ensure that his initiatives do not explode the deficit. This does not even include what he proposed or spent that impacted budgets in the early years of his presidency or the long-term implications. Unlike the repeated practice by the Bush campaign of asserting – and even making up – policy proposals and cost estimates never proposed by Senator Kerry, the analysis below relies on specific proposals that President Bush has actually proposed or signed into law, with official cost estimates.
2. President Bush’s Unpaid Initiatives Increase the Deficit By More Than $900 Billion in 2014 Alone. President Bush’s unpaid initiatives explode in cost, increasing the deficit by $335 billion in 2004 growing to $940 billion in 2014.
3. Bush’s Abandonment of Paying for Proposals Is a Complete Reversal of the Bipartisan Commitment to Fiscal Discipline in the 1990: The practice abandoned by President Bush in his four budgets had gained widespread bipartisan support in the 1990s. Budget rules were passed in 1990 and signed into law by the first President Bush. They were extended in 1993 and 1997 – both times with the strong support and vote of Senator Kerry. Even during the budget showdowns of 1995, both President Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed on one thing: that any new initiatives should contain offsets and be proposed within the larger context of fiscal discipline.
4. $6.5 Trillion in Unpaid Initiatives is a Conservative Estimate: The $6.5 trillion increase in the deficit from Bush’s initiatives is a very conservative estimate that does not include a number of initiatives Bush has strongly and consistently supported including defense and homeland security, the cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror, the true cost of the Mars mission, the energy bill, the cost of the Bush proposals from 2001-04, the many unpaid-for proposals President Bush has made in previous years, or the excessive long-term costs of Retirement Savings Accounts and Lifetime Savings Accounts.
THE BUSH RECORD: A SPENDING EXPLOSION
When the Bush Administration decided to abandon any responsibility to pay for new proposals or present any semblance of a fiscally responsible budgetary framework, it was not only charting a harmful course for our nation, but were making a radical departure from what was a broad, bipartisan commitment to fiscal discipline in the 1990s. Despite dramatically different priorities, the strong commitment of both Democrats and Republicans to fiscal discipline led to record surpluses in the late 1990s and contributed to the longest economic expansion in our nation’s history. As a result, President Bush inherited the strongest fiscal position in our nation’s history, with surpluses projected in January 2001 of $5.6 trillion over the next decade.
* In 1990, the bipartisan Budget Enforcement Act established new budget rules, requiring policymakers to pay for any tax cuts or entitlement spending increases, so that such policies would not increase deficits.
* These rules were extended by President Clinton as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which passed with broad bipartisan support. Senator Kerry voted in favor of both of these bills.
* The Bush Administration let these rules expire, opening the door for its deficit exploding tax cuts, and recently put forward a proposal to reinstate them only on new spending initiatives – a cynical, ineffective gimmick that gives the appearance of budget discipline, while offering a completely free pass for tax cuts and corporate subsidies.
* John Kerry will reestablish a commitment to paying for new proposals and will restore fiscal sanity in Washington DC.
THE RESULT: $6.5 TRILLION INCREASE IN THE DEFICIT FROM BUSH’S UNPAID COMMITMENTS
Over the past three years, the Bush Administration has proposed or signed into law tax and mandatory spending initiatives that will cost $4.8 trillion from 2005-14, together with debt service they will increase the deficit by $6.5 trillion. President Bush has never offered any plan to offset the costs with spending cuts or tax increases. The cost of the Bush legislation and proposals grows from $335 billion in 2004 to $940 billion in 2014. The result has been not only to explode annual deficits, which have now reached record levels at $500 billion as far as the eye can see, but to destroy sense of mutual commitment to fiscally responsible budget policy so vital to making progress in Washington. The table on the following page lists the major initiatives put forward by President Bush with no offsets or framework to cover their costs. It is followed by a list of the spending and other initiatives not included in the conservative estimate and an appendix which provides more detail on the cost estimates included in the table, and the Administration’s support of various initiatives...
Click here for Bush’s Unpaid for Proposals
(Skip down the page to find the boxed information)
___________________________________________________________________
Who is Going to Pay for the Bush $6 Trillion Spending Spree?
April 05, 2004
Widening the White House’s growing credibility gap, a new report released today by John Kerry for President reveals that President Bush has proposed or passed $6 trillion in new, unpaid initiatives during the first three years of his administration. The report shows that while the President and administration officials have publicly touted their commitment to fiscal discipline, they were quietly pushing trillions of dollars in unpaid proposals that have resulted in skyrocketing deficits and contributed to state budget deficits across the country.
Relying on specific proposals that President Bush has actually proposed or signed into law and official cost estimates, today’s report exposes the Bush administration for abandoning any semblance of fiscal discipline and turning the nation’s record surpluses into record deficits.
“President Bush has mortgaged the fiscal health of the country and left future generations burdened by a mountain of debt,” said former Clinton administration Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman. “In the end, taxpayers will get stuck with the bill for George Bush’s recklessness with increased state taxes and higher costs in areas like education. If a family managed their household budget like this, they’d lose their house, their car, and any hope of building a brighter future for their children.”
President Bush and administration officials have long maintained that they are committed to fiscal discipline. In 2002, Bush said “if Congress will not show spending restraint, I will enforce spending restraint.” And in a recent radio address, the President proposed making spending limits the law, saying “budget limits must mean something.”
Yet as today’s report shows, these comments were just more examples of empty rhetoric and political posturing by the Bush White House. The White House’s reckless tax cut for the wealthiest Americans will cost Americans over $2.2 trillion in the next decade alone and its plan to privatize Social Security costs $1.4 trillion. The Bush White House has pushed a Medicare prescription drug plan that represents a giveaway to big drug companies without providing any real relief to seniors.
The $6 trillion figure is actually conservative since it does not even count what the Bush tax cuts have cost to date and excludes the true costs of many of their other plans, like the Mars mission.
Bush’s economic recklessness has had serious consequences outside of Washington. While the President has racked up $6 trillion in new spending without a penny to pay for it, Governors across the country have been struggling to balance their budgets. With no help available from the federal government, states have been forced to increase taxes and make cuts in spending.
“When it comes to spending, this administration’s rhetoric does not match the reality,” Altman said. “In public, this President professes to be a fiscal conservative, but in truth, he has pushed $6 trillion in new spending without ever paying for a penny of it. That’s reckless, and it’s the American people who will pay in the end. It’s time we put our country back on the path to fiscal responsibility by electing a new President.”
A fact sheet and today’s report are below.
Fact Sheet:
GEORGE W. BUSH’S UNPAID BILLS TOTAL OVER $6 TRILLION
WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR THE BUSH $6 TRILLION SPENDING SPREE
George W. Bush rejected ten strong years of fiscal discipline, in which new spending was accounted for and tax cuts were offset by decreases in spending. Instead he has run up a spending bill that will increase the deficit by more than $6 trillion over the next ten years alone. His tax cuts, expansion of entitlement programs and spending has grown into a $6 trillion bill over the next ten years. It is not a bill he plans on paying for. He’s leaving it for the taxpayers and their children.
BREAKING PROMISES AGAIN AND AGAIN: BUSH SAYS HE’S FOR LIMITING SPENDING
Bush Proposes Paying for Spending. To assure that Congress observes spending discipline, now and in the future, I propose making spending limits the law. This simple step would mean that every additional dollar the Congress wants to spend in excess of spending limits must be matched by a dollar in spending cuts elsewhere. Budget limits must mean something, and not just serve as vague guidelines to be routinely violated.” [Bush Radio Address, 1/31/04] But George Bush hasn’t paid for a penny of his over $6 trillion bill.
Bush Pledged to Cut Spending – But Instead He has a $6 Trillion Bill. During a radio address, George Bush pledged to cut spending. Bush said, “If Congress will not show spending restraint, I will enforce spending restraint. For the good of our economy, for the good of the people who pay taxes, my administration will spend what is truly needed, and not a dollar more.” [Bush Radio Address, 8/17/02]
Bush Pledged to Save Money to Pay Down the Debt – Now That Money Is Part of His $6 Trillion Bill. During a debate with Senator John McCain, then Governor George W. Bush said he would pay down the debt. Bush said, “I believe we’ve got $4 trillion over 10 years; $2 trillion of which will go to save Social Security and pay down the debt; $1 trillion available for debt repayment and other programs; and $1 trillion over a 10-year period, for a meaningful, substantial real tax cut to the people.” [Associated Press, 1/26/00]
TOTALING UP THE SPENDING – $6 TRILLION. Bush’s unpaid initiatives total to $4.9 trillion in the next decade alone, with debt service costs they will increase the deficit by $6.5 trillion over ten years. It is a bill that the Bush Administration has decided to ignore and tack onto their skyrocketing deficit. Someone has got to pay Bush’s $6.5 trillion spending spree –the American taxpayers and their children
$2,227 Billion in Enacted Tax Cuts. The Bush Tax Cuts that have already been enacted when extended over the next ten years will total to $2,227 billion in the next ten years [Joint Committee on Taxation]
$243 Billion in Other Tax Cuts. Bush has proposed other tax cuts, such as his flawed health care plan that will help the wealthiest and healthiest Americans. These additional tax cuts cost an additional $243 billion over the next ten years.
$1,427 Billion Social Security Privatization. George Bush has proposed privatizing Social Security and creating individual retirement accounts. This plan will not only put the fiscal future of America’s seniors in doubt, it will also cost the American taxpayers an additional $1,427 billion. [Council of Economic Advisors, Economic Report of the President, 2004]
$887 Billion in Other Mandatory Spending. Bush has proposed other spending such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit that his own actuaries said was more expensive than he budgeted for. Other plans such as Mars and Missile Defense will also cost money.
$1,642 Billion in Interest on the Debt. As anyone who has ever had a credit card knows, racking up huge debt costs even more, because you have to pay interest. The additional costs of the Bush plans for interest on the debt costs $1642 billion over the ten year period.
$6 Trillion is a Conservative Number. It doesn’t include the real cost of his Mars initiatives or the energy bill he has promised to sign. It doesn’t include some of his other tax plans he wanted to pass or what his tax cut for the wealthy has already cost in the early years. It doesn’t include defense or Iraq. Basically, American taxpayers cannot afford another four years of George W. Bush.
Report:
REPORT ON MORE THAN $6 TRILLION OF UNPAID BUSH INITIATIVES
BUSH HAS PRESIDED OVER A RECKLESS SPENDING EXPLOSION
April 5, 2004
Perhaps the most harmful fiscal policy decision made by the Bush Administration has been to completely disregard any attempt to propose or pass new initiatives with offsetting savings to ensure that they do not explode the deficit. While there may be occasional, justifiable exceptions not paying for a specific proposal, President Bush’s utter abandonment of any sense of fiscal discipline or even the slightest effort to pay for new initiatives represents a stunning reversal from the accepted practice in the 1990s, and has had highly damaging consequences for our nation’s fiscal position. He has presided over a spending explosion – proposing or signing into law over $6 trillion in unpaid for initiatives just in 2005 to 2014 alone. That doesn’t even count the costs of the early years of the tax cut or his plan to repeal the corporate AMT.
SUMMARY OF THE REPORT
1. President Bush Has Proposed or Signed Into Law New, Unpaid Initiatives That Increase the Deficit By $6.5 Trillion from 2005-14. The report attached shows that President Bush has either proposed or passed entitlement and tax proposals that total $4.8 trillion from 2005-14, with debt service costs these initiatives would increase the deficit by $6.5 trillion over ten years. President Bush has not proposed any offsets to ensure that his initiatives do not explode the deficit. This does not even include what he proposed or spent that impacted budgets in the early years of his presidency or the long-term implications. Unlike the repeated practice by the Bush campaign of asserting – and even making up – policy proposals and cost estimates never proposed by Senator Kerry, the analysis below relies on specific proposals that President Bush has actually proposed or signed into law, with official cost estimates.
2. President Bush’s Unpaid Initiatives Increase the Deficit By More Than $900 Billion in 2014 Alone. President Bush’s unpaid initiatives explode in cost, increasing the deficit by $335 billion in 2004 growing to $940 billion in 2014.
3. Bush’s Abandonment of Paying for Proposals Is a Complete Reversal of the Bipartisan Commitment to Fiscal Discipline in the 1990: The practice abandoned by President Bush in his four budgets had gained widespread bipartisan support in the 1990s. Budget rules were passed in 1990 and signed into law by the first President Bush. They were extended in 1993 and 1997 – both times with the strong support and vote of Senator Kerry. Even during the budget showdowns of 1995, both President Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed on one thing: that any new initiatives should contain offsets and be proposed within the larger context of fiscal discipline.
4. $6.5 Trillion in Unpaid Initiatives is a Conservative Estimate: The $6.5 trillion increase in the deficit from Bush’s initiatives is a very conservative estimate that does not include a number of initiatives Bush has strongly and consistently supported including defense and homeland security, the cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror, the true cost of the Mars mission, the energy bill, the cost of the Bush proposals from 2001-04, the many unpaid-for proposals President Bush has made in previous years, or the excessive long-term costs of Retirement Savings Accounts and Lifetime Savings Accounts.
THE BUSH RECORD: A SPENDING EXPLOSION
When the Bush Administration decided to abandon any responsibility to pay for new proposals or present any semblance of a fiscally responsible budgetary framework, it was not only charting a harmful course for our nation, but were making a radical departure from what was a broad, bipartisan commitment to fiscal discipline in the 1990s. Despite dramatically different priorities, the strong commitment of both Democrats and Republicans to fiscal discipline led to record surpluses in the late 1990s and contributed to the longest economic expansion in our nation’s history. As a result, President Bush inherited the strongest fiscal position in our nation’s history, with surpluses projected in January 2001 of $5.6 trillion over the next decade.
* In 1990, the bipartisan Budget Enforcement Act established new budget rules, requiring policymakers to pay for any tax cuts or entitlement spending increases, so that such policies would not increase deficits.
* These rules were extended by President Clinton as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which passed with broad bipartisan support. Senator Kerry voted in favor of both of these bills.
* The Bush Administration let these rules expire, opening the door for its deficit exploding tax cuts, and recently put forward a proposal to reinstate them only on new spending initiatives – a cynical, ineffective gimmick that gives the appearance of budget discipline, while offering a completely free pass for tax cuts and corporate subsidies.
* John Kerry will reestablish a commitment to paying for new proposals and will restore fiscal sanity in Washington DC.
THE RESULT: $6.5 TRILLION INCREASE IN THE DEFICIT FROM BUSH’S UNPAID COMMITMENTS
Over the past three years, the Bush Administration has proposed or signed into law tax and mandatory spending initiatives that will cost $4.8 trillion from 2005-14, together with debt service they will increase the deficit by $6.5 trillion. President Bush has never offered any plan to offset the costs with spending cuts or tax increases. The cost of the Bush legislation and proposals grows from $335 billion in 2004 to $940 billion in 2014. The result has been not only to explode annual deficits, which have now reached record levels at $500 billion as far as the eye can see, but to destroy sense of mutual commitment to fiscally responsible budget policy so vital to making progress in Washington. The table on the following page lists the major initiatives put forward by President Bush with no offsets or framework to cover their costs. It is followed by a list of the spending and other initiatives not included in the conservative estimate and an appendix which provides more detail on the cost estimates included in the table, and the Administration’s support of various initiatives...
Click here for Bush’s Unpaid for Proposals
(Skip down the page to find the boxed information)
___________________________________________________________________
50 Cent Gas Tax: Yet Another Misleading Bush Attack Ad
UPDATED 4.06.04
KERRY BACKED EFFORT TO STOP CHENEY GAS PRICE HIKE
BUSH FICTION: Bush Ad: Kerry “supported a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax.”
FACT: John Kerry has never sponsored or voted for a 50 cent gas tax increase. When Sen. Charles Robb introduced legislation in 1993 that phased in a 50-cent increase, John Kerry chose not to vote for or co-sponsor this bill. (S. 1068, Introduced 5/28/93) It’s George Bush who has broken his promise to lead the way to a sustainable energy policy. His refusal to stand up to his big oil contributors has contributed to the highest gas prices in history – an effective $245 tax increase on American families and commuters.
Kerry opposed a Dick Cheney plan that would have raised gas prices by prices by $1.2 trillion and cut 400,000 jobs.
In 1986, then-Congressman Dick Cheney proposed a tax on oil that would have raised gasoline prices and laid 400,000 workers off. Despite this bill, the Bush-Cheney campaign claims that they are interested in lower gas prices and opposed to higher taxes.
Senator Kerry helped stop Cheney’s proposed gas price hike, co-sponsoring for a resolution in opposition to the plan. Even Cheney’s fellow Republican lawmakers opposed his gas price hike -- 15 Senators joined Kerry to sponsor a resolution in 1987 to stop Cheney’s bill.
Cheney Opposed Low Oil Prices
In October 1986, Cheney introduced legislation to create a new import tax that would have increased the price of oil and ultimately the price of gasoline by billions of dollars per year. On the House floor Cheney said “let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States.” [Energy Security Policy Act of 1986, H.R.5667, introduced 10/9/86, 99th Congress 2nd Session, 132 Cong Rec E 1350, Vol. 132, No. 139; Inside Energy/with Federal Lands, 10/13/86]
Cheney Bill would Cost Consumers $1.2 Trillion
The Congressional Research Service, in coordination with staffers from the Senate Energy Committee, studied the effects of Cheney’s bill on consumers. The report states that if Cheney’s plan had been enacted in 1986 it would have cost consumers $1.2 trillion. [New York Times, 4/6/04]
Bill Would Have Led to Loss of 400,000 jobs
Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania, a Republican, said in February 1987 that the proposals would add $1.3 billion per year to the energy costs of Pennsylvania consumers. He also cited a study done for a Federal Reserve Bank suggesting that a $5 per barrel fee would lead to the loss of 400,000 jobs nationwide and cause inflation to soar. [New York Times, 4/5/04; S.RES.97, introduced 02/03/87]
Kerry and 15 Senators from Both Parties Joined in Opposition to Cheney’s Bill
On February 3rd, 1987, John Kerry and 15 Senators cosponsored a resolution in opposition to import fees and taxes on oil, including Republican Senators John Heinz and Alphonse D’Amato. Senator Pell said that “the truth is that an oil import fee is not a good idea and would certainly not be painless for consumers. An oil import fee would impose heavy new costs on all who use oil and oil products in manufacturing and production. It would also impose higher costs on all who heat their homes with oil or use oil-generated electricity. In addition, by increasing the production costs of energy and raw materials, an oil import fee would make American manufacturers far less competitive in world markets—a situation certainly not tolerable with today's current trade imbalance. [S.RES.97, introduced, 2/3/87; 100th Congress 1st Session, Congressional Record Vol. 133 No. 16, S 1624]
Bush-Cheney Campaign Refuse to Acknowledge Cheney’s Call for Higher Taxes
When asked about Cheney’s bill to increase oil taxes, Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said that “President Bush and Vice President Cheney want to keep taxes low and keep the economy moving. They have proposed an energy plan that will provide for a stable, affordable and secure energy supply.”
While the Bush-Cheney campaign failed to acknowledge the higher tax and gas prices as a result of Cheney’s bill, Cheney’s office refused to comment about the bill. [New York Times, 4/5/04]
The Bush Administration is happy to use the gas tax for political purposes, but they are shamelessly misleading the American people about John Kerry’s record on cutting middle class taxes.
Here's what they're not telling you: George Bush and his Republican allies have NEVER ONCE supported lowering the gas tax on middle class families, despite the fact that Bush promised to during his 2000 campaign. Bush has submitted three budgets and passed two huge tax cuts, but the gas tax has not changed one penny under George Bush. Gas prices, on the other hand, have increased dramatically, reaching their highest level in history and taxing families by $24 billion this year alone. While George Bush campaigned on the issue, he has let the problem sit and fester so that consumers are left paying the bill. Instead of helping consumers who will pay $24 billion more for gas this year, Bush and Cheney are aiding oil companies’ record profits and increasing American dependence on foreign countries.
Bush Ad: “families would pay $657 more a year"
FACT: Bush Gas Tax Hike Has ALREADY Cost Americans $24 Billion More
On January 5, consumers paid $1.51 for an average gallon of gas. As of today – less than three months later – they’re paying $1.75 per gallon, a 24 cent increase since January. According to the Wall Street Journal, “every penny increase in a gallon of gas costs consumers $1 billion a year.” That’s a $24 billion gas tax hike this year alone.
* But that’s not all: nationwide gas prices have risen 12% since 2000, and are expected to skyrocket upward to $1.83 a gallon this summer – a 17% increase since Bush took office.
* Guy Caruso, the administrator of the Energy Information Administration told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that an average family will spend about $1,700 for gas in 2004. At today’s gas prices, this means that an average family will spend over $300 more for gas than they would have if prices were at the level they were the week Bush took office.
* Bush’s top economic advisor backs a 50 cent per gallon increase. In Fortune Magazine, Gregory Mankiw, President Bush’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, argued that a 50 cent gas tax is a necessary component of income tax cuts. He explained that “cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming--all without jeopardizing long-term fiscal solvency. This may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer.” [Fortune, 5/24/99]
Bush Ad: Kerry supported higher gasoline taxes 11 times.
FACT: Kerry Voted for 23 Million New Jobs, a Balanced Budget, and LOWER Gas taxes
* 1993 Vote balanced the budget and led to the creation of 23 Million New Jobs. The 1993 vote Bush criticizes put the U.S. back on track toward a balanced budget and fiscal discipline. The measure passed by one vote and did not receive ANY Republican support in either house of Congress. [Senate Roll Call vote, 1993, #247]. But after turning the largest surplus in history into the largest deficits ever, we can’t expect Bush to praise deficit reduction.
* REPUBLICANS opposed repealing the gas tax. Another vote Bush criticizes was to repeal the 4.3 cents gas tax. Unfortunately, it was defeated when 15 Republicans crossed the aisle to join Kerry because repealing the gas tax would be a job-killing plan -- costing up to 50,000 jobs. Republicans who also opposed the temporary suspension were from a wide range of states and ideological bents, including Pat Roberts (KS), Craig Thomas (WY), and Chuck Hagel (NE).
* George Bush counts airplane fuel as gas tax: One vote Bush uses is a vote to exempt airplane fuel from the proposed BTU tax. Keep that in mind next time you pull your 747 to the local Exxon pump. [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d103:SP00203:]
BUSH AND GAS TAXES: Bush only cares about the gas tax during election years
In 2000, George W. Bush promised to reduce the gas tax “as a means of helping motorists cope with the sharp rise in gasoline prices.” But not one of his budgets or tax cuts have kept this promise. In fact, while families have been hurt by the highest prices in history under Bush, he has delivered far more for the wealthy and his contributors. Here is a sample of tax breaks he has delivered for the wealthy instead of keeping his promise to roll back gas taxes:
· eliminate personal income taxes on dividends
· reduce capital gains taxes on sales of corporate stock.
According to Citizens for Tax Justice, “these new loopholes would cost $364 billion over the next 10 years. In 2003, half of the tax reductions from these provisions would go to only one percent of all taxpayers, and almost three-quarters would go to the best-off five percent.”
_________________________________________________________________
UPDATED 4.06.04
KERRY BACKED EFFORT TO STOP CHENEY GAS PRICE HIKE
BUSH FICTION: Bush Ad: Kerry “supported a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax.”
FACT: John Kerry has never sponsored or voted for a 50 cent gas tax increase. When Sen. Charles Robb introduced legislation in 1993 that phased in a 50-cent increase, John Kerry chose not to vote for or co-sponsor this bill. (S. 1068, Introduced 5/28/93) It’s George Bush who has broken his promise to lead the way to a sustainable energy policy. His refusal to stand up to his big oil contributors has contributed to the highest gas prices in history – an effective $245 tax increase on American families and commuters.
Kerry opposed a Dick Cheney plan that would have raised gas prices by prices by $1.2 trillion and cut 400,000 jobs.
In 1986, then-Congressman Dick Cheney proposed a tax on oil that would have raised gasoline prices and laid 400,000 workers off. Despite this bill, the Bush-Cheney campaign claims that they are interested in lower gas prices and opposed to higher taxes.
Senator Kerry helped stop Cheney’s proposed gas price hike, co-sponsoring for a resolution in opposition to the plan. Even Cheney’s fellow Republican lawmakers opposed his gas price hike -- 15 Senators joined Kerry to sponsor a resolution in 1987 to stop Cheney’s bill.
Cheney Opposed Low Oil Prices
In October 1986, Cheney introduced legislation to create a new import tax that would have increased the price of oil and ultimately the price of gasoline by billions of dollars per year. On the House floor Cheney said “let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States.” [Energy Security Policy Act of 1986, H.R.5667, introduced 10/9/86, 99th Congress 2nd Session, 132 Cong Rec E 1350, Vol. 132, No. 139; Inside Energy/with Federal Lands, 10/13/86]
Cheney Bill would Cost Consumers $1.2 Trillion
The Congressional Research Service, in coordination with staffers from the Senate Energy Committee, studied the effects of Cheney’s bill on consumers. The report states that if Cheney’s plan had been enacted in 1986 it would have cost consumers $1.2 trillion. [New York Times, 4/6/04]
Bill Would Have Led to Loss of 400,000 jobs
Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania, a Republican, said in February 1987 that the proposals would add $1.3 billion per year to the energy costs of Pennsylvania consumers. He also cited a study done for a Federal Reserve Bank suggesting that a $5 per barrel fee would lead to the loss of 400,000 jobs nationwide and cause inflation to soar. [New York Times, 4/5/04; S.RES.97, introduced 02/03/87]
Kerry and 15 Senators from Both Parties Joined in Opposition to Cheney’s Bill
On February 3rd, 1987, John Kerry and 15 Senators cosponsored a resolution in opposition to import fees and taxes on oil, including Republican Senators John Heinz and Alphonse D’Amato. Senator Pell said that “the truth is that an oil import fee is not a good idea and would certainly not be painless for consumers. An oil import fee would impose heavy new costs on all who use oil and oil products in manufacturing and production. It would also impose higher costs on all who heat their homes with oil or use oil-generated electricity. In addition, by increasing the production costs of energy and raw materials, an oil import fee would make American manufacturers far less competitive in world markets—a situation certainly not tolerable with today's current trade imbalance. [S.RES.97, introduced, 2/3/87; 100th Congress 1st Session, Congressional Record Vol. 133 No. 16, S 1624]
Bush-Cheney Campaign Refuse to Acknowledge Cheney’s Call for Higher Taxes
When asked about Cheney’s bill to increase oil taxes, Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said that “President Bush and Vice President Cheney want to keep taxes low and keep the economy moving. They have proposed an energy plan that will provide for a stable, affordable and secure energy supply.”
While the Bush-Cheney campaign failed to acknowledge the higher tax and gas prices as a result of Cheney’s bill, Cheney’s office refused to comment about the bill. [New York Times, 4/5/04]
The Bush Administration is happy to use the gas tax for political purposes, but they are shamelessly misleading the American people about John Kerry’s record on cutting middle class taxes.
Here's what they're not telling you: George Bush and his Republican allies have NEVER ONCE supported lowering the gas tax on middle class families, despite the fact that Bush promised to during his 2000 campaign. Bush has submitted three budgets and passed two huge tax cuts, but the gas tax has not changed one penny under George Bush. Gas prices, on the other hand, have increased dramatically, reaching their highest level in history and taxing families by $24 billion this year alone. While George Bush campaigned on the issue, he has let the problem sit and fester so that consumers are left paying the bill. Instead of helping consumers who will pay $24 billion more for gas this year, Bush and Cheney are aiding oil companies’ record profits and increasing American dependence on foreign countries.
Bush Ad: “families would pay $657 more a year"
FACT: Bush Gas Tax Hike Has ALREADY Cost Americans $24 Billion More
On January 5, consumers paid $1.51 for an average gallon of gas. As of today – less than three months later – they’re paying $1.75 per gallon, a 24 cent increase since January. According to the Wall Street Journal, “every penny increase in a gallon of gas costs consumers $1 billion a year.” That’s a $24 billion gas tax hike this year alone.
* But that’s not all: nationwide gas prices have risen 12% since 2000, and are expected to skyrocket upward to $1.83 a gallon this summer – a 17% increase since Bush took office.
* Guy Caruso, the administrator of the Energy Information Administration told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that an average family will spend about $1,700 for gas in 2004. At today’s gas prices, this means that an average family will spend over $300 more for gas than they would have if prices were at the level they were the week Bush took office.
* Bush’s top economic advisor backs a 50 cent per gallon increase. In Fortune Magazine, Gregory Mankiw, President Bush’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, argued that a 50 cent gas tax is a necessary component of income tax cuts. He explained that “cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming--all without jeopardizing long-term fiscal solvency. This may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer.” [Fortune, 5/24/99]
Bush Ad: Kerry supported higher gasoline taxes 11 times.
FACT: Kerry Voted for 23 Million New Jobs, a Balanced Budget, and LOWER Gas taxes
* 1993 Vote balanced the budget and led to the creation of 23 Million New Jobs. The 1993 vote Bush criticizes put the U.S. back on track toward a balanced budget and fiscal discipline. The measure passed by one vote and did not receive ANY Republican support in either house of Congress. [Senate Roll Call vote, 1993, #247]. But after turning the largest surplus in history into the largest deficits ever, we can’t expect Bush to praise deficit reduction.
* REPUBLICANS opposed repealing the gas tax. Another vote Bush criticizes was to repeal the 4.3 cents gas tax. Unfortunately, it was defeated when 15 Republicans crossed the aisle to join Kerry because repealing the gas tax would be a job-killing plan -- costing up to 50,000 jobs. Republicans who also opposed the temporary suspension were from a wide range of states and ideological bents, including Pat Roberts (KS), Craig Thomas (WY), and Chuck Hagel (NE).
* George Bush counts airplane fuel as gas tax: One vote Bush uses is a vote to exempt airplane fuel from the proposed BTU tax. Keep that in mind next time you pull your 747 to the local Exxon pump. [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d103:SP00203:]
BUSH AND GAS TAXES: Bush only cares about the gas tax during election years
In 2000, George W. Bush promised to reduce the gas tax “as a means of helping motorists cope with the sharp rise in gasoline prices.” But not one of his budgets or tax cuts have kept this promise. In fact, while families have been hurt by the highest prices in history under Bush, he has delivered far more for the wealthy and his contributors. Here is a sample of tax breaks he has delivered for the wealthy instead of keeping his promise to roll back gas taxes:
· eliminate personal income taxes on dividends
· reduce capital gains taxes on sales of corporate stock.
According to Citizens for Tax Justice, “these new loopholes would cost $364 billion over the next 10 years. In 2003, half of the tax reductions from these provisions would go to only one percent of all taxpayers, and almost three-quarters would go to the best-off five percent.”
_________________________________________________________________
Monday, April 05, 2004
A Paul Revere no one wants to hear from
I co-chaired a national security panel that warned the Bush administration the terrorists were coming. Why hasn't the 9/11 commission called any of us to testify?
Editor's note: The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century was created by President Bill Clinton in October 1998, with the approval of the congressional leadership. It was a bipartisan commission with a three-year life and a mandate to review threats to national security and opportunities to avoid those threats and to report to the next president of the United States in early 2001. It completed the most comprehensive review of U.S. national security since 1947.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Gary Hart
April 6, 2004 l Suppose that in March or April 1941, 14 Americans with lengthy backgrounds in national security affairs had reported to President Franklin Roosevelt that the United States was going to be attacked somewhere, sometime, somehow by the Japanese, that this attack would result in large numbers of American casualties, and these officially appointed Americans had strongly recommended to the Roosevelt administration that it take urgent steps to help prevent such an attack. Further suppose that Roosevelt had done little if anything in response to this warning, and that almost eight months later, as it happened, the Japanese attacked American facilities at Pearl Harbor, and almost 2,000 Americans died. Suppose after this attack official inquiries were launched, as it also happened, as to why there was a failure of intelligence, what actions were or were not taken based on what intelligence there was, and what could be done to prevent such catastrophic surprises in the future. And finally suppose that the official commission created to investigate the tragedy of Pearl Harbor failed to call upon the original 14 Americans who forecast the attack and forewarned against it.
Now move this supposed scenario forward to 2004 and you have virtually a perfect fit and an actual set of circumstances. The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, co-chaired by former Sen. Warren Rudman and myself, reported to President George W. Bush and his new administration in January 2001 that terrorists were surely going to attack the United States and that our country was woefully unprepared. We documented the lack of intelligence coordination against this threat and the lack of preparation of up to two dozen federal agencies, as well as state and local governments, to prevent such attacks or respond to them when they did occur. Though we had no ability to forecast specific times, places and methods for such attacks, we were united in our certainty that they were bound to occur. In our first report we said: "America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland [and] Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers." In our final report we urged the new Bush administration to create a national homeland security agency to prevent terrorist attacks.
Now that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- the so-called 9/11 commission -- is moving toward completion of its deliberations and preparation of its final report, I am increasingly asked what information our earlier commission, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, has provided the 9/11 commission and why that information has not been made public. When told that the 9/11 commission has not asked for any public testimony from us, most people are incredulous. If the 9/11 commission is really trying to find out what was known and when it was known, they ask, why would your national security commission's warnings and recommendations not be of direct relevance and urgent interest? Didn't you publicly and privately warn the new Bush administration of your concerns about terrorism? Didn't you specifically recommend a new national homeland security agency? Why wouldn't all this be of central importance to the work of the 9/11 commission? The simple answer to all these questions is: I don't know why we have not been asked to testify.
Since the U.S. Commission on National Security officially ceased to exist as of the summer of 2001, I cannot speak for the other 13 commissioners. But I have been waiting for many months to hear from the 9/11 commission, fully expecting a request for public testimony from members of our earlier commission, and have heard nothing.
To my knowledge, few if any members of the media have asked the 9/11 commission these questions either. Why would a commission investigating the events leading up to 9/11 not want to know what an earlier commission learned about potential terrorist attacks and what recommendations it gave to the new administration? This would seem to any reasonable person to be of intense interest to the press and the public the media serves. Apparently not. Apparently the politics of whether National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice will testify under oath and the drama of personal assaults on chief terrorism advisor Richard Clarke exhaust media attention. It is difficult to know, or to understand, why this is so.
In this connection it is important to note that the U.S. Commission on National Security based its conclusions about the inevitability of terrorist attacks in part on testimony from Clarke, and fully briefed Rice and other senior Bush administration officials regarding the urgency of its conclusions.
Sixty years after Pearl Harbor, books are still being written about whether the Roosevelt administration had any warnings of potential Japanese attacks. There certainly was no U.S. Commission on National Security in 1941 to issue such warnings. Only lonely Billy Mitchell, prophet of aerial warfare, some 18 years before. Now the 9/11 commission has the great burden of creating as complete a public record as possible of all the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks for the rest of history, to try to lay to rest theories of conspiracy and behind-the-scenes manipulation and maneuver, and to exhaustively examine all relevant information.
This cannot be done until the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century is officially and publicly heard from.
________________________________________________________________________
I co-chaired a national security panel that warned the Bush administration the terrorists were coming. Why hasn't the 9/11 commission called any of us to testify?
Editor's note: The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century was created by President Bill Clinton in October 1998, with the approval of the congressional leadership. It was a bipartisan commission with a three-year life and a mandate to review threats to national security and opportunities to avoid those threats and to report to the next president of the United States in early 2001. It completed the most comprehensive review of U.S. national security since 1947.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Gary Hart
April 6, 2004 l Suppose that in March or April 1941, 14 Americans with lengthy backgrounds in national security affairs had reported to President Franklin Roosevelt that the United States was going to be attacked somewhere, sometime, somehow by the Japanese, that this attack would result in large numbers of American casualties, and these officially appointed Americans had strongly recommended to the Roosevelt administration that it take urgent steps to help prevent such an attack. Further suppose that Roosevelt had done little if anything in response to this warning, and that almost eight months later, as it happened, the Japanese attacked American facilities at Pearl Harbor, and almost 2,000 Americans died. Suppose after this attack official inquiries were launched, as it also happened, as to why there was a failure of intelligence, what actions were or were not taken based on what intelligence there was, and what could be done to prevent such catastrophic surprises in the future. And finally suppose that the official commission created to investigate the tragedy of Pearl Harbor failed to call upon the original 14 Americans who forecast the attack and forewarned against it.
Now move this supposed scenario forward to 2004 and you have virtually a perfect fit and an actual set of circumstances. The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, co-chaired by former Sen. Warren Rudman and myself, reported to President George W. Bush and his new administration in January 2001 that terrorists were surely going to attack the United States and that our country was woefully unprepared. We documented the lack of intelligence coordination against this threat and the lack of preparation of up to two dozen federal agencies, as well as state and local governments, to prevent such attacks or respond to them when they did occur. Though we had no ability to forecast specific times, places and methods for such attacks, we were united in our certainty that they were bound to occur. In our first report we said: "America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland [and] Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers." In our final report we urged the new Bush administration to create a national homeland security agency to prevent terrorist attacks.
Now that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- the so-called 9/11 commission -- is moving toward completion of its deliberations and preparation of its final report, I am increasingly asked what information our earlier commission, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, has provided the 9/11 commission and why that information has not been made public. When told that the 9/11 commission has not asked for any public testimony from us, most people are incredulous. If the 9/11 commission is really trying to find out what was known and when it was known, they ask, why would your national security commission's warnings and recommendations not be of direct relevance and urgent interest? Didn't you publicly and privately warn the new Bush administration of your concerns about terrorism? Didn't you specifically recommend a new national homeland security agency? Why wouldn't all this be of central importance to the work of the 9/11 commission? The simple answer to all these questions is: I don't know why we have not been asked to testify.
Since the U.S. Commission on National Security officially ceased to exist as of the summer of 2001, I cannot speak for the other 13 commissioners. But I have been waiting for many months to hear from the 9/11 commission, fully expecting a request for public testimony from members of our earlier commission, and have heard nothing.
To my knowledge, few if any members of the media have asked the 9/11 commission these questions either. Why would a commission investigating the events leading up to 9/11 not want to know what an earlier commission learned about potential terrorist attacks and what recommendations it gave to the new administration? This would seem to any reasonable person to be of intense interest to the press and the public the media serves. Apparently not. Apparently the politics of whether National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice will testify under oath and the drama of personal assaults on chief terrorism advisor Richard Clarke exhaust media attention. It is difficult to know, or to understand, why this is so.
In this connection it is important to note that the U.S. Commission on National Security based its conclusions about the inevitability of terrorist attacks in part on testimony from Clarke, and fully briefed Rice and other senior Bush administration officials regarding the urgency of its conclusions.
Sixty years after Pearl Harbor, books are still being written about whether the Roosevelt administration had any warnings of potential Japanese attacks. There certainly was no U.S. Commission on National Security in 1941 to issue such warnings. Only lonely Billy Mitchell, prophet of aerial warfare, some 18 years before. Now the 9/11 commission has the great burden of creating as complete a public record as possible of all the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks for the rest of history, to try to lay to rest theories of conspiracy and behind-the-scenes manipulation and maneuver, and to exhaustively examine all relevant information.
This cannot be done until the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century is officially and publicly heard from.
________________________________________________________________________
Blackouts? Again? In other words, self-regulation of the power industry DIDN'T and DOESN'T WORK! And Bush and Cheney, the "experts" on energy, are not protecting the public's interest. I know. Californina was screwed over by them with our "energy crisis" a few years ago. First Bush and Cheney said it wa a "market problem". Next we find out the energy companies were gaming the system (with names like "Fatboy" and "Deathstar") for billions in profits while millions of poor people suffered. The Bush FERC did nothing but shake their fingers at the industry (the lone Democrat on the board flung up his hands over the three other Bush-appointees who allowed the light sentencing of the industry criminals). Get ready to bend over for Bush and Cheney's pals again.
Officials Warn Blackout Could Be Repeated
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The power industry's disregard of its rules intended to ensure the reliable flow of electricity contributed significantly to last summer's blackout in eight states and Canada, investigators said Monday in their final report.
Another major outage could happen unless reliability regulations, with clear penalties for violators, are put in place, according to the report by a joint U.S.-Canadian task force.
It also recommended more independence for the private industry-sponsored group that writes voluntary requirements for power grids.
"The report makes clear that this blackout could have been prevented and that immediate actions must be taken in both the United States and Canada to ensure that our electric system is more reliable," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said.
The blackout came on Aug. 14, darkening all or parts of eight states from Michigan to New York and affecting areas of Canada. An interim report in November from the task force outlined many problems, but Congress has failed to address them.
The Bush administration and many lawmakers agree on the need to end the industry's regulation of itself. Attempts to have the government impose reliability standards have gotten tangled up in broader disagreements on Capitol Hill over energy legislation.
The report Monday said none of the information received during the past four months "have changed the validity" of its interim findings in November. Those conclusions were that the blackout should have been prevented; that it originated with power line problems in Ohio; and that the outages rapidly cascaded because of communications problems, faulty equipment and inadequate training.
The final report, as did the earlier one, leveled much of the blame on Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp., which it said failed to adequate recognize or respond to problems on three of its Ohio lines. Investigators also found inadequate monitoring of events by the regional grid system operator.
FirstEnergy has contended that the grid problems were more widespread.
But the final report also said investigators found "additional violations of reliability requirements and institutional and performance deficiencies beyond those identified" in November.
"First and foremost, compliance with reliability rules must be made mandatory with substantial penalties for noncompliance," said Abraham and Canadian Natural Resource Minister John Efford, who led the task force.
The power industry has an array of voluntary requirements aimed at preventing blackouts. They are administered by the private North American Reliability Council, which lacks the ability to hand down penalties.
Many reliability rules were ignored and the council could not do much about it, investigators have found.
The task force recommended finding new ways to fund the council and its regional affiliates "to ensure their independence from the parties that they oversee."
__________________________________________________________________
Officials Warn Blackout Could Be Repeated
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The power industry's disregard of its rules intended to ensure the reliable flow of electricity contributed significantly to last summer's blackout in eight states and Canada, investigators said Monday in their final report.
Another major outage could happen unless reliability regulations, with clear penalties for violators, are put in place, according to the report by a joint U.S.-Canadian task force.
It also recommended more independence for the private industry-sponsored group that writes voluntary requirements for power grids.
"The report makes clear that this blackout could have been prevented and that immediate actions must be taken in both the United States and Canada to ensure that our electric system is more reliable," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said.
The blackout came on Aug. 14, darkening all or parts of eight states from Michigan to New York and affecting areas of Canada. An interim report in November from the task force outlined many problems, but Congress has failed to address them.
The Bush administration and many lawmakers agree on the need to end the industry's regulation of itself. Attempts to have the government impose reliability standards have gotten tangled up in broader disagreements on Capitol Hill over energy legislation.
The report Monday said none of the information received during the past four months "have changed the validity" of its interim findings in November. Those conclusions were that the blackout should have been prevented; that it originated with power line problems in Ohio; and that the outages rapidly cascaded because of communications problems, faulty equipment and inadequate training.
The final report, as did the earlier one, leveled much of the blame on Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp., which it said failed to adequate recognize or respond to problems on three of its Ohio lines. Investigators also found inadequate monitoring of events by the regional grid system operator.
FirstEnergy has contended that the grid problems were more widespread.
But the final report also said investigators found "additional violations of reliability requirements and institutional and performance deficiencies beyond those identified" in November.
"First and foremost, compliance with reliability rules must be made mandatory with substantial penalties for noncompliance," said Abraham and Canadian Natural Resource Minister John Efford, who led the task force.
The power industry has an array of voluntary requirements aimed at preventing blackouts. They are administered by the private North American Reliability Council, which lacks the ability to hand down penalties.
Many reliability rules were ignored and the council could not do much about it, investigators have found.
The task force recommended finding new ways to fund the council and its regional affiliates "to ensure their independence from the parties that they oversee."
__________________________________________________________________
April 5, 2004 NY TIMES
New to the Job, Rice Focused on More Traditional Fears
(Meaning she was out of her league and ignored the Clinton national security team's warnings on terrorism ---Sam)
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, April 4 — Condoleezza Rice was, perhaps, in the best position to galvanize the government to prevent terrorist attacks before Sept. 11, 2001. As national security adviser she sat at the nexus of the intelligence, foreign policy, defense and law enforcement agencies who shared responsibility for counterterrorism.
That is why, as the White House scrambles to defend against charges that President Bush and his advisers paid too little heed before Sept. 11 to potential for terror attacks on American soil, Ms. Rice finds herself at the center of the storm.
On Thursday, testifying publicly in front of the commission examining the attacks, she will be pressed to square her account of events — one of heightened alerts and the development of new policies to oust Al Qaeda and the Taliban — with accusations by Richard A. Clarke, who served under her as counterterrorism adviser, that the new administration paid far less attention to these threats than President Clinton's did. Her task seemed to become even more difficult on Sunday, when the leaders of the commission said that it was likely to conclude that the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.
Senior White House aides concede that Mr. Bush has a huge amount riding on how Ms. Rice does. "She's the one who can make our most forceful case," one close colleague of Ms. Rice said this weekend. "They don't call her the Warrior Princess for nothing," a reference to the moniker her staff gave her after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But a review of the record, from testimony and interviews, suggests that Ms. Rice faces a daunting challenge because her own focus until Sept. 11 was usually fixed on matters other than terrorism, for reasons that had to do with her own background, her management style and the unusually close, personal nature of her relationship with Mr. Bush.
Coit Blacker, a longtime friend and colleague of Ms. Rice at Stanford who is now director of that university's Institute for International Studies, said any blind spots she had upon taking office in January 2001 might have been rooted in the fact that she emerged from a generation of scholars trained to focus on great-power politics, with terrorism seen as a troubling but subordinate element.
"It wasn't until after Sept. 11 that most of us realized that for the first time in human history," Mr. Blacker said, "a nonstate actor, a group of religious extremists at the very bottom of the international system, had the capability to inflict devastating damage on the very pinnacle of the international system."
Ms. Rice, who is 49, is widely recognized as one of the most poised and effective public advocates of the administration, and she won praise from Democrats and Republicans for her private testimony before the commission. Even so, as she prepares for her public testimony this week, friends have been warning her that her personal style — which combines fierce loyalty to the president with the abiding self-confidence of a woman who ascended to powerful jobs, including the No. 2 post at Stanford, at a young age — leaves her prone to two potential missteps.
One would be to reveal the depth of her anger toward Mr. Clarke, who she believes she protected against those who wanted to oust him because of his closeness to the Clinton White House. Directly contradicting him, her colleagues fear, would exacerbate the politically polarizing debate that has captivated Washington for more than two weeks.
The other possible minefield, they said, would be to give no ground, to offer no room for self-doubt that the issue was handled with the right urgency and the right approach.
"Her attention was surely engaged," said another former senior official, also an admirer, who dealt with her every day on these issues before and after Sept. 11. "Did she register how serious the threat was to the United States of America? I don't know; that's what she'll have to answer."
Still, the reality is that Ms. Rice has virtually no public utterances about Al Qaeda to point to as evidence that she was as engaged in the issue as she was in Mr. Bush's other foreign policy agendas.
In February 2001, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told Congress that terrorism was the top threat facing the United States.
Even four months later, as intelligence warnings about possible attacks by Al Qaeda began to surge, a June 2001 address that Dr. Rice delivered to Council on Foreign Relations on "Foreign Policy Priorities and Challenges of the Administration" made no mention of terrorism.
And the next month, speaking with a correspondent over a cup of coffee under an outdoor cafe umbrella during Mr. Bush's first major summit of world leaders in Genoa, Italy — a meeting many feared could become a Qaeda target — she expressed concern about the frenzy of terror reports, but indicated her biggest worry was a strike in the Mideast.
By the time she reached Genoa, Ms. Rice had already changed the nature of the National Security Council. She cut the staff by roughly 10 percent, though accurate numbers are elusive because the White House office is often staffed by employees on the payroll at the State Department, the C.I.A. or other agencies.
Her concern, dating back to her days as a young member of the council staff, was that the organization should look for problems that fell through the cracks, and to adjudicate disputes between agencies. But it was the cabinet agencies, she believed, that had to act on policy, whether it was renegotiating the anti-ballistic missile treaty or applying resources to fight terrorists.
Ms. Rice also created a hierarchical, corporate style in which she largely delegated policy development to others. To oversee the creation of a new strategy on counterterrorism, she relied on her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley. For Ms. Rice, in part, that preserved time to concentrate on issues more familiar to her, to tutor Mr. Bush and to translate his instincts and decisions into policy.
Administration officials said that even in the context of fighting terrorism, Ms. Rice was reluctant to budge from other matters that were higher on her agenda. They said that concern about an attack on the United States was usually in the context of the potential for a missile from North Korea or another rogue state, buttressing the case for missile defense.
Her public speeches and interviews tended to focus on more orthodox foreign-policy issues, including relations with China (particularly after an American surveillance plane was forced down there in the early weeks of the administration); the new relationship with Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader; and the threat posed by Iraq and Iran, all of which she had emphasized in a lengthy essay in the January 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs. That essay became the blueprint for Bush's presidential campaign, in which he never mentioned Osama bin Laden or the Qaeda network.
Indeed, Ms. Rice's biggest vulnerability may have been that when she came to Washington in 2001, she was determined to quickly tackle three tasks that had little to do with terrorism: refocusing the nation's diplomacy on big-power politics, chiefly Russia and China; fulfilling Mr. Bush's pledge of a missile-defense system; and steamlining the security council, getting it out of what she called "operational matters."
Her background, as she acknowledged, was as "a Europeanist." And when she briefly dropped her self-confident tone, Ms. Rice, then a professor and former provost at Stanford, said in an interview in June 2000 that as a campaign adviser to Mr. Bush, she found herself "pressed to understand parts of the world that have not been part of my scope."
Among those relatively unfamiliar issues was the rise of radical Islamic movements in the Mideast and South Asia. Ms. Rice has said "we did everything we knew how to do" to combat terrorism in the months before the attack.
Ms. Rice openly concedes that her world view, and her priorities, have greatly changed since Sept. 11. The N.S.C. is now larger and more operational than ever, particularly since Ms. Rice, unhappy with the way the Defense and State Departments were running occupied Iraq, pulled the issue back into the White House under a new organization that reports directly to her.
A former senior administration official who has worked closely with Ms. Rice over the years painted this retrospective portrait of her as she took office in 2001: "She's a quick study, she's very smart, she has an orderly mind, and she has great self-confidence. On the other hand, she suffers in that she doesn't have a really broad background, especially in the history of different areas. So she's good on Russia, pretty good on Europe, but it drops off pretty sharply from there."
As she moved into her corner office in the West Wing of the White House, the need to retain expertise on issues related to terrorism was part of the reason she asked Mr. Clarke, President Clinton's counterterrorism chief on the N.S.C. staff, to stay on in that post. Even so, Mr. Clarke recalls, she also suggested at their first meeting that some of his day-to-day duties should be moved back to government departments, where she thought they belonged.
To what extent any failures in the Bush White House's response to terrorism should be laid at Ms. Rice's feet is a matter of some debate. Her insistence that the National Security Council play less of an operational role than in the past was one reason for the prickly relationship between her and Mr. Clarke, who as the senior director for counterterrorism had less access to high-level officials under Mr. Bush than he did under President Clinton.
Junior in age and experience to advisers like Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state, and Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, Ms. Rice was also seen by some aides as more deferential than some of her predecessors. But as a friend, confidante and sometime workout partner as well as adviser to the president, Ms. Rice enjoyed by far the closest personal ties with Mr. Bush of any foreign-policy adviser.
"She's established a very good relationship with the president, and that is critical," said Brent Scowcroft, who as national security adviser under President Bush's father hired Ms. Rice onto the security council staff as an expert on the Soviet Union. "If you don't have that relationship, you're nowhere."
She told her staff in the opening days of the administration that she had an open door and asked for memorandums describing the most urgent problems facing them. Mr. Clarke responded with a lengthy e-mail message on Jan. 25 that he describes as presenting a full plan to combat Al Qaeda. Ms. Rice viewed it differently. "It was a hodgepodge of ideas about how to make life miserable for Osama bin Laden," said an official who has reviewed the still-classified memorandum.
The turning over of such issues to Mr. Hadley, Ms. Rice's alter ego in the N.S.C., has been a common practice in the White House. Precisely organized and deeply connected to the neoconservative wing of the administration, Mr. Hadley is a quiet bureaucratic operator who has said he knows it is his place to operate behind the scenes. He once joked that a middle-aged lawyer "shouldn't expect to have Condi's star power."
Mr. Clarke clearly chafed under the new management style. In the Clinton White House he dealt often with the "principals," the secretary of defense and the secretary of state, among others; in the Bush White House he was expected to deal with Mr. Hadley and Ms. Rice. He frequently skipped their morning meeting of senior directors of the N.S.C. He said he was too busy.
"Condi saw it as a dis," said one of her closest aides.
She sent him two stiff e-mail messages. "Look, I know how to manage people," Ms. Rice told reporters last month, "and I asked him to come once. We continued to have a problem. I asked him to come twice. We didn't have a problem after that."
_____________________________________________________________________________
New to the Job, Rice Focused on More Traditional Fears
(Meaning she was out of her league and ignored the Clinton national security team's warnings on terrorism ---Sam)
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, April 4 — Condoleezza Rice was, perhaps, in the best position to galvanize the government to prevent terrorist attacks before Sept. 11, 2001. As national security adviser she sat at the nexus of the intelligence, foreign policy, defense and law enforcement agencies who shared responsibility for counterterrorism.
That is why, as the White House scrambles to defend against charges that President Bush and his advisers paid too little heed before Sept. 11 to potential for terror attacks on American soil, Ms. Rice finds herself at the center of the storm.
On Thursday, testifying publicly in front of the commission examining the attacks, she will be pressed to square her account of events — one of heightened alerts and the development of new policies to oust Al Qaeda and the Taliban — with accusations by Richard A. Clarke, who served under her as counterterrorism adviser, that the new administration paid far less attention to these threats than President Clinton's did. Her task seemed to become even more difficult on Sunday, when the leaders of the commission said that it was likely to conclude that the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.
Senior White House aides concede that Mr. Bush has a huge amount riding on how Ms. Rice does. "She's the one who can make our most forceful case," one close colleague of Ms. Rice said this weekend. "They don't call her the Warrior Princess for nothing," a reference to the moniker her staff gave her after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But a review of the record, from testimony and interviews, suggests that Ms. Rice faces a daunting challenge because her own focus until Sept. 11 was usually fixed on matters other than terrorism, for reasons that had to do with her own background, her management style and the unusually close, personal nature of her relationship with Mr. Bush.
Coit Blacker, a longtime friend and colleague of Ms. Rice at Stanford who is now director of that university's Institute for International Studies, said any blind spots she had upon taking office in January 2001 might have been rooted in the fact that she emerged from a generation of scholars trained to focus on great-power politics, with terrorism seen as a troubling but subordinate element.
"It wasn't until after Sept. 11 that most of us realized that for the first time in human history," Mr. Blacker said, "a nonstate actor, a group of religious extremists at the very bottom of the international system, had the capability to inflict devastating damage on the very pinnacle of the international system."
Ms. Rice, who is 49, is widely recognized as one of the most poised and effective public advocates of the administration, and she won praise from Democrats and Republicans for her private testimony before the commission. Even so, as she prepares for her public testimony this week, friends have been warning her that her personal style — which combines fierce loyalty to the president with the abiding self-confidence of a woman who ascended to powerful jobs, including the No. 2 post at Stanford, at a young age — leaves her prone to two potential missteps.
One would be to reveal the depth of her anger toward Mr. Clarke, who she believes she protected against those who wanted to oust him because of his closeness to the Clinton White House. Directly contradicting him, her colleagues fear, would exacerbate the politically polarizing debate that has captivated Washington for more than two weeks.
The other possible minefield, they said, would be to give no ground, to offer no room for self-doubt that the issue was handled with the right urgency and the right approach.
"Her attention was surely engaged," said another former senior official, also an admirer, who dealt with her every day on these issues before and after Sept. 11. "Did she register how serious the threat was to the United States of America? I don't know; that's what she'll have to answer."
Still, the reality is that Ms. Rice has virtually no public utterances about Al Qaeda to point to as evidence that she was as engaged in the issue as she was in Mr. Bush's other foreign policy agendas.
In February 2001, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told Congress that terrorism was the top threat facing the United States.
Even four months later, as intelligence warnings about possible attacks by Al Qaeda began to surge, a June 2001 address that Dr. Rice delivered to Council on Foreign Relations on "Foreign Policy Priorities and Challenges of the Administration" made no mention of terrorism.
And the next month, speaking with a correspondent over a cup of coffee under an outdoor cafe umbrella during Mr. Bush's first major summit of world leaders in Genoa, Italy — a meeting many feared could become a Qaeda target — she expressed concern about the frenzy of terror reports, but indicated her biggest worry was a strike in the Mideast.
By the time she reached Genoa, Ms. Rice had already changed the nature of the National Security Council. She cut the staff by roughly 10 percent, though accurate numbers are elusive because the White House office is often staffed by employees on the payroll at the State Department, the C.I.A. or other agencies.
Her concern, dating back to her days as a young member of the council staff, was that the organization should look for problems that fell through the cracks, and to adjudicate disputes between agencies. But it was the cabinet agencies, she believed, that had to act on policy, whether it was renegotiating the anti-ballistic missile treaty or applying resources to fight terrorists.
Ms. Rice also created a hierarchical, corporate style in which she largely delegated policy development to others. To oversee the creation of a new strategy on counterterrorism, she relied on her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley. For Ms. Rice, in part, that preserved time to concentrate on issues more familiar to her, to tutor Mr. Bush and to translate his instincts and decisions into policy.
Administration officials said that even in the context of fighting terrorism, Ms. Rice was reluctant to budge from other matters that were higher on her agenda. They said that concern about an attack on the United States was usually in the context of the potential for a missile from North Korea or another rogue state, buttressing the case for missile defense.
Her public speeches and interviews tended to focus on more orthodox foreign-policy issues, including relations with China (particularly after an American surveillance plane was forced down there in the early weeks of the administration); the new relationship with Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader; and the threat posed by Iraq and Iran, all of which she had emphasized in a lengthy essay in the January 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs. That essay became the blueprint for Bush's presidential campaign, in which he never mentioned Osama bin Laden or the Qaeda network.
Indeed, Ms. Rice's biggest vulnerability may have been that when she came to Washington in 2001, she was determined to quickly tackle three tasks that had little to do with terrorism: refocusing the nation's diplomacy on big-power politics, chiefly Russia and China; fulfilling Mr. Bush's pledge of a missile-defense system; and steamlining the security council, getting it out of what she called "operational matters."
Her background, as she acknowledged, was as "a Europeanist." And when she briefly dropped her self-confident tone, Ms. Rice, then a professor and former provost at Stanford, said in an interview in June 2000 that as a campaign adviser to Mr. Bush, she found herself "pressed to understand parts of the world that have not been part of my scope."
Among those relatively unfamiliar issues was the rise of radical Islamic movements in the Mideast and South Asia. Ms. Rice has said "we did everything we knew how to do" to combat terrorism in the months before the attack.
Ms. Rice openly concedes that her world view, and her priorities, have greatly changed since Sept. 11. The N.S.C. is now larger and more operational than ever, particularly since Ms. Rice, unhappy with the way the Defense and State Departments were running occupied Iraq, pulled the issue back into the White House under a new organization that reports directly to her.
A former senior administration official who has worked closely with Ms. Rice over the years painted this retrospective portrait of her as she took office in 2001: "She's a quick study, she's very smart, she has an orderly mind, and she has great self-confidence. On the other hand, she suffers in that she doesn't have a really broad background, especially in the history of different areas. So she's good on Russia, pretty good on Europe, but it drops off pretty sharply from there."
As she moved into her corner office in the West Wing of the White House, the need to retain expertise on issues related to terrorism was part of the reason she asked Mr. Clarke, President Clinton's counterterrorism chief on the N.S.C. staff, to stay on in that post. Even so, Mr. Clarke recalls, she also suggested at their first meeting that some of his day-to-day duties should be moved back to government departments, where she thought they belonged.
To what extent any failures in the Bush White House's response to terrorism should be laid at Ms. Rice's feet is a matter of some debate. Her insistence that the National Security Council play less of an operational role than in the past was one reason for the prickly relationship between her and Mr. Clarke, who as the senior director for counterterrorism had less access to high-level officials under Mr. Bush than he did under President Clinton.
Junior in age and experience to advisers like Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state, and Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, Ms. Rice was also seen by some aides as more deferential than some of her predecessors. But as a friend, confidante and sometime workout partner as well as adviser to the president, Ms. Rice enjoyed by far the closest personal ties with Mr. Bush of any foreign-policy adviser.
"She's established a very good relationship with the president, and that is critical," said Brent Scowcroft, who as national security adviser under President Bush's father hired Ms. Rice onto the security council staff as an expert on the Soviet Union. "If you don't have that relationship, you're nowhere."
She told her staff in the opening days of the administration that she had an open door and asked for memorandums describing the most urgent problems facing them. Mr. Clarke responded with a lengthy e-mail message on Jan. 25 that he describes as presenting a full plan to combat Al Qaeda. Ms. Rice viewed it differently. "It was a hodgepodge of ideas about how to make life miserable for Osama bin Laden," said an official who has reviewed the still-classified memorandum.
The turning over of such issues to Mr. Hadley, Ms. Rice's alter ego in the N.S.C., has been a common practice in the White House. Precisely organized and deeply connected to the neoconservative wing of the administration, Mr. Hadley is a quiet bureaucratic operator who has said he knows it is his place to operate behind the scenes. He once joked that a middle-aged lawyer "shouldn't expect to have Condi's star power."
Mr. Clarke clearly chafed under the new management style. In the Clinton White House he dealt often with the "principals," the secretary of defense and the secretary of state, among others; in the Bush White House he was expected to deal with Mr. Hadley and Ms. Rice. He frequently skipped their morning meeting of senior directors of the N.S.C. He said he was too busy.
"Condi saw it as a dis," said one of her closest aides.
She sent him two stiff e-mail messages. "Look, I know how to manage people," Ms. Rice told reporters last month, "and I asked him to come once. We continued to have a problem. I asked him to come twice. We didn't have a problem after that."
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April 5, 2004 NY TIMES
Leaders of 9/11 Panel Say Attacks Were Probably Preventable
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, April 4 — The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed Sunday that evidence gathered by their panel showed the attacks could probably have been prevented.
Their remarks drew sharp disagreement from one of President Bush's closest political advisers, who insisted that the Bush and Clinton administrations had no opportunity to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot. They also offered a preview of the difficult questions likely to confront Condoleezza Rice when she testifies before the panel at a long-awaited public hearing this week.
In a joint television interview, the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, indicated that their final report this summer would find that the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.
They also suggested that Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, would be questioned aggressively on Thursday about why the administration had not taken more action against Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, and about discrepancies between her public statements and those of Richard A. Clarke, the president's former counterterrorism chief, who has accused the administration of largely ignoring terrorist threats in 2001.
"The whole story might have been different," Mr. Kean said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," outlining a series of intelligence and law enforcement blunders in the months and years before the attacks.
"There are so many threads and so many things, individual things, that happened," he said. "If we had been able to put those people on the watch list of the airlines, the two who were in the country; again, if we'd stopped some of these people at the borders; if we had acted earlier on Al Qaeda when Al Qaeda was smaller and just getting started."
Mr. Kean also cited the "lack of coordination within the F.B.I." and the bureau's failures to grapple with the implications of the August 2001 arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was arrested while in flight school and was later linked to the terrorist cell that carried out the attacks.
Commission officials say current and former officials of the F.B.I., especially the former director Louis J. Freeh, and Attorney General John Ashcroft are expected to be harshly questioned by the 10-member panel at a hearing later this month about the Moussaoui case and other law enforcement failures before Sept. 11.
Mr. Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Intelligence and International Relations committees, said, "There are a lot of ifs; you can string together a whole bunch of ifs, and if things had broken right in all kinds of different ways, as the governor has identified, and frankly if you'd had a little luck, it probably could have been prevented." He said the panel would "make a final judgment on that, I believe, when the commission reports."
Mr. Kean has made similar remarks in the past, but commission officials said it appeared to be the first time Mr. Hamilton, the chief Democrat on the panel, had said publicly that he believed the attacks could have been prevented.
Mr. Kean and other members of the commission also agreed in interviews Sunday that the Bush administration's skepticism about the Clinton administration's national security policies might have led the Bush White House to pay too little attention to the threat of Al Qaeda.
Also appearing on "Meet the Press," Karen P. Hughes, one of Mr. Bush's closest political advisers and an important strategist for his re-election campaign, rejected the suggestion that the attacks could have been prevented.
"I just don't think, based on everything I know, and I was there, that there was anything that anyone in government could have done to have put together the pieces before the horror of that day," Ms. Hughes said. "If we could have in either administration, either in the eight years of the Clinton administration or the seven and a half months of the Bush administration, I'm convinced we would have done so."
Since Mr. Clarke made his charges against the Bush administration in a new book and in highly publicized testimony before the Sept. 11 commission, public opinion polls have suggested that while Mr. Bush's overall approval rating is unchanged, public support for his handling of terrorism has slipped.
The commission has said it intends to make its final report public on July 26, which Congress has set as the commission's deadline, although Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said there could be a struggle with the White House over whether the full document can be declassified. Large portions of the Congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks remain secret at the insistence of the White House.
Mr. Kean said Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush's chief of staff, had set up a special declassification team to "look at the report in an expedited manner and try to get it out just as fast as possible — nobody has an interest in this thing coming out in September or October in the middle of the election."
Despite allegations from Congressional Republican leaders that Mr. Clarke is not telling the truth, he received new support for his account on Sunday from a prominent Senate Republican, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
On the ABC News program "This Week," Mr. Lugar said he did not recall any contradictions between Mr. Clarke's testimony to the Sept. 11 commission and information he had previously provided to the joint Congressional investigation of the attacks. Asked if he would join his Republican colleagues in attacking Mr. Clarke's credibility, Senator Lugar replied, "I wouldn't go there."
The commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is expected to send staff members to the White House on Monday to begin reviewing thousands of classified Clinton-administration foreign policy documents that the White House acknowledged last week it had not turned over.
Responding to criticism from former Clinton aides, the White House explained that it had withheld the files from the commission because they duplicated other material, were not responsive to the commission's requests or contained "highly sensitive" national security information. The White House has agreed to allow the commission's staff to review the documents but has made no promise on giving any of them to the panel.
"We have to ascertain for ourselves that we have had access to what we need," said a commission spokesman, Al Felzenberg.
_______________________________________________________________________
Leaders of 9/11 Panel Say Attacks Were Probably Preventable
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, April 4 — The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed Sunday that evidence gathered by their panel showed the attacks could probably have been prevented.
Their remarks drew sharp disagreement from one of President Bush's closest political advisers, who insisted that the Bush and Clinton administrations had no opportunity to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot. They also offered a preview of the difficult questions likely to confront Condoleezza Rice when she testifies before the panel at a long-awaited public hearing this week.
In a joint television interview, the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, indicated that their final report this summer would find that the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.
They also suggested that Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, would be questioned aggressively on Thursday about why the administration had not taken more action against Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, and about discrepancies between her public statements and those of Richard A. Clarke, the president's former counterterrorism chief, who has accused the administration of largely ignoring terrorist threats in 2001.
"The whole story might have been different," Mr. Kean said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," outlining a series of intelligence and law enforcement blunders in the months and years before the attacks.
"There are so many threads and so many things, individual things, that happened," he said. "If we had been able to put those people on the watch list of the airlines, the two who were in the country; again, if we'd stopped some of these people at the borders; if we had acted earlier on Al Qaeda when Al Qaeda was smaller and just getting started."
Mr. Kean also cited the "lack of coordination within the F.B.I." and the bureau's failures to grapple with the implications of the August 2001 arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was arrested while in flight school and was later linked to the terrorist cell that carried out the attacks.
Commission officials say current and former officials of the F.B.I., especially the former director Louis J. Freeh, and Attorney General John Ashcroft are expected to be harshly questioned by the 10-member panel at a hearing later this month about the Moussaoui case and other law enforcement failures before Sept. 11.
Mr. Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Intelligence and International Relations committees, said, "There are a lot of ifs; you can string together a whole bunch of ifs, and if things had broken right in all kinds of different ways, as the governor has identified, and frankly if you'd had a little luck, it probably could have been prevented." He said the panel would "make a final judgment on that, I believe, when the commission reports."
Mr. Kean has made similar remarks in the past, but commission officials said it appeared to be the first time Mr. Hamilton, the chief Democrat on the panel, had said publicly that he believed the attacks could have been prevented.
Mr. Kean and other members of the commission also agreed in interviews Sunday that the Bush administration's skepticism about the Clinton administration's national security policies might have led the Bush White House to pay too little attention to the threat of Al Qaeda.
Also appearing on "Meet the Press," Karen P. Hughes, one of Mr. Bush's closest political advisers and an important strategist for his re-election campaign, rejected the suggestion that the attacks could have been prevented.
"I just don't think, based on everything I know, and I was there, that there was anything that anyone in government could have done to have put together the pieces before the horror of that day," Ms. Hughes said. "If we could have in either administration, either in the eight years of the Clinton administration or the seven and a half months of the Bush administration, I'm convinced we would have done so."
Since Mr. Clarke made his charges against the Bush administration in a new book and in highly publicized testimony before the Sept. 11 commission, public opinion polls have suggested that while Mr. Bush's overall approval rating is unchanged, public support for his handling of terrorism has slipped.
The commission has said it intends to make its final report public on July 26, which Congress has set as the commission's deadline, although Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said there could be a struggle with the White House over whether the full document can be declassified. Large portions of the Congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks remain secret at the insistence of the White House.
Mr. Kean said Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush's chief of staff, had set up a special declassification team to "look at the report in an expedited manner and try to get it out just as fast as possible — nobody has an interest in this thing coming out in September or October in the middle of the election."
Despite allegations from Congressional Republican leaders that Mr. Clarke is not telling the truth, he received new support for his account on Sunday from a prominent Senate Republican, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
On the ABC News program "This Week," Mr. Lugar said he did not recall any contradictions between Mr. Clarke's testimony to the Sept. 11 commission and information he had previously provided to the joint Congressional investigation of the attacks. Asked if he would join his Republican colleagues in attacking Mr. Clarke's credibility, Senator Lugar replied, "I wouldn't go there."
The commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is expected to send staff members to the White House on Monday to begin reviewing thousands of classified Clinton-administration foreign policy documents that the White House acknowledged last week it had not turned over.
Responding to criticism from former Clinton aides, the White House explained that it had withheld the files from the commission because they duplicated other material, were not responsive to the commission's requests or contained "highly sensitive" national security information. The White House has agreed to allow the commission's staff to review the documents but has made no promise on giving any of them to the panel.
"We have to ascertain for ourselves that we have had access to what we need," said a commission spokesman, Al Felzenberg.
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