The Kos-Brand Deniers and Fake Truth Movement Begin Their Convergence...

Jon Gold could've written the comment in bold...

for more on the history of 9/11 Denial at Kos, see: http://wtcdemolition.com/blog/node/1410

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/16/709036/-9-11-Report-Facts-Obtain...

9/11 Report Facts Obtained From Tortured Prisoners
by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 06:47:36 PM PDT
Today, most people know that the US tortured prisoners at Guantánamo and CIA black sites. Experts have been clear that torture does not produce reliable information. The response is often yeah, torture is the only way to save Americans from a mushroom cloud tomorrow. Cripes, it works for Jack Bauer!

Even if you believe torture is permissible for national security reasons, is torture an acceptable method for a Congressionally-established commission to obtain facts? News reports indicate that 25% of the information about the 9/11 attacks came from prisoners who were tortured. The 9/11 Commission was responsible for providing a complete accounting of the attacks, including "recommendations designed to guard against future attacks." Just how safe is America when it is relying upon recommendations based upon facts obtained by torture?

Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse's diary :: ::
Newsweek is now reporting that the 9/11 commission relied upon information obtained from prisoners who were tortured. The 9/11 report documented in detailed footnotes when information was obtained from the CIA interrogations of prisoners. NBC news conducted an analysis that found that ¼ of the footnotes referenced the source of the facts to prisoners who were subjected to the euphemistic "enhanced interrogation techniques" or what many admit now was torture. The NBC News analysis was based on the final 9/11 report as well as interviews with Commission staffers and current/former intelligence officials.

According to both current and former senior U.S. intelligence officials, the operatives cited by the Commission were subjected to the harshest of the CIA’s methods, the "enhanced interrogation techniques." The techniques included physical and mental abuse, exposure to extreme heat and cold, sleep deprivation and waterboarding.

The torture evidence was cited to establish key parts of critical sections of the 9/11 report:

The NBC News analysis shows that more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida operatives who were subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations is central to the Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks. The analysis also shows - and agency and commission staffers concur - there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, done specifically to answer new questions from the Commission.

The CIA claims that only 3 prisoners were waterboarded: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks; Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda's operations chief; and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, ringleader of the USS Cole bombing." The 9/11 report cites information from KSM and Zubaydah "throughout two key chapters" of the report addressing the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks.

Evidence tainted by torture is excluded from criminal trials because it is inherently unreliable, yet, key parts of a Congressional report that will be used to establish policy are based on torture.

What does it say about America that a Congressionally established committee apparently ignored "obvious clues throughout 2003 and 2004 that its account of the 9/11 plot and Al Qaeda's history relied heavily on information obtained" from tortured prisoners? The NBC report states that the 9/11 Commission "suspected that critical information it used in its landmark report" was the product of the "enhanced interrogations" that many call by its rightful name of torture.

The 9/11 panel also did not publicly protest the interrogation methods even though there were public reports at the time that the prisoners were being tortured or subjected to "enhanced interrogation." Moreover, despite their suspicions and public news reports, the position of the commission staffers interviewed by NBC News was that interrogation techniques were "not in our mandate."

Finally, the commission "demanded that the CIA carry out new rounds of interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions." Newsweek reports that it is a "distinct possibility" that prisoners were subjected to torture in order to answer the questions posed by the 9/11 Commission. Commission members wanted to have direct access to the prisoners to ask questions, but the Whitehouse refused, so questions were passed onto the CIA. The Commission first requested access to the prisoners in 2004 when the horrors of Abu Ghraib were publicly revealed.

NBC News reported how the Commission "pushed" the CIA to obtain information from the prisoners:

In addition, officials of both the 9/11 Commission and CIA confirm the Commission specifically asked the agency to push the operatives on a new round of interrogations months after their first interrogations. The Commission, in fact, supplied specific questions for the operatives to the agency. This new round took place in early 2004, when the agency was still engaged in the full range of harsh techniques.

Newsweek notes the "troubling implications for the credibility of the commission’s final report" given that testimony obtained by torture is "typically discredited." Commission staffers knew this to be the case:

9/11 Commission staffers say they "guessed" but did not know for certain that harsh techniques had been used, and they were concerned that the techniques had affected the operatives’ credibility. At least four of the operatives whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators critical information as a way to stop being "tortured."

The 9/11 Commission executive director, Philip Zelikow, stated that they did not know for sure that prisoners were tortured to obtain this information, but "we guessed that things like that were going on" and so "we tried to find different sources to enhance our credibility."

Former Senator Bob Kerrey, who was a commission member, said that we may need a "permanent 9/11 commission" to resolve the "mysteries of September 11" as even he now believes that "there’s reason now to suspect that we may have gotten some of the details wrong."

The NBC News analysis was reported on its investigative blog site a year ago. Aside from an interview conducted at the time by Democracy Now!, there has not been much press coverage until the Newsweek article this week. Have there been other times when prisoners were tortured to provide information to other committees? For whatever reason that members of the 9/11 Commission did not yell this story to the public years ago, why not come forward now?

Our options for finding out the truth are being wiped away bit by bit. Will there ever be public trials of the prisoners? How many lawsuits filed by prisoners will be dismissed rather than proceed to a public trial? Congress is discussing various proposals for investigations, but what will be the scope of those inquiries and the rules for whether immunity is provided? And, how is a "Truth Commission" based on the model of the 9/11 Commission anything more than a sham, particularly knowing that it used evidence obtained from torture? If a special prosecutor is not appointed to conduct a truly open and independent inquiry, we may never learn the truth about the nature and extent to which our government tortured prisoners and which of our policies are based on tortured evidence.

For many Americans, torture was an abstract concept of events occurring overseas. Now we learn that elected lawmakers and appointed officials turned a blind eye while they used, and perhaps encouraged, torture to obtain "facts" upon which US policy will be based.

Tags: human rights, torture, 9-11 Commission Report (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions

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by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 06:49:08 PM PDT

war crimes trials (13+ / 0-)
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The only way we'll be free of this stuff is if it's brought out into the open. A war crimes tribunal is the right way to do it.

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by Stranded Wind on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 06:49:21 PM PDT

yup, out in the open (11+ / 0-)
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i'm still wondering why this NBC News analysis was done a year ago, and Newsweek reports this week. This is fairly important information to sit on for so long.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 06:55:06 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Shouldn't any information from a prisoner ... (5+ / 0-)
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be corroborated with what others say (or some other corraboration) ?

Esp. if you think of these people as ideologically brainwashed - they are similar to spies who have been caught - how can you take there words at face value anyway ?

Dr Hansen : Time is running out

by nataraj on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 06:53:31 PM PDT

There you go Again (8+ / 0-)
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Being reasonable, thoughtful and moral. Haven't they taught you anything yet??
/snark

by Calfacon on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 06:55:06 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

the newsweek report said the 9/11 (7+ / 0-)
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commission wanted to confirm information because they realized there was credibility issue. but, as newsweek said, how would the commission confirm info from persons tagged a terrorist?

But, experts say the tortured evidence is just bogus.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:01:47 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

This was my thinking through the entire diary (4+ / 0-)
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If these pieces of torture-induced information were used as "footnotes" in the report, does that imply they were the only source of stated assertions for which the footnotes were used?

A single source for significant points in a high-profile report? That would be grossly incompetent, at the very least.

"So, please stay where you are. Don't move and don't panic. Don't take off your shoes! Jobs is on the way."

by wader on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:03:46 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

the 9/11 report was pretty meticulous about (6+ / 0-)
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detailed footnotes for information provided. and at least 2 of the waterboarded prisoners provided a lot of information. but, that would be a case of one tortured prisoner confirming information from another tortured prisoner.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:19:32 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

great, ugh (n/t) (4+ / 0-)
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"So, please stay where you are. Don't move and don't panic. Don't take off your shoes! Jobs is on the way."

by wader on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:40:19 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Tainted intelligence forming the basis (9+ / 0-)
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of policy recommendations during the Bush administration? Mon dieu!

"[R]ather high-minded, if not a bit self-referential"--The Washington Post.

by Geekesque on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 06:57:54 PM PDT

i was surprised to hear the 9/11 commission (5+ / 0-)
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comprised of people like hamilton and kerrey, used evidence obtained from tortured prisoners.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:03:28 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Kerrey wouldn't surprise me at all, but did the (3+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Kimberley, Valtin, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
911 Commissioners know about the mistreatment of the prisoners?

"[R]ather high-minded, if not a bit self-referential"--The Washington Post.

by Geekesque on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:05:37 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

according to both articles, yes, (4+ / 0-)
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did the CIA tell that to the commission? of course not. but the commission suspected it was the case given that at that time the news broke about Abu Ghraib and lots of stories in the media about Bush's "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:10:16 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

That would spotlight Philip Zelikow (7+ / 0-)
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Bushco's watchdog over the commission as its Executive Director.

I really don't believe Zelikow was "guessing."

The truth is we are tortured by the truth.

by walkshills on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:50:34 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

good point. n/t (2+ / 0-)
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Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:53:09 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

An example (5+ / 0-)
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of how torture acts as a universal acid, eating through all morals and ethics, touching everything with its moral oblivion, turning good but weak men and women into accomplices of torture. With those willing to accommodate torture in order to hold or achieve power, it brings evil doom. We may think it has not, but we have not played out the last act of this terrible tragedy yet.

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade Invictus

by Valtin on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:13:22 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

How credible are KSM's claims? (12+ / 0-)
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Take Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's claim of being involved in '31 plots', how credible are his admissions?

From USA Today:

John Sifton, a terrorism expert at Human Rights Watch in New York, said Mohammed's long list of claims is so sweeping it is not credible. "A lot of these things are back-of-the-napkin plans that never took one significant step forward," he said. "Lots of people have dreams … that never go anywhere. You can't claim credit for every last thing."

The transcript of Mohammed's hearing is censored at a key point in an exchange about his claim that he had been tortured in U.S. custody.

The tribunal president asked whether any of the statements Mohammed had made were "because of the treatment." Mohammed's answer is blanked out in midsentence. It reads: "CIA people. Yes. At the beginning when they transferred me … "

"We're disturbed by the fact that the military has redacted the transcript at that precise moment," Sifton said. "The alleged torture of these suspects is one of the main problems that has marred the legal process."

by Magnifico on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 06:58:14 PM PDT

I think KSM shot Kennedy and Lincoln too. (2+ / 0-)
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I don't know why people would be satisfied by the 9/11 commission report. The fact that much of the info was garnered from unreliable torture confessions has been known for several years. While I'm glad the MSM is covering this, this isn't anything new.

I like Michelle more than Barack.

by duha on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:07:20 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

how was it known for several years? (1+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Valtin
the nbc analysis was from a year ago, and then newsweek reported couple days ago.

did other megamedia report earlier, and i just missed?

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:14:19 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

I have seen it online since around the end of (2+ / 0-)
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2005, the fact that much of the 9/11 commission report's facts and storyline came from tortured confessions. I don't think MSM reported it but it's been in alternative news media for a while. I thought it had made that yearly list of the most censored news story in 2006 or 2007.

I like Michelle more than Barack.

by duha on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:19:32 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Not to be a killjoy, if that's the word... (1+ / 0-)
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...but what exactly don't we know regarding the September 11 attacks? It seems to me that all of our significant remaining questions involve not the attacks and attackers, but rather the US government's prior knowledge that attacks were being planned.

Al que no le guste el caldo, le dan dos tazas.

by Rich in PA on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:02:07 PM PDT

the articles say that most of the key info (3+ / 0-)
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that we NOW know came from the tortured prisoners.

but, the issue is really a commission established by congress and involving some elected people used evidence obtained from torture to make recommendations about US policy.

that does not bother you?

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:06:31 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

It doesn't bother me, and you know why? (0+ / 0-)
Because their recommendations weren't taken into account any more than my recommendations were.

Al que no le guste el caldo, le dan dos tazas.

by Rich in PA on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:29:05 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

and using torture to provide info to (3+ / 0-)
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congressional commission is ok too?

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:31:54 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

I think we're losing sight of the issue (0+ / 0-)
It's wrong to torture people. That evidence from tortured people made its way into congressional evidence or a commission report is a trivial, ancillary issue that doesn't deserve a diary except perhaps as a perverse novelty. Especially since everyone on the progressive side of the spectrum already thinks the 9/11 Report was a piece of crap.

Al que no le guste el caldo, le dan dos tazas.

by Rich in PA on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:36:37 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

sorry, but not "trivial, ancillary issue" for me (7+ / 0-)
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this evidence did not just make its way into a congressional report. the commission pushed the CIA to get more information knowing from public reports that the CIA was torturing prisoners during interrogations at that time.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:42:10 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Well said. (4+ / 0-)
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And I agree. Nothing trivial about this.

by Nightprowlkitty on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:44:29 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Well: (2+ / 0-)
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When you run your own site and you get to make the rules, then you can decide what people can and can't write about. Until then, you're not the diary police.

Conservatism is Dead!

by Eternal Hope on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:45:38 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Judge not, lest ye be judged (4+ / 0-)
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http://www.dailykos.com/...

Yell Louder!!! @ Docudharma

by buhdydharma on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:06:21 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

The report may have been a piece of crap (7+ / 0-)
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but your analysis on this issue is a bad case of missing the forest through the trees.

Looked at from another angle, it could have been any damn report. If a government uses tortured evidence for military and intelligence purposes, that's evil, and bad enough (and illegal, and should be prosecuted).

But when torture is used by civil commissions as a basis of investigation, then the entire nation has jumped the shark, and we are in waters so deadly and deep, I don't know how we all don't drown.

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade Invictus

by Valtin on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:16:57 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

valtin! you just stated it so clearly (3+ / 0-)
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i tried to explain this upthread, but your comment really hits the nail on the head! thanks.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:31:38 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

oops, downthread. :) n/t (1+ / 0-)
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Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:32:20 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

I thought you did a pretty good job of it (1+ / 0-)
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IMHO

If I'd first read yours, downthread, I probably wouldn't have bothered to write mine. Rich in PA has his own agenda, seems like a good guy. It's hard when you have hold of one important truth to look up and see another. I know, I've been in that position myself.

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade Invictus

by Valtin on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:39:31 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

what we 'know' is the torture info, that's the (2+ / 0-)
Recommended by:skrekk, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
point. You can either be satisfied and trust everything you got from KSM, including his confession to every single terrorist act in the last 20 years or you can not be satisfied.

I like Michelle more than Barack.

by duha on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:09:08 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

No, I mean without any of their info. (1+ / 0-)
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What the fuck is there to know? 19 guys were trained in Afghanistan to do it, they came to the US in dribs and drabs, and at a certain moment they were called into action to do what they had trained for. I really don't understand what else there is to know, nor do I understand what part of the above narrative is open to any doubt.

Al que no le guste el caldo, le dan dos tazas.

by Rich in PA on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:28:05 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Yes, but beyond that: (2+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Valtin, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
Everything is now open to doubt given the fact that information obtained by torture is not reliable.

Conservatism is Dead!

by Eternal Hope on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:34:45 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

I think I'm going to scream. (0+ / 0-)
"beyond that" I don't care. There isn't anything beyond the thumbnail summary that holds any interest for me. Did they train in Kabul or out in the country? Did they eat cold Chinese food or stale pizza?

I'm not sure what is wrong with this country. We spend a lot of time, money, and angst investigating people who are dead, from the VT shooter to the 19 hijackers. It's a People Magazine mentality.

Al que no le guste el caldo, le dan dos tazas.

by Rich in PA on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:41:16 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

This is not about you. (4+ / 0-)
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This is about bringing to justice one of the most criminal administrations in US history, an administration that planned and executed a war of aggression that resulted in the deaths of millions of people.

Conservatism is Dead!

by Eternal Hope on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:44:16 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

you just don't get it. (5+ / 0-)
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this is not about the 9/11 facts primarily. it's about elected lawmakers and appointed government officials thinking it's ok to use evidence obtained from torture in a commission investigation. this was official government business here in DC halls of Congress not on the battlefields of iraq or afghanistan.

So, if we have a "truth commission" via Whitehouse/Leahy, is it ok for them to get information obtained by torture in order to investigate the torture authorized by bush?

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:51:02 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Exactly!! n/t (3+ / 0-)
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War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade Invictus

by Valtin on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:19:22 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

Uh, it wasn't just 19 guys involved. (0+ / 0-)
Who trained them? Did KSM personally train them? Because there were a lot of ISI officials around. Who paid for the attack? There seems to be money sources coming from U.A.E., Qatar, Saudi Arabia. How did they get into the U.S.? They seem to have gotten help from individuals in Saudi Arabia.

by duha on Thu Mar 19, 2009 at 10:27:29 AM PDT

[ Parent ]

An excellent diary on an important subject (12+ / 0-)
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The very term, "9/11", can still rouse a great deal of emotion and fear. The idea that much of what we thought we knew about 9/11 is based on torture "evidence"/testimony is about as horrifying as anything I can think of.

Truly the use of torture has spread like a poison and infected everything this country does or claims to stand for. It has invaded the very notion of truth and sullied it beyond recognition.

Moreover, this kind of news will give new credence to those who have seen 9/11 as some kind of government conspiracy. While I am no such conspiracist on this issue, there are certainly strange doings around the 9/11 events.

One such unanswered aspect of the affair appeared in respected journalist James Bamford's recent book on the NSA post-9/11, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.

In the first chapter of the book, Bamford reports how Tom Wilshire, a high-level CIA deputy chief at Counter-Terrorism Center, spiked a report on the travel of a known associate of a terror center in Yemen to New York City. From Bamford's book (pp. 19-21 -- emphases added):

Doug Miller, one of three FBI employees at Alec Station, took one look at the faxes and became instantly alarmed. A possible terrorist, whose travel was arranged by bin Laden's ops center, was on his way to a secret al-Qaeda meeting [in Kuala Lampur] and would soon be heading for America's largest city. At 9:20 a.m. [roughly Dec. 1999], started pecking out a message to alert his superiors at FBI headquarters, who could then put [Khalid al] Mihdhar on a watch list to bar him from entry.

But inexplicably, the message -- known as a Central Intelligence Report (CIR) -- was spiked by his CIA boss, Tom Wilshire, the deputy chief of Alec Station. At about 4:00 p.m., one of the CIA analysts assigned to the station, a twenty-nine year old woman, typed a note onto it: "pls hold off on CIR for now per Tom Wilshire." Without Wilshire's approval, Miller could not pass on the information, even verbally. He had done everything by the book....

Miller then told his FBI colleague Mark Rossini what happened. Rossini had spent many years working on terrorism cases in the bureau, from the first World Trade Center bombing to the attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa, and had been assigned to Alec Station for several years. he was both perplexed and outraged that the CIA would forbid the bureau's notification on a matter so important. "Doug came to me and said, 'What the fuck?'" said Rossini, who took the matter up with Wilshire's deputy.... "So the next day I went to her and said, 'What's with Doug's cable. You've got to tell the bureau about this.' She put her hand on her hip and said, 'Look, the next attack is going to happen in Southeast Asia -- it's not the FBI's jurisdiction. When we want the FBI to know about it, we'll let them know. But the next bin Laden attack's going to happen in Southeast Asia.'" It made no sense to Rossini. The potential terrorists were coming to the U.S. -- not to Southeast Asia. Neither Rossini nor miller was questioned by the 9/11 Commission.

"They refused to tell us because they didn't want the FBI... muddying up their operation," said one of the FBI agents assigned to the station....

Having forbidden Miller and Rossini from notifying their headquarters about Mihdhar's planned travel to the U.S., the CIA then proceed to lose Mihdhar and Hamzmi when they took off for a brief visit to Bangkok, en route to the U.S....

On January 14, the chief of Alec Station told senior officals that the search for Khalid al-Mihdhar and the others was still going strong. In fact, it had been over for days. The next day, the FBI agent Doug Miller sent an e-mail to Tom Wilshire asking what happened to his CIR to FBI headquarters warning of Mihdhar's plans to travel to the U.S. "Is this a no-go or should I remake it in some way?" he asked. He never received a response.

At almost the same moment, Mihdhar and Hazmi's plane touched down at Los Angeles International Airport.

Mihdhar and Hazmi died along with everybody else after they helped hijack American Flight 77 and flew it into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Will someone please stop asking for torture information and goddamn ask Tom Wilshire what the hell he was doing suppressing the CIR on Mihdhar. Someone also might want to investigate the coincidental loss of the tail of the two suspected terrorists after they left Kuala Lumpur.

I'm sure this doesn't represent the sum total of unanswered questions about 9/11. The diarist's own article raises a new one: who ordered or approved the use of tortured information in the investigation? They should be headed to jail, and pronto.

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade Invictus

by Valtin on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:26:02 PM PDT

i just find it incredible that a commission (9+ / 0-)
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with elected lawmakers and appointed officials would find it ok to conduct an investigation to determine facts to obtain the truth by using evidence obtained by torture.

Even under bush's own BS rules, torture was used to find out about future terrorism to protect America from a jack bauer type of attack.

And now we find out torture used in congressional fact-finding mission to develop US policy.

So, how else has our government used torture?

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:38:10 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

This is very serious (9+ / 0-)
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What credibility does our government have at this point? You could have a hundred Barack Obamas, and that's taking him without any criticism at all, and still not be able to trust this government.

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade Invictus

by Valtin on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 07:45:29 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

How else has our government used torture? (1+ / 0-)
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A better question might be when since the birth of the CIA from the OSS has the US not used torture? When have we not propagated it to our client states, or looked the other way when they have tortured?

Dubya's legacy: 25 million really pissed Iraqis...50 million shoes

by skrekk on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 11:32:35 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

true, but i'm wondering what other crimes (1+ / 0-)
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have george, dickie et al committed that we might not know about. we can't do much about crimes from way back, but we need a special prosecutor to investigate the full scope of bush using torture for civilian and military uses here and globally.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 11:48:02 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

. (0+ / 0-)

Conservatism is Dead!

by Eternal Hope on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:09:41 PM PDT

I guess it would've been almost impossible (4+ / 0-)
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to talk with someone relevant, who had been caught and wasn't tortured because Bush/Cheney, from what I understand, pretty much tortured everyone they caught in the days between 9/11 and the release of the Commission's report.

I'm not at all saying that's a good thing, mind you - I agree with the diarist that this is significant. But when Bush/Cheney decided to use "enhanced interrogation" they really, really screwed everything up in ways that I'm sure we haven't seen the end of, yet.

This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no foolin' around!

by Snud on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:24:32 PM PDT

exactly, and that is why special prosecutor is (5+ / 0-)
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needed to independently investigate. Knowing that this torture cancer has spread to the halls of Congress is incredible, but we don't know, as you say, where else it has spread.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:34:50 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

I would go somewhat further (5+ / 0-)
Recommended by:skrekk, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, whitewidow, twinpeaks, good grief
most of the information provided by Colin Powell to the UN, particularly the claim the Iraq's mobile chemical weapons labs which came from Curve, and the continuing claims that Iraq was "allied" with Al Qeada" which cam from Ibn Sheik al-Libi. Both of them were torture too.

Add in the Niger forgery and just about everything used to justify the Iraq invasion was clearly based on a lie.

The 9-11 Commission was duped just like Powell and that nation.

Vyan

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by Vyan on Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 08:38:56 PM PDT

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