this is from late Feb or first week in March 2003
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CBS's Dan Rather tells BBC reporter Palast that US reporters are too afraid to ask questions
On my BBC television show, Newsnight, an American journalist confessed that, since the 9/11 attacks, U.S. reporters are simply too afraid to ask the uncomfortable questions that could kill careers: "It's an obscene comparison, but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck," Dan Rather said.
Without his makeup, Rather looked drawn, old and defeated in confessing that he too had given in. "It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore in on the tough questions so often."
Investigators were ordered to "back off" from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks....
The reports I did based on this information won the California State University School of Journalism's Project Censored Award in 2002. It's not the kind of prize you want to win -- it's given to crucial stories that were effectively banned from U.S. airwaves and papers.3 I don't want any misunderstanding here, so I must emphasize what we did not find: We uncovered no information, none whatsoever, that George W. Bush had any advance knowledge of the plan to attack the World Trade Center on 9/11, nor, heaven forbid, any involvement in the attack.
FBI Document 199I
What we did discover was serious enough. To begin with, from less-than-happy FBI agents we obtained an interesting document, some 30 pages long, marked "SECRET." I've reproduced a couple of pages here (figure 2.1). Note the designation "199I" -- that's FBI-speak for "national security matter." According to insiders, FBI agents had wanted to check into two members of the bin Laden family, Abdullah and Omar, but were told to stay away by superiors -- until September 13, 2001. By then, Abdullah and Omar were long gone from the United States.
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