Andrew Cockburn: Rumsfeld dismissed 9/11 warnings as “vast doses of Al Qaeda disinformation”

[sabra]

This books seems like a must read...

http://harpers.org/sb-six-questio-1171292346.html

Six Questions on Donald Rumsfeld for Andrew Cockburn

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007. If you miss having Donald Rumsfeld to kick around, you'll definitely want to check out Andrew Cockburn's soon-to-be released Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy. Cockburn, who for the past three decades has written on national security issues for such publications as Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, shreds the former secretary of defense, following Rumsfeld's career from his early days in the Nixon Administration (Nixon once called him a “ruthless little bastard”) through his departure last fall. Cockburn's previous books include The Threat, Inside the Soviet Military Machine, and Out of the Ashes, the Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, which he co-authored with his brother, Patrick. By Ken Silverstein.


1. The conventional view in the media is that Rumsfeld was a pillar of strength and acted decisively on 9/11, yet you report that he “deserted his post.” Where was Rumsfeld in the aftermath of the attacks?

It was a typical day for Rumsfeld, in that he didn't do what he was meant to do, which was coordinate the defense of the United States. He's a micromanager. When he heard a plane had hit the building, he didn't stop to think about what it meant, he wandered outside without telling anyone—to have a look. It's what you or I might have done, but you and I weren't the secretary of defense. It finally dawned on him that he might have a job to do, but even then, the plane hit the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m. and he didn't arrive at the National Military Command Center until about 10:30. They were desperately looking for him and no one knew where he was.

2. How closely involved was Rumsfeld in the detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and elsewhere?

He played an important role, and he had close involvement in the torture of one particular prisoner. Mohammed al-Qahtani was alleged to have been the “twentieth hijacker” and he may well have been, but he hadn't been able to get into the country. They later picked him up in Afghanistan and sent him to Guantánamo. In 2002 Rumsfeld signed a now-famous directive that approved sleep deprivation, stress positions, and the refinement of various cruel methods. He had this guy in mind when he signed it. We know from Lieutenant General Randall Schmidt, who was appointed in 2005 to investigate FBI allegations of abuses at Guantánamo, that Rumsfeld was regularly calling in to find out what was happening with al-Qahtani's interrogation, and it was clear that they were using techniques on him that had been approved by Rumsfeld. We know from former General Janice Karpinksi, who was at Abu Ghraib and who found a memo signed by Rumsfeld authorizing torture techniques. Of course, when all the allegations about torture began to emerge, Rumsfeld sought to evade any responsibility. When 60 Minutes called the Pentagon to say they had pictures of abuses at Abu Ghraib, the Pentagon held them off for three weeks by appealing to their patriotism. During that time, Larry Di Rita, Rumsfeld's chief of staff, set up a crisis team of PR professionals from inside and outside the Pentagon. They devised the fall back defense that the abuses were committed by a bunch of hillbillies from Cumberland County, Maryland. It was all designed to shift responsibility from the secretary of defense.

3. We now know that the Bush Administration received repeated warnings before 9/11 that Al Qaeda was planning a major strike in the United States. How did Rumsfeld respond to those warnings?

By dismissing them. Even the CIA realized there was something in the wind. In July of 2001, CIA Director George Tenet gave a briefing to then–National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that warned that Bin Laden was preparing a major attack on the United States. By some accounts, Rice took the warning seriously. Rumsfeld just dismissed it. An intelligence source I spoke with told me that Rumsfeld described it as “vast doses of Al Qaeda disinformation” and accused the CIA of “mortal doses of gullibility.”

[CJCRANE]

1. What gets me

is that when Rumsfeld stood down after the midterms it made it seem like * was finally seeing some sense...
but then * sucker-punched us with the "surge".

[sabra]

2. I took it as BushCo knowing Rummy would be target number 1 for various

hearings...

[sakabatou]

3. .

:grr::mad::grr::mad::grr::mad::grr::mad::grr::mad::grr::mad::grr::mad::grr::mad::grr::mad::grr::mad::grr::mad:

[tanyev]

4. If only Rumsfeld's OSP findings had been dismissed as vast doses of disinformation.

:grr:

[sabra]

5. check out question 4:

<snip>

4. Your book contains new information about the Pentagon's efforts to spin the Iraq war. How extensive was that operation and how much success did it have?

The underlying approach used by the Pentagon was “information dominance”—you produce so much news that you satiate the media's requirement for information. You supply it all. They'd bring in retired military officers for briefings at the Pentagon and give them information that had not yet been released. These guys would speed away to Fox and sound incredibly knowledgeable. They were allowed to be a little bit critical, but if they became critical of whole enterprise they'd be cut off. Some of the retired generals were making good money on consulting deals with the networks and they were obviously reluctant to risk that. A person on staff at the Pentagon's public affairs office told me that he was looking at a bank of TVs in the office at the start of the war and he saw that every single talking head was one of “our guys.”

[Old and In the Way]

6. Of course he dismissed them.

How else to start the PNAC plan for the Mid-East without a "modern day Pearl Harbor"? Rumsfield is no dummy....this wasn't incompetence, this was part of the plan. His job was to let it happen in advance of our move into Iraq...Cheney's job was to plan the privitization of the Iraqi oilfields (see Secret Energy Meetings). Bush's job was to read a book on 9/11.

[goforit]

7. Well, quite frankly, 911 was his intentional masterpiece. And AlQaeda?

Well, he dimissed them because he created them.

[tanyev]

8. Question #1 needs even more attention.

Not only did Rumsfeld neglect the job he was supposed to do as Sec Def, but according to an order passed on June 1, 2001, he was the ONLY person who had the authority to relay a shoot down order from the POTUS. That really should have been investigated further, even if only to prove his incompetence.

[sabra]

9. wow, I didn't know that. Rummy disappearing makes this even more curious

btw, do you have a link re: this?

thanks!

[tanyev]

11. Here's the best one I can find in a hurry.

They do quote directly from the DOD directive.

Muzzling the Defense?
As indicated by the swift fighter response in the Payne Stewart case, the Chain of Command was not ordinarily needed to get escort fighters off the ground – this could all be done automatically and at intermediate levels. But more tightly controlled actions, like issuing an order for these fighters to shoot down a civilian aircraft, constituted an emergency and had to originate with the President and pass through every link in the chain of command to the responsible fighter pilots.

But these guidelines, in effect since 1986, oddly changed just three months before September 11, extending the need for approval yet further down. A Defense Department directive of June 1 2001 stated: “In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses <…> forward requests for DoD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval.” <1> Aviation Week backed this up: “On Sept. 11, the normal scramble-approval procedure was for an FAA official to contact the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and request Pentagon air support. Someone in the NMCC would call NORAD's command center and ask about availability of aircraft, then seek approval from the Defense Secretary--Donald H. Rumsfeld--to launch fighters.” <2> In other words, the automatic scrambling of fighters was no more – the Secretary of Defense now had to personally sign off before fighters could be sent up, and specifically in response to a hijacking. Michael Ruppert wrote that this change in procedures “demonstrated a willful intent to centralize decision-making away from field commanders prior to the attacks.” <3>
http://they-let-it-happen.blogspot.com/2006/11/muzzling-defense.html

[sabra]

12. thanks!

:yourock:

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. This is multiple choice, either:

A) Rumsfeld was incredibly incompetent from the beginning by overlooking the signs that 9/11 was coming, and then was put in a position where he wagged the dog into Iraq to hide his incompetence; or,

B) He was part of a plot to create a Pearl Harbor effect that would end up in Iraq?; or,

C) 9/11 was incompetence, Iraq was opportunistic?

[Scriptor Ignotus]

13. my vote is C --nt