Glenn Greenwald: Why doesn't the 9/11 Commission know about Mukasey's 9/11 story?

[marmar]

from Salon, via AfterDowningStreet:



Why doesn't the 9/11 Commission know about Mukasey's 9/11 story?
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2008-04-04 19:48. Evidence Spying
By Glenn Greenwald, SALON

Last week, during a question-and-answer session following a speech he delivered in San Francisco, Attorney General Michael Mukasey revealed a startling and extremely newsworthy fact. As I wrote last Saturday, Mukasey claimed that, prior to 9/11, the Bush administration was aware of a telephone call being made by an Al Qaeda Terrorist from what he called a "safe house in Afghanistan" into the U.S., but failed to eavesdrop on that call. Some help is needed from readers here to generate the attention for this story that it requires.

In that speech, Mukasey blamed FISA's warrant requirement for the failure to eavesdrop on that call -- an assertion which is, for multiple reasons that I detailed in that post, completely false. He then tearfully claimed that FISA therefore caused the deaths of "three thousand people who went to work that day." For obvious reasons, the Attorney General's FISA falsehoods themselves are extremely newsworthy, but it is the story he told about the pre-9/11-planning call from Afghanistan itself that is truly new, and truly extraordinary.

Critically, the 9/11 Commission Report -- intended to be a comprehensive account of all relevant pre-9/11 activities -- makes no mention whatsoever of the episode Mukasey described. What has been long publicly reported in great detail are multiple calls that were made between a global communications hub in Yemen and the U.S. -- calls which the NSA did intercept without warrants (because, contrary to Mukasey's lie, FISA does not and never did require a warrant for eavesdropping on foreign targets) but which, for some unknown reason, the NSA failed to share with the FBI and other agencies. But the critical pre-9/11 episode Mukasey described last week is nowhere to be found in the 9/11 Report or anywhere else. It just does not exist.

Yesterday, I contacted Lee Hamilton, the 9/11 Commission Vice Chairman, to ask him whether the Commission was ever told about Mukasey's alleged Afghan Terrorist 9/11-planning telephone calls and/or the Bush administration's failure/inability to eavesdrop on such calls. Hamilton refused to comment, first claiming that he was in meetings all day yesterday and had no time to talk to me. When asked if he would comment today or whenever he had time, he said he was not going to comment on this ever, since he had not read Mukasey's speech. Calls to 9/11 Executive Director Philip Zelikow seeking comment were not returned and 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean could not yet be reached.

It's unacceptable for Hamilton to refuse to comment on Mukasey's claims. The whole purpose of the 9/11 Commission was to ensure that there was full-scale investigation and disclosure of all facts relevant to the 9/11 attacks, including the Government's actions and inactions in preventing that attack from occurring. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/32481

[seemslikeadream]

1. before 9/11,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqDWLbILX7w


3/31/08 Countdown transcript

And number one: Mukasey said what-gate? Almost ignored in the coverage of his speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco pleading for telecom immunity, Attorney General Michael Mukasey also said, quote, “Before 9/11, that‘s the call that we didn‘t know about. We knew there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan, and we knew that it came to the United States, we didn‘t know precisely where it went.”

What? The government knew about some call from the safe house in Afghanistan into the U.S. about 9/11, before 9/11, and even though it had the same FISA courts and the same right to act against international targets in 2001 as it has does now, they didn‘t do anything about it?

Well, this would seem to leave only two options, either the attorney general just admitted that the government for he works is guilty of malfeasance complicity of the 9/11 attacks or he‘s lying.

I‘m betting on lying. If not, somebody in Congress better put that man under oath right quick. You could send them to Gitmo I suppose.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23906974 /


Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, he said, "we knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went. You've got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn't come home, to show for that."

Mukasey did not specify the call to which he referred. He also did not explain why the government, if it knew of telephone calls from suspected foreign terrorists, hadn't sought a wiretapping warrant from a court established by Congress to authorize terrorist surveillance, or hadn't monitored all such calls without a warrant for 72 hours as allowed by law. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for more information.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/28/BA69VROE9.DTL


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee2cxB0wzdI

[babylonsister]

2. And why are they stonewalling? Hmmm. Rec'd. nt