Our local radio station KPFA just covered the torture hearings with Feith that took place in Congress today and investigative journalist Jane Mayer's new book exposing torture info is now out at the same time. I was looking up what she's said about 9/11 and what the book might say and came across the descriptions below.

She mentioned how members of the Administration who spoke to her were so intimidated by Cheney that they had to speak in code to each other because they assumed that Cheney was tapping their phones. I expect she probably rejects "inside job" -- afterall, she was formerly a Wall Street Journal writer, is a Yale grad, etc -- but it could be an opportunity to provide her with more info, if possible.

What was the outcome with Naomi Klein? I'd be interested to hear any ideas of what did or didn't work for interacting with her and getting info across.

Jane Mayer discusses
"The Dark Side: How The War on Terror Became a War on American Ideals"
excerpt:
"The book, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals," by Jane Mayer, who writes about counterterrorism for The New Yorker, offers new details of the agency's secret detention program, as well as the bitter debates in the administration over interrogation methods and other tactics in the campaign against Al Qaeda. The Sunday after September 11, 2001 Vice President Dick Cheney sat down for an interview with Tim Russert on "Meet the Press." In that much quoted interview, Cheney gave a memorable description of how the administration viewed the continuing threat and how it planned to respond:

"We'll have to work sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies... if we are going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in. And, uh, so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal basically, to achieve our objectives."

Since 2001 New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer has been investigating and reporting on what the dark side really means. For the first time, she pieces together the full story of how Cheney, and a handful of extraordinarily powerful, but almost unknown lawyers including his Chief of Staff David Addington, took command of the war on terrorism. They seized on the mood of national fear to institute a top secret, covert program that twisted or ignored 221 years of constitutional history. She chronicles the behind-the-scenes meetings in the White House, Justice Department and CIA, and shows how the decisions taken behind closed doors in Washington spiraled out around the world, often with unintended consequences, violated the Constitution, and dramatically hindered the pursuit of Al Qaeda."
http://kpfa.org/events/index.php?#1873
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9-11 Preventable
Submitted by davidswanson on Sun, 2008-07-13 11:32.
From Frank Rich on Jane Mayer's book:
excerpt:
"So hot is the speculation that war-crimes trials will eventually follow in foreign or international courts that Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, has publicly advised Mr. Feith, Mr. Addington and Alberto Gonzales, among others, to "never travel outside the U.S., except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel." But while we wait for the wheels of justice to grind slowly, there are immediate fears to tend. Ms. Mayer's book helps cement the case that America's use of torture has betrayed not just American values but our national security, right to the present day.

In her telling, a major incentive for Mr. Cheney's descent into the dark side was to cover up for the Bush White House's failure to heed the Qaeda threat in 2001. Jack Cloonan, a special agent for the F.B.I.'s Osama bin Laden unit until 2002, told Ms. Mayer that Sept. 11 was "all preventable." By March 2000, according to the C.I.A.'s inspector general, "50 or 60 individuals" in the agency knew that two Al Qaeda suspects — soon to be hijackers — were in America. But there was no urgency at the top. Thomas Pickard, the acting F.B.I. director that summer, told Ms. Mayer that when he expressed his fears about the Qaeda threat to Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general snapped, "I don't want to hear about that anymore!"
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34725
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COVER REVIEW
Collateral Damage
According to Jane Mayer, the United States has succeeded in creating an American gulag.
Reviewed by Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, July 13, 2008; Page BW03
THE DARK SIDE
excerpt:
"From Mayer, we learn that in George W. Bush's Washington, the decisions that matter are made in secret by a handful of presidential appointees committed to the proposition that nothing should inhibit the exercise of executive power. The Congress, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the "interagency process" -- all of these constitute impediments that threaten to constrain the president. In a national security crisis, constraint is intolerable. Much the same applies to the media and, by extension, to the American people: The public's right to know extends no further than whatever the White House wishes to make known. . . . Despite what Mayer describes as "the worst intelligence failure in the nation's history," the aftermath of 9/11 saw not a single senior official fired. (Earlier this week a bipartisan commission headed by former secretaries of state James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher proposed new legislation to govern the war-making powers of the president and Congress.)"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/11/ST2008071101354.html

(Interesting that the Washington Post is bothering to mention that no senior official was ever fired. Also interesting that the culture described -- a secret handful -- would have been ideally suited to conduct a false flag, not just torture.)
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Jane Mayer is the co-author of two best-selling narrative non-fiction books, LANDSLIDE: THE UNMAKING OF THE PRESIDENT, 1984-1988, and STRANGE JUSTICE: THE SELLING OF CLARENCE THOMAS, the latter of which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is a Washington-based staff writer for The New Yorker, specializing in political and investigative reporting. Before that, she was a senior writer and front page editor for The Wall Street Journal.