The declassification and release today (November 9, 2022) of the interview with President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney conducted by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission) follows recommendations long advocated by the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB). The release of the transcript addresses one of the Boards mandates, to release records and materials of extraordinary public interest.

The declassified transcript of the interview is now available at: https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2012-163-doc-1-release-material.pdf.

“The release of this historical record regarding then President Bush and Vice President Cheney’s actions in the period leading up to and immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attack is an important step towards additional public transparency. The Board thanks all members of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), who diligently participated in the declassification review and made it possible for this important historical record to be released to the public. We hope that in the coming months additional records regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks will be declassified, consistent with President Biden’s September 2021 order. The resource intensive process required to release this record highlights the need to reform and streamline the entire declassification process,” said Chair Ezra Cohen.

Source: https://transforming-classification.blogs.archives.gov/2022/11/09/declassified-9-11-commission-interviews-with-bush-and-ch...

9/11 Family Member Lorie Van Auken holding up the JICI showing redacted pages on CNN.

Jon Gold
4/24/2016

You may have heard of the 28 redacted pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11. They have been redacted for years, and the 9/11 families and others have been fighting for their release since the day it was announced they were redacted. According to people like former Senator Bob Graham, those pages talk about alleged Saudi Government support for the hijackers.

Recently, there was a short segment on 60 Minutes about the pages. This resulted in a much needed push for the release of the 28 redacted pages. When Obama first came into office, it was reported that he told 9/11 Family Member Kristen Breitweiser “that he was willing to make the pages public.” A few years later, according to 9/11 Family Member Bill Doyle, Obama told him “Bill, I will get them released.”

Many times throughout Obama’s Presidency, we have seen him protect the Saudis against the 9/11 Families who want their day in court. Right now, he is threatening to veto a bill called JASTA that would finally give the families that day in court.

The 28 pages were originally classified by the Bush Administration “for reasons of national security.” Obama said that “Jim Clapper, our director of national intelligence, has been going through to make sure that whatever it is that is released is not gonna compromise some major national security interest of the United States.”

We have heard from many people who have read them say that there is nothing in those pages that would affect national security. Rep. Walter Jones said “there's nothing in it about national security.” Former Sen. Bob Graham has said “they do not affect national security.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_sDu6rDp7g

Bob McIlvaine is the father of Robert McIlvaine Jr., an Assistant Vice President of media relations for Merrill Lynch & Co. who was murdered on 9/11. Since 9/11, Bob has been very outspoken about a number of different issues. He has spoken around the country, and in different parts of the world. With the exception of one, Bob attended every 9/11 Commission Hearing. He has appeared on different news outlets, and has been mentioned in several news articles over the years. He has appeared in many documentaries that call into question what we were told about the 9/11 attacks.

Lee Hamilton -- Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission -- admits that the debate about what destroyed WTC 7 on 9/11 still continues when he's asked about it on C-SPAN's Washington Journal on September 12th, 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56_aoSO6pi4

The pervasive news surrounding the confirmation hearing of John Brennan, Obama’s nominee for CIA director, is paralleled by another, related story that has been largely ignored by the U.S. media.  That is the story of the man called Abu Zubaydah, whose alleged torture testimony, obtained by the CIA while Brennan was the head of the agency’s Terrorist Threat Center, built the foundation for the official account of 9/11.  This week I spoke to Lee Hamilton, former vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, about the serious problems that the government’s new stance on Zubaydah creates for the 9/11 Commission Report.

As stated in my last article on the subject, Zubaydah is at the center of an unraveling of the official account of the 9/11 attacks.[1]  His extensive torture at the hands of the CIA during Brennan’s tenure, which included at least 83 water-boarding sessions, hanging the man naked from the ceiling, slamming him against a concrete wall, and other atrocious experimental techniques, was said to produce valuable evidence about al Qaeda.  However, the government now claims that Zubaydah was never a member or associate of al Qaeda and therefore he could not have known any of the information that the 9/11 Commission attributed to him.

From the start of our conversation, Hamilton told me that he was having trouble remembering Zubaydah.  That was odd considering that an article he and Thomas Kean wrote for the New York Times in 2008, describing how the CIA obstructed the 9/11 investigation, referred several times to Zubaydah specifically.[2]  The article claimed that “Beginning in June 2003, we requested all reports of intelligence information on these broad topics that had been gleaned from the interrogations of 118 named individuals, including both Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two senior Qaeda operatives.”  Kean and Hamilton further wrote that, “in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.’s general counsel. One set posed dozens of specific questions about the reports, including those about Abu Zubaydah.”

We Are Change

Luke Rudkowski and Dustin D attend the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Tenth Anniversary Report Card: The Status of the 9/11 Commission Recommendations press conference in Washington D.C. on August 31, 2011. Watch Luke ask Congressman Lee Hamilton, Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, about Philip Zelikow’s 9/11 Commission outline, and if that influenced the omission of the Building 7 collapse from the 9/11 Commission’s final report. More to come soon of course, stay tuned and subscribe to see Thomas Kean run away from Luke next week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUM2VaHaqyE

http://www.facebook.com/LukeWeAreChange
http://www.twitter.com/LukeRudkowski

Special Thanks to Dustin D cameraman and editor
song: The Raconteurs – Hold Up

An example of State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADS) - Conspiracy if you will ...

Does the name "Lee Hamilton" ring a bell? Could author Robert Parry be drawing the wrong conclusion here?

consortiumnews.com

Key October Surprise Evidence Hidden

By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
May 6, 2010

A Russian government report, which corroborated allegations that Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign interfered with President Jimmy Carter’s Iran-hostage negotiations in 1980, was apparently kept from the Democratic chairman of a congressional task force that investigated the charges a dozen years later.

Lee Hamilton, then a congressman from Indiana in charge of the task force, told me in a recent interview, “I don’t recall seeing it,” although he was the one who had requested Moscow’s cooperation in the first place and the extraordinary Russian report was addressed to him.

This week, ABC's Nightline televised an excerpt from an interview with Lee Hamilton, former vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission. The purpose of the interview excerpt was to suggest that those who produced the official reports of what heppened on 9/11 are willing to openly examine all evidence related to those crimes. Since I've met with Mr. Hamilton privately before, I exchanged a few messages with him to follow-up on my previous attempts to get him to examine the evidence in a public forum.

Due to the critical nature of this question, I'm posting the exchanges here for the record.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: kncryan@msn.com
To: lee.hamilton@wilsoncenter.org
Subject: Follow-up letter
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 16:21:45 -0400

Unbalanced coverage of this past weekend’s 'Treason in America' conference in Valley Forge. Note the specific placement of pejorative keywords to condition the viewer. Many clues are given as to techniques used to marginalize open discussion of the subject.

Definitely a huge step forward in the right direction. By engaging the mainstream media with factually clear, rationale dialogue when the opportunities arise, we win the hearts and minds of more critically thinking Americans every day, all of whom have the potential to stand for the Justice and Accountability due us all.

http://www.wearechange.org/2010/03/abc-airs-hit-piece-of-pa-conference.html

After the Carter Administration failed to secure the release of American hostages held by Iran, Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan. Following this, evidence emerged, particularly during the Iran-Contra investigations, that Republicans and CIA operatives, including George H.W. Bush, William Casey and Robert Gates, had sabotaged Carter's negotiations with the Iranians and made their own deal for hostage release. Thus, the phrase 'October Surprise' was coined. The evidence and allegations mounted and eventually caused a crisis of legitimacy, and so a 'bi-partisan' Commission was appointed to 'investigate' the matter. It was chaired by Lee Hamilton, and in January, 1993 a report was released that pretended to 'debunk' the evidence that the October Surprise operation had in fact occurred. Investigative journalist/author Robert Parry, who had investigated these things at the time, has written an account of how the Commission operated under the direction of Hamilton.

Former 9/11 Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton recently made some bizarre comments about the Zacarias Moussaoui case in an interview for Vanity Fair. The interview was used for a wide-ranging and very interesting oral history of the Bush White House. Hamilton’s comments appear to show complete ignorance of a key aspect of the investigation of which he was vice chair.

Moussaoui was arrested on an immigration violation due to suspicious he was planning to hijack an aircraft by the Minneapolis FBI on 16 August 2001, nearly four weeks before 9/11. His personal effects contained evidence linking him to eleven of the nineteen alleged hijackers and the local FBI suspected that he was part of a wider plot. It correctly assumed a search of the effects would uncover his links to the other conspirators. However, due to obstruction by FBI headquarters, no warrant was ever granted to search Moussaoui’s belongings. Middle managers at headquarters also failed to properly inform their superiors of the case.

Here are Hamilton’s comments on the Moussaoui case:

From an email today from the Regressive Antidote . . . Great last line: "It’s just the people who were missing." --Betsy

"Greetings, Good People -

I hope this message finds you well, happy and productive!

Hey, the Iraq war was a total debacle, right? Right! So, we need to reform our political system to insure that that never happens again, right? Right! So, who do you think might be a good choice to lead a bipartisan commission looking into this question and recommending new war powers legislation? How about James Baker, the guy who trashed the Constitution in order to install Bush Junior on the throne in the first place? Or, how about Warren Christopher, the guy who stood by and watched it all happen? Hey, I know, how about both of them together? Great idea! Read all about their cool plans for making a bad situation worse in:

A Government of People, After All

(http://www.regressiveantidote.net/)

Check it out. And while you're there, be sure to also have a look at these regular features: The Regressive Watch and Quote For The Week.

Till next time, be well!

Cheers -
dmg"

Quotations from Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 911 Commission, by Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton

"We were set up to fail" (14).

"The chief obstacle was the White House, which argued that the congressional inquiry was continuing, and that an independent investigation would distract the government from waging the ongoing war on terrorism" (17).

"The two sides decided to split the difference, allowing eighteen months for the inquiry—a period of time that proved insufficient" (20).

"The White House also suggested some candidates for executive director for our staff. The importance of this position cannot be overstated" (22).

"…we seriously only considered one candidate: Philip Zelikow…. Zelikow was a controversial choice. In the 1990s, as an academic, he had co-authored, with Condoleezza Rice, a book about German unification, and he later assisted Stephen Hadley in running the National Security Council transition for the incoming Bush administration in 2000-2001" (28).

"…our office space and employees had to be cleared by the FBI and CIA to handle top-secret information…" (34)

Jon Gold
4/24/2008

As we all know, Norman Mineta's testimony was never investigated or mentioned in the 9/11 Report. You would think that the "young man" that was involved in such an important moment during the 9/11 attacks would be named, and brought before the 9/11 Commission. He was not.

This clip is from C-SPAN's 5/26/2005 taping of the "Washington Journal". The caller clearly states that at the time the Pentagon was hit, Cheney was aware of the incoming plane according to Norman Mineta's testimony. At the end of this segment, Lee Hamilton says that Cheney was "in the key position at the time". Prior to that, he said that "the Vice President was in the operation room", and "when the impact did occur." To me, this sounds like Lee Hamilton just confirmed Norman Mineta's testimony.

This took place on 5/26/2005. On 7/22/2005, then Representative Cynthia McKinney held the 9/11 Congressional Briefing. Lee couldn't make it apparently.