Lee Hamilton denies Michael Mukasey's claim about 9/11

SALON

"I am unfamiliar with the telephone call that Attorney General Mukasey cited in his appearance in San Francisco on March 27. The 9/11 Commission did not receive any information pertaining to its occurrence."

Glenn Greenwald

This is something I rarely see, so I thought I'd post it. Sorry for the quality of the video (the obvious fact that I filmed it from my camcorder because I don't know how to convert RealPlayer files).

Comment: 9/11 Commissioners Kean and Hamilton NYT January 2, 2008 Op-Ed Article: "Stonewalled by the C.I.A."

by Elizabeth Woodworth, January 11, 2008.

On January 2, 2008, the New York Times carried an op-ed article entitled "Stonewalled by the C.I.A." by 9/11 Commission Chair Thomas Kean and Vice Chair Lee Hamilton (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html).

It is difficult to understand why there has been so little follow-up to Kean and Hamilton’s emphatic charges that the CIA wilfully obstructed their investigation.

The tapes in question were destroyed in 2005, long after the Commission had collected its evidence in 2003 and early 2004.

This revelation constitutes a new and highly visible public schism between the Chairs of the 9/11 Commission and the CIA, the only agency they thanked twice in the Preface to their official Report.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/02/obstruction/index.html

Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday January 2, 2008 08:12 EST
9/11 Commission: Our investigation was "obstructed"

(*** Updated below - Outside prosecutor appointed

Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V)

The bi-partisan co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, jointly published an Op-Ed in today's New York Times which contains some extremely emphatic and serious accusations against the CIA and the White House. The essence:

[T]he recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes -- and did not tell us about them -- obstructed our investigation.

More strikingly still, they explicitly include the White House at the top of their list of guilty parties:

January 2, 2008
Op-Ed Contributors
Stonewalled by the C.I.A.
By THOMAS H. KEAN and LEE H. HAMILTON

Washington

MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

Cincinnati 9/11 Truth, Columbus 9/11 Truth, and a member of We Are Change Seattle, posed some questions to Lee Hamilton.

Last year at about this time, 9/11 Commission chairman Lee Hamilton was interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This interview is incredible, to say the least, and represents an outstanding example of the need for 9/11 truth.

http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/911hamilton.html

At the time, Hamilton was trying to sell his new book, “Without Precedent", in which he and co-chairman Thomas Kean described how frustrated they were with repeated misstatements by the Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Agency during the investigation, and how they considered an investigation into possible deception.

But the interview also showed how utterly clueless Hamilton actually was, and apparently still is today, about the most basic aspects of the events of 9/11.

When asked about the demolition hypothesis, Hamilton said – “The charge that dynamite, or whatever, brought down the World Trade Towers, we of course looked at very carefully - we find no evidence of that. We find all kinds of evidence that it was the airplanes that did it.”

Hamilton then clarified – “What caused the collapse of the buildings, to summarize it, was that the super-heated jet fuel melted the steel super-structure of these buildings and caused their collapse.”

For those who don’t know, only Osama bin Laden himself still promotes the “super-heated jet fuel melted the steel super-structure” theory, or so says the US State department. According to Ms. Rice’s debunking page “The Top September 11 Conspiracy Theories”, Osama claimed in his confession video that “Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building.”

http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=pubs-english&y=2006&m=August&x=20060828133846esnamfuaK0.2676355

(Continued after the jump...)

Can anyone crash this and ask Lee Hamilton why he knowingly allowed NORAD to lie to the 9/11 Commission? Or, flood their email address with questions about 9/11?

Conversations with Daschle: Lee Hamilton on 9/11 and the Current State of Homeland Security

On Wednesday, November 29, 2006, Campus Progress and the Center for American Progress will host the next program in our “Conversations with Daschle” series.

Co-sponsored by the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, the event will be held at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., and broadcast live over the internet.

Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader, and his special guest, Rep. Lee Hamilton, former Congressman and Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, will discuss the current state of our homeland security and will answer questions both from a live audience and from internet webcast viewers across the country.

If you have a question you would like to ask, you can send an e-mail to townhall@campusprogress.org. Feel free to send your question now as well as during the live webcast!

The official account of the arrest of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is that it was made in Rawalpindi by Pakistani security forces on Saturday, 1 March 2003.
Links:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-03-02-topstrip_x.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,911860,00.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/south/03/03/pakistan.arrests

However, due to a whole grabbag of discrepancies in the official account, many conspiracy theorists have speculated that, while KSM may well be in custody, the story of his actual arrest is entirely fictional and he was probably arrested elsewhere, earlier.
Link:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=essayksmcapture

Thankfully, 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton have now cleared the matter up. In their new book "Without Precedent" they put an end to speculation:

"Khalid Skeikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 plot, was captured in an early 2003 raid on a Karachi apartment orchestrated by the CIA, the FBI and Pakistani security services." (p. 115)

Well, that's that, the "Rawalpindi arrest" story should surely be dead now.

In a lengthy interview with CBC, Lee Hamilton, 9/11 Commission co-chair makes some stunning revelations. Remember, Hamilton is the guy who felt it necessary to co-author a book "Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission". The journalist who asks some sharp questions is Evan Solomon. The interview was done back in August.

Here are some interesting tid-bits:

Question: Now, one of the stipulations, you write in the book, one of the ways that you thought that this ought to be successful, this report, the Commission Report, is on page 23, you said if the American people would accept the results as authoritative, and the recommendations.

And when I measure that against a Zogby poll done in May, that says now 42% of Americans say that "the U.S. government, and its 9/11 Commission, concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts the official explanation of September 11th, saying there's a cover-up" - 42%, Mr. Hamilton - what does that say to you about the efficacy of the Commission's report?

CBC Sunday covered in great detail 9/11 alternative theories. They referenced Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Loose Change, and the standard range of 'conspiracy theory' topics. The show featured interviews with Bob McIlvaine, Dr. David Ray Griffin, Dylan Avery, Lee Hamilton, and Jim Meigs (Popular Mechanics). Download it, check it out, post some comments, and send in some feedback to the CBC. You can also check out a tiny bit on CBC's website at the moment here. Big Thanks to Neil from stoplying.ca for the video rip and heads up!