al Qaeda

9/11, al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Gitmo, Guantanamo, Keep Gitmo Open, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Military Commissions, Pentagon, September 11, World Trade Center

9-11 families pressure Obama to keep Guantanamo prison open

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Writing for the McClatchy Newspapers, Carol Rosenberg further reports on the reactions of 9/11 family members who this past week observed the Military Commission hearings of high-value al Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo:

Heartbroken survivors of the 9-11 attacks have emerged as a key constituency in the campaign to stop Obama from making good on his Jan. 22 executive order to empty the prison camps and revise the controversial military trials within a year.

Obama argued that Guantanamo has become an anti-American recruiting tool in the arsenal of al-Qaida. Moreover, he said military commissions designed in the Bush years lacked fundamental U.S. guarantees of due process and were at odds with American values.

“There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world,” he said in a May 21 address to the nation on terrorism policy. “Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al-Qaida that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law.”

But, three times stretching back to the candidacies of Obama and Sen. John McCain, who each pledged to “close Guantanamo,” the Pentagon has brought parents, siblings and children of 9-11 victims to watch the attack’s alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and co-conspirators defend themselves at a court designed by Bush administration officials to mete out military justice.

Three times, the court watchers described the antics of the confessed al-Qaida acolytes as making a mockery of American justice.

And three times, they held news conferences urging the White House to keep the prison camps open and war court here intact as the speediest, safest way to close the books on the former CIA-held captives accused of mass murder in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

“I did not come with a vengeful heart,” said Pompano Beach, Fla., mother Janet Roy, whose firefighter brother, William Burke, died saving others at the World Trade Center. “I came to see for myself … I know the right thing is being done here, in a carefully thought-out manner.”

Theirs is a powerful and emotional message from a sampling of victims’ kin, chosen by lottery, escorted to this base gingerly and with sensitivity to the families of the 2,974 people killed in al-Qaida’s coordinated hijackings that sent planes plunging into the Pentagon, Twin Towers and a Pennsylvania field.

READ THE REST, keep Gitmo open, and keep al Qaeda’s killers out the United States and our federal court system.

9/11, al Qaeda, Barack Obama

Post-9/11, Bush and Cheney had C.I.A. plan to kill OBL and al Qaeda leadership (Dems in Congress shocked)

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It turns out that last week’s pitiful attempt by Congressional Democrats to politically cover for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s blatant lies about not being briefed on waterboarding was their not being briefed on an unimplemented, post-9/11 plan to “assassinate” Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s leadership. The only things more ridiculous than Democrats in Congress being up in arms over this are 1) Barack Obama said both last year and this that he would do the same thing, he’d “take them out,” and 2) C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta ended the program:

The Wall Street Journal reports:

A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

The precise nature of the highly classified effort isn’t clear, and the CIA won’t comment on its substance.

According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn’t become fully operational at the time Mr. Panetta ended it.

In 2001, the CIA also examined the subject of targeted assassinations of al Qaeda leaders, according to three former intelligence officials. It appears that those discussions tapered off within six months. It isn’t clear whether they were an early part of the CIA initiative that Mr. Panetta stopped.

The revelations about the CIA and its post-9/11 activities have emerged amid a renewed fight between the agency and congressional Democrats. Last week, seven Democratic lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee released a letter that talked about the CIA effort, which they said Mr. Panetta acknowledged hadn’t been properly vetted with Congress. CIA officials had brought the matter to Mr. Panetta’s attention and had recommended he inform Congress.

Neither Mr. Panetta nor the lawmakers provided details. Mr. Panetta quashed the CIA effort after learning about it June 23.

The battle is part of a long-running tug of war between the executive branch and the legislature about how to oversee the activities of the country’s intelligence services and how extensively the CIA should brief Congress. In recent years, in the light of revelations over CIA secret prisons and harsh interrogation techniques, Congress has pushed for greater oversight. The Obama administration, much like its predecessor, is resisting any moves in that direction.

Most recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a dispute over what she knew about the use of waterboarding in interrogating terror suspects, has accused the agency of lying to lawmakers about its operations.

Republicans on the panel say that the CIA effort didn’t advance to a point where Congress clearly should have been notified.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the agency “has not commented on the substance of the effort.” He added that “a candid dialogue with Congress is very important to this director and this agency.”

One former senior intelligence official said the program was an attempt “to achieve a capacity to carry out something that was directed in the finding,” meaning it was looking for ways to capture or kill al Qaeda chieftains.

The official noted that Congress had long been briefed on the finding, and that the CIA effort wasn’t so much a program as “many ideas suggested over the course of years.” It hadn’t come close to fruition, he added.

Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said little had been spent on the efforts — closer to $1 million than $50 million. “The idea for this kind of program was tossed around in fits and starts,” he said.