Check It Out for Monday, June 22nd
Check It Out on the fourth Monday in June offers these excerpts:
Gareth Porter at IPS News begins a series that exposes the story that Al Qaeda was excluded from the suspects list of the bombing that killed US military at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. (My note: Recall that in 2001, 15 of the 19 highjackers were Saudis and Bushite regime allowed planes carrying Saudi royals and other Saudis to leave this country a few days after 9-11.)
"On Jun. 25, 1996, a massive truck bomb exploded at a building in the Khobar Towers complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which housed U.S. Air Force personnel, killing 19 U.S. airmen and wounding 372.
"Immediately after the blast, more than 125 agents from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were ordered to the site to sift for clues and begin the investigation of who was responsible. But when two U.S. embassy officers arrived at the scene of the devastation early the next morning, they found a bulldozer beginning to dig up the entire crime scene.
"The Saudi bulldozing stopped only after Scott Erskine, the supervisory FBI special agent for international terrorism investigations, threatened that Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who happened to be in Saudi Arabia when the bomb exploded, would intervene personally on the matter.
"U.S. intelligence then intercepted communications from the highest levels of the Saudi government, including interior minister Prince Nayef, to the governor and other officials of Eastern Province instructing them to go through the motions of cooperating with U.S. officials on their investigation but to obstruct it at every turn.
"That was the beginning of what interviews with more than a dozen sources familiar with the investigation and other information now available reveal was a systematic effort by the Saudis to obstruct any U.S. investigation of the bombing and to deceive the United States about who was responsible for the bombing.
"The Saudi regime steered the FBI investigation toward Iran and its Saudi Shi’a allies with the apparent intention of keeping U.S. officials away from a trail of evidence that would have led to Osama bin Laden and a complex set of ties between the regime and the Saudi terrorist organiser.
"The key to the success of the Saudi deception was FBI director Louis Freeh, who took personal charge of the FBI investigation, letting it be known within the Bureau that he was the "case officer" for the probe, according to former FBI officials.
"Freeh allowed Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan to convince him that Iran was involved in the bombing, and that President Bill Clinton, for whom he had formed a visceral dislike, "had no interest in confronting the fact that Iran had blown up the towers," as Freeh wrote in his memoirs.
"Nevertheless, Freeh quickly made Iranian and Saudi Shi’a responsibility for the bombing the official premise of the investigation, excluding from the inquiry the hypothesis that Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organisation had carried out the Khobar Towers bombing.
"Meanwhile, the Saudis were refusing the most basic FBI requests for cooperation...."
William Fisher writes at the Public Record that Obama's pledge of transparency remains largely unfulfilled.
"Human rights and open-government advocates were heartened by President Barack Obama’s pledge during his first week in office to create “an unprecedented level of openness in Government” and “establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.”
"But now, well into Obama’s second 100 days in office, many are expressing outrage and disappointment that many of the president’s decisions have followed the path of his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
"The Obama administration has invoked the "state secrets" privilege several times to prevent lawsuits dealing with “extraordinary renditions” and warrantless wiretapping from ever being heard in court. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers have argued that detainees at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan have no right to challenge their detention.
"The government has also caved to Democrats and Republicans in Congress to keep any of the Guantanamo Bay detainees from ever entering the U.S., even though the Defense Department (DOD) has cleared these men for release and declared that they present no threat to U.S. national security. Reliable reports suggest that Obama is considering “indefinite detention” for GITMO detainees who cannot be tried in U.S. courts because the evidence against them was obtained through torture.
"The government has gone to court to appeal a court ruling ordering the release of a 2004 report from the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) describing the harsh treatment of prisoners in the agency’s secret prisons. And the new president has refused to make public photographs reportedly depicting abusive interrogations at these and other government detention centers.
"Obama recently rejected a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies because the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications."
"On the issue of electronic surveillance, the new president has not repudiated the Bush-era executive orders supporting warrantless wiretapping and the legal opinions used to support them. Obama has resisted a “truth commission” to investigate former officials who allegedly broke the law and committed crimes, saying he would rather look forward than back.
"But a few have offered insights as to the “why” of what they see as Obama’s U-Turn. Among them is Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois law school. He told Inter Presse Service (IPS) S, “After winning the Democratic Party against Senator Clinton by appealing to its progressive wing, Obama immediately veered far to the right and co-opted all of the Clinton people into his campaign and then administration. So what we are seeing now is a Third Clinton Term with a continuation of many of the same foreign and domestic policies pursued by the Bush Jr. administration.”
"He added, 'This has little to do with personnel and personalities. It has to do structurally with the preservation and further extension of the American Empire abroad that necessarily requires the further consolidation of an American Police State at home. Hence the Obama administration has continued to ratify the illegal and unconstitutional policies of the Bush administration in court cases across the board, while escalating the Bush admistration's imperialist intervention into Afghanistan and now expanding it into Pakistan.”
"Another explanation came from Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has mobilized dozens of pro-bono lawyers to represent Guantanamo prisoners.
"He asked rhetorically in response to an IPS reporter’s question, 'Why did Obama make promises about less secrecy, transparency and a narrowed state secrets privilege and proceed to have his administration assert positions and back legislation that was directly contrary to those promises? In the U.S., we complain about Chile hiding the crimes of the Pinochet regime, or Germany hiding the Nazi crimes or Russia the crimes of the KGB, yet where is the screaming when President Obama hides the war crimes of the Bush administration?'
"His answer: 'In part, the recent blatant assertions of secrecy are to hide crimes of former and some current officials. That is why President Obama is keeping the torture photos hidden. That is why he is continuing to assert broad state secret claims to try and hide the rendition program. That is why the 2004 CIA report on the secret site interrogations will be released with heavy redactions.' "
Gareth Porter at IPS News begins a series that exposes the story that Al Qaeda was excluded from the suspects list of the bombing that killed US military at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. (My note: Recall that in 2001, 15 of the 19 highjackers were Saudis and Bushite regime allowed planes carrying Saudi royals and other Saudis to leave this country a few days after 9-11.)
"On Jun. 25, 1996, a massive truck bomb exploded at a building in the Khobar Towers complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which housed U.S. Air Force personnel, killing 19 U.S. airmen and wounding 372.
"Immediately after the blast, more than 125 agents from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were ordered to the site to sift for clues and begin the investigation of who was responsible. But when two U.S. embassy officers arrived at the scene of the devastation early the next morning, they found a bulldozer beginning to dig up the entire crime scene.
"The Saudi bulldozing stopped only after Scott Erskine, the supervisory FBI special agent for international terrorism investigations, threatened that Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who happened to be in Saudi Arabia when the bomb exploded, would intervene personally on the matter.
"U.S. intelligence then intercepted communications from the highest levels of the Saudi government, including interior minister Prince Nayef, to the governor and other officials of Eastern Province instructing them to go through the motions of cooperating with U.S. officials on their investigation but to obstruct it at every turn.
"That was the beginning of what interviews with more than a dozen sources familiar with the investigation and other information now available reveal was a systematic effort by the Saudis to obstruct any U.S. investigation of the bombing and to deceive the United States about who was responsible for the bombing.
"The Saudi regime steered the FBI investigation toward Iran and its Saudi Shi’a allies with the apparent intention of keeping U.S. officials away from a trail of evidence that would have led to Osama bin Laden and a complex set of ties between the regime and the Saudi terrorist organiser.
"The key to the success of the Saudi deception was FBI director Louis Freeh, who took personal charge of the FBI investigation, letting it be known within the Bureau that he was the "case officer" for the probe, according to former FBI officials.
"Freeh allowed Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan to convince him that Iran was involved in the bombing, and that President Bill Clinton, for whom he had formed a visceral dislike, "had no interest in confronting the fact that Iran had blown up the towers," as Freeh wrote in his memoirs.
"Nevertheless, Freeh quickly made Iranian and Saudi Shi’a responsibility for the bombing the official premise of the investigation, excluding from the inquiry the hypothesis that Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organisation had carried out the Khobar Towers bombing.
"Meanwhile, the Saudis were refusing the most basic FBI requests for cooperation...."
William Fisher writes at the Public Record that Obama's pledge of transparency remains largely unfulfilled.
"Human rights and open-government advocates were heartened by President Barack Obama’s pledge during his first week in office to create “an unprecedented level of openness in Government” and “establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.”
"But now, well into Obama’s second 100 days in office, many are expressing outrage and disappointment that many of the president’s decisions have followed the path of his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
"The Obama administration has invoked the "state secrets" privilege several times to prevent lawsuits dealing with “extraordinary renditions” and warrantless wiretapping from ever being heard in court. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers have argued that detainees at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan have no right to challenge their detention.
"The government has also caved to Democrats and Republicans in Congress to keep any of the Guantanamo Bay detainees from ever entering the U.S., even though the Defense Department (DOD) has cleared these men for release and declared that they present no threat to U.S. national security. Reliable reports suggest that Obama is considering “indefinite detention” for GITMO detainees who cannot be tried in U.S. courts because the evidence against them was obtained through torture.
"The government has gone to court to appeal a court ruling ordering the release of a 2004 report from the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) describing the harsh treatment of prisoners in the agency’s secret prisons. And the new president has refused to make public photographs reportedly depicting abusive interrogations at these and other government detention centers.
"Obama recently rejected a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies because the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications."
"On the issue of electronic surveillance, the new president has not repudiated the Bush-era executive orders supporting warrantless wiretapping and the legal opinions used to support them. Obama has resisted a “truth commission” to investigate former officials who allegedly broke the law and committed crimes, saying he would rather look forward than back.
"But a few have offered insights as to the “why” of what they see as Obama’s U-Turn. Among them is Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois law school. He told Inter Presse Service (IPS) S, “After winning the Democratic Party against Senator Clinton by appealing to its progressive wing, Obama immediately veered far to the right and co-opted all of the Clinton people into his campaign and then administration. So what we are seeing now is a Third Clinton Term with a continuation of many of the same foreign and domestic policies pursued by the Bush Jr. administration.”
"He added, 'This has little to do with personnel and personalities. It has to do structurally with the preservation and further extension of the American Empire abroad that necessarily requires the further consolidation of an American Police State at home. Hence the Obama administration has continued to ratify the illegal and unconstitutional policies of the Bush administration in court cases across the board, while escalating the Bush admistration's imperialist intervention into Afghanistan and now expanding it into Pakistan.”
"Another explanation came from Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has mobilized dozens of pro-bono lawyers to represent Guantanamo prisoners.
"He asked rhetorically in response to an IPS reporter’s question, 'Why did Obama make promises about less secrecy, transparency and a narrowed state secrets privilege and proceed to have his administration assert positions and back legislation that was directly contrary to those promises? In the U.S., we complain about Chile hiding the crimes of the Pinochet regime, or Germany hiding the Nazi crimes or Russia the crimes of the KGB, yet where is the screaming when President Obama hides the war crimes of the Bush administration?'
"His answer: 'In part, the recent blatant assertions of secrecy are to hide crimes of former and some current officials. That is why President Obama is keeping the torture photos hidden. That is why he is continuing to assert broad state secret claims to try and hide the rendition program. That is why the 2004 CIA report on the secret site interrogations will be released with heavy redactions.' "
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