From the Washington Post
In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows.
The document, dated Oct. 12, 2001, shows that the FBI requested $1.5 billion in additional funds to enhance its counterterrorism efforts with the creation of 2,024 positions. But the White House Office of Management and Budget cut that request to $531 million. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, working within the White House limits, cut the FBI's request for items such as computer networking and foreign language intercepts by half, cut a cyber-security request by three quarters and eliminated entirely a request for "collaborative capabilities."
The document was one of several administration papers obtained and given to The Washington Post by the Center for American Progress, a liberal group run by former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks.
...
Other documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's "Strategic Plan" from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. After the attacks, fighting terrorism became the department's primary goal. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism "the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area."
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If John Kerry is unfit to be President because in 1995 he proposed reducing the intelligence budget by 1%, then what is John Ashcroft doing still in the AG's slot, having having taken terrorism off the list of DoJ priorities a month before 9-11? And why hasn't whoever at OMB decided to cut $1 billion from an FBI request for $1.5 billion in extra counter-terror funds after 9-11 looking for a job?
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From the day of 9/11 to the present, the degree to which the Bush administration has stood in the way of any and all investigation into September 11 is nothing less than an insult to the memory of every person who died on that day.
So let's review a little history.
For over a year after the attacks, Bush fought the creation of an independent commission to investigate the intelligence failures that led to September 11. At one point, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees thought they had worked out the details of the commission so it could be added to the intelligence authorization bill but found out that the White House had instructed the Republican House leadership to prevent the commission from coming to the floor, effectively killing it.
After families of the September 11 victims finally shamed him into it, Bush signed on to the creation of the commission but appointed Henry Kissinger-perhaps the single person on the planet least likely to expose government mistakes and wrongdoing-to be its chair. Kissinger turned Bush down when it turned out he'd have to reveal the identities of his clients (who knows how many dictatorial regimes are on that list).
When the commission's work finally got underway, investigators were stymied by the Justice Department's insistence that any interviews of government officials be watched over by a "minder," either the interviewee's boss or someone else from their agency. If this sounds familiar, it's because the same technique was used by Saddam Hussein to intimidate scientists being interviewed by UN weapons inspectors.
The commission investigating the intelligence failures leading up to the greatest crime in American history was initially funded with a pathetic $3 million-a fraction of the $50 million appropriated to investigate the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia, and less even than the $5 million Congress spent on studying the effects of casino gambling.
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Business Roundtable to run the country via "CEO COM LINK" in case of "national emergency"
Tinfoil hat time? Nope. Not under Bush!
CEO COM LINK [is] a secure, exclusive telephone system established in November 2001 that allows chief executives to speak directly with Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and other officials during a terrorist attack.
The exclusive communications network was created by the [Business] Roundtable for use by its members, 150 CEOs from Fortune 500 companies... (The Roundtable's chairman, Henry A. McKinnell, is the CEO of Pfizer, Inc., and recently was named a Bush Pioneer.)
CEO COM LINK has already been activated four times, all at Ridge's request.
Even in an administration notorious for its catering to corporate interests, CEO COM LINK affords the Business Roundtable an astonishing status. No other organization, public or private, has such a secure and open line to the top tier of government during a national disaster. ... No dedicated hot line like CEO COM LINK exists for any other group: not governors, mayors, firefighters, hospitals, or police.
When I asked John Castellani, the Roundtable President, whether CEO's profit motives might conflict with the government's interest in national security, he shot back that the two "were absolutely tied together with the same purpose."
CEO COM LINK is the only system of its kind in America, and as such is could, during a national emergency, allow for a kind of ad hoc governance by the Roundtable and its unelected CEOs.
Secretiveness on such matters seems to suit the DHS, the first U.S. government agency in history that has a separate division dedicated to serving the private sector.