The Paul Revere No One Wants to Hear From (Gary Hart)

[Triana]

A Paul Revere no one wants to hear from
I co-chaired a national security panel that warned the Bush administration the terrorists were coming. Why hasn't the 9/11 commission called any of us to testify?

Editor's note: The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century was created by President Bill Clinton in October 1998, with the approval of the congressional leadership. It was a bipartisan commission with a three-year life and a mandate to review threats to national security and opportunities to avoid those threats and to report to the next president of the United States in early 2001. It completed the most comprehensive review of U.S. national security since 1947.

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By Gary Hart


April 6, 2004 | Suppose that in March or April, 1941, 14 Americans with lengthy backgrounds in national security affairs had reported to President Franklin Roosevelt that the United States was going to be attacked somewhere, sometime, somehow by the Japanese, that this attack would result in large numbers of American casualties, and these officially-appointed Americans had strongly recommended to the Roosevelt administration that it take urgent steps to help prevent such an attack. Further suppose that Roosevelt had done little if anything in response to this warning, and that almost eight months later, as it happened, the Japanese attacked American facilities at Pearl Harbor, and almost two thousand Americans died. Suppose after this attack official inquiries were launched, as it also happened, as to why there was a failure of intelligence, what actions were or were not taken based on what intelligence there was, and what could be done to prevent such catastrophic surprises in the future. And finally suppose that the official commission created to investigate the tragedy of Pearl Harbor failed to call upon the original 14 Americans who forecast the attack and forewarned against it.

Now move this supposed scenario forward to 2004 and you have virtually a perfect fit.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/04/06/commission/index_np.html

[Ivote]

1. The Court Martial Of Billy Mitchell

comes to mind. Back then as now People didn't want to hear the truth.

[kentuck]

2. He sure would have credibility as a VP candidate!

It would make it difficult for Bush to talk about his "war" credentials...

[WildClarySage]

3. Monkey Business/Donna Rice

Pukes would have a field day. It's not fair, of course, but the negative comparisons to Clinton would obscure their message. Of course, pukes will likely try that on whoever becomes the candidate, so maybe there's a way to openly settle the matter.

I'm starting to think that Kerry is waiting too long to pick his running mate. JMHO, of course.

[noonwitch]

5. I always liked Hart, would have voted for him in 88 if he had stuck it out

He quit after the Donna Rice incident. He was a much stronger candidate than Dukakis.

[stewert]

4. E-Mail........

I sent an e-mail to the 9-11 commission about this very issue, they did
not reply to me.

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Subject: Question.......
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 07:39:30 -0600
From: Steve
To: [e-mail]

I may be wrong but I do not recall anyone on the
9-11 commission saying one word about the January
2001 Hart/Rudman terrorism report.

And how come the 9-11 commission has not
questioned Gary Hart or Warren Rudman ?

The Clinton Administration put together a 14
person bi-partison panel called The U.S.
Commission on National Security, it was headed by
Gary Hart and Warren Rudman in 1998, they spent
2.5 years and 15 million dollars to study
terrorism.

They released the finding of their report on
1-31-01, this was 11 days after Bush took office.
Yet as of 9-11-01 they had not implented one thing
from their study. In fact they ignored it totally,
Jake Tapper at salon.com wrote an article about it
one day after the 9-11 attacks.

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"We predicted it"

A bipartisan commission warned the White House and
Congress that a bloody attack on U.S. soil could
be imminent. Why didn't anyone listen?

By Jake Tapper

September 12, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- They went to great pains not to
sound as though they were telling the president "We told you so."

But on Wednesday, two former senators, the bipartisan co-chairs of a Defense
Department-chartered commission on national security, spoke with
something between frustration and regret about how White House officials failed to
embrace any of the recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism delivered
earlier this year.

Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo.,
and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the
recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National
Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice
President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism --
which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying --
while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.

The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism
was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA's attention.

Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be
taking the commission's suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. "Frankly,
the White House shut it down," Hart says. "The president said 'Please wait, we're going
to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.
' And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day."

Full Story Here:

http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/12/bush/index.html

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The Hart/Rudman report was totally ignored by the
Bush administration, this report proves President
Clinton was very worried about terrorism. It also
proves President Bush was not worried about
terrorism. On top of the warnings Richard Clarke
was giving the Bush white house, the daily
warnings from the CIA director, the warnings Condi
Rice was getting, and the Hart/Rudman report, it
shows Bush ignored warnings from everywhere.
And this report was not released until after Bush
took office. Yet almost nobody even mentions this
report in the media or from the 9-11 commission,
or the fact that Bush ignored it and all the
warnings from everywhere. They spent millions of
dollars and 2.5 years on this study yet Bush put
it on the shelf and ignored it until after
9-11-01.

Can someone at the 9-11 commission tell me why
none of this is asked about in the public hearings
?

Steve