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Cheney Fears Leaks From Any New Sept. 11 Inquiry
May 22, 2002 04:47 PM ET Email this article Printer friendly version
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By Arshad Mohammed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday he feared
a new Sept. 11 inquiry proposed by the top Senate Democrat would leak
intelligence secrets and undercut U.S. efforts to prevent future attacks.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle on Tuesday said he would push for an
independent commission after disclosures suggesting the White House missed a
series of hints last year that critics believe might have helped prevent the
attack.
In an interview with CNN's "Larry King Live," Cheney called suggestions that
President Bush had forewarning of the Sept. 11 attacks that killed about
3,000 people "despicable" and rejected expanding the inquiry beyond the one
under way by the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives intelligence
committees.
"Our concern is that if we now lay another investigation on top of that (it)
would just multiply the potential sources of leaks and disclosures of
information that we can't disclose," Cheney said according to interview
excerpts released by CNN.
"The key to our ability to defend ourselves and to take out the terrorists
lies (in) intelligence," Cheney added, noting there have been calls for the
disclosure of an Aug. 6 memo in the president's daily intelligence briefing.
"This is the most sensitive product ... of the intelligence community. It
comes from our most sensitive and secret sources. If there are leaks from
that document ... we will lose the capacity to defend ourselves against
future attacks," he said.
"If we now start adding commissions, nobody is going to come back and shut
down this one. There is not just going to be just one, there will be several
and we can't afford to have several," the vice president added.
The debate over an independent commission flared after last week's
disclosure, confirmed by the White House, that Bush received an analysis on
Aug. 6 raising the possibility of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network seeking
to hijack planes.
'A DESPICABLE STATEMENT'
The United States blames al Qaeda for the attacks in which 19 men hijacked
four U.S. commercial aircraft, driving two into the twin towers of New York's
World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed in a
Pennsylvania field after a scuffle between passengers and the hijackers.
Critics have seized on the Aug. 6 analysis and on a recent disclosure that an
FBI agent in Phoenix last summer recommended his superiors look for al Qaeda
members training at U.S. flight schools as evidence the Bush administration
did not do everything it could to prevent the attack.
Cheney has angrily rejected the idea that Bush had forewarning of the Sept.
11 attacks.
"When members of Congress suggest that the president of the United States had
foreknowledge of the attack on September 11, I think that's outrageous,"
Cheney said. "That's a gross outrageous political attack and it's totally
uncalled for."
"The implication that somehow we had prior knowledge and didn't act on it, I
think, is a despicable statement."
Separately, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said al Qaeda detainees at the
American navy base in Guantanamo, Cuba, were trained in deceiving their
interrogators and suggested this was a deliberate effort to mislead the
United States.
"If you behave off of inaccurate information, it costs you time and it costs
you money," Rumsfeld told reporters. "There is no question but that it
happens. These people are well trained. You've seen their training manuals."
--- Begin Message ---
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=politicsnews&StoryID=9969
81
Dick Cheney fears the loss of power if secrets were made known as to the
nature of a single memo in Washington. Let people's capacity for the truth
decide whether these "secrets" are so terrible. What exactly do we NOT
know about world affairs that would make this memo so dangerous? How
would the world become less secure if this information became common
knowledge?
Fran
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