Air Force Officer Delivers Blistering Excoriation Of Bush
Says Bush is Responsible for September 11th
Attacks By
Jerry Isaacs 8-11-3
- A US Air Force officer in California recently accused
President Bush of deliberately allowing the September 11 terror attacks
to take place. The officer has been relieved of his command and faces
further discipline. The controversy surrounding Lt. Col. Steve Butler's
letter to the editor, in which he affirmed that Bush did nothing to warn
the American people because he "needed this war on terrorism," received
scant coverage in the media.
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- Universally ignored by the press, however, was that
the officer was not merely expressing a personal opinion. He was in a
position to have direct knowledge of contacts between the US military
and some of the hijackers in the period before the terrorist attacks
that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.
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- Lieutenant Colonel Butler, who wrote in a letter to
the editor of the Monterey County Herald charging that "Bush knew about
the impending attacks," was vice chancellor for student affairs at the
Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California " a US military
facility that one or more of the hijackers reportedly attended during
the 1990s. In his May 26 letter to the newspaper, Butler responded to
Bush supporters, who had written the paper opposing the congressional
investigation into the September 11 events. He wrote:
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- "Of course President Bush knew about the impending
attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because
he needed this war on terrorism. His daddy had Saddam and he needed
Osama. His presidency was going nowhere. He wasn't elected by the
American people, but placed in the Oval Office by a conservative supreme
court. The economy was sliding into the usual Republican pits and he
needed something on which to hang his presidency.... This guy is a joke.
What is sleazy and contemptible is the President of the United States
not telling the American people what he knows for political
gain."
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- The letter provoked immediate retaliation against the
24-year Air Force veteran. Butler was transferred from the Monterey
installation and threatened with court martial under Article 88 of the
military code, which prohibits officers from publicly using
"contemptuous words" against the president and other officials.
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- Last week the Air Force announced it had concluded its
investigation of the case and suggested Butler would likely face
"nonjudicial punishment," such as a fine or a letter of reprimand,
rather than a stiffer sentence. If he refuses this punishment, however,
Butler, who is ready to retire, could still face a court martial.
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- The issue is a particularly sensitive one for the
Pentagon and the Bush administration. While many people believe that the
Bush administration viewed September 11 as a priceless opportunity to
implement an ultra-reactionary program of militarism and repression,
Butler is different. His military assignment brought him into contact
with at least one of the alleged hijackers.
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- Shortly after September 11, several US news outlets
reported that Saeed AlghamdiÑnamed as taking part in the hijacking of
United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in western PennsylvaniaÑhad
taken courses at the Defense Language Institute, the US military's
primary foreign language facility, where Butler was a leading officer
overseeing students (essentially, dean of students).
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- Alghamdi, a 41-year-old Saudi national, was one of
several alleged hijackers, including accused ringleader Mohamed Atta,
who reportedly trained at US military facilities, according to a series
of articles published between September 15 and 17 in the Washington
Post, Newsweek magazine, the New York Times and several other
newspapers.
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- On September 15, Newsweek reported: "U.S. military
sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged
hijackers of the planes used in Tuesday's terror attacks received
training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s."
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- The magazine said that Saeed Alghamdi was among three
who had taken flight training at the Navy Air Station in Pensacola,
FloridaÑknown as the "cradle of US Navy aviation"Ñwhich also administers
training of foreign aviation students for the Navy. The magazine, citing
"a high-ranking Pentagon official" as its source, reported that two
othersÑboth former Saudi air force pilots who had come to the USÑalso
attended such facilities. One received tactical training at the Air War
College in Montgomery, Alabama and the other language training at the
Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Over the next few days,
more detailed information appeared in several other newspapers. A
September 16 article in the New York Times reported:
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- "Three of the men identified as the hijackers in the
attacks on Tuesday have the same names as alumni of American military
schools, the authorities said today. The men were identified as Mohamed
Atta, Abdulaziz al-Omari and Saeed al-Ghamdi.
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- "The Defense Department said Mr. Atta had gone to the
International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama; Mr.
al-Omari to the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in
Texas; and Mr. al-Ghamdi to the Defense Language Institute at the
Presidio in Monterey, Calif."
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- The Knight Ridder news service also reported that
Saeed Alghamdi had been to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey
and the Associated Press cited Air Force sources indicating that more
than one of the hijackers may have received language training at the
installation. The media dropped the story after the Air Force officials
issued a cursory statement aimed at preventing any further inquiry into
links between the US military and the terrorists. While acknowledging
that some of the suspected terrorists "had similar names to foreign
alumni of U.S. military courses," the statement said discrepancies in
biographical information, such as birth dates and name spellings,
"indicate we are probably not talking about the same people." Without
providing any substantiation, the statement suggested the hijackers may
have stolen the identities of foreign military personnel who received
training at the bases.
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- Following this less than convincing explanation, the
Air Force refused to release the ages, countries of origin or any other
information about the individuals whose names matched those of the
alleged hijackersÑmaking it virtually impossible to verify the claim
that these were not the same individuals.
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- Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI also
refused to make public any information. Asked by Florida Senator Bill
Nelson whether any of the hijackers were trained at the Pensacola base,
the Justice Department refused to give a definitive answer, and the FBI
said it could not respond until it could "sort through something
complicated and difficult," according to the senator's
representative.
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- To receive such training, the hijackers would have had
connections to Arab governments that enjoyed close relations with the US
government. A former Navy pilot at the Pensacola air station told
Newsweek that during his years on the base, "We always, always, always
trained other countries' pilots. When I was there two decades ago, it
was Iranians. The Shah was in power. Whoever the country du jour is,
that's whose pilots we train."
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- Military officials acknowledged that the US has a
longstanding agreement with Saudi Arabia to train pilots for the
kingdom's national guard. Candidates receive air combat training and
other courses on several Army and Navy bases, in a program paid for by
Saudi Arabia. Significantly 15 of the 19 hijackers were believed to be
Saudi nationals.
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- According to its web site, the Defense Language
Institute Foreign Language Center in MontereyÑfounded in 1946 as the
Military Intelligence Service Language SchoolÑ"provides foreign language
services to Department of Defense, government agencies and foreign
governments" to support "national security interests and global
operational needs."
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- As vice chancellor for student affairs, Butler had
extensive contact with students, according to Pete Randazzo, a close
associate of the officer and president of the National Association of
Government Employees Local 1690, which represents civilian employees at
the language school.
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- "He would go and have lunch with the students, sit in
their classrooms. He was a very caring officer over there," Randazzo
told the Herald. Butler was also navigator of a B-52 bomber during the
Persian Gulf War, which made it likely he was familiar with Saudi
military operations, given the close relations between the US and Saudi
Arabia during the 1990-91 war against Iraq.
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- In the 1990s, several officers were disciplined under
Article 88 of the military code for publicly denouncing Clinton,
including an Air Force general who went so far as to ridicule the
president as a "gay-loving, pot-smoking, draft-dodging womanizer" in
front of 250 people at an awards banquet.
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- With Butler's comments, however, the Pentagon faces a
more delicate problem. The Lieutenant Colonel may well know considerably
more than he is saying about US military-intelligence apparatus
involvement in the September 11 events, and, on the eve of his
retirement, took the opportunity to set the record straight.
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- http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mcherald/3406502.htm
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