I'll include the text of the Atlanta Journal Constitution Article detailing this hearing, but my real aim here is to do my little piece to lend exposure to skewed MSM coverage of Rep. McKinney's efforts. To that end, McKinney's 8/2 letter to the AJC as reported by Playahata first.
It's a shame that the Atlanta Journal and Constitution seems incapable of running factual coverage of important events for the people in the Atlanta area. Their coverage of our historic Capitol Hill 9-11 briefing, laden with commentary and innuendo, bore no resemblance to the content of the actual event. They refuse to retract that story--as I have requested them to do--or to even print this op ed signed by many of the panelists and me. Please share this op ed with your friends; post it widely as an example of the way serious issues are treated by the corporate media in Atlanta.
August 2, 2005Editor
Atlanta Journal Constitution
55 Marietta Street, Ste. 1500
Atlanta, GA 30303OP-ED TO THE EDITOR:
Your recent article ("McKinney reopens 9/11" July 23, 2005,by Bob Kemper) covering a day-long Congressional briefing on July 22 was totally misleading in claiming that it consisted of "conspiracy theories implicating president [Bush]." The actual title was ""The
9/11 Commission Report One Year Later: A Citizens' Response – Did They Get it Right?" and not a single panelist at the event, which included 9/11 family members, former intelligence and government workers, whistleblowers and academic experts, raised any allegations that the Bush administration arranged the
9/11 attacks.The eight hours of testimony included a powerful statement from New Jersey 9/11 widow Lorie van Auken speaking for other family members about their questions that remain unanswered to date, and their frustration that no one has been held accountable at any level for what was not an "institutional failure" nor a "failure of imagination"in relation to the 9/11 attacks, but personal failures to heed multiple and explicit advance warnings of just such an event in the United States.
Your reporter has done the concerned family members and scholars present a disservice by his defamatory remarks which continue to hide from the American public the many unexplored facts and unanswered questions that mark our understanding of and response to 9/11. I hope the public and the citizens in my district in Georgia will take the opportunity to hear this new evidence through C-SPAN, Pacifica Radio,and my own website.
Certainly the dozens of panelists who spoke about
post-9/11 violations of civil rights and liberties, the rise of secrecy and the hidden costs of covert operations and consolidation of intelligence, and the rise of the neoconservative view in foreign policy and a new "Pax Americana" and permanent warfare that ignore international law or the alternatives of restoring justice and peace cannot be called "conspiracy theorists" because they question the immediate response and flawed recommendations that now guide legislation and a new security paradigm.Historians and researchers who discover glaring errors or omissions in the Commission's report, or the lack of historical framework to their comprehension of the sources of terrorism can't be called "contrarians" for unearthing facts that contradict faulty conclusions or assumptions in the official version of events.
This calls for another look at the government's account of 9/11, which guides so much of what has happened since. Mistakes of fact, intentional or not, have changed and guided America into costly wars and increased insecurity at home. They need to be addressed and scrutinized, not dismissed and used to attack those who discover or raise them.
Your writer further implies that the issues I raised in 2002 regarding 9/11 and its aftermath "helped to spur my ouster from Congress" and that this event merely revisited the questions I raised then. To the contrary, my legitimate questions of 2002 have been taken up since by many others in Congress and the public. Many 9/11 victims' families share these concerns as well. My re-election calls the question to such claims, since my credibility with the electorate in my district is intact.
In the end, public consideration of important new facts regarding all aspects of the 9/11 tragedy is my responsibility to my constituents, the victims of 9/11, and the oath I took to defend our Constitution.
The presenters listed below, who were at the July 22 briefing, join me in this response.
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
4th District, GeorgiaPeter Dale Scott, Ph.D.
Ray McGovern
David MacMichael
Paul Thompson
Nafeez Ahmed
Elaine Cassell
C. William Michaels, Esq.
Dr. John Nutter
Anne Norton
Dr. William F. Pepper
The article which provoked Rep. McKinney's letter;
Original Article in the AJC
Conspiracy theories implicating president aired at 8-hour hearing
Bob Kemper - Staff
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Washington --- Revisiting the issue that helped spur her ouster from Congress three years ago, Rep. Cynthia McKinney led a Capitol Hill hearing Friday on whether the Bush administration was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The eight-hour hearing, timed to mark the first anniversary of the release of the Sept. 11 commission's report on the attacks, drew dozens of contrarians and conspiracy theorists who suggest President Bush purposely ignored warnings or may even have had a hand in the attack --- claims participants said the commission ignored.
"The commission's report was not a rush to judgment, it was a rush to exoneration," said John Judge, a member of McKinney's staff and a representative of a Web site dedicated to raising questions about the Sept. 11 commission's report.
The White House and the commission have dismissed such questions as unfounded conspiracy theories.
McKinney first raised questions about Bush's involvement shortly after the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, generating a furious response from fellow Democrats in Washington and voters in Georgia, who ousted her in 2002.
"What we are doing is asking the unanswered questions of the 9/11 families," McKinney, a DeKalb County Democrat who won back her seat in 2004, said during the proceedings.
She rebuffed a reporter's repeated attempts to ask her why she would so boldly embrace the same claims that led to her downfall.
"Congresswoman McKinney is viewed as a contrarian," panelist Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official, said. "And I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom."
Though she left the testimony and questioning of panelists to others, McKinney was the main attraction, presiding over more than two dozen participants, including the author of a book that claims the U.S. government had advance knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack and allowed it to happen, and Peter Dale Scott, who wrote three books on President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
Georgia peanuts, Cokes and coffee were available to more than 50 attendees, whose casual dress was a decided change from the gangs of blue-suited lobbyists who usually crowd Capitol Hill hearings.
McKinney herself offered witnesses bottled water and found additional trash cans to place around the room.
Nearly a dozen 9/11 enthusiasts lined one side of the room, camcorders at the ready, broadcasting the hearing live over the Internet or recording it for later release. C-SPAN cameras documented the hearing, and a DVD recording of the proceedings will soon be available.
Ten people sat in a section reserved for family members of 9/11 victims.
"Nine-eleven could have been prevented," said Marilyn Rosenthal, a University of Michigan professor who lost a son in the attacks, echoing the premise of the hearing.
Panelists maintained that Bush ignored numerous warnings from the CIA, the Federal Aviation Administration, foreign governments and others who told him before 9/11 that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack the United States and that terrorists were likely to use hijacked airliners as weapons.
But why would the president or his administration want the 9/11 attacks to occur? Power, the panelists agreed.
In the wake of the attacks, the administration was able to greatly expand the president's power and the reach of the federal government, they said, but whistle-blowers and other potential witnesses who could have testified to the Sept. 11 commission about such things were either prevented from speaking or ignored in the commission's final report. Panelists called the commission's report "a cover-up."
"The American people have been seriously misled," said Scott.