{"id":223770,"date":"2022-11-14T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=223770"},"modified":"2022-11-13T06:16:25","modified_gmt":"2022-11-13T06:16:25","slug":"u-s-government-quietly-declassifies-post-9-11-interview-with-bush-and-cheney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/11\/u-s-government-quietly-declassifies-post-9-11-interview-with-bush-and-cheney\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Government Quietly Declassifies Post-9\/11 Interview with Bush and Cheney"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a newly declassified interview conducted in 2004, Bush shows not a glimmer of awareness of the destruction and carnage he had unleashed on the world.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney walk to the Oval Office, on Nov. 17, 2004, in Washington, D.C.\u00a0 Photo: Ron Edmonds\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

10 Nov 2022 – <\/em>Yesterday,<\/span> as the eyes of the U.S. public were focused on Tuesday\u2019s [8 Nov] midterm election results, a U.S. government panel quietly released a newly declassified summary<\/a> of an Oval Office joint interview conducted with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney about the September 11 attacks. The interview,\u00a0carried out by members of the 9\/11 Commission, was not recorded and the summary document constitutes the only known official record of the meeting. The meeting took place on April 29, 2004.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe President and Vice President were seated in chairs in front of the fireplace. The President\u2019s demeanor throughout was relaxed. He answered questions without notes,\u201d according to the\u00a0document drafted by the commission\u2019s Executive Director Philip Zelikow. \u201cThe portrait of Washington was over the fireplace, which was flanked by busts of Lincoln and Churchill. Paintings of southwestern landscapes are on the wall. It was a beautiful spring day.\u201d The document, whose declassification was first reported<\/a> by the Wall Street Journal, is not an official transcript but is described as \u201ca memorandum for the record.\u201d It was authorized for release by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the most striking aspects of the declassified document is the apparent absence of even a glimmer of self-awareness by Bush about the significance of the death and destruction he was unleashing with his global war. The interview took place just as a massive insurgency was erupting in Iraq against a U.S. occupation that would kill thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. While the document is a rough transcript and summary, Bush comes off as almost childishly simplistic in his insights and analysis. The lack of any sensitive information contained within the document should spur questions as to why it took more than 18 years to be made public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While the document is a rough transcript and summary, Bush comes off as almost childishly simplistic in his insights and analysis.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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The declassified document does not contain any groundbreaking revelations, but it does offer some new\u00a0texture\u00a0to the internal events immediately following the attacks. That morning, after the first plane had hit the World Trade Center, Bush was reading \u201cThe Pet Goat\u201d with second grade students at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota County, Florida. Bush told the commissioners that he had seen the first plane hit but thought it was an accident. \u201cHe recalled that he and others thought the building had been hit by a twin engine plane. He remembered thinking, what a terrible pilot.\u201d\u00a0Soon after the second plane hit the south tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m., chief of staff Andy Card approached Bush as he sat listening to the students reciting more passages from \u201cThe Pet Goat\u201d and informed him that it appeared the U.S. was under attack.<\/p>\n

The commissioners asked the commander-in-chief why he continued to sit in the classroom. \u201cHe was trying to absorb the news. He remembered a child, or someone, reading. He remembered watching the press pool and noticing them talking on their phones. He realized the country was watching his behavior. He had to send the right signals. He wanted to collect his thoughts,\u201d according to the notes. \u201cHe felt he should project calm and strength, until he could understand better what was happening.\u201d Bush \u201cthought it was important to keep his body language calm in the face of danger. As the president, he was conscious that \u2018people react off me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Perhaps the most interesting passages from the document relate to the extent to which Cheney was empowered to effectively take command authority that morning. Bush said he was pressured to get on Air Force One, so he \u201cmade some quick remarks and blasted out of there.\u201d Cheney, he recalled, urged him, \u201cDon\u2019t come home.\u201d Cheney \u201ctold him that Washington was under attack. He strongly recommended that the President delay his return to Washington. There was no telling how much more the threat might be. The President agreed, reluctantly.\u201d Once Cheney was at the helm inside the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, an underground bunker beneath the East Wing of the White House, he and Bush discussed the \u201crules of engagement\u201d for the evolving situation, including confronting other potential hijacked aircraft. \u201cYes, engage the enemy. You have the authority to shoot down an airplane,\u201d Bush reportedly told Cheney. \u201cThe President understood this from his experience in the Texas Air National Guard,\u201d according to the notes. \u201cHe had been trained to shoot down planes. He understood generally how this worked \u2014 one plane would lock on, one would ID. He understood the consequences for the pilot, how a pilot might feel to get the order to shoot down a US airliner. It would be tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The document describes a chaotic scene with communications equipment failing and Bush being overwhelmed with rumors and reports about other potential targets, including Air Force One and his private ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush \u201chad heard of the fog of war. That day he saw it, firsthand. He wanted to go back to D.C.\u201d Instead, Bush was flown to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana while Cheney ran things from the bunker under the White House. The document states that during this period, the secure phone line between Bush and Cheney kept failing. Bush also\u00a0tried to reach Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but said that \u201cthey couldn\u2019t find him.\u201d Bush \u201cwas very frustrated about not being able to make contact with different people.\u201d He also complained that \u201cthere was not good television on\u201d Air Force One. He was eventually moved to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, where he had better secure communications equipment. Bush would spend some nine hours aboard Air Force One that day and did not return to the White House until 7 p.m.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cheney, according to the document, gave direct authorization to the military to shoot down civilian aircraft after being presented with intelligence that the planes had been hijacked. \u201cThen they heard that an aircraft was down in Pennsylvania. The Vice President thought we\u2019d shot it down. It took a while to sort this out. In the next half hour there were two or three occasions like this: a report of an incoming, would he reiterate authorization? Yes. In every case, though, the problem was resolved without shots being fired.\u201d According to the declassified notes, there were five reports of additional hijackings that all turned out to be false. When one of the commissioners pressed Cheney about apparent discrepancies in the timeline of when exactly Bush gave the vice president authority to direct the shooting down of U.S. civilian planes, \u201cThe President said: Look, he didn\u2019t give orders without my permission.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the 9\/11 commissioners \u201casked if the President or the Vice President had been involved in permitting planes carrying Saudi nationals to leave after 9\/11. No, the President said. He had no idea about this until he read about it in the papers.\u201d Cheney, the document noted, \u201calso gave a negative answer,\u201d but added that\u00a0his answer was \u201chard to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several 9\/11 commissioners raised the issue of the infamous Presidential Daily Briefing<\/a> from August 6, 2001, titled \u201cBin Laden Determined to Strike in US.\u201d That document cites foreign intelligence indicating that Osama bin Laden \u201cwanted to hijack US aircraft\u201d in an effort to free Islamic extremist prisoners held by the U.S. on terror convictions. It also stated that the FBI had information \u201cthat indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.\u201d Bush repeatedly rejected the notion that he had received any \u201cactionable intelligence\u201d and said it was just a \u201cgeneral assessment,\u201d and that he had personally requested information that ultimately led to the production of that specific briefing. \u201cIt reaches the conclusion that Bin Ladin wants to attack us,\u201d Bush told the commissioners. \u201cYeah, the President commented, he\u2019s trying to do that. So is al Qaeda.\u201d Bush claimed that none of the briefings he received \u201cwas commenting on a threat in America. There was no actionable intelligence on such a threat \u2014 not one.\u201d Bush told the commissioners that CIA Director George Tenet told him, \u201cThe threat was overseas \u2014 that was what George said.\u201d Bush \u201csaid he thought that if there had been a serious concern in August [2001], he would have known about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The declassified document also contains some reflections from Bush and Cheney on the initial stages of the so-called war on terror. Bush complained that U.S. allies were reluctant to join in the global assassination program implemented after 9\/11. \u201cOn bringing terrorists to justice, their approach was not as tough as ours. Foreign governments were less willing to kill them, to go after them in the remote places of the world. Our own agencies, the President said, were pretty darn robust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheney also decried congressional oversight of covert operations, particularly those run by the CIA, saying it had weakened the agency. \u201cThe standards that had been applied to the intelligence community had left them inclined to be risk averse. The penalties were high for getting involved in actions that might later be judged to be inappropriate,\u201d the notes read. Cheney \u201cmentioned the example of having nasty people on the CIA payroll. The officials then try to be careful; they don\u2019t take things on.\u201d Throughout his political career, Cheney was notorious for despising congressional oversight of U.S. covert operations. Five days after 9\/11, he said<\/a> on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press,\u201d \u201cWe also have to work, though,\u00a0sort of the dark side, if you will. We\u2019ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked how the U.S. could \u201cmake the country less vulnerable to attack,\u201d Bush \u201csaid they were trying to kill a lot of the enemy. They are killers. We had to kill them before they kill us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The document also describes some of the White House efforts to cajole Muslim nations, like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, into supporting a much wider U.S. war. The Saudis, Bush asserted, were \u201cunhappy\u201d with the U.S. position on Israel, and \u201cPakistan was too close to the Taliban. They had to change Pakistan\u2019s behavior. But the country was smothered in congressional sanctions; there were no carrots they could use. After 9\/11 this changed.\u201d In the case of both nations, the document notes that following alleged Al Qaeda attacks against them, they fell more in line with the White House\u2019s wishes. \u201cThe enemy helped give us an opportunity,\u201d according to the document. In Pakistan there were two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003. \u201cThat helped him change some more.\u201d In Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda took responsibility for the May 2003 bombing of a series of residential compounds in Riyadh, including one operated by the U.S. private military contractor Vinnell Corporation. \u201cAfter that, the Saudis were better warfighters.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When asked how the U.S. could \u201cmake the country less vulnerable to attack,\u201d Bush \u201csaid they were trying to kill a lot of the enemy. They are killers. We had to kill them before they kill us.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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In an unusual admission, the document states that Bush acknowledged that the U.S. economic sanctions on Iraq were \u201crecruiting terrorists. Their propaganda with reports of starving Iraqi children were hurting us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bush also told the commissioners that working with Vladimir Putin, who had assumed the presidency in Russia in 2000, \u201cwas important,\u201d especially to facilitate the use by U.S. military and intelligence of bases in central Asia, including Uzbekistan,\u00a0to stage its operations in Afghanistan. \u201cHe spoke with Putin about this in the summer of 2001. He remembered Putin complaining about Pakistan \u2014 and about Saudi Arabia \u2014 being safe havens for the terrorists, urging the need to find the source of these problems.\u201d Developing a better relationship with Putin and Russia, Bush said, \u201cwould make it easier for the U.S. to base activity in the \u2018Stans.\u2019 This was hard for Russia historically, to accept.\u201d<\/p>\n

The document describes a lengthy discussion on why the U.S. did not actively try to kill bin Laden before 9\/11. Bill Clinton did sign a presidential finding to kill bin Laden and authorized a missile attack against a suspected Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in 1998 following the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Without directly criticizing Clinton, Bush decried the launching of cruise missiles in an effort to assassinate bin Laden. Bush \u201csaid he was concerned about an empty response that Bin Ladin and others would use to propaganda advantage,\u201d according to the notes. \u201cIf that had been ineffective, the enemy would have used it to show their ability to thwart U.S. technology and military might.\u201d Bush \u201csaid you must use ground forces for a job like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the commissioners questioned Bush about why he did not authorize military activity to kill bin Laden in the months before 9\/11, Bush mentioned that he had recently spoken with British Prime Minister Tony Blair who observed that \u201cthey were being criticized for not launching a preemptive attack against Afghanistan. And they were criticized for preemptively attacking Iraq.\u201d Blair allegedly told\u00a0Bush that if\u00a0the president had said \u201cbefore 9\/11 that he wanted to put forces in Afghanistan, he \u2014 Blair \u2014 would have been floored. \u2018I would have looked at you like a nut,\u2019 Blair said. There was an appetite for a \u2018throat slit\u2019 (killing Bin Ladin), not a war footing.\u201d With no apparent sense of the lethal irony present, Bush told the commissioners, \u201cA president can\u2019t force preemptive war without a cause. The country didn\u2019t like war. \u2018I don\u2019t like it either,\u2019 the President said.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the document, the commissioners discussed 9\/11 \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d with Bush, and the president said he had seen some, including ones that \u201cwere worse than anything he had seen coming out of even the John Birch Society in Midland, Texas.\u201d Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste told Bush that the commission \u201cwanted to deal with as many of these conspiracy themes as possible. Their goal was to make the country safer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Jeremy Scahill<\/a> is an investigative reporter, war correspondent and author of the international bestselling books <\/em>Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield\u00a0<\/em>and <\/em>Blackwater: The Rise of the World\u2019s Most Powerful Mercenary Army<\/em>.\u00a0He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has served as the National Security Correspondent for <\/em>The Nation Magazine <\/em>and <\/em>Democracy Now!.<\/em> His work has sparked several Congressional investigations and won some of journalism\u2019s highest honors. He was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award, in 1998 for foreign reporting and in 2008 for his book <\/em>Blackwater.<\/em>\u00a0Scahill is a producer and writer of the award-winning film <\/em>Dirty Wars<\/em>, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and has been nominated for an Academy Award. jeremy.scahill@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Nov 2022 – One of the most striking aspects of the interview conducted in 2004 is the apparent absence of even a glimmer of self-awareness by Bush about the significance of the death and destruction he was unleashing with his global war. He comes off as almost childishly simplistic in his insights and analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":124647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[2862,481],"class_list":["post-223770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-george-bush-ii","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}