Ourview
U.S.
should not declassify report
A French writer, Thierry Meyssan, published
a bestseller in France called “The Frightening
Fraud,” accusing right-wing Americans of
masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorist plot
and that American Airlines Flight 77 that
crashed into the Pentagon in Washington
killing 189 did not exist. Radical American
groups have accused the Bush family of instigating
the attacks to press their oil interest
in the Middle East and to gain revenge for
Saddam Hussein’s failed attempt to assassinate
the first President Bush.
Most Americans, and especially our government,
give no more than passing consideration
to these theories. They seem ludicrous.
How could any American, or person, for that
matter, live with causing so much pain and
suffering?
It seems that Sen. Bob Graham is trying
to cash in on the circulating conspiracy
theories by accusing the Bush administration
of engaging in a coverup of intelligence
failures before and after the Sept. 11 attacks
to protect it from embarrassment. The conspiracy
Graham describes is not as sinister as the
French writer or the radical Americans’
theories, but Graham’s motives seem less
than innocent.
Sen. Graham announced his candidacy for
president last week. Unlike Meyssan, Graham
looks to cash in on votes rather than dollars.
The Los Angles Times reported that, “Graham,
a presidential candidate and former chairman
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also
accused the administration of jeopardizing
the safety of Americans by blocking the
release of a landmark congressional report
on the government failures that preceded
the attacks on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon. The Florida Democrat said the
White House has withheld from the public
important information about the continued
existence of terrorist cells in the United
States — including some with ties to foreign
governments that the U.S. has been afraid
to go after.”
Graham is basing his accusations on classified
information he has been privy to as a ranking
member of the Senate intelligence committee
and as a leader of last year’s joint congressional
inquiry into the Sept.11 attacks.
The House and Senate intelligence committees
Graham took part in investigated missteps
made by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement
agencies in relation to Sept.11. That inquiry
reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages
of CIA, FBI and National Security Agency
files, interviewed hundreds of agents and
held hearings before compiling their final
report.
Graham is gaining media attention with his
accusations. He is also taking advantage
of a paranoid public to provide himself
with a forum in which to press his views
and his presidential aspirations.
This is nothing new. The way in which any
of our presidents have climbed the political
ladder has been less than ideally patriotic.
But this does not mean that we should neglect
to expose the issue when it is as obvious
as Graham’s tirade.
The report is more than 400,000 pages of
highly classified material. Much of it is
made up of how our security entities work
and where their weaknesses are. If this
information became public domain before
law enforcement agencies were able to correct
the problems, we could be in even worse
danger than before the Sept.11 attacks.
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