Monday, 5. March 2012

9/11 Questions Bubble Up in the Media

On Friday February 24, Boiling Frogs posted an article titled “Media Sleepwalks, While History is in the Making.” Three articles had come out the week before, one in the London Daily Telegraph and two in the Florida-based Broward Bulldog, raising important new questions about the crimes of September 11, 2001 and the quality of the government’s investigation. In particular, these articles discussed new information and questions coming from former Senator Robert Graham, questions relating to secret documents that Graham described as running at odds with past government assertions in the 9/11 investigation. These three articles also raised new questions about the role of the government of Saudi Arabia.

The Feb 24 Boiling Frogs post discussed those three articles, and noted that there hadn’t been a single article in the mainstream media on the issues they raised, even though a week had gone by. The post then asked if a valid prediction market could be established for the date when the media would wake up.

Political prediction markets have a very interesting history. One of the difficulties in having a successful market, a market that people trust, is related to a similar issue in futures markets. Futures contracts need to be specified carefully and clearly, and remain free of ambiguous legal interpretation.

Well, did the mainstream media just wake up? In last Wednesday’s New York Times, Eric Lichtblau had an article titled “Saudi Arabia May Be Tied to 9/11, 2 Ex-Senators Say.” Lichtblau cited sworn statements from Graham as well as Robert Kerrey in affidavits filed last Friday in a court case still developing inManhattan. As the day wore on, it looked like the dam was starting to burst, with numerous traditional media outlets reporting on the matter.

At least one item in the March 1, 2012 New York Times article looked pretty interesting. At the close of the article, Lichtblau quoted Kenneth L. Wainstein, identified as a “senior national security official with the George W. Bush administration,” in the following way:

The senators’ assertions “might inject some temporary strain or awkwardness at a diplomatic level,” said Kenneth L. Wainstein, a senior national security official in the George W. Bush administration. Even so, he said, “the United States and the Saudis have developed strong counterterrorism cooperation over the last decade, and that relationship will not be undermined.”

Back in 2004, Senator Graham wrote a book called Intelligence Matters. This book included a review of the work of the joint congressional inquiry into the 9/11 events, a cooperative effort of the Senate and House intelligence committees. Graham had led the Senate effort, while serving as the Chairman of the Senate intelligence committee.

Intelligence Matters cited a “Ken Wainstein,” perhaps the same person as in the New York Times article, in a material way. The reference arrived while Graham was describing the effort of the joint inquiry to directly question an FBI informant that Congressional leaders believed held material information. Explaining why the inquiry wanted to question the informant directly, Senator Graham said:

The FBI could not, however, explain a number of inconsistencies in the informant’s statements, inconsistencies that our staff — not the FBI – had uncovered in reading the files. Of course, the FBI’s investigation of the informant was a self-investigation, so we were skeptical of their conclusion; it might have been colored by self-interest.

Graham went to describe the difficulty in persuading the FBI to voluntarily allow the inquiry access to the informant, followed by the inquiry’s decision to formally subpoena and depose the informant. They decided to ask the FBI to serve the subpoena, given that the FBI could locate him or her. Graham then had a meeting that included a person named “Ken Wainstein.” In his 2004 book, Graham identified this person as the then-general counsel of the FBI. During the meeting, Graham pulled the subpoena out of his pocket, and described the reaction in the following terms:

My most enduring memory of that day is Mr. Wainstein’s body language. He leaned back from the subpoena as if it were radioactive; his hands remained pinned behind his back. I am certain that had I placed the subpoena in his lapel pocket, his hands still would not have moved. I was about to do just that when Mr. Wainstein said that he’d prefer not to take the subpoena, but would get back to us by the following Monday, and if we hadn’t worked out something by then, “the FBI will effect service.” Nobody ever got back to us. Never before, in all my time in Congress, had I seen the FBI refuse to serve a subpoena.

For anyone seeking the truth about the events of 9/11, and anyone who cares about the integrity of government, Senator Graham’s book remains compelling reading today.

# # # #Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

Source: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2012/03/05/who-is-ken-or-kenneth-wainstein/