*0bama ordered DHS to scrub records of Muslims with terror ties*

[wxzyw]

DHS ordered me to scrub records of Muslims with terror ties

Philip Haney

Amid the chaos of the 2009 holiday travel season, jihadists planned to slaughter 290 innocent travelers on a Christmas Day flight from the Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan. Twenty-three-year old Nigerian Muslim Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab intended to detonate Northwest Airlines Flight 253, but the explosives in his underwear malfunctioned and brave passengers subdued him until he could be arrested. The graphic and traumatic defeat they planned for the United States failed, that time.

Following the attempted attack, President Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to “connect the dots.” He said, “this was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His words infuriated many of us because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material—the actual intelligence we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.

After leaving my 15 year career at DHS, I can no longer be silent about the dangerous state of America’s counter-terror strategy, our leaders’ willingness to compromise the security of citizens for the ideological rigidity of political correctness—and, consequently, our vulnerability to devastating, mass-casualty attack.

Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.”  Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.

A few weeks later, in my office at the Port of Atlanta, the television hummed with the inevitable Congressional hearings that follow any terrorist attack. While members of Congress grilled Obama administration officials, demanding why their subordinates were still failing to understand the intelligence they had gathered, I was being forced to delete and scrub the records. And I was well aware that, as a result, it was going to be vastly more difficult to “connect the dots” in the future—especially beforean attack occurs.

As the number of successful and attempted Islamic terrorist attacks on America increased, the type of information that the Obama administration ordered removed from travel and national security databases was the kind of information that, if properly assessed, could have prevented subsequent domestic Islamist attacks like the ones committed by Faisal Shahzad (May 2010), Detroit “honor killing” perpetrator Rahim A. Alfetlawi (2011); Amine El Khalifi, who plotted to blow up the U.S. Capitol (2012); Dzhokhar or Tamerlan Tsarnaev who conducted the Boston Marathon bombing (2013); Oklahoma beheading suspect Alton Nolen (2014); or Muhammed Yusuf Abdulazeez, who opened fire on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee (2015). 

It is very plausible that one or more of the subsequent terror attacks on the homeland could have been prevented if more subject matter experts in the Department of Homeland Security had been allowed to do our jobs back in late 2009. It is demoralizing—and infuriating—that today, those elusive dots are even harder to find, and harder to connect, than they were during the winter of 2009.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/268282-dhs-ordered-me-to-scrub-records-of-muslims-with-terror

[D2D]

That order gives aid and comfort to the enemy!

That order is treason!

[scott_free]

and yet bush was president for 8 months with all kinds of dots connected and ignored when 9/11 occurred.  there is no proof this asshole is telling the truth.  why do you believe him?


1. NY Times: Bush Warned bin Laden Would Hijack Planes
"The White House said tonight that President Bush had been warned by American intelligence agencies in early August that Osama bin Laden was seeking to hijack aircraft..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/16/politics/16INQU.html

2. CNN: Bush briefed on hijacking threat before 9-11
"President Bush's daily intelligence briefings in the weeks leading up to the September 11 terror attacks included a warning of the possibility that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network would attempt to hijack a U.S.-based airliner, senior administration officials said Wednesday."
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/05/15/bush.sept.11/index.html

3. UK Guardian: Bush knew terrorists would hijack planes
"George Bush received specific warnings in the weeks before 11 September that an attack inside the United States was being planned by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, US government sources said yesterday?. The memo received by Bush on 6 August contained unconfirmed information passed on by British intelligence in 1998 revealing that al-Qaeda operatives had discussed hijacking a plane to negotiate the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Muslim cleric imprisoned in America for his part in a plot to blow up the World Trade Centre in 1993."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,718312,00.html

4. Sunday Herald: Britain warned Bush to expect 9-11 al-Qaeda hijackings
"Britain gave President Bush a categorical warning to expect multiple airline hijackings by the al-Qaeda network a month before the September 11 attacks which killed nearly 3000 people and triggered the international war against terrorism."
http://www.sundayherald.com/24822

5. Village Voice: Officials Warned of Plans to Attack DC, NY with Planes
"The U.S. government had received repeated warnings of impending attacks?and attacks using planes directed at New York and Washington?for several years. The government never told us about what it knew was coming."
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0332/mondo4.php

6. AP: 9/11 report, Rice conflict; Bush got specific data on threats
"...the briefing given to the president a month before the suicide hijackings included recent intelligence that al-Qaida was planning to send operatives to the United States to carry out an attack using high explosives."
http://www.sunspot.net/business/nationworld/bal-te.rice29jul29,0,2620591.story?coll=bal-business-headlines

[scott_free]

7. MSNBC: White House Briefed on Imminent bin Laden Attack
"One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and prophetic. It predicted that Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist strike 'in the coming weeks,' the congressional investigators found. The intelligence briefing went on to say: 'The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.'"
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3067907/

8. MSN: Condoleezza Rice's False Statement

A: "The overwhelming bulk of the evidence was that this was an attack that was likely to take place overseas."
- White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, in a May 16 news briefing.

B: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
- Title of the CIA's Aug. 6 briefing memo to President Bush . . .
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2066154

9. Newsweek: Day before 9-11, Pentagon Generals Cancelled Flights
"On Sept. 10, NEWSWEEK has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."
http://www.msnbc.com/news/629606.asp 

10. SF Gate: Mayor got 8-hour warning Before 9-11 Attacks ? September 12, 2001
For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss came late Monday when he got a call from what he described as his airport security - - a full eight hours before yesterday's string of terrorist attacks -- advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel.

11. Florida State: Jeb Bush Declares Martial Law 9-7-01
"Based on the potential massive damage to life and property that may result from an act of terrorism at a Florida port, the necessity to protect life and property from such acts of terrorism..."
http://www.state.fl.us/eog_new/eog/orders/2001/september/eo2001-261-09-07-01.html

12. CBS News: Ashcroft Avoided Commercial Travel Prior to 9-11
"In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/printable303601.shtml

13. UK Independent: Taliban Mole Warning Ignored
"Weeks before the terrorist attacks on 11 September, the United States and the United Nations ignored warnings from a secret Taliban emissary that Osama bin Laden was planning a huge attack on American soil."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=331115

14. NY Times: "President Mubarek Warned US of Al Qaeda Plot”
"Egyptian intelligence warned American officials about a week before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden's network was in the advance stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview on Sunday."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D16F73B5E0C778CDDAF0894DA404482

15. Village Voice: US Ignored France Warnings
"A key point in unraveling why the FBI failed to follow up leads on Al Qaeda terrorism now centers on the Bureau's contemptuously brushing aside warnings from French intelligence a few days before 9-11."
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/ridgeway2.php

16. Intl. Herald Tribune: White House Ignored Arab Warnings
"When the hubbub about what the White House did or didn't know before Sept. 11 dies down, Congressional or other investigators should consider the specific warnings that friendly Arab intelligence services sent to Washington in the summer of 2001."
http://www.iht.com/articles/58269.html

17. UK News-Telegraph: Israel issued urgent warning of large-scale terror attacks
Israeli intelligence officials say that they warned their counterparts in the United States last month that large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent."
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$52PMOXQAADW5PQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2001/09/16/wcia16.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/09/16/ixhome

[scott_free]

18. NY Post: FBI Warned D.C. It Was A Target
"A Minnesota FBI agent investigating Zacarias Moussaoui testified yesterday that he notified the Secret Service weeks before Sept. 11 that a terror team might hijack a plane and 'hit the nation's capital.'"
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/57848.htm

19. Yahoo News: FBI Warnings Ignored
"An FBI supervisor, sounding a prophetic pre-Sept. 11 alarm, warned FBI headquarters that student pilot Zacarias Moussaoui was so dangerous he might 'take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center,' a congressional investigator said in a report Tuesday."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story2&cid=512&ncid=716&e=4&u=/ap/20020924/ap_on_go_co/attacks_intelligence

20. Independent: America had 12 warnings of aircraft attack
"American intelligence received many more clues before the 11 September attacks than previously disclosed, that terrorists might hijack planes and turn them into weapons, a joint congressional committee was told yesterday."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=334633

21. Washington Post: 9/11 Probe Says Agencies Failed to Heed Attack Signs
"U.S. intelligence agencies received many more indications than previously disclosed that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network was planning imminent "spectacular" attacks in the summer of 2001 aimed at inflicting mass casualties."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36754-2002Sep18.html

22. Yahoo News: Spy Agencies Had Pre-9/11 Threats on U.S. Soil
"U.S. intelligence agencies picked up threats of attacks inside the United States and of using airplanes as weapons during the spring and summer before last year's Sept. 11 attacks, but were more focused on the possibility of an assault overseas, a congressional source said on Tuesday."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?mpl=story2&cid=578&ncid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20020917/ts_nm/attack_congress_intelligence_dc

23. Vanity Fair: Bin Laden Relatives Secretly Evacuated From NY
"Patrick Tyler of the New York Times is reporting from Washington: 'In the first days after the attacks on Sept. 11, the Saudi Arabian ambasador to Washington, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, supervised the urgent evacuation of 24 members of Osama bin Laden's extended family from the United States fearing they might be subjected to violence.'"
http://www.guerrillanews.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=gnn&Number=204363&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&part=all

24. Sydney Morning Herald: Administration Told US agents “Back off bin Ladens”
"US special agents were told to back off the bin Laden family and the Saudi royals soon after George Bush became president, although that has all changed since September 11, it was reported today."
http://www.old.smh.com.au/news/0111/07/world/world100.html

25. Ha'aretz Daily: CEO Says Workers Warned Hours Before World Trade Center Hit -- FBI Investigating
"Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack."
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=77744

26. NY Times: White House Approved Secret Evacuation of Bin Ladens After 9-11
"Richard Clarke, who ran White House crisis team after Sept 11 terror attacks, says top White House officials personally approved evacuation of dozens of influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, from United States in days after Sept 11, when most flights were grounded." http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/090503A.shtml

27. Tampa Tribune: Bodyguards tell of Secret Bin Laden Flight
"The hastily arranged flight out of Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar on the outskirts of Tampa International Airport, was anything but ordinary. It lifted off the tarmac at a time when every private plane in the nation was grounded due to safety concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks. "
http://www.dirtybush.com/connectthesedots.html

28. UK Minister: "Bush had Foreknowledge of 9-11 attacks"
"...it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1036588,00.html

[wmdn_bs]

It never ceases to amaze me that there are people as stupid as xwxyz321 walking around and breathing on their own without someone following them around telling them to "breathe in, now breathe out, now breathe in, etc..."

Anyone can write anything they like. Honesty doesn't matter, and xwxyz321 has nothing but the words of someone with an agenda. As long as it fits his particular brand of bigotry he gobbles it up, hook, line and sinker.

[sweetwater5s9]

Some things cry out for explanation. Like finding $90,000 in marked bills in a Congressman's freezer. Or finding out that a blue-chip lawyer who held one of the most important jobs in the nation was willing to risk his career, his livelihood, and his liberty to steal, hide, and destroy classified documents.

We all have a pretty good idea what the money was doing in Representative William Jefferson's freezer. But the questions about President William Jefferson Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, just keep piling up.

According to reports from the Inspector General of the National Archives and the staff of the House of Representatives' Government Operations Committee, Mr. Berger, while acting as former President Clinton's designated representative to the commission investigating the attacks of September 11, 2001, illegally took confidential documents from the Archives on more than one occasion. He folded documents in his clothes, snuck them out of the Archives building, and stashed them under a construction trailer nearby until he could return, retrieve them, and later cut them up. After he was caught, he lied to the investigators.

What could have been important enough for Berger to take the risks he did? What could have been important enough for a lawyer of his distinction to risk disgrace, disbarment, and prison?

To paraphrase the questions asked of Richard Nixon by members of his own Party, what did he take and why did he take it?

  Only Mr. Berger knows what transpired on his first two visits, when he reviewed collections of confidential memos, e-mails, and handwritten notes, including materials taken from counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke's office - all of which were not catalogued at the individual item level. 

What was on the copies he destroyed? Handwritten notes from Berger, the President, or some other official? Observations that would be embarrassing to them, evidence they missed an important threat or considered or recommended actions - or decisions not to act - they wouldn't want to defend in public? Evidence, perhaps, that would have supported the Bush Administration? We don't know, and no one who does is saying, but the evidence must have been terribly damning for Berger to take the risks he did.

Clinton obviously has great sensitivity to his place in history and to accusations that he did too little to respond to al-Qaeda, that he is to some degree responsible for failing to prevent 9/11's tragedy. That is why he and his lieutenants made reckless and baseless accusations against the current Bush administration, attempting to portray them as having dropped the baton handed off by ever-vigilant Clintonistas (who, according to John Ashcroft's testimony, withheld the MAAAR and its warnings about al-Qaeda's operations in the US from the Bush transition team).

But maybe there is more to the story. Maybe there is something far worse than we can imagine that is worth having his chief security aide risk his reputation, his career, and his liberty to cover up.

This story at bottom is about the security of our nation, about what was - or was not - done to protect us from the most shocking and deadly attack on American citizens by foreign agents in our nation's history. This story is critical not only to understanding our past but also to securing our future.

Those who wrap themselves so frequently in the mantra of the people's right to know should want to know the truth - all the time. Sadly, today's would-be Woodwards and Bernsteins look more like ostriches than hawks, showing no curiosity about what Sandy Berger was hiding. Had that been the attitude when Watergate first appeared as a minor news story, Richard Nixon would have served out his full second term. The rest, as they say, is history.
         

         
         

         
Mr. Cass, Chairman of the Center for the Rule of Law and Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law

[scott_free]

the guy you quoted is a liar, jerkwater.  berger did not steal or attempt to steal any ORIGINAL notes that were archived in that building.  even someone as stupid as you must know they do not give out original classified material inside a non-secure building to anyone.  there are copies of everything that everyone has access to, and even a dumbass moron like you should know that and know your source was a lying asshole. 

On July 19, the Associated Press was the first to report that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger for allegedly illegally removing classified documents and personal notes from the National Archives last fall during preparations for his appearance before the 9-11 Commission.

This much is known: Berger and his lawyer, Lanny Breuer, have said for the record that: 1) Berger inadvertently put several copies of classified documents into a leather portfolio he was carrying; and 2) that Berger put handwritten notes, which he had made while reviewing the documents, in his jacket and in his pants pockets. (making notes and carrying out those notes is technically against the law, too)

But rumors and confusion abound in media coverage:

Media confuses originals and copies. As the story unfolded between July 20 and July 22, conservative pundits have run with speculation that Berger removed original classified documents, rather than copies, from the archive and then destroyed them as part of a cover-up. But there is no evidence to support this accusation; in fact, according to The Washington Post, "The documents removed were copies; the National Archives retained the originals."

Berger did admit later than he purposely took the documents but offered no reason why, since they were only copies and had no real relevance.  He was found guilty of a misdemeanor and lost his security clearance for 3 years. 

and this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16706-2005Mar31.html

The document, written by former National Security Council terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, was an "after-action review" prepared in early 2000 detailing the administration's actions to thwart terrorist attacks during the millennium celebration. It contained considerable discussion about the administration's awareness of the rising threat of attacks on U.S. soil.


Archives officials have said previously that Berger had copies only, and that no original documents were lost.

[D2D]

Yet, nothing Scott posted refutes the fact Obama ordered the cover up of terrorist affiliations!

[scott_free]

yeah, it does, dumbass. who is Philip Haney?  why do you believe him?  all somebody has to do is say something happened, and if it apparently makes Obama or Clinton look bad, you automatically believe it, without proof?  you are too stupid to comment.  go away. 

[D2D]

Yet, nothing Scott posted refutes the fact Obama ordered the cover up of terrorist affiliations!

[wmdn_bs]

The only reason D2D and Sweetwater believes him is because his libelous slander was anti-Obama. Honesty doesn't matter to them. The only thing that matters is that it casts Obama in a bad light. The right is getting more desperate every day. I'm guessing they see a Clinton Presidency in the near future.