Rice vor der 911-Kommission

--- Nach der lange erwarteten Anhörung von Condoleezza Rice, der nationalen Sicherheitsberaterin Bush, wartet die Fachwelt nun schon wieder gespannt. Und zwar auf das so genannte President's Daily Briefing (PDB) vom 6. August 2001. Warum erklärt die New York Times: The importance of the document has grown in recent weeks as the investigation by the independent commission has shown that the government was inundated that summer with dire warnings from the C.I.A. and other agencies of imminent, possibly catastrophic terrorist attacks against the United States. In some of the sharpest exchanges of the hearing, Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor and one of the Democrats on the commission, prodded Ms. Rice to justify her past descriptions of the Aug. 6 report. "You indicated here that this was some historical document, and I'm asking you whether it is not the case that you learned in the P.D.B. memo of Aug. 6 that the F.B.I. was saying it had information that preparations — not historically, but ongoing preparations — were being made consistent with hijackings within the United States," he said. Ms. Rice said that much of the report was "speculative" and referred to intelligence gathered years earlier. "This was not a warning," she repeated. "This was a historical memo prepared by the agency because the president was asking questions about what we knew" about domestic terrorism threats. Mr. Ben-Veniste asked if there was anything in the document that should have given a reader any reassurance that a terrorist attack might be prevented. "Certainly not," Ms. Rice replied. "There was nothing reassuring. But I can also tell you that there was nothing in this memo that suggested that an attack was coming on New York or Washington, D.C. There was nothing in this memo as to time, place, how or where. This was not a threat report to the president." Das pikante Dokument will das Weiße Haus nun angeblich noch heute auf seiner Website veröffentlichen. Bisher findet sich dort allerdings nur das Eingangsstatement Rice' zu ihrer Vernehmung. Ansonsten gab es wenig Unerwartetes bei dem Hearing, die Bush-Beraterin textete die Fragenden gut zu und spinnte die Fakten planstabmäßig im Sinne der Regierung. Das komplette Transkript gibt es unter anderem auch bei der Times. Für unsere geliebten Verschwörungstheoretiker ist dagegen nach wie vor klar, dass der neokonservative Bush-Zirkel selbst der Strippenzieher bei den Anschlägen vom 11. September war. Hinweise darauf finden sie vor allem in Clarkes Buch, das ihrer Ansicht nach die Schuld bewusst auf die Geheimdienste und die schläfrige Bush-Regierung schiebt, um noch halbwegs ernst genommen zu werden, aber beim genaueren Lesen Hinweise auf "die eigentlichen Täter" gibt. Siehe dazu auch Bröckers in Telepolis. Interessante Hintergründe rund um das PDB auch in der Washington Post.

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