9/11 hijackers tied to Saudi government, Graham says in book.

WASHINGTON -- Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Senator Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.

The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers "would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration," the Florida Democrat wrote.

And in Graham's book, "Intelligence Matters," obtained by The Miami Herald yesterday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees

This is an amazingly arrogant video in many senses. We're supposed to believe that former Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent of this WMD Prevention Commission, a government-funded group, put together this snazzy and misleading video about H1N1 vaccines? Or did a Big Pharma lobbying group do it for them? It's hard to say, based on the lack of information as to the actual creator. The basic question is, is there really anything wrong with creating flu vaccine with eggs?

Here's the thing - back in the day, pharmaceuticals making vaccines needed a living medium in which to grow cultures, something that was cheap because they needed to make a lot. Something like... eggs! The FDA not only approved this process for flu vaccines, but also vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, and rabies. And the thing is, once the FDA approves a particular process and materials for a drug, if you want to update the process and/or materials, you have to start all over with the FDA approval process. That's expensive, especially if you have to pay off the research and development costs accrued.

Today the problem is that no large pharmaceutical firms want to get involved in vaccine production because of the time and cost involved. Many of our vaccines come from overseas plants today. That's part of the reason why the production of H1N1 vaccine was delayed, but to be clear, this is more about an overworked and underappreciated FDA than the need for new production facilities.

So why do these guys want to tell us about H1N1 vaccines? Do they really care about public health vaccines? Or do they really want some attention so that you'll listen to them talk about bioterrorism and their lobby friends can get some business to produce more BW agent vaccines? I'm thinking the latter. And then there's this part of the G-T comedy hour.

The consequences of ignoring these warnings could be dire. For example, one recent study from the intelligence community projected that a one- to two-kilogram release of anthrax spores from a crop duster plane could kill more Americans than died in World War II. Clean-up and other economic costs could exceed $1.8 trillion.

Now in what universe does a small release of anthrax cause more deaths than all those Americans who died in WW2, when bio weapons experts like Bill Patrick have told us that 50 kilos of anthrax would be needed to take out Washington DC? I don't think the intel community endorses this scenario; rather, the G-T team got a powerpoint slide from a certain senior bioterrorism adviser to the former administration that effectively makes an anthrax attack worse than a nuclear weapon.

A source tells me that this study uses a point source generator inside of a city to cause 1.9 to 3.4 million exposed, with 450,000 people becoming ill and 380,000 dead. City-wide decontamination is needed and the projected economic cost is greater than $1.6 trillion. This is just a brilliant case of fiction, designed to get the attention of people who usually wouldn't stop to talk about bioterrorism. I doubt that any intel community expert would give this scenario the time of day - but Senators Graham and Talent don't know that. They just repeat what they've been told.

It's just sad.

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This is a block buster. Former Sen.(D)Bob Graham, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee told David Shuster that he never was briefed about waterboarding by the CIA on MSNBC. He also said that he was never allowed to take real notes about the CIA briefings, but he did log the topics and the amount of times he was briefed. They don't match up with the CIA's version. And of course, George "Slam Dunk" Tenet's outfit never was wrong or misled us before. James Fallows backs up Graham's honesty and integrity by the way. And Graham also sees the real motives behind the smearing of Pelosi. As he says it's an attempt to shift the blame away the Bush administration and their use of torture.

Graham: David, when I was briefed about three weeks after The Speaker, the subject "waterboarding" never came up. Nor did the treatment of Abu-Zubaydah or any other specific detainee.

Shuster: And that's significant because by the time of your briefing and the Speaker's briefing we now know that Zubaydah had been waterboarded 83 times, so again was their a requirement, was it incumbent on the CIA to tell you as the Chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee or a ranking member, was there an obligation on them to tell you what was going on?

Graham: Yes, they're obligated to tell the full Intelligence Committee not just the leadership. This was the same time, within the same week in fact that the CIA was submitting their National Intelligence Estimate or NIE report on WMD's in IRAQ which proved so erroneous that we went to war and that have had thousands of persons killed and injured as a result of misinformation.

David, I think fundamentally what's happening is there's an attempt underway to try and shift the discussion away from what's really important and that is did the US use torture? Was that within the law? Who authorized and what were the consequences of that. Those are the important issues. Whether The Speaker or anybody else knew about it is frankly sort of off on the edges.

Graham blasts the CIA for also misleading us in the IRAQ WAR, but they would never try to mislead Pelosi or smear her now. He also calls for a Truth Commission on Torture. Can Republicans now keep denying that we need a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of all this torture business?

Greg Sargent broke this story:

Former Senator Bob Graham, who received a classified briefing on terror detainees during the same month in the fall of 2002 as Nancy Pelosi, was not briefed about the use of either waterboarding or enhanced interrogation techniques during the meeting, he claimed in an interview with me.

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Emptywheel: Former Sen. Bob Graham says the CIA is making sh*t up. Holy Joe says they always told him the truth.  At least one Republican disagrees...sometimes. Still, I applaud the Wingnutosphere's sudden, inexplicable desire for accountabilty.

Hit & Run: Drug Czar calls for an end to the 'War on Drugs'

The Brad Blog: Rove to be questioned by Special Prosecutor on U.S. Attorney firings today

Happy Valley News Hour: The Fanboyification of the GOP

The Reaction: Does anybody really give a damn other than the "variable values" lunatics?

The Political Carnival: Scouts train to fight terrorists

When I first read this report, I admit that I got angry. Then I got smart. Look carefully at the names named in this report. Isn't it interesting that the WaPo reporters made sure to point out the Democrats in attendance when Congress was still operating under a Republican majority? Hmmm....who do you suppose could have leaked this story to the press to perhaps deflect from their own negative stories?

No matter how you slice it, there's some serious 'splaining that needs to be done, but the lopsidedness of this article makes me more than a little leery of its accuracy.

WaPo:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.[..]

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.[..]

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

GONZALES Defends Eavesdropping

Alberto went on the TODAY Show-to do a little clean up work-and to justify the President's actions. I thought he already had the power anyway.

WaPo: Gonzales said that while FISA prohibits eavesdropping without court approval, it makes an exception where Congress "otherwise authorizes." That authorization, he said, was implicit in the authorization for the use of military force.

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I like the "I can't tell you, but it has been helpful," routine Gonzo uses. How much did we pay journalists to plant positive stories again?

Bob Graham disagrees: "My interpretation of the law would be yes, that he did not have the legal authority to do this under the Afghanistan war resolution or under the general powers as commander-in-chief."

ReddHedd has her take: "Why bother going around the FISA law anyway? You could already do an emergency wiretap or surveillance at any time, and get a judge to okay it after the fact. You had everything you needed with the FISA laws. What were you spying on that you didn't want the FISA courts to know about?..."...read on"