JVLV: TRUMP IS RIGHT! “W” AND CONDI IGNORED MULTIPLE WARNINGS OF COMING 9/11, 2-14-16

“Unafraid, Bi-partisan Uphold U.S. and Freedom!”

On 2-13-16, the  9/11 catastrophe again became a subject of contention at the South Carolina GOP debate.  Jeb maintained his brother kept us safe. Trump argued that “W” did not; the world Trade Center came down on his watch. As our forthcoming study on follies of U.S. policy-makers concludes, not just the CIA as Trump stated, but also Vladimir Putin, Dick Clarke and Garry Hart issued warnings to “W” and/or Rice.  This narrative is based on excerpts of our forthcoming book, Follies of U.S. Policy-makers; 9/11, Iraq War of Choice and Benghazi-gate, Copyright, JVLV. 

Not just Bush, but also his NSA, Dr. Condi Rice, “W”’s close confidant- turned Jeb’s present principle advisor, disregarded Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning of a coming attack on our homeland. Putin warned both of them at a June 16 summit in Slovenia. He didn’t know the date, however.  In Rice’s later words, “Putin… was right. The Taliban and al Qaeda were time bombs that would explode on September 11, 2001…I was taken aback by Putin’s alarm and vehemence.” 

But not by Putin’s alone were they warned! Two holdovers from the Bill Clinton administration, who also worked for “W”, Dr. Richard Clarke, head of counter-terrorism in the Bush NSC, and CIA Director George Tenet, repeatedly warned Rice of a coming attack. Trump mentioned the CIA in the debate yesterday. In the Bush administration it was also Clarke.   

What Trump did not say, is that not just “W” but NSA Condi Rice was responsible.  Condi did not let Clarke get close to the president and even demoted him from his senior position at the NSC! Tenet called Rice on July 10th to sound the alarm once again about the impending attack. Clearly Rice did not pay high level attention to the Islamic terrorism threat in June and July 2001.

 Only on August 6th did the CIA Director, Tenet, finally get to brief the president with the now famous memo entitled, “Bin Laden determined to Strike in U.S.”  A few weeks after this Presidential Briefing, Tenet went to Bush’s Crawford Ranch in Texas for the first time to make sure “W” understood its meaning.  

Finally, we also learned from Senator Gary Hart (D), former co-chair of a bipartisan commission on national security, that he personally warned Condi too. He knew her well as she had worked on his 1984 presidential campaign.  On September 6, 2001, five days before 9/11, Hart met with Rice and urged, "You must move more quickly on homeland security. An attack is going to happen.”  He, like Clarke, later accused Bush and Rice of ignoring his warnings.    Hart did not see the president, but Rice had three warnings – Putin, CIA-Clarke and Hart. However, Condi prevaricated while testifying at the 9/11 Commission, she denied responsibility.

Actually, we admire “W” for his strong response to terrorism afterwards. Jeb is right about that. His brother responded brilliantly to 9/11 by going to the source with his invasion of Afghanistan. Donald did not mention this.  However, “W” and Rice failed to anticipate and defend us from the 9/11 attack. As both Clarke and Donald Rumsfeld noted, Condi monopolized “W”.   She made herself the channel for information from various staff he should have directly consulted to make his own decisions. If “W’s” security people had enjoyed direct access to him and Putin’s and Hart’s warnings were heeded, there is likelihood the attack could have been prevented and 2,753 lives could have been saved.

Finally, as we severely criticized President Putin for his Ukrainian intervention, we must say, as objective authors, we still give him kudo for his warning and desire to help America in her struggle against Islamic terrorism at that time.

We also applaud Trump that, instead of following the GOP politically correct line of never criticizing Bush, he rejects the PC line and calls things as he sees them. Having a president who tells the truth is important to us.   Remember our motto: “Unafraid, Bi-partisan Uphold U.S. and Freedom!”

Dr. Jiri Valenta is President of the Institute of Post-Communist Studies and Terrorism.  A long-standing member of the Council on Foreign Relations, N.Y, he is the recipient of numerous prestigious fellowships – Brookings, CFR, Woodrow Wilson Rockefeller, Peace Institute, Fulbright and more, as well as grants from the PEW and Konrad Adenauer Foundations. He has also been a trustee of the Heritage Foundation and member of Dante Fascell’s Fellowship Committee at the U.S. State Dept., and served as adviser to senior members of the Ronald Reagan administration. He was invited by Henry Kissinger to testify at his Bi-Partisan Commission on Central America.  For his work in directing a post-revolutionary think tank for the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he received the Jan Masaryk silver medal based on his “contribution in preserving and promoting relations between the Czech Republic and the United States of America.”  He was a founder of the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies at the U. of Miami (1985-91 and supervised and taught Soviet and East European Studies for a decade (1976-85) at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.

Leni Friedman Valenta is the CEO of our Institute and co-writer and editor-in-chief of it’s website, jvlv.net.  She has contributed to scholarly publications such as The National Interest, the Aspen Review, the Miami Herald, Kyiv Post, Georgian Messenger (Tbilisi, GA) and the Tico Times, San Jose, Costa Rica.  She is also a regular blogger for the Russian International Affairs Council, Moscow.  A graduate cum laude of Brandeis University, she is the recipient of an MFA from the Yale School of Drama in Playwriting.  She is also a playwright and painter.

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