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<p>President Obama is caught smack in the middle of a family feud among 9/11 relatives of a financier killed at Ground Zero, The Post has learned.</p> <p>The brothers of Adam Arias went ballistic when they learned that their aunt, Valerie Lucznikowska, was among the 9/11 relatives invited to last week's White House meeting with Obama. The brothers were not invited.</p>

Relatives of the Sept. 11 victims ripped into Condoleezza Rice yesterday after she insisted the Bush administration had no clue the U.S. would be attacked. "Shame," Terry McGovern, a New Yorker whose mother was killed, yelled at the national security adviser during Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission. Other relatives ridiculed Rice's assertion that she had no idea that Osama Bin Laden's men would hijack planes and crash them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. "How could she not know that?" asked Kristen Breitweiser, who lost her husband in the attacks. She noted that several similar threats were made,...

A flowchart, based on what we know to date, courtesy of FrontPage Magazine's Jennifer Verner: Of course these will need to be updated as more information surfaces.

THE al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui called the US “the head of the snake� as he justified the September 11 attacks yesterday. Moussaoui lambasted US support for Israel, which he said was little more than an American colony, in testimony as part of the defence’s attempt to avoid the death penalty. “You [Americans] are the head of the snake for me. If we want to destroy the Jewish state . . . we have to destroy you first,� he said. The 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with the September 11, 2001, attacks. The jury...

Washington, DC, Sep. 13 (UPI) -- Five widows whose husbands were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks will endorse John Kerry for president on Tuesday, United Press International has learned. [snip]Breitweiser and the others have become increasingly outspoken critics of the administration recently, especially since the launch of the war in Iraq. "That was not about making the country safer," she said of the war. The five have been criticized as partisan opponents of President Bush, after speaking out earlier this year against his use of imagery from Ground Zero in election ads.

Five outspoken Sept. 11 widows on Tuesday will publicly endorse John Kerry

Nearly three years ago, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows was born out of a shared belief that America’s military response to the 9/11 attacks which took our loved ones’ lives would result in the deaths of countless innocent civilians and increase recruitment for terrorist causes, making the United States, and the world, less safe and less free for generations to come. Today, as we commemorate September 11, 2004, we find that our worst fears have been realized. The terrorism of September 11th has been neither neutralized, nor ended, by the terrorism of war. Since our bombing and military action...

Presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry has pledged to refuse all "special interest" contributions. But Kerry and his wealthy wife--ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry--found a way to bypass campaign finance laws that limit her personal contributions to $2,000. Their conduit: a network of left-wing foundations and nonprofits that channel donations from the Heinz fortune to anti-Bush advocacy groups. Eyebrows rose when the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), the environmentalist political lobby, jumped on the Kerry bandwagon with an early primary endorsement. Why Kerry? "A clue may be found in grants the Heinz Endowments of Pittsburgh made to environmental groups whose leaders...

Was listening to Bill O'Reilly's Radio Factor. He did a story on the left-leaning groups behind some of the "9/11 families". He then interviewed Matthew Continetti who wrote the article (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/854qqwpu.asp) leading to O'Reilly's investigation. My point, if I ever get to it, is that on tonight's O'Reilly Factor there'll be a segment on which will include discussions of groups such as Peaceful Tomorrows, The Tides Foundation, etc.

There are a lot of stories around right now, about how surviving relatives of 9/11 victims are complaining about Bush's first round of campaign ads, featuring 9/11-related footage. As it turns out, this is a fun game for warbloggers. First you find one of these stories. Then you google each interviewee, and almost invariably it turns out to be a serious activist or political foot-soldier. Of course, there's no reason why the relatives of 9/11 victims should refrain from political activism. They have opinions, and as they stand metaphorically on the front line of our war, they deserve a hearing....

Heinz Seeks to Disavow Kerry Connection By CHARLES SHEEHAN, AP Business Writer PITTSBURGH - H.J. Heinz Co. has launched an election-year campaign of its own, this one to distance the ketchup maker from what is shaping up to be an acrimonious presidential race. The company has sent nearly 50 letters to radio and television talk shows nationwide to tamp down chatter on the airwaves and Internet suggesting revenue from ketchup sales will benefit the campaign of pending Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry (news - web sites). His wife is Teresa Heinz Kerry, heiress to the $500 million family ketchup fortune....

<p>PITTSBURGH (AP) -- H.J. Heinz Co. has launched an election-year campaign of its own, this one to distance the ketchup maker from what is shaping up to be an acrimonious presidential race.</p> <p>The company has sent nearly 50 letters to radio and television talk shows nationwide to tamp down chatter on the airwaves and Internet suggesting revenue from ketchup sales will benefit the campaign of pending Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.</p>

A flood of anti-Bush headlines poured across the news outlets last week like a tidal wave: “Sept. 11 Families Disgusted By Bush Campaign Ads;” “Bush Ads Using 9/11 Images Stir Anger;” “Bush Exploiting 9/11;” and “Has Bush No Shame?” Morning and evening editions of national newspapers led with the story, and the major news television networks revisited the debate every half an hour like clockwork. The controversy arose from Bush’s presidential ad campaign, which depicts brief images of the World Trade Center after the tragedy of 9/11. Colleen Kelly, who lost her brother Bill Kelly Jr. in the attacks on...

Call it "three green suitcase" journalism. Let's say a feature writer thinks green luggage is becoming popular. So the reporter taps out a story citing three people in different states who have given up black suitcases and bought green ones. The second paragraph begins: "All across America, people are switching to green suitcases." This creates a media trend that might be real, but is probably bogus and certainly isn't established by three sales. The uproar over President Bush's 9/11 ads was a classic three-green-suitcase story. The New York Daily News broke the story on March 4th, with a huge headline:...

The outrageous attack on President Bush's television commercials was the work of an extreme left-wing group that has been in the forefront of the battle against the War on Terrorism for years, but you'd never know it from the coverage it has received in the establishment news media. By picking up the charge, rather than reporting on its dubious source, the media have done major damage to the President's campaign, which compounded the problem by "defending" the ads, rather than exposing the hateful anti-Americanism of those who attacked them. The President's actions in the immediate wake of 9/11 were nothing...

Dover to D.C. Memorial Procession A trail of mourning and truth to honor those killed and wounded in Iraq Sunday, March 14 - Monday, March 15, 2004 The Bush Administration refuses to acknowledge the toll of this war – including those who are killed and wounded. We call on this administration to start telling the truth, and stop hiding the toll. We will begin this two-day event at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the U.S. war dead arrive. This memorial procession will honor our fallen brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers and friends, along...

Bush Campaign Urged to End TV Advertisements by Sept . 11 Victims ... Bloomberg  - 2 hours ago ... McIlvane was joined at the press conference by Rita Lasar , 72, who lost her brother, Abraham Zelmanowitz, 52. The computer programmer ... 'Dubya is trampling graves of 9/11 victims' Independent Online, South Africa  - 3 hours ago ... Ground Zero is a sacred site," said Rita Lasar , a steering committee member of the group, September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. ... Bush urged to pull 9/11 ads News24, South Africa  - 4 hours ago ... Rita Lasar , member of the group steering committee...

... Now I'm going to pick on the worst habits of certain anti-Times critics lurking on the Web. Last Sunday, an item appeared on FreeRepublic.com under the headline "FReeper Call to Action! Help make N.Y. Times correct the phony setup outrage story of Bush ads." Posted by "Doug from Upland," it exhorted readers of the self-described "Premier Conservative News Forum" to call Washington correspondent Richard W. Stevenson and demand that he "correct the record." Stevenson's apparent offense was a March 5 story he and Jim Rutenberg had written about negative reactions to Republican ads invoking the events of 9/11. Stevenson's...

Now I'm going to pick on the worst habits of certain anti-Times critics lurking on the Web. Last Sunday, an item appeared on FreeRepublic.com under the headline "FReeper Call to Action! Help make N.Y. Times correct the phony setup outrage story of Bush ads." Posted by "Doug from Upland," it exhorted readers of the self-described "Premier Conservative News Forum" to call Washington correspondent Richard W. Stevenson and demand that he "correct the record." Stevenson's apparent offense was a March 5 story he and Jim Rutenberg had written about negative reactions to Republican ads invoking the events of 9/11. Stevenson's...

The Teresa Heinz connection to the Tides Foundation and the left-wing activist group Families for Peaceful Tomorrows is the cover story on The Weekly Standard. I heard on Fox that it uncovers the phony orchestrated outrage of Bush's 9/11 ads. It's on newstands now. I can't access the article online, but I'm hoping someone has it. Thanks.

"Outraged 9-11 Victims" Tied to Kerry Campaign "September 11 Families Say Bush Campaign Treading on the Dead . . ." So reads the headline. It makes one think that Bush has enraged every member of every family who lost someone on September 11. It gives the idea that Bush has crossed the line and disrespected the victims of our nation's tragedy. . . . . . . then you read "the rest of the story." The article has quotes from some women like Rita Lasar, who lost her brother. Rita says, "Ground Zero is a sacred site . ....

Call it "three green suitcase" journalism. Let's say a feature writer thinks green luggage is becoming popular. So the reporter taps out a story citing three people in different states who have given up black suitcases and bought green ones. The second paragraph begins: "All across America, people are switching to green suitcases." This creates a media trend that might be real but is probably bogus and certainly isn't established by three sales. The uproar over President Bush's 9/11 ads was a classic three-green-suitcase story. The New York Daily News broke the story on March 4, with a huge headline...

<p>Your allegation ["(Mrs.) Kerry's Cash Connection," Editorial, March 9] that an organization called Peaceful Tomorrows has received funding from foundations directed by Teresa Heinz Kerry is flat-out wrong.</p> <p>The allegation rests on a false assumption - that Heinz Endowments funding of the Tides Center for projects in western Pennsylvania is "fungible," as you state in your editorial, and so can be redirected to other causes.</p>

<p>Every time this newspaper runs a commentary exploring a possible uncomfortable nexus between Heinz Endowments disbursements and the presidential campaign of John Kerry (or some wild-eyed liberal, socialist or Marxist cause du jour), a nasty gram from the Pittsburgh-based endowments can't be far behind.</p>

Peace activists, left-wing flacks, and compliant reporters produced the flap over Bush's 9/11 ads. IT WAS THE WEEK of March 4, and the Bush reelection campaign was ready to go on the offensive. One campaign official told the New York Times that the president was "eager" to start the debate with Massachusetts senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. Another, Matthew Dowd, the president's pollster, said, "We have a whole series of things we're going to correct that have been said over the last six months." And the day before the ads premiered, Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, put it this...

"March 9, 2004 -- To hear some folks tell it, families of the 9/11 victims have risen en masse to denounce President Bush for using brief images from Ground Zero in his campaign commercials. " "But now it turns out that this whole furor is driven by a tiny group that's motivated by a far-left agenda and a festering hatred of the president - and has some quite dubious financial ties. "

The outrageous attack on President Bush's television commercials was the work of an extreme left-wing group that has been in the forefront of the battle against the War on Terrorism for years, but you'd never know it from the coverage it has received in the establishment news media. By picking up the charge, rather than reporting on its dubious source, the media have done major damage to the President's campaign, which compounded the problem by "defending" the ads, rather than exposing the hateful anti-Americanism of those who attacked them. The President's actions in the immediate wake of 9/11 were nothing...

<p>March 12, 2004 -- IN a letter in the opposite column, the president of the Heinz Endowments - chaired by Sen. John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry - takes issue with our Tuesday editorial on the hard-left anti-war group Peaceful Tomorrows, which is spearheading criticism of President Bush's campaign ads. Peaceful Tomorrows - which has opposed the entire War on Terror, including the toppling of Afghanistan's Taliban regime - is heavily funded by the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation.</p>

It didn’t take long to figure out someone from the Democratic camp was behind crying foul and protesting the ad showing some of the tragic events of 9/11. Never mind President Bush, along with Mayor Rudy Giuliani, were a "consoling" driving force during one of the darkest periods in America’s history. It’s okay for Hillary Clinton to construct a demagogue for her few listeners and espouse untruths about how her husband Bill Clinton built up the military and how the current president should give him the credit for the military action in Iraq, but don’t anybody praise or give any...

Have you ever wondered how far will the far-left Democratic establishment will go to undermine the President and advance the political interests of John Kerry Heinz? Today's recommended reading choices will give you an idea. First up is a New York Post editorial look at the machinations of Theresa Kerry and company that generated what turns out to be a very unspontaneous burst of outrage from a minority of 9/11 families over the latest campaign ads for George W. Bush. Of course, the mainstream liberal media were more than happy to magnify this "wide public outrage" way out of proportion...

"Furor" over Bush's 9/11 ads was entirely manufactured: We have no doubt that the use of the images is appropriate - given that the president's leadership in the wake of 9/11, and his conduct of the War on Terror, are under drumbeat assault by John Kerry and the Democrats. But now it turns out that this whole furor is driven by a tiny group that's motivated by a far-left agenda and a festering hatred of the president - and has some quite dubious financial ties. Leading the rhetorical charge has been an outfit called September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows...

Has anyone else out there begun to wonder just who these 9/11 "families" are that have been interviewed without end the past week about their "outrage" over President Bush's TV ads with a quick clip of September 11? Are they all neutral innocents, as depicted, or are they part of an organized anti-Bush opposition? It seems to us that the media that gives these folks so much free face time and column inches might push the story a bit further to help viewers and readers put this dispute in context. Alas, what a little pushing of our own unearths is...

The RAT setup and phony outrage of the Bush ads is not going to stand. The ball has started to roll. Rush has been on the story. Hannity has been on the story. Hewitt has been on the story. Boortz has been on the story. Now, we have seen coverage in the New York Post and Wall Street Journal. USA TODAY told a FReeper that they are investigating and wish they had the info about the Heinz connection before they did the story. We raised hell with the NY TIMES over the weekend. On this thread, please chronicle all of...

<p>March 9, 2004 -- To hear some folks tell it, families of the 9/11 victims have risen en masse to denounce President Bush for using brief images from Ground Zero in his campaign commercials.</p> <p>We have no doubt that the use of the images is appropriate - given that the president's leadership in the wake of 9/11, and his conduct of the War on Terror, are under drumbeat assault by John Kerry and the Democrats.</p>

John Kerry’s Super Tuesday wins on March 2 marked the formal start of this year’s presidential campaign. This might explain why the liberal media silliness began with the first Bush-Cheney ad buy on March 4. The Bush ads were positive, promotional, piano-plunking, the type that usually bore reporters to death. But this time, they were quickly slammed by the press. The Democrats thought they had an angle to trip up the Bush campaign, and they pushed it. Say, didn’t those ads flash about a second of pictures of September 11? Well, yes, and so what? After being attacked unmercifully by...

USA TODAY: 703.854.3400 Gwenn Foster - political editor. Mark Memmott - Judy Keen, writers Here we go again, FReepers. Finally, the NY POST did the story about the funding of PEACEFUL TOMORROWS. The POST told its readers about the funding which was ultimately tied to Teresa Heinz. I'm still waiting for the WASHINGTON POST and NY TIMES to set the record straight. Perhaps I shouldn't hold my breath. And now, we come to USA TODAY. Are they a wholly owned subsidiary of the DemocRATic Party? No. Do they do the bidding of the DemocRATic Party? It seems so. I spoke...

<p>March 9, 2004 -- To hear some folks tell it, families of the 9/11 victims have risen en masse to denounce President Bush for using brief images from Ground Zero in his campaign commercials. We have no doubt that the use of the images is appropriate - given that the president's leadership in the wake of 9/11, and his conduct of the War on Terror, are under drumbeat assault by John Kerry and the Democrats.</p>

Bush Ads in HeinzSightby Daniel Sargis08 March 2004Is President Bush really in a pickle over his recently released campaign advertisements?  The media would have you believing the issue has some traction.  As Reuters reported, “Families who lost relatives in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks pressed President Bush's re-election campaign on Friday to stop running political ads that use images of the devastated World Trade Center....”  Of course, there are “57 Varieties” of truth to this story. Almost without exception, the family members quoted in this and other similar stories are associated with pro-Kerry and/or, ipso facto, anti-Bush causes.  And, God forbid,...

9/11 Victims' Kin Angered by Bush Ads 12 minutes ago Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo! By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a firefighters union said Thursday they're angry that President Bush (news - web sites)'s new campaign ads include images of the destroyed World Trade Center and firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher through the rubble. They say the ads are in poor taste and accuse Bush of exploiting the attacks. Bush's campaign defended the commercials as appropriate for an election about public policy and...

Ladies and gentlemen, it is breaking hard right before our eyes. Sean Hannity is talking now about the phony outrage story regarding the President Bush ads. We are going to find that the RATS contacted family members who are anti-war, anti-Bush and who lost relatives on 9-11. We will find they were given the phone numbers of newsrooms. We will find they were given talking points. Although some who called got out of hand, we got the NY TIMES to take notice of the story. They were deluged with phone calls. I understand Neal Boortz was on the story as...

Is President Bush really in a pickle over his recently released campaign advertisements? The media would have you believing the issue has some traction. As Reuters reported, “Families who lost relatives in the September 11, 2001, attacks pressed President Bush's re-election campaign on Friday to stop running political ads that use images of the devastated World Trade Center....” Of course, there are “57 Varieties” of truth to this story. Almost without exception, the family members quoted in this and other similar stories are associated with pro-Kerry and/or, ipso facto, anti-Bush causes. And, God forbid, some of these causes feed from...

HERE IS THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE by FReeper dead Peaceful Tomorrows is a group largely funded by the wife of the RAT weasel running for president. Their outrage over the Bush ads was a setup on the media. This morning, I phoned NBC news and asked for the newsroom. I spoke with Lauren and she said to send an email. Please join me in sending to nightly@nbc.com Also, a phone call might be helpful. 212.664.4444, and ask for the news room. For those who were around yesterday, FReepers caused a stir by flooding the NY TIMES with calls. You have...

The Bush Campaign Ads: Irrational Hatred and Phoney Outrage March 8, 2004 by Edward Daley Once again the forces of extreme liberalism, moral ambiguity and pacifism have banded together to create the illusion of indignation over something that our president has done, and for obvious political reasons. I'm talking about the recent "outrage" over George W. Bush using images from 9/11 in two campaign advertisements released last week. (Video 1 | Video 2)When I first started hearing family members of certain victims of those horrific attacks saying that they were upset by the "unconscionable" use of those images by...

"MY SON WAS MURDERED ..." Among those angered was Bob McIlvaine, who lost his son Bobby when hijacked planes destroyed the Twin Towers. "My son was murdered on September 11th," he said. "To argue that using footage of the wreckage of the towers to further someone's political career is 'tasteful' really needs to be rejected outright, and I condemn it." The latest anti-Bush volleys came at a news conference held by September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Other victims' relatives said that group was politicizing the issue and had its own political agenda.

The media has bombarded us with these stories about the 9/11 families' dismay at the Bush ads. But who are these people? After watching them on Today, Hardball, Fox, etc. etc. etc., I decided to do a little snooping. I didn't have the names of those on TV, so I went with news articles on the web. This is probably not news to you, but they're bleeding heart, anti war, peace protesters. If the press weren't so biased they would be calling them the "Bush Haters". What I found is below:

There was a previous post about an article that originally appeared in the NY TIMES. While doing a key word search about families offended by the recent Bush ads, I found this story -- Anger at terror images in Bush ads .....By Richard Stevenson, Jim Rutenberg..... Santa Clara..... March 6, 2004 Included in that article attributed to Stevenson and Rutenberg was this: "Kelly Campbell, co-director of a non-partisan group called September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows....." Unfortunately, the site used Stevenson's work and combined it with work from a WASHINGTON POST author named Paul Fahri. THE AGE, where the story...

A follow up to my article on Friday. You'll remember I showed that the "outraged" victims who paraded around the networks this week blasting President Bush's television ads were leaders of a group called Peaceful Tomorrows, a group funded directly by The Tides Center, which is chaired by Teresa Heinz Kerry - wife of Senator John Kerry. Folks, this story seems to have no end. It appears Mrs. Kerry's organization, The Tides Center receives some of its funding directly from the Open Society Institute & Soros Foundations Network. http://www.soros.org/grants/research/results.php?s=keyword&q=tides You might recognize a name in that organization's title. The "Soros"...

The group Peaceful Tomorrows, which bills itself as an independent group of 9/11 victim families and whose members have led the charge to force the Bush re-election campaign to yank ads citing the Twin Towers attacks, has direct financial ties to the Heinz Foundation, the charitable trust administered by the wife of likely Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. On its Web site, Peaceful Tomorrows identifies itself as "a project of the Tides Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization." A December 2003 report in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review detailed the financial relationship between the Tides Center and the charitable foundation controlled by Mrs....

WASHINGTON – The non-profit, tax-exempt organization representing the families of September 11 victims who are critical of campaign ads by President Bush is a project of the Tides Center, which has received millions of dollars in charitable contributions from foundations chaired by Teresa Heinz Kerry, WorldNetDaily has learned. height=150 border=0>Teresa Heinz Kerry "September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows" is a pacifist organization that has opposed not only the war in Iraq but the war in Afghanistan as well. It is a project of the Tides Center, one of the pet causes of the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Vira Heinz...

“Peaceful Tomorrows” is being portrayed as an independent group of relatives of victims of the 911 attacks. They are getting a lot of press claiming to be outraged over the new Bush ads. Call me insensitive if you like, but I wonder if this outrage could possibly be a tad overblown, and more likely attributable to the millions and millions of dollars this group has received from endowments chaired by Teresa Heinz, wife of Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry. According to their own contribution page, “Peaceful Tomorrows is a project of the Tides Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.” According to...