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NEW YORK — A judge cited national security concerns in ruling Wednesday that the CIA does not have to release hundreds of documents related to the destruction of videotapes of Sept. 11 detainee interrogations that used harsh methods. U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said he believed he had an obligation to let the CIA director decide what should be released when it pertains to methods used to make uncooperative detainees divulge information. "The need to keep confidential just how the CIA and other government agencies obtained their information is manifest, and that has to do with the identities of...

In blind retaliation, we wreaked havoc on Iraq and continue to slaughter peasants in Afghanistan. What if eight years ago the World Trade Center had been leveled by a small nuclear bomb that took out most of lower Manhattan, as well? How many millions of innocent civilians would we have killed in retaliation? Would we still be a free society, or would then-Vice President Dick Cheney have attained the power of a demented king, having moved on from snooping on our phone calls and outing honest CIA agents to destroying the last vestiges of the rule of law? As assaults...

From the BNO Newsroom. WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) -- President Obama on Thursday extended the national emergency declared following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. President Bush first declared the national emergency on September 14, 2001, three days after the terrorist attacks which left thousands of people dead in three American cities. The National Emergencies Act requires each national emergency to be ended or continued every year. "Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2009. Therefore,...

BOISE, Idaho - A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday to the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government’s improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 was “repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.” The court found that a man who was detained as a witness in a federal terrorism...

BOISE, Idaho – A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday to the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government's improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 was "repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history." The court found that a man who was detained as a witness in a federal terrorism...

Ashcroft liable for detentions, court finds By Tony Romm - 09/04/09 04:18 PM ET Former Attorney General John Ashcroft may be sued and held liable for wrongly detaining witnesses after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. In its decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Abdullah Al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen detained as a material witness for two weeks, may sue the former attorney general for breaching his constitutional rights. Al-Kidd claimed during the case that his brief imprisonment caused him to lose a scholarship and crippled his chances of finding employment, according...

WASHINGTON — Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials. Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants. Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force. A decision to...

The Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, New York, suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects, the New York Times reported. WASHINGTON - The Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, New York, suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects in what would have been a nearly unprecedented use of military power within the United States, The New York Times reported. Vice President Dick Cheney and several other Bush advisers at the time strongly urged that the military be used to apprehend men who were suspected of plotting with...

If you need to recall what National Pride feels like, take a moment to view this video. Please keep the comments to the event of Oct. 30, 2001. (The MSM gave King Obama enough accolades over his 1st pitch already!)Video of a great American moment!

On Sunday, the New York Times struck another blow against the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism measures with a front-page story alleging that a CIA program was kept secret from Congress for eight years. The orders to keep Congress out of the loop — which sound flagrantly illegal — came, according to the story, straight from then Vice President Dick Cheney.

So forget politics for a moment and just watch the video below. It’s a great behind-the-scenes look at the build-up to Bush’s first pitch at the 2001 World Series, and the strike he fired with the lights shining bright.

Via The Hill: With their Speaker behind them, House Democrats are pushing ahead with plans to hold a series of hearings investigating instances in which intelligence officials may have misled members of Congress.Senior Democratic aides said that a major announcement could come by the end of week, but it was already clear on Monday that House Democrats are seizing on weekend news reports that former Vice President Dick Cheney hid information from Congress.

(2009-07-15) — With Democrats in Congress already alarmed at revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a covert scheme to kill terrorist leaders like Usama Bin Laden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly set to announce a probe into allegations that the CIA may have also “conspired to conduct espionage operations against America’s enemies.” Although the “vague” plans to dispatch small CIA teams to hit senior al Qaeda leaders never materialized due to legal, logistical and diplomatic obstacles, current CIA Director Leon E. Panetta cancelled the program in June, and sold several planning documents to the producers of Fox...

WASHINGTON – The Homeland Security Department will review and possibly replace the often-ridiculed multicolored terror alert system created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Since it was created in 2002, the system has been confusing and became the butt of jokes by late-night television comics. Critics have said assigning different categories to different colors is too vague an approach to deliver enough information to be useful. And Democrats said the Bush administration used it for political manipulation. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appointed a task force Tuesday to determine in 60 days how effective the current system is.

Cheney's "Secret Counterterrorism Program" Not So Secret After All On Sunday the Times hinted darkly about a "secret counterterrorism program" Dick Cheney concealed from Congress. Now the details are out -- and it turns out the Times reported the program (killing Al Qaeda's leaders) on its front page back in December 2002. Posted by: Clay Waters 7/14/2009 2:04:26 PM The Times' lead story Sunday was on a C.I.A. program allegedly hidden by Dick Cheney, and abruptly ended by new C.I.A. director Leon Panetta when he learned of it. The headline to intelligence reporter Scott Shane's story huffed: "Cheney Is Linked...

House Democrats are in (cynical, calculated) high dudgeon after a shocking "revelation" was made public this week.  Brace yourself, because this bombshell isn't for the faint of heart:  After 9/11, the Bush administration considered a CIA program designed to target and kill top al-Qaeda operatives. Gasp. It gets worse: Some members of Congress now say they weren't sufficiently briefed on the then-nascent secret program (which was never actually implemented), and it's even possible that Vice President Cheney intentionally kept lawmakers in the dark about the preliminary plans (which, again, never became operational). Once you've picked yourself up off the floor, take...

WASHINGTON — Armed with new authority from President Bush for a global campaign against al-Qaida, the Central Intelligence Agency is contemplating clandestine missions expressly aimed at killing specified individuals for the first time since the assassination scandals and consequent legal restraints of the 1970s. Drawing on two classified legal memoranda, one written for President Bill Clinton in 1998 and one since the attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush administration has concluded that executive orders banning assassination do not prevent the president from lawfully singling out a terrorist for death by covert action. The CIA is reluctant to accept a broad...

Via The Hill: With their Speaker behind them, House Democrats are pushing ahead with plans to hold a series of hearings investigating instances in which intelligence officials may have misled members of Congress.Senior Democratic aides said that a major announcement could come by the end of week, but it was already clear on Monday that House Democrats are seizing on weekend news reports that former Vice President Dick Cheney hid information from Congress.The New York Times reported on Sunday that the CIA, under the direction of Cheney, developed a secret counterterrorism program and then was directed by the vice president...

Armed with new authority from President Bush for a global campaign against al Qaeda, the Central Intelligence Agency is contemplating clandestine missions expressly aimed at killing specified individuals for the first time since the assassination scandals and consequent legal restraints of the 1970s. Drawing on two classified legal memoranda, one written for President Bill Clinton in 1998 and one since the attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush administration has concluded that executive orders banning assassination do not prevent the president from lawfully singling out a terrorist for death by covert action. The CIA is reluctant to accept a broad grant...

WASHINGTON — Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior Qaeda terrorists, according to current and former government officials. Skip to next paragraph Paul Buck/European Pressphoto Agency The plans remained vague and were never carried out, the officials said, and Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, canceled the program last month. Officials at the spy agency over the years ran into myriad logistical, legal and diplomatic obstacles. How could the role of the United States be masked? Should allies be informed and might they block the access of the C.I.A. teams...

A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

New York, NY (AHN) - People will be able to climb to the Statue of Liberty's crown on the Fourth of July, for the first time since that portion of America's most famous symbol was closed to the public for safety reason shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. National Park Service officials had barred the public from visiting the crown out of concerns that it would be difficult to evacuate in case of an emergency because access is by a narrow 168-step double-helix spiral staircase. Officials have made improvements by adding a public address system and will limit the...

At a dinner last week in California, I was reminded of the debt we owe to those who have, for 233 years, sustained our freedom and independence. One remarkable family in particular exemplifies the best in the American spirit of courage and sacrifice. Sitting at my table was a friend, Christine Krissoff, wife of Dr. Bill Krissoff and mother of Nathan and Austin Krissoff. One of her sons, Marine First Lt. Nathan Krissoff, was killed in Al Anbar Province in December 2006. A Williams College grad, athlete and musician, he'd left for Iraq on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11...

Following are excerpts of for mer Vice President Dick Cheney's address at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington yesterday. NOW and for years to come, a lot rides on our president's understand ing of the security policies that preceded him. Whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of this country, those choices shouldn't be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history. Our administration always faced its share of criticism, and from some quarters it was always intense. That was especially so in the later years of our term, when the dangers were as serious...

More Than 800 Responders Stage Ground Zero Emergency Drill NEW YORK (AP) ― It was an emergency drill, yet the scene of hundreds of firefighters, police officers and other first responders hustling around the World Trade Center site Sunday evoked the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Firefighters carried oxygen tanks, hoses and heavy axes into an underground train station, while police and other emergency personnel helped those playing injured — all part of a large disaster response exercise at ground zero.

<p>As was asked when this issue was debated -- and resolved, we thought -- "If you don't trust a pilot to carry a gun, what the fuck are you doing allowing him at the controls of a plane carrying 300 people?"</p>

After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings. Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology. The Obama administration this past week diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program to hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in field inspections of pilots. This looks like completely unnecessary harassment of the pilots. The 12,000 Federal...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration threw open the curtain on years of Bush-era secrets Monday, revealing anti-terror memos that claimed exceptional search-and-seizure powers and divulging that the CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other treatment of terror suspects. The Justice Department released nine legal opinions showing that, following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not apply during the coming fight. Within two weeks, government lawyers were already discussing ways to wiretap U.S. conversations without warrants. The Bush administration eventually abandoned many of the legal conclusions, but the documents themselves...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Monday released a long-secret legal document from 2001 in which the Bush administration claimed the military could search and seize terror suspects in the United States without warrants. The legal memo was written about a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It says constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure would not apply to terror suspects in the U.S., as long as the president or another high official authorized the action. >snip The memo was one of nine released Monday by the Obama administration.

After 9/11, historians and pundits rushed to give a new era a suitable name. My favorite was Norman Podhoretz's, who called it "World War IV." In doing so, he recast the Cold War as World War III while putting the attacks in a century-long context of the global struggle between democratic and totalitarian forces. But the election of Barack Obama and the financial crisis have now ushered us into the post-post-9/11 world, and this era, too, needs a name. Let's call it "the Locarno Restoration." Locarno, a picturesque Swiss town on the shores of Lake Maggiore, was the site of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano avoids mentioning terrorism or 9/11 in remarks prepared for her first congressional testimony since taking office, signaling a sharp change in tone from her predecessors. Napolitano is the first homeland security secretary to drop the term "terror" and "vulnerability" from remarks prepared for delivery to the House Homeland Security Committee, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press. Tom Ridge, who headed the agency when it was launched in 2003, mentioned terrorism 11 times in his prepared statement at his debut before the oversight committee in 2003. And in 2005 Michael...

After 9/11, historians and pundits rushed to give a new era a suitable name. My favorite was Norman Podhoretz's, who called it "World War IV." In doing so, he recast the Cold War as World War III while putting the attacks in a century-long context of the global struggle between democratic and totalitarian forces. But the election of Barack Obama and the financial crisis have now ushered us into the post-post-9/11 world, and this era, too, needs a name. Let's call it "the Locarno Restoration." Locarno, a picturesque Swiss town on the shores of Lake Maggiore, was the site of...

U.S. "war on terror" eroded rights worldwide: experts Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:22am EST By Laura MacInnis GENEVA (Reuters) - Washington's "war on terror" after the September 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday. Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded. "Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock...

Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done. Aericans have known surprise attacks, but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day, and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack. The terrorists' directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans and make no distinctions among military and civilians,...

A simple Thank You to President Bush!

In recent days, there have been a host of articles, recollections, retrospectives and commentary tendered on the Presidency of George W. Bush.As expected, with the grace of a five-year old's temper tantrum, many of the Bush missives have been mercilessly scathing and unforgiving. Some have been fair, but most have been written by spoiled-brat feet-stampers who cannot stop sticking pins in their "W" dolls long enough to string two coherent thoughts togther. Admittedly, there is enough to criticize President Bush for from a conservative perspective, but it's difficult to take any analysis of his eight years in office seriously that...

Contesting judgment is not a popular pastime these days, not even among Republicans. True enough, many of the Bush administration's key foreign policy decisions have turned out more difficult than anticipated--most notably the prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the long run, however, the Bush legacy will most certainly receive a fair treatment, emphasizing those achievements now buried under partisan politics and veiled by the inevitable problems that accompany the implementation of every groundbreaking policy. In fact, future U.S. administrations will be well-advised to build on the core ideas formulated and realized by the Bush administration. After all, there...

... We will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network," Mr. Bush told a Joint Session of Congress. "I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people." In that moment, he set the standard for the Bush Presidency: To protect Americans from another 9/11 and hit Islamist terrorists and their...

The 9/11 Presidency Long after George W. Bush boards Marine One next Tuesday bound for Texas, the enduring image of his epochal eight years will be the September 20, 2001 evening a relatively new President stood before a nation traumatized and in mourning. "We will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network," Mr. Bush told a Joint Session of Congress. "I will not yield; I...

Actor MICKEY ROURKE sympathises with U.S. President GEORGE W. BUSH - insisting he doesn't know how any politician could have successfully navigated America after the 9/11 attacks on New York. The Hollywood tough-guy spoke out about his political views in a candid interview with Britain's GQ magazine, and admits he doesn't understand why so many people blame Bush for a string of world issues - including Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in the West. And the actor, who claims he didn't follow last year's (08) historic U.S. election battle between Barack Obama and John McCain, urges the public to consider the...

Bush at a memorial service after 9/11. Posted: 1:50 am January 11, 2009 If you asked Americans to list President Bush's foreign policy and national security accomplishments, you'd likely get some laughs - surely some snarky comments. Perhaps, at best, a short list. But, in truth, there are a number of great successes. So as the Bush administration gets ready to exit the national and world stage in the coming days, it's time to give credit where credit's due. It's not just by chance that there hasn't been another terrorist strike here at home since the 9/11 attacks at...

Richard M. Helms, the first director of Central Intelligence to rise from the ranks, was fond of saying that the CIA had been founded to make sure that there would never be another Pearl Harbor. Underlying this mission impossible was the wishful supposition that an America that knew everything could prevent anything. The CIA's job was to keep an eye -- a jaundiced eye -- on the whole world, friend and foe, weak countries and strong ones alike, as a means of preventing catastrophic surprises. For more than 50 years, on the whole, the magic worked. And then, on Sept....

Bush administration officials will host senior Obama officials for a three-hour joint exercise next week that consists of “a hypothetical scenario that is designed to test and tax the capabilities of the federal government.” White House spokesman Scott Stanzel declined to offer many details about the exercise, but he did say that Tuesday’s exercise will be “a disaster scenario where the government would be very much tested.” The joint exercise is “intended to familiarize the incoming administration with domestic and international instant management procedures used by the current administration.” Stanzel said the exercise is part of a realization that this...

About a decade ago, when he was vice president, Al Gore explained that our national motto, e pluribus unum, means "from one, many." This was a sad day for knowledge of Latin among our political elite—and after all those expensive private schools that Gore had been packed off to by his paterfamilias. It was the kind of flagrant mistranslation that, had it been committed by a Republican, say George W. Bush or Dan Quayle, would have been a gaffe heard round the world. But the media didn't play up the slip, perhaps because they had seen Gore's Harvard grades and...

President George W. Bush departs with low approval ratings. Appraisals of presidents sometimes change over time, and sometimes they don’t. *snip* No doubt the Internet dervishes will pepper this and other assessments of Bush with their standard displays of anonymous ferocity. There are a lot of 14-year-olds with Internet connections. But when the Jon Meacham of 150 years from now goes about his task with Bush, that historian will have as much material and more, as did the author of “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.” And the verdict will be nearly the same: Here was an extraordinary...

Dec. 7 was once a significant date on the American calendar. But sometime in the past 20 years it faded almost entirely out of view. Partly this was generational and partly it was historical, as the end of the Cold War drew a line under the era that began with the day of infamy. And partly it was a matter of indifference and neglect. With that in mind, here's a forecast for tonight's result: Starting around the time the returns from Pennsylvania and Virginia are announced, 9/11 becomes another Dec. 7. [snip] The way in which we've chosen to remember...

(CBS) Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon ordered a top secret team of American commandos into Afghanistan with a single, simple order: kill Osama bin Laden. It was America's best chance to eliminate the leader of al Qaeda. The inside story of exactly what happened in that mission, and how close it came to its objective has never been told until now.

As you've probably noticed by now, the twenty-first century has gotten off to a rocky start.  In 2001, on September 11, we were attacked.  And now our country's financial system is collapsing.  This makes for two "unimaginable" events within a decade. How could 19 hijackers succeed against the world's greatest military power?  And how could history's strongest and most productive economy seize up virtually overnight?  Of course, there are complicated and highly technical explanations for each of these disasters.  Some books have already been written about the causes of 9-11, and others are sure to come along in the years...

The events of Sept. 11 were not only a terrorist attack on America, but on Islam in the United States. About 500 Muslims died in the tragedy and the rest of them became hostage to fear, intimidation and insecurity about their future. All the progress made in the growth of Islam in our country for the last 50 years seems to be reversed, and some immigrant Muslims have started to question whether they should go back to their countries of origin. Of course, Muslim Americans like my children, who were born here, have no place to go. This is their ...

The various speeches, statements, and pontifications by the president and the political class arrayed around him on Thursday's seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon serve as a reminder that -- despite silly suggestions to the contrary -- nothing has changed. George Bush and Dick Cheney were running things on Sept. 11, 2001. And George Bush and Dick Cheney were still in charge on Sept. 11, 2008. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate were ridiculously deferent to Bush and Cheney on Sept. 11, 2001. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate...