05/17/2002 Archived Entry: "Connecting the Dots... VP Graham"

As soon as President Clinton said, during early summer after Gore had wrapped up the nomination, that his two VP picks that he though Gore should decide from was Graham, I knew the idea was toast, as far as Al was concerned... you know, the 'anything Bill says, I do the other' stage that Gore seemed fixated with at the time. So, the Gore/Graham ticket that all but assured Florida was tossed before its time.

Fast forward to 2001, Graham is still immensely popular in Florida. The Democrats are salivating at the thought of his running for Governor against Jeb Bush. He thinks about it for a while. A non-partisan A Mason-Dixon poll, conducted 2/23-26/01 is released, and Graham leads 47-39, outside the margin of error, over Jeb Bush:

          All   Men  Women  Dem   GOP    Ind
 Graham    47    41   52     76    15     45
 Bush      39    45   34     14    69     36
Undec.    14    14   14     10    16     19

It didn't happen, and here we are (with a forward eye on that VP slot in 2004), Bob Graham is the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman and the Democrats point man for putting the Bush administration on the defensive. A few nights ago he was on-message, raising the ethical questions about the Bush photo-op on 9/11 used for GOP fundraising. His spokesman then is on cue, "It represents a failure to connect the dots," said Sen. Graham's spokesman Paul Anderson. "This was dismissed rather lightly at FBI headquarters." Then, Graham's on with a CNN interview, raising the stakes. "The Phoenix document" was the subject of a briefing for lawmakers last week, he said.

The Phoenix Document-- rising out of the ashes, the truth comes forth...

This would then explain the co-ordination somewhat of the sequence of events over the past couple of days... a well thought and across the field attack by the Democrats on the Bush-9/11 photo-op. Followed up then by Rather's reporting, Ari's admission, and the story has wheels.

Asked whether the September 11 attacks might have been averted had the Phoenix document raised more red flags, Graham replied, "Well, it might have been if this had been seen in the context of other information, which indicated that there was a potential conspiracy to use commercial airliners as weapons of mass destruction. That could have started a chain of events, which would have disrupted September 11, but unfortunately because the information was not placed in the right hands or was distributed to too many places, there wasn't a single point of contact for analysis and reporting of what was going on. We failed to put the puzzle together before the horrific event."

A key question, Graham said, would be "why these dots weren't seen and connected."

What dots? I don't see no dots:

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta is quoted saying that, "There was no way we could have, let's say, connected the dots to point to what happened on the 11th of September."

Really? no way at all? I mean, what if we numbered them for you Norman, something like this Buzzflash reader had in mind:

"They said they couldn't connect the dots, but once the dots were connected and the picture was drawn on the morning of 9/11, why did they do nothing?" she asked. "Why was the president allowed to sit for 35 minutes with a group of second graders when this country was under attack? For the safety of ourselves and our fellow citizens, we want an investigation to make sure something like Sept. 11 never, ever happens again," said Kristin Breitweiser, whose husband, Ronald, died at the World Trade Center.

I would say this recent turn of events kind of puts on hold the proposed 9/11 2004 GOP convention in NYC, at the least. What about the Crawford ranch option?

Replies: 3 comments

The question need to be asked, especially in light of Bush's judidial appointments, whether it is better for Graham to beat Jeb Bush or to remain in the Senate. Jeb Bush as the governor of Florida would have impact on only Florida. He has no impact on judicial confirmations at the federal level. On the other hand, if Graham vacates the seat, it could well be filled by another GOP, which could mean at least two years of Trent Lott and right wing judges on the bench at least for a generation. I am glad that Graham chose to remain in the Senate.

Posted by G.C. Raj @ 05/17/2002 06:44 AM PST

We will have to wait on that Pheonix document a bit more, but here's a teaser:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/phoenixmemo1.html

Posted by Smoking Gun @ 05/17/2002 08:46 PM PST

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/warningmemo020517.html

However, before Sept. 11 the FBI did receive key information from its Phoenix office in a memo that named individuals who were enrolled in flight schools in the area and were ultimately linked to bin Laden. And the memo never made to the White House before the attacks.

The memo, dated July 10, 2001, said it was believed that bin Laden had sent terrorists to the United States to learn how to fly commercial airliners at American flight schools.

"The purpose of this communication is to advise the bureau and New York [the seat of the Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force] of the possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civilian aviation universities and colleges," the memo began, sources told ABCNEWS.

The eight-page memo contains the names and background of at least eight individuals from the Middle East who were enrolled in aviation schools in the Phoenix area. When the FBI first sent the memo to its unit that dealt with Osama bin Laden and radical fundamentalists, agents could not link any of the individuals to bin Laden or al Qaeda. The memo urged the FBI to discuss the individuals' possible links to bin Laden with the wider intelligence community but the discussions never made it out of the agency's mid level offices.

Sources told ABCNEWS that the Phoenix memo reached the CIA only a few weeks ago, and officials there found that at least two of the individuals named had ties to al Qaeda — a discovery the CIA made after Sept. 11.

Posted by The Key Phoenix Memo @ 05/17/2002 08:51 PM PST