Will they get away with it...?

The following is from Newsweek, via Common Dreams:

Even as White House political aides plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the emotions and issues raised by the September 11 terror attacks, administration officials are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events relating to the attacks.

Astonishingly, the Bush administration is not only blocking efforts to release an 800+-page report, prepared by a joint congressional inquiry into the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded 9/11, they're seeking to reclassify materials that are already widely disseminated.

Like the now famous July, 2001, Phoenix-FBI memo reporting that Middle Eastern nationals might be enrolling in U.S. flight schools. The article quoted one intelligence official as saying, just because something has been inadvertently released, doesn't make it unclassified.

And they impeached Clinton for his verbal quibbling!

According to Newsweek, the administration's motives for keeping the report under wraps could be to avoid political embarrassment (No...!) or merely in response to the ingrained culture of secrecy that permeates the highest levels of the White House. (Why not both?) Whichever, the two congressional members who oversaw the report--Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss--are said to be really mad and they're preparing a letter of complaint to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Oh yeah, that will solve the problem.

The real question is, will the electorate let Bush conceal his administration's failings vis-a-vis 9/11, and at the same time re-elect him when he cynically plays on the terrible event's strong emotions?

...The White House is delaying the Republican nominating convention, scheduled for New York City, until the first week in September 2004-the latest in the party's history. That would allow Bush's acceptance speech, now slated for Sept. 2, to meld seamlessly into 9-11 commemoration events due to take place in the city the next week. [This makes me physically ill....]

Some sources who have read the still-secret congressional report say some sections would not play quite so neatly into White House plans. One portion deals extensively with the stream of U.S. intelligence-agency reports in the summer of 2001 suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning an upcoming attack against the United States-and implicitly raises questions about how Bush and his top aides responded. One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and prophetic. It predicted that Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist strike in the coming weeks, the congressional investigators found. The intelligence briefing went on to say: The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.

Newsweek sources claim Bush himself was present at that briefing.

It will come as no surprise that some administration officials are expressing regret that the sensitive material was ever provided to Congress in the first place. Yep, this is an administration that believes strongly in checks and balances!

We have got to make sure that Bush does not win a second term.

Complete story here.