I emailed Zelikow yesterday to see if he would answer some more questions on this. He hasn’t responded and I haven’t had time to follow-up.

This is a great post but Zelikow does not talk to the little people. He is too important. Zelikow is one of the most important and most secretive members of Darth’s 4th branch of government. He has been Condi’s puppetmaster from the beginning. He made certain that Bin Laden was protected from Tenet when Tenet on July 10, 2001 wanted to attack Bin Laden. Zelikow was a major Irak war planner. In 1998 Zelikow was preparing for a cataclysmic Pearl Harbor type event, to start a War.

Then there is 9-11. Zelikow wrote

“To date,the U.S.government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance.”

Especially since Saudi Arabia financed 9/11 through the Riggs Bank in Washington DC.

But this EW scoop and Zelikow’s memo is so very interesting. Zelikow blames the CIA and threatens them with “18 U.S.C. section 1001,
punishing the concealment of material facts in a matter within the
jurisdiction of the United States government”. Of course almost everything in the 9-11 Report is false or misleading, plus the numerous concealment of facts.

And who else shows up? The notorious AZ-Abu Zubaydah.

reacting to press allegations that Abu Zubaydah had
referred to a Saudi prince in his interrogations, the Commission asked “what information does the CIA have” about whether such assertions were made in Zubaydah’s interrogations.

AZ was “referring” to Saudi collaboration with Bin Laden. But AZ was apparently given Sodium Pentothal and other drugs to help his referring.

Zubaydah, writes Posner, said the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom’s longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin Laden “personally” told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him with secret funds as long as al-Qaeda refrained from promoting jihad in the kingdom. The Pakistani contact, high – ranking air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the equation, Zubaydah said, at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan also attended by Zubaydah. Bin Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to get protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was “blessed by the Saudis,” according to Posner.

Zubaydah said he attended a third meeting in Kandahar in 1998 with Turki, senior ISI agents and Taliban officials. There Turki promised, writes Posner, that “more Saudi aid would flow to the Taliban, and the Saudis would never ask for bin Laden’s extradition, so long as al-Qaeda kept its long-standing promise to direct fundamentalism away from the kingdom.”

Maybe KSM and AZ were the only detainees used as sources for the 9/11 Commission Report who were waterboarded, but I wonder how many of the others were subjected to other forms of torture and coercion. Remember that it was the mere threat of torture by the Egyptians that induced Al Libi to falsely confess that Iraq had trained Al Qaeda in the use of chemical weapons.

It took eight years. But I guess just about everybody is hip to–and sick of–Cheney’s ways.

Reading your closing thought brought to mind an epu’d comment I made in your “Mitchell” post, and that it relates to your closing insight irt Cheney.

Here’s what I posted:

CACI’s DODD contracts were actually through Dept. of Interior. Thus, it has been quite difficult to track their gov contracts for DOD work. Thus, difficult to track “the books” on the contracts…which makes all the money issues at Interior more interesting.

The government contract that led interrogators working for CACI International Inc. into Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was awarded in 1998, with the stated purpose of providing inventory control and other routine services to the U.S. Army.

This kind of “blanket-purchase agreement” is becoming increasingly popular with federal agencies because it is supposed to increase efficiency. Large, vaguely worded contracts are designed so the agencies can make quick requests and get fast results, without requiring separate bids and evaluations for each service. Critics say these open-ended contracts allow agencies to skirt public oversight and give big companies an unfair advantage in winning government business.

The CACI contract with the Army is administered by the Interior Department, under an outsourcing agreement with the Army, which has made it even harder to track.

(my emphasis)

and then this from another article irt Cheney:

Hoffman, now in another job at the Interior Department, said Cheney never told him what to do on either issue — he didn’t have to.

“His genius,” Hoffman said, is that “he builds networks and puts the right people in the right places, and then trusts them to make well-informed decisions that comport with his overall vision.”

(my emphasis)

I take this information together. I do not see the blanket-purchase-agreement as a flaw to privatization, I see it as the design to hide black-ops (and other funds funneling) off the books. The “not a bug but a feature” aspect of privitization. And if you follow the Cheney placed people in combo with the “blanket-purchases”, it reads like a design, not happenstance.

These are breadcrumbs which lead somewhere and not by chance or accident.

To know his daughter was at the State Department and Blackwater’s contract came through the state department, fits into the pattern I am pointing to.

Blanket purchase agreements filled with many no-bid contracts allow for hiding all the “dirty” work and slip in sub contractors from anywhere. (And I cannot begin to imagine what goes on when a mole gets their hands on managing a blanket purchase agreement. Quite the bargain deal on espionage. One could redirect and potentially control a whole country with one blanket purchase agreement, especially as it relates to intel.)

On that note. Cheney, himself, was not a bug but a feature.