9-11 commission 13 April 04
What with the presidential press conference and the Ashcroft attacks Gorelick strategic declassification, some might have missed
The following

It is interesting for two reasons. First the Washington Post's transcript is clearly incorrect since they have Pickard answering questions which were clearly asked of Black. Second Ben Veniste accused the Bush administration of using the classification process to cover up the fact that Clinton ordered the CIA to kill bin Laden without wasting effort making it look like an effort to capture him. Amazingly Fielding seems to share Ben Veniste's view. This is a man who represented Nixon concerning Watergate but he seems to have reached his limit.

Pretty thermonuclear.


"BEN-VENISTE: The request never came.

And finally with request with -- Mr. Black -- to the kill or capture answer that you gave earlier to Secretary Lehman: Are you confident that you saw all of the instructions signed by President Clinton as of late 1998 before you took up your duties at the CT center in mid-1999?

PICKARD: All of the memorandums of notification...

BEN-VENISTE: Yes.

PICKARD: ... were retained by our lawyers. And I did have access to them.

BEN-VENISTE: Are you confident that you saw all of them, because, sir, you are mistaken with respect to your answer.

PICKARD: Well -- well, I don't know the universe of what -- I don't know what, necessarily, all the ones. I know the ones that were made available to me -- put it that way.

BEN VENISTE: The problem was that the one that we are referring to here was not made available to us until very recently. It was in the Clinton archived materials and was held very closely.

PICKARD: Yes. I don't know what you're referring to, so I would have to see it to confirm that I was aware of it. So I don't know, sir. ""


Also later

BEN-VENISTE: ...

I believe in your statement, General Ashcroft, with respect to the failed capture policy of the prior administration that you may be incorrect.

I don't believe that you have seen the MON that we have recently received as of last week which had not been previously made available to us. And I will leave that for others to discuss; we've got to tip- toe around it for obvious national security and classification reasons. But you may be enlightened by reviewing that document.

And still later

FIELDING: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

...

You said in your prepared statement this afternoon, that in discussing the debate on the nature of the covert action authorities, that in February 2001, shortly after becoming attorney general, you reviewed those authorities. And your thorough review revealed no covert action program to kill bin Laden. Is that correct?

ASHCROFT: I believe that the covert action plan I reviewed was to capture bin Laden. And if he were to be killed it would only be in the eventual circumstance that there were some kind of inability to capture that resulted in a threat that required some kind of self- defense measure.

FIELDING: What briefings did you seek in February to review this whole situation?

...[Much question dodging by Ashcroft later]

FIELDING: Did you staff prepare a briefing for you? Was there any written documentation of the process that you went through to make this evaluation?

ASHCROFT: I'm not in a position to remember whether or not they did at this time.

FIELDING: We would request that you check that. And the reason I'm asking is I must advise you that we have received recent information in regard to MONs which I believe may alter your evaluation of existing authorities in February of 2001. "