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Blogger bares Rumsfeld's post 9/11 orders
By Julian Borger in Washington
02/24/06 "The Guardian" -- -- Hours after a commercial
plane struck the Pentagon on September 11 2001 the US defence
secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was issuing rapid orders to his
aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement, according to
notes taken by one of them.
"Hard to get good case. Need to move swiftly," the notes say.
"Near term target needs - go massive - sweep it all up, things
related and not."
The handwritten notes, with some parts blanked out, were
declassified this month in response to a request by a law
student and blogger, Thad Anderson, under the US Freedom of
Information Act. Anderson has posted them on his blog at
www.outragedmoderates.org.
The Pentagon confirmed the notes had been taken by Stephen
Cambone, now undersecretary of defence for intelligence and then
a senior policy official. "His notes were fulfilling his role as
a plans guy," said a spokesman, Greg Hicks.
"He was responsible for crisis planning, and he was with the
secretary in that role that afternoon."
The report said: "On the afternoon of 9/11, according to
contemporaneous notes, Secretary Rumsfeld instructed General
Myers [the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff] to obtain
quickly as much information as possible. The notes indicate that
he also told Myers that he was not simply interested in striking
empty training sites. He thought the US response should consider
a wide range of options.
"The secretary said his instinct was to hit Saddam Hussein at
the same time, not only Bin Laden. Secretary Rumsfeld later
explained that at the time he had been considering either one of
them, or perhaps someone else, as the responsible party."
The actual notes suggest a focus on Saddam. "Best info fast.
Judge whether good enough [to] hit SH at same time - not only
UBL [Pentagon shorthand for Usama/Osama bin Laden]," the notes
say. "Tasks. Jim Haynes [Pentagon lawyer] to talk with PW
[probably Paul Wolfowitz, then Mr Rumsfeld's deputy] for
additional support ... connection with UBL."
Mr Wolfowitz, now the head of the World Bank, advocated regime
change in Iraq before 2001. But, according to an account of the
days after September 11 in Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack, a
decision was taken to put off consideration of an attack on Iraq
until after the Taliban had been toppled in Afghanistan.
But these notes confirm that Baghdad was in the Pentagon's
sights almost as soon as the hijackers struck.
On July 23, 2005, I submitted an electronic Freedom of
Information Act request to the Department of Defense seeking DoD
staffer Steven Cambone's notes from meetings with Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the afternoon of September 11,
2001. Cambone's notes were cited heavily in the 9/11 Commission
Report's reconstruction of the day's events. On February 10,
2006, I received a response from the DoD which includes
partially-redacted copies of Cambone's notes.
The released notes document Donald Rumsfeld's 2:40 PM
instructions to General Myers to find the "[b]est info fast . .
. judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at
same time - not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]" (as discussed on
p. 334-335 of the 9/11 Commission Report and in Bob
Woodward's Plan of Attack).
In addition, the documents confirm the contents of CBS News'
Sept. 4, 2002 report
"Plans For Iraq Attack Began on 9/11," which quoted
Rumsfeld's notes as stating: "Go massive . . . Sweep it all up.
Things related and not." These lines were not mentioned in the
9/11 Commission Report or Woodward's
Plan of Attack, and to
my knowledge, have not been independently confirmed by any other
source. After the Rathergate fiasco,
I wondered if CBS had been fooled into publishing a story
that, from a publicity perspective, seemed too good to be true.
Finally, these documents unveil a previously undisclosed part of
the 2:40 PM discussion. Several lines below the "judge whether
good enough [to] hit S.H. at same time" line, Cambone's notes
from the conversation read: "Hard to get a good case."
The documents are available as a
photo set on Flickr, and or you can download them in PDF
format below. BitTorrent users can also download a 6.9 MB zip
file containing PDFs of all the documents. [Torrent
/
Prodigem torrent details page]
Notes from 12:05 PM meeting [PDF]
Notes from 12:05 PM meeting (negative) [PDF]
Notes from 2:40 PM meeting [PDF]
Notes from 2:40 PM meeting (negative) [PDF]
Notes from 9:53 PM meeting [PDF]
Notes from 9:53 PM meeting (negative) [PDF]
DoD's FOIA release letter [PDF]
Raw scan of page 3 of notes [PDF]
Raw scan of page 5 of notes [PDF]
Raw scan of page 6 of notes [PDF]
Raw scan of page 9 of notes [PDF]
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