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Here's a start for you:
truthout.org
Democrats End United Support of Bush on War
Democrats Say Bush Must Give Full Disclosure
By Alison Mitchell
May 17, 2002
WASHINGTON, May 16 -- After months of unstinting support for
President Bush's handling of the war on terror, leading Congressional
Democrats changed course today and demanded full disclosure of what
Mr. Bush was told last summer about the danger of terrorist hijackings.
They also called for a broad public inquiry into what the government
knew before Sept. 11.
The sharp questions about possible intelligence lapses and about
the vigor of the administration's response to terrorist warnings came a
day after the White House announced, eight months after the terror
attacks, that President Bush had been alerted by the Central
Intelligence Agency last summer to the danger of hijackings by
terrorists affiliated with Osama bin Laden.
Even some Republicans questioned the government's response to
information gathered last summer.
"I think it should have been acted upon, and it wasn't," said Senator
Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate
intelligence committee.
Mr. Shelby was particularly critical of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, saying officials there had been "asleep."
But Democrats were the fiercest. For the first time since Sept. 11,
the bipartisan unity over how Mr. Bush has conducted the war on terror
appeared to be dissolving in sharp questions, accusations and partisan
finger-pointing.
Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the majority leader, said he
was "gravely concerned" and asked, "Why did it take eight months for
us to receive this information?" Mr. Daschle added that the president
should immediately hand the Congressional intelligence committees
"the entire briefing that he was given" in August.
Democrats were also seeking an F.B.I. memorandum warning that
many Middle Eastern men were training at American flight schools.
Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the House minority leader,
said, "I think what we have to do now is to find out what the president,
what the White House, knew about the events leading up to 9/11, when
they knew it and, most importantly, what was done about it at that
time."
Mr. Gephardt, of Missouri, said the long-planned investigation by the
intelligence committees was no longer enough. "I don't think this can
just be a closed-door secret intelligence investigation," he said. (The
joint committee is planning to hold both public and closed hearings.)
In a Senate speech, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of
New York, called on Mr. Bush to "come before the American people at
the earliest possible time to answer the questions so many New
Yorkers and Americans are asking."
Most of the Republicans who spoke publicly today rallied around Mr.
Bush, arguing that the information he had received in August in a
briefing paper several pages long was too generalized to act on. They
said the Democrats were playing election-year politics.
Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, accused the
two Democratic leaders of an "effort to blow this up into a scandal."
"Their unspoken implication," Mr. Bond said, "is that the president
knew these attacks were coming and did nothing. That is an insult to
the U.S. intelligence community, to the president and the American
people."
Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, said in a Senate
speech tonight that "there is nothing more despicable ‹ and `despicable'
is a tame word ‹ in American politics than to insinuate the president of
the United States knew that an attack on the United States was
imminent and did nothing to stop it."
"For us to be talking like our enemy is George W. Bush and not
Osama bin Laden, that's not right," Mr. Lott added.
But Democrats, who until now have been reluctant to speak out
against Mr. Bush on foreign policy, said it was their duty to seek
information.
"We have a right and responsibility to speak out," said Senator John
Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who may run for president.
"Preventing another Sept. 11 undoubtedly requires understanding our
past vulnerabilities."
The questions over what the administration knew ignited a battle
over whether to create a special commission to look into the events
surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks.
Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and John
McCain, Republican of Arizona, have long argued for an independent
commission. They said they would move quickly to try to create one in
an attachment to other legislation, perhaps as early as next week. Mr.
Daschle suggested he might support the idea.
Mr. Lieberman, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2000,
pointed to an array of warnings to intelligence agencies last summer
that have recently been made public.
"If there had been one person receiving all that information, would it
have been possible to prevent Sept. 11?" he asked. "That's the question
an independent commission has to answer so we never have to ask it
again."
Senator Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, who has also
pushed hard for a commission, noted that Vice President Dick Cheney
repeatedly pressed Congress last fall to avoid an investigation while
troops were in Afghanistan. In light of recent disclosures, Mr. Torricelli
said, "that argument just became extremely disingenuous."
One dispute that simmered across the day was about just how
much members of Congress knew last August about intelligence
warnings.
After Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, pointed to an
assertion by Representative Porter J. Goss of Florida, chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee, that the Congressional panels had been
given similar information, Senate Democrats quickly contested the
remark.
Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is chairman of the
Senate intelligence committee, said that the committees were given
more general information than the president received last August and
that it did not include references to hijackings.
Mr. Daschle, at Mr. Graham's side at a news conference, said,
"There is no one in Congress who had that information."
Mr. Goss said all the information in the president's intelligence
briefing had been given to his committee as well, but over time. The
information, he said, included "no specificity as to time, place, date or
method."
The senior Democrat on the intelligence committee, Representative
Nancy Pelosi of California, who is also the No. 2 Democrat in the House
leadership, joined Mr. Goss at his news conference and agreed that
some of the information in the president's memorandum had been
available to the lawmakers.
But, Ms. Pelosi added, the president's briefing paper had three
pieces of specific information that day in August that the intelligence
committees had learned over several months. That, she said, "raised it
to a different level" and needed to be part of the Congressional
investigation into Sept. 11.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.)
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