THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
2001
May 2001
- May: Intercepts from Afghanistan warn that al-Qaeda could attack an American target in late June or on the July 4 holiday.
9/11 attacks
However, The White House's Counterterrorism Security Group does not meet to discuss this prospect. This group also fails to meet after intelligence analysts overhear conversations from an al-Qaeda cell in Milan suggesting that bin Laden's agents might be plotting to kill Bush at the European summit in Genoa, Italy, in late July. In fact, the group hardly meets at all. By comparison, the Counterterrorism Security Group met two or three times a week between 1998 and 2000 under Clinton. In the same month, US intelligence obtains information that al-Qaeda is planning to infiltrate the US from Canada and carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives. The report doesn't say exactly where inside the US, or when, or how an attack might occur. Two months later, the information is shared with the FBI, the INS, US Customs Service, and the State Department, and is included in "a closely held intelligence report for senior government officials in August 2001." Secretary of State Powell gives $43 million in aid to Afghanistan's Taliban government, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of the Taliban. This follows $113 million given by the US in 2000 for humanitarian aid. (CCR) - May: General William Kernan,
War in Afghanistan
commander in chief of the Joint Forces Command, later mentions: "The details of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan which fought the Taliban and al-Qaeda after the September 11 attacks, were largely taken from a scenario examined by Central Command in May 2001." (CCR) - May: The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an arm of the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), has been quite effective in recent months in countering the huge amounts of illegal cash used by terrorists to carry out their plans.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
Drug smuggling and money laundering operations were stymied and brought to light by FATF efforts. Most publicly, the FATF has been successful in what it calls a "name and shame" campaign designed to humiliate nations with lax banking laws or enforcement procedures into cooperating with international efforts to clean up the banking industry and reduce the amount of terrorist cash flowing through its pipelines. The Bush administration suspends American cooperation with the FATF after Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill complains that it conflicts with the administration's tax and economic priorities. Further cooperation with the FATF will be subject to review, a review that abruptly ends on September 11. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green) - May: Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Stanley Prusiner tries and fails to get a meeting with Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman to warn her of a looming danger to the nation's food supply.
Corporate - friendly deregulation
Mad cow disease has been identified in Canada, and Prusiner, discoverer of the disease's etiology, wants Veneman to begin testing all American cattle for the deadly disease (only 10% are currently being tested). Venenam refuses to meet with Prusiner. He later gets a short meeting with political guru Karl Rove, who is uninterested in the threat to America's beef. In December 2003, the first case of mad cow disease among American cattle will be reported; as Prusiner predicted, it came from Canada. The Department of Agriculture will not expand its testing for mad cow disease until March 2004, by which time over 50 countries will have banned American beef from being imported. A Kansas beef company will volunteer to test its beef, and California will propose legislation requiring that the state's entire cattle population will be tested; not only will the USDA oppose both proposals, they even threaten the beef company with prosecution if they begin voluntary testing. (Mark Crispin Miller) - May: Vice President Cheney's national energy plan is publicly released.
Bush's energy policies
It calls for expanded oil and gas drilling on public land and easing regulatory barriers to building nuclear power plants. It suggests that the US cannot depend exclusively on traditional sources of supply to provide the growing amount of oil that it needs, and that the US will have to obtain substantial supplies from new sources, such as the Caspian states, Russia, and Africa. It also notes that the US cannot rely on market forces alone to gain access to these added supplies, but will also require a significant effort on the part of government officials to overcome foreign resistance to the outward reach of American energy companies. The plan was largely decided through Cheney's secretive Energy Task Force. Both before and after this, Cheney and other Task Force officials meet with Enron executives, including a meeting a month and a half before Enron declares bankruptcy. Two separate lawsuits are later filed to reveal details of how the government's energy policy was formed and if Enron or other players may have influenced it, but so far the Bush administration has resisted all efforts to release these documents. (Freedom of Information Center) - May: The US introduces the "Visa Express" program in Saudi Arabia, which allows any Saudi Arabian to obtain visas through his or her travel agent instead of appearing at a consulate in person.
Islamist terrorism
An official later states, "The issuing officer has no idea whether the person applying for the visa is actually the person in the documents and application." At the time, warnings of an attack against the US led by the Saudi Osama bin Laden are higher than they had ever been before -- "off the charts" as one senator later puts it. A terrorism conference had recently concluded that Saudi Arabia was one of four top nationalities in al-Qaeda. Five hijackers use Visa Express over the next month to enter the US. The widely criticized program is finally canceled in July 2002. (CCR) - May: US Medicine magazine reports,
9/11 attacks
"Though the Department of Defense had no capability in place to protect the Pentagon from an ersatz guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner, DoD [Department of Defense] medical personnel trained for exactly that scenario in May." The tri-Service DiLorenzo Health Care Clinic and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic train inside the Pentagon this month "to fine-tune their emergency preparedness." (CCR) - May: The Bush delegates to the UN Commission on Human Rights are so belligerent and obstreporous that for the first time Europeans refuse to re-elect the US to the commission.
Bush's foreign policies
While the US receives pledges of support from 41 countries, when it comes time to vote, only 29 of those countries honor their pledge. Instead, France is elected to the commission in a landslide, a victory attributed by the French ambassador to the UN to France's foreign policy "founded on dialogue and respect," as opposed to the unilaterism and arrogance of the US. China says virtually the same thing, observing that America's defeat demonstrates that it has "undermined the atmosphere for dialogue." (Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, Eric Alterman and Mark Green) - May: Bush nominates far-right Christian ideologue Charles Pickering, a federal judge in Mississippi, for the federal appeals bench.
Partisan Bush appointees
Pickering, if confirmed, will oversee the Fifth Circuit appeals court, which encompasses Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and has a 44% minority population. Pickering is a particularly hateful nominee for Democrats and progressives because of his record on civil rights. Pickering has published only 95 of his over 1100 rulings; Senate Democrats, unwilling to confirm yet another recordless judge, stall his nomination until they can find more information on his record. Pickering proves to have a stunning number of reversals from higher courts along with a record of ethics violations and a propensity for being insensitive to civil rights issues. One of the most damning examples is from a case brought before Pickering involving a cross-burning on the lawn of an interracial couple with a young child; Pickering broke federal sentencing guidelines to get the convicted perpetrator a substantially reduced sentence, a move fraught with violations of judicial ethics. Pickering, a protege of the racially problematic Trent Lott, also lies about his support of the racist Mississippi Sovreignity Commission, but brags about his belief in the "inerrancy" of the Bible and his belief that the Bible should serve as the basis for secular law. After the Senate thwarts Pickering's nomination, Bush renominates him, prompting the NAACP's Julian Bond to retort, "The renomination of failed judicial candidate Charles Pickering is a clear signal that the party of Lott has no intention of becoming the party of Lincoln and that they'll continue to play the race card and practice the politics of racial division." Pickering will again be voted down in October 2003. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green, Mark Crispin Miller) - May-July: In a two month time period,
9/11 attacks
the NSA reports "at least 33 communications indicating a possible, imminent terrorist attack." None of these reports provide any specific information on where, when, or how an attack might occur. These reports are widely disseminated to other intelligence agencies. The NSA Director later claims that all of the warnings were false. (CCR)
"Star Wars" revived
- May 1: Bush officially launches the US's resurgent push towards deployment of a limited, test-model missile defense system (commonly known as Star Wars).
US military
The idea is to give the US the capability of shooting down nuclear missiles launched at its territory from hostile countries. Bush promised during the campaign that he would revive the program, first proposed and budgeted in 1983. After 18 years of research and development, and over $84 billion in expenditures, no proven model exists. Yet Bush intends to go ahead with the program, even if it violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty signed with the Soviet Union. Such a prospect rattles the governments in Moscow and Beijing, and any number of European allies. (Most arms control experts and missile defense critics believe that the ABM treaty does not truly constrain missile defense efforts, and accuse Bush of exaggerating the treaty's restrictive effects in order to justify his decision to withdraw from the treaty.) Bush says that a missile defense system is necessary because "today's most urgent threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in Soviet hands, but from a small number of missiles in the hands of...states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life." According to Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld "has identified near-term options that could allow us to deploy an initial capability against limited threats. In some cases, we can draw on already-established technologies." Bush says that a missile defense system "can strengthen deterrence by reducing the incentive for proliferation." He adds that there will be "real consultations" with US allies, and the US will not present "our friends and allies with unilateral decisions already made." - Bush's speech is a farrago of lies. While the prospect of a nuclear launch from an unfriendly country is certainly real, and more than worrisome, to call it the single most urgent threat faced by the US is inaccurate at best (as 9/11 will prove in mere months). Congressional testimony in February 2000 from the then-national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, Robert Walpole, points to attacks with weapons of mass destruction from "non-missile delivery means (most likely from non-state entities) than by missiles, primarily because non-missile delivery means are less costly and more reliable and accurate. They can also be used without attribution." Walpole means that terrorists wielding bombs and delivering them by truck, airplane, automobile, or train are far more likely the source of an attack on US soil than missile launches from Iran or Albania. Most nations with a grievance or a grudge against the US would find ballistic missiles prohibitively expensive, and find themselves facing quick and devastating reprisal.
- Former senator Sam Nunn, a conservative and hawkish Democrat, counters Bush's push for a missile defense system, saying, "The most serious threats right now are not a missile from a third world country that has a return address. If we end up spending a huge amount of money on defending limited attack from three or four countries in the world -- three, four, five missiles -- amd we don't have money left over to try and get the [nuclear] weapons and materials and know-how [that exist in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere] under control, we could end up with a more dangerous situation in ten years than we have now." (The Nunn-Lugar bill, passed in 1999, funded measures that drastically increased security for nuclear weapons in Russia, provided for the destruction of Russian nuclear materials, and provided for the secure employment of Soviet-era missile scientists. In 2000, Bush promised to ask for an increase in funding for Nunn-Lugar; in 2002, he will slash funding by over 15%.) Bush says during his speech that a limited missile defense system is virtually ready to go, and that such a defense system is essentially a tried-and-tested system. Both statements are dead wrong. Two of three tests of the existing prototype missile defense system that occurred in 2000 failed miserably, and the third only "succeeded" after the target drone was "painted" with a beacon that made it easy for the system to find the drone. The use of this beacon, said Defense Week, "raises new questions about the realism of the exercises." Bush's claim that such a missile defense system would inhibit proliferation is another indefensible lie. In fact, US intelligence analyses would mean just the opposite: that hostile countries would respond to such a system by "deploying larger forces, penetration aids, and countermeasures." A classified intelligence briefing from 2000 warns that the deployment of such a system would prod China to increase its own missile arsenal from around 20 long-range missiles to up to 200 in order to maintain the relevance of its nuclear weaponry, and prompt a similar response from India and Pakistan. The briefing also warned that countries developing nuclear weapons could easily develop the technical means to evade such a defense system. A month before the speech, Bush declared, "I've assured our allies that we will consult with them, but we are moving forward to develop systems." One European diplomat says after the speech, "If Bush has already decided to go ahead with breaking the ABM treaty and building his project, then how are we supposed to believe that these consultations have any meaning?" (David Corn)
- May 1: Bush tells the press regarding his recent summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin:
Bush's foreign policies
"...I also made it clear to him that it's important to think beyond the old days of when we had the concept that if we blew each other up, the world would be safe." Bush also claims to have somehow "read" Putin's soul by staring him in the eyes: "When I looked at him, I felt that he was shooting straight with me." He claims to have gotten a sense of Putin's soul and finds Putin, a former KGB boss who is in the process of waging a bloody repression of Chechnyan rebels and gutting the vestiges of Russia's free press, a "remarkable leader" and an "honest, straightfoward man...who loves his family" and reportedly professes a belief in God. Bush apparently did not notice the warning in Condoleezza Rice's briefing for his meeting with Putin that reads, "If we have learned anything in the last several years, it is that a romantic view of Russia -- rather than a realistic one -- did nothing to help the cause of stability in Russia." Her briefing portrays Russia as "a threat to the West and to our European allies in particular." (The Dubya Report, Eric Alterman and Mark Green) - May 8: Bush entrusts Vice President Cheney to head the new Office of National Preparedness, a part of FEMA.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
This office is supposed to oversee a "national effort" to coordinate all federal programs for responding to domestic attacks. Cheney tells the press, "One of our biggest threats as a nation" may include "a terrorist organization overseas. We need to look at this whole area, oftentimes referred to as homeland defense." The ONP is extremely secretive and little of its documentation or operations are ever made public. (CCR) - May 9: The Bush administration nominates Honduran-born lawyer Miguel Estrada to the prestigious position of judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, often the last stop before a nomination to the Supreme Court.
Partisan Bush appointees
Estrada, who has no judiciary experience, is a hard-line conservative and former law partner of Solicitor General Theodore Olson. The nomination is immediately challenged by Democrats and moderates, largely over his ideology and temperment. Estrada's supervisor in the office of the Solicitor General says, "I think Estrada lacks the judgment and he is too much of an ideologue to be an appeals court judge." Republicans, led by former segregationist Trent Lott, retaliate by accusing the opposition of anti-Hispanic prejudice, a ludicrous claim in light of the GOP's own record in stalling Clinton's appointment of Hispanic judges. A particularly appalling ad from a conservative group features a young Hispanic boy looking for a job while a white store owner removes the "help wanted" sign; the ad says, "Call the Senate Democrats. Tell them it's time for intolerance to end." Estrada will face a two-year fight for the position and will, in September 2003, withdraw his name from consideration. (CNN, Washington Post/Paul Waldman, Joe Conason) - May 14: The Washington Post reveals how White House press secretary Ari Fleischer,
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
as a manifestation of administration policy towards the press, attempted to intimidate and threaten journalist Bennett Roth. Roth, with the Houston Chronicle, asked Fleischer about Bush's daughter Jenna's arrest for drunken driving; Fleischer later called Roth to warn him that his impertinent question had been "noted in the building." (Washington Post/Paul Waldman)
"For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it." -- George W. Bush, May 14, 2001
- May 16: US General Tommy Franks, later to head the US occupation of Afghanistan, visits the capital of Tajikistan.
Bush's foreign policies
He says the Bush administration considers Tajikistan "a strategically significant country" and offers military aid. This follows a visit by a Department of Defense official earlier in the year and an earlier regional visit by Franks. The British press reports, "US Rangers were also training special troops in Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek special troops were training in Alaska and Montana." (From the Wilderness) - May 17: Bush embarks on a PR tour around the country to tout the Cheney energy task force's recommendations, released in a 163-page document that Bush says focuses on conservation and alternate energy sources.
Bush's energy policies
"I've laid out an initiative that said first and foremost we better be conservationists in the country," and claims his "comprehensive energy plan" will "require manufacturers to build more energy-efficient appliances." Bush also says that the US faces a "severe energy shortage," one that can only be addressed by immediate drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, along with immediate construction of more power plants and the revival of nuclear energy. "We've yelled at -- yelled at each other enough; now it's time to listen to each other, and to act." But Bush's energy plan is far different than what he is touting in his PR appearances. The Cheney document predicts huge energy deficits for the next 20 years, a gap shown to be far smaller than the document outlines. The document uses figures supplied by Sandia National Laboratories; the more comprehensive and less partisan figures from the US Energy Information Administration paints a far less dire picture. The document also uses the California energy blackouts as primary evidence of a coming energy crisis, failing to note that the California energy debacle was largely caused by the "gaming" of California's energy markets by Enron and other energy corporations. The document also predicts that New Hampshire will face a similar energy crisis within months, ignoring the fact that New Hampshire currently enjoys an energy surplus and is busily selling power to other states. (The executive director of the Cheney task force, Andrew Lundquist, admits that the projection about New Hampshire is wrong, and is unable to state which, if any, Northeastern states might face an energy crunch in the near future.) A chart in Chapter Two of Cheney's report actually refutes the document's own predictions of an impending energy crisis. Forbes magazine counters that "there is no energy crisis and there is little reason to believe there will be." - "Bush and his crew were trying to scare the country into believing an energy emergency was at hand," writes David Corn, and notes that by 2003, the country will actually experience an energy glut. The document also contains virtually nothing about energy conservation, and little about developing alternative energy sources, and fails to note that the Bush administration is busy slashing funding for energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. It refuses to recommend that US auto manufacturers adopt stricter gas-consumption standards for its vehicles. What it does call for is a relaxation of environmental standards for coal mining, for oil drilling, and for the nuclear industry. Bush's own EPA will challenge the document's recommendations, saying that the entire document is little more than a compendium of misleading information designed to benefit the oil and energy industries. As for Alaska's ANWR, the document is stuffed with lies. The document claims that of the entire 19 million protected acres, the amount of land affected by oil drilling will be less than 2,000 acres, an area smaller than Dulles International Airport. In reality, the drilling will harshly impact at least 1.5 million acres of unspoiled wilderness. The document also fails to note the enormous infrastructure, including roads and pipelines, that would stretch across the entirety of the reserve. Time magazine notes, "[O]nly the space of the equipment touching the ground is counted [in the 2,000 acre estimate]. Each drilling platform can take up as little as 10 acres. The pipelines are above ground. For space purposes, [the 2,000 acre calculation] counts only the ground touched by the stanchions holding up the pipe. Road widths are also conveniently left out of the space limit." Worse, the document asserts that drilling in ANWR will produce immediate energy relief for the country and, in Ari Fleischer's words, "massive [supplies that] will last for an extended, long period of time" and help to ease the US's dependence on foreign oil. In reality, according to the EIA's own estimates, oil from ANWR would not reach American markets for seven to ten years after drilling began. Even the highest estimates project less than two years' worth of oil, and probably closer to nine months' worth. The amount of oil from ANWR would ease the US dependence on foreign oil by about 2% at best. (In contrast, raising the gas mileage of the average American car by 3 miles per gallon would save more oil than ANWR would produce.) Forbes writes, "Whatever the merits of this plan environmentally, the case remains that just slight increases in automobile fuel efficiency would conserve far more oil than the US could ever hope to extract from the Alaskan preserve." The document also fails to note the devastating environmental impact on the pristine Arctic wilderness. Interior Secretary Gale Norton claims, for example, that Alaskan caribou rarely even use the reserve, ignoring 30 years' worth of evidence that the area covered in ANWR is critical for caribou to thrive. Norton also asserts that drilling in ANWR will create "700,000 new jobs" for Americans; she fails to note that the figure is from an 11-year old study by the corporate-backed American Petroleum Institute. Real estimates are less than one-tenth of that figure. (David Corn)
- May 17: Secretary of State Colin Powell
Bush's foreign policies
announces a $43 million aid package in humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan. The package includes $28 million worth of wheat from the US Department of Agriculture, $5 million in food commodities and $10 million in "livelihood and food security" programs, both from the US Agency for International Development. (CNN, CNN/Killtown, From the Wilderness)
Allegations of Clinton transition team "trashing" White House are proven false
- May 17: The General Services Administration concludes, after a meticulous investigation, that the Bush administration's accusations that outgoing Clinton staffers "vandalized" the White House are completely false.
Lies about "trashed White House"
A number of Bush officials concocted a story about Clinton aides vandalizing, trashing, and pilfering from the White House during the former president's final days in office (see above item). The story quickly became a media sensation, and wild allegations from senior Republicans and conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh were aired as established fact. The GSA report says in part, "The condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy." The GSA finds no wholesale slashing of cords to computers, copiers and telephones, nor any evidence of lewd graffiti or pornographic images; both had been alleged by a number of Bush aides and conservative critics. The GSA didn't bother to investigate the source of some of the pranks that were done during the Clinton administration's final days; among those pranks was the apparent removal of the W key from some computer keyboards and the placing of official-looking signs on doors, saying things like "Office of Strategery," after a popular "Saturday Night Live" spoof on Bush. "I think it was this calculated effort to plant a damaging story," says Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. "There was a sort of fertile ground for believing anything bad." Conservative columnist and former Bush speechwriter Tony Snow was one of the loudest and most uninformed critics of the so-called vandalism. He wrote that the White House "was a wreck." He also alleged that Air Force One "looked as if it had been stripped by a skilled band of thieves -- or perhaps wrecked by a trailer park twister." He went on to list all manner of missing items, including silverware, porcelain dishes with the presidential seal and even candy. "It makes one feel grateful that the seats and carpets are bolted down," he fumed. - Except none of it happened. An official at Andrews Air Force Base, which maintains the presidential jets, told the Kansas City Star at the height of the controversy that nothing was missing. Bush himself acknowledged the same a few days later. The GSA report makes it official. "They told me that there were papers that were not organized lying on the floor and on desks; there were some scratches here and there, but the bottom line was they didn't see anything really in their view that was significant and that would appear to some as real extensive damage," says Bernard Unger, director for physical infrastructure for the General Accounting Office, which asked GSA to look into the allegations. Mark Lindsay, who oversaw the transition as Clinton's assistant for management and administration, says he was pleased that the record has been set straight. "Because of President Clinton, this was one of the smoothest transitions in the history of the presidency," he said. "This was nothing more than just lies." Republican congressman Bob Barr, who demanded the investigation, refuses to discuss the situation. Snow says he may or may not have erred regarding Air Force One, but he chooses to believe his "sources" over the GSA investigation and even over Bush's own admission. To date, the "vandal scandal" story is still circulating, painted as truth by numerous conservative commentators, politicians, and enemies of the Clinton administration. (Kansas City Star)
- May 17: Convicted junk-bond manipulator Michael Milken, convicted of racketeering and other major charges and released from prison in 1993,
Bush's economic policies
and Enron CEO Kenneth Lay meet with a select group of Republican financial and political figures, including wannabe politician Arnold Schwarzenegger. Lay, who convenes the meeting, is searching for a way out of the problems facing Enron, which stands accused of manipulating the California energy market and bilking the state, and its energy consumers, out of billions of dollars. Schwarzenegger is present because California's governor, the previously unremarkable Democrat Gray Davis, has recently pushed Enron and the other market manipulators to pay back the $9 billion that the state can prove was stolen from it, even going so far as to filing a regulatory complaint with the federal government. Lay knows that Davis is going to be anything but amenable to a settlement for pennies on the dollar, but Schwarzenegger makes it clear that, if he is governor, he will be far more willing to settle with Enron and the other companies; this meeting is the beginning of the recall effort that in 2003 replaces Davis with Schwarzenegger. (Greg Palast) - May 20: On Face the Nation, Vice President Cheney tells one of the most bald-faced lies ever pronounced on that program.
Bush's economic policies
Regarding the administration's energy policies, he says, "Virtually all of the recommendations for financial incentives and assistance tax credits and so forth are for conservation and increased efficiency and renewables. There are no new financial subsidies of any kind for the oil and gas industries." In reality, the new energy policies lavish $28 billion in subsidies and tax breaks on the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries. Adding that sum to the $33 billion already earmarked for energy industry subsidies by the administration, the grand total is $61 billion -- about $220 for every man, woman, and child in America. (CBS/Eric Alterman and Mark Green) - May 23: Zalmay Khalilzad is appointed to a position on the National Security Council
Partisan Bush appointees
as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other Regional Issues. Khalilzad is a former official in the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. During the Clinton years, he worked for Unocal. He is later appointed special envoy to Afghanistan. (BBC/Killtown)
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." -- Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, NPR Morning Edition, 05-25-01, quoted by Brandi Mills
- Late May: Theodore Olson is confirmed as US Solicitor General by the Senate after Democrats agree not to oppose his confirmation.
Partisan Bush appointees
Olson, who successfully argued Bush v. Gore to the Supreme Court in December 2000, lies to the Senate in saying that he had nothing to do with the "Arkansas Project," the concerted effort to undermine and destroy the Clinton presidency. In fact, as many, many entries in earlier pages of this site prove, Olson was at the heart of the Project. (The American Prospect, David Brock) - May 31: The Wall Street Journal summarizes tens of thousands of pages of evidence disclosed in a recently concluded trial of al-Qaeda terrorists.
Islamist terrorism
The documents reveal numerous connections between al-Qaeda and specific front companies and charities. They even detail a "tightly organized system of cells in an array of American cities, including Brooklyn, N.Y.; Orlando, Fla.; Dallas; Santa Clara, Calif.; Columbia, Mo., and Herndon, Va." The 9/11 hijackers had ties to many of these same cities and charities. The report draws little interest from the FBI. (CCR)
