JOHN DEAN
Dean, former counsel to President Nixon, is author of the just-released book Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush
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BOB MCILVAINE
McIlvaine lost his son Bobby in the World Trade Center. He is currently in New York City and will be in D.C., where he will attend the hearings. McIlvaine said today: “The tip of the iceberg is now finally being acknowledged with Clarke’s testimony: The administration did not do all it could to prevent 9-11. Clarke gets noticed because he was an insider, but the pattern of the administration’s lack of straightforwardness has been obvious to those of us closely following the commission.”
CLARENCE LUSANE
Author of a forthcoming book about Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, Lusane’s most recent book is Hitler’s Black Victims. He said today: “The administration has impeded the investigation and is continuing to do so. The White House received a promise that the commission would not call any more White House staffers after Rice’s appearance. This allows Rice to be able to make any claims and assertions she wants without any possibility of refutation from other White House staffers.”
SHELDON RAMPTON
Co-author of the book Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq and editor of PR Watch, Rampton said today: “Like other top officials in the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice has repeatedly made statements about war in Iraq that are demonstrably false and that she had to know were false at the time she said them.” Examples include:
* “We know that he [Saddam] has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon…. He is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon,” she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on September 8, 2002. Rampton said: “In reality, she didn’t ‘know’ any such thing, because the U.S. intelligence community was deeply divided on this question.”
* In the same interview, Rice told CNN: “We do know that there have been shipments going … into Iraq … of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to … nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.” Rampton said: “Rice had to know this statement was false, because the government’s most experienced technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy had concluded that the tubes were ‘poorly suited’ for this purpose, and intelligence officials at the State Department concurred.”
* “There is plenty to indict Saddam Hussein without a direct link to 9/11. He clearly has links to terrorism…. Links to terrorism would include al Qaeda,” she told Fox News (9/15/2002). Rampton said: “The intelligence community’s doubts also didn’t stop her from going on Larry King Live (2/5/2003) to say ‘There is no question in my mind about the al Qaeda connection’ and that Saddam Hussein had even given al Qaeda ‘assistance in chemical and biological weapons.'”
For a database of false claims by administration officials on Iraq, see: www.iraqontherecord.
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
