Note:  I sent the following email to Ron Wyden, D-OR, on the morning of May 16, 2002.
 
 

(Updated May 17, 18, 25, 2002) 

Ten hours later -- no response from Wyden.
Twenty-four hours later -- no response from Wyden.
Forty-eight hours later -- no response from Wyden
Nine days later -- no response from Wyden.

NOTE: The original article is below the italicized updates.

May 17, 2002  (10:00 A.M. PDT) -- According to conservative, Rush Limbaugh, the Associated Press just notified all their major press clients that in two hours they would release a report that indicates the Clinton White House was, in 1999, informed that Osama Bin Ladin was planning to hijack American commercial aircraft and fly them into buildings in this country.

10:26 AM -- The Pentagon was specifically mentioned in this report, which was either requested by Congress, or made available to them upon completion.  The release date of this report was circa September 11, 1999.

11:00 AM -- The ABC radio news feed during a Limbaugh program break, reported the above item, phrasing the text in such a way that the item was tied to the alleged Bush failure to act.  (Since Bush was governor of Texas at the time, he did not receive the report.)  No mention was made that the very people now raising hell, did receive the report.  This is just another example of the manipulation of news by the mainstream media, particularly the networks, in service of their liberal bias.

May 18, 2002 - Conservative News Service -- Some members of Congress say they saw the same general intelligence briefings the White House saw, but Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle denied that. Meanwhile, administration officials suggested the person who leaked the story about the White House receiving hijack warnings works on or with one of the congressional intelligence committees.

(5/18/02) The last item above, from http://www.conservativenews.org/, suggests a reason why Mr. Wyden  has not responded to the note from Oregon Magazine.  He "works on or with one of the congressional intelligence committees."  His friendship with and loyalty to Tom Daschle, the Democrat Senate Majority Leader from South Dakota, is well known. 

 Mr. Edwards, below, who was one of those who kicked off the story on the morning of the 16th, by the evening of the 16th had modified his tone dramatically.  What in the morning had been evil or stupidity by President Bush, became something else as the day wore on.  Mr. Edwards may, unlike many in his party, have a shred of decency about him.  Most likely, however, his sudden bi-partisanship is due to a working set of political antennas.  He quickly noticed that even DNC in-house newsletters like the Washington Post early began to back off this one. 

Edwards and Gibson this morning expressed deep concern because when added to the fact that one of the terrorists was at that time in FBI custody in Arizona, no doubt being asked why he wears a hat made out of a tablecloth, this all stinks of a Bush conspiracy to allow thousands of people to be killed, or the failure to recognize the obvious by a complete brainwipe who once got a ticket for driving too slowly after having three glasses of wine at his parent's house.  Then, of course, there is the fact that the moon was in the second house and Jupiter was aligned with Mars.

(NOTE: May 17, 6:11 P.M. correction:  With respect to the "tablecloth" comment above, a later report, from ABC, which sounds potentially credible to Oregon Magazine, indicates the "Phoenix memo" may have been far more detailed than first reported. Had Bush seen it, as it is portrayed by the network, he would have had what he needed to take specific actions against the September 11 attack.  Unfortunately, considering the information gaps that would still have obtained, one of those actions in our opinion could have been to shoot down the airliners.  I would not like to be the president who had to do something like that.)

Here are Charlie's actual words:What did Bush know and when did he know it?  (According to Portland conservative talk show commentator, Gregg Clapper, of KTLK A.M., it was Judy Woodruff of CNN who took a generic story about ongoing FBI/CIA airline hijack warnings and without any additional information turned it into a Bush Conspiracy piece.  Thus do ad hominem proclivities become ad hoc news.)

Bush was told that terrorists were planning to hijack an airplane.  In 2001?  Boy, that must have been the first time any president was informed that a terrorist was going to do that sort of thing.  If Clinton had been the president, he would have figured out that in this case "hijacking an airplane" really meant "hijacking four and slamming them into the tallest buildings in New York City, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001."

The desperation of the blatently liberal mainstream media, and Democrat politicians, generated by Bush's tremendous and long lasting ratings in their polls, is driving them to lunatic levels of accusation.  The hunt to hang ENRON around his neck is nothing compared to this farce.

Watching Terry Moron delivering the message, and having seen him deliver similar stretches of the imagination previously, it is obvious as hell that he is antsy about this one. In spite of what I think of him, which isn't much, it's possible he is beginning to realize that the stain for blatently biased journalism does not wash easily away.

It leaves me with the impression that this wasn't what he thought he was training to do when he took journalism in college.

If that is what's on his mind, he's wrong.  Getting anybody who displays the faintest of conservative tendencies is exactly what modern American universities are teaching their J-students to do.  That's what ABC wants in a graduate they hire, and what the Putlitzers reward when they are handed out. 

Some related comments taken from various sources.

If Bush had said that Arab terrorists were about to hijack airplanes prior to Sept.11, when most Americans believed something like that couldn't happen here, what would the outcry from the politically correct have been? (Anti-Arab bias!)  If airport security people had been told to inspect every Arab getting on a plane, what would the press have said about that? (Profiling!  Racism! Proof that this administration hates all Moslems!  The Rightwing Christians own Bush!)   What do you hear from liberals these days after such warnings from the new Office of Internal Security turn out to be false?  (Bush is damaging the economy and unnecessarily frightening travelers!)

These things have been said by the very people who are now charging Bush with failure to warn America.  Tom Daschle said them.  Dick Gephart said them.  I saw and heard them say those things on network television.

This is pure dirty politics.  Some of the dirtiest in recent memory.  Thomas Jefferson must be vomiting in his grave.  To think that a political party begun by a man like that could be expropriated by garbage like them. 

If you're a registered Democrat, fly your flag at half mast, today. 

Next day, same song.  (May 17, 2002) Charlie Gibson, liberal American journalism's answer to Joseph Goebbles, continued the Bush Bash this A.M., topping the program off with a guest appearance by a man whose wife died in one of those plane bombs. 

This was followed by an infobabe report about how the V.P. called all this a political smear during wartime, and fraught with possible damaging effects on the institutions of government that are fighting for our nation.  Next, the infobabe, implying that Cheney was countering himself,  reported that  he was unhappy with the performance of some of the agencies involved.

Local or national, it seems the basic job requirement for 99% of  our big media journalists is a head that, when turned sideways to the wind, whistles.  The bloodthirsty sharkettes of the networks seem to believe that Bush the Second invented the concept of the FBI and CIA upon taking office.  The eight years of Clinton and Reno are so irrelevant to the subject that they aren't even mentioned. The following is from the May 18 Drudge Report:
 
 

One can imagine the reaction of Charlie and the Infobabes if they all moved into a 100 year old house and on their first day of residence were castigated for the condition of the paint.

When ENRON popped up, I predicted that they wouldn't succeed in hanging this on Bush, but rather would do damage to themselves.  (The media and the Congressional Left.)  I will make the same prediction about this situation, except to say that the majority reaction of the American public will be even stronger in this case.

The big networks, big papers and big magazines have been in bed with the ancestors of Daschle and Company since a decade before the administration of FDR.  The results of the polls they so often take have reflected the actual, steady decline in listeners, viewers and readers where they are concerned. 

Their beloved Soviet Union fell.  Capitalism within a framework of Western-style government is a tidal wave, washing the world clean of the stink of tyranny.  Everywhere they look, our mainstream media barons and baronettes see disaster.  Even Holland, yea, beloved socialist France!, in recent days have experienced the disaster of a free electorate casting their ballots to the right.  Combined with the Berlusconi disaster in Italy and the Reagonomics revitilazation of Ireland, everywhere a graduate of Harvard, Berkely or Columbia looks, the utopian dream is folding like a house of cards in a fresh wind.

That is the reason for attacks like this latest one.  Corner a junkyard dog in an alley, and his snarl is viscious and bitter.  Once the top dog, bullying the pack, his reaction is that of the bitter loss of power and deep resentment that justice has his back to the wall.

As these media morons pull down their own walls around themselves, I watch with satisfaction.  My prediction is that the only poll that matters, the elections coming in the fall, will embitter these progressive potentates even more. The House will gain conservative seats and the Senate will return to Republican control.

I will watch the anguish of the mainstream media, both national and local, with relish.  (LL)

Postscript, Sunday, May 26, 2002 -- Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle (D-S.Dakota), on Meet the Press, backed off his previous position that Bush had known about the World Trade Center attack prior to September 11, 2001.  This retraction came a week after Dick Gephart (D-Hell) ate the same humble pie.  As long as the link lasts, here's the Washington Times story on this.

After the "shadow government," ENRON and this, Democrats have lost all credibility in the public arena.  There isn't a soul left in America who doesn't know what they're up to.  Pure partisan politics during a time of great danger to America.  It must be said, however, that though they're getting close, they have yet to commit treason.

© 2002 Oregon Magazine  Return to Media Moments