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Intro­duc­tion: Con­tin­u­ing a pre­vi­ous line of analy­sis, this pro­gram sets forth the struc­ture of an appar­ent Under­ground Reich/Islamist Fifth Col­umn with­in the US polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary estab­lish­ments. Embod­ied in the milieu of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest Raids of March 20, 2002, this Fifth Col­umn embraces the Islam­ic Insti­tute (vir­tu­al­ly an exten­sion of the GOP), the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Mus­lim Chap­lains pro­gram in the Unit­ed States. Sig­nif­i­cant ele­ments of the so-called anti­war move­ment grouped around Inter­na­tion­al ANSWER over­lap the same milieu, and might be viewed as exem­pli­fy­ing a “Red/Brown” (Communist/Fascist) milieu. This, too, can be seen as part of the Under­ground Reich Fifth Col­umn. The over­all goal of this Fifth Col­umn is to effect the physical/political/economic destruc­tion and or sub­ju­ga­tion of the Unit­ed States.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: GOP oper­a­tive Kamal Nawash’s con­nec­tions to Abdu­rah­man Alamoudi—an asso­ciate of Youssef Nada; Nawash’s con­nec­tions to GOP oper­a­tive Grover Norquist; Norquist’s work on behalf of the Islam­ic Insti­tute and Alam­ou­di; Alam­oudi’s con­nec­tions with the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids; Alam­oudi’s asso­ci­a­tion with Al Taqwa’s Yousssef Nada and Ahmed Idris Nasred­din; the con­flict between the CIA and the Bush White House over the leak­ing of the CIA back­ground of Valerie Plame; the influ­ence of Hen­ry Ford’s The Inter­na­tion­al Jew on anti-Semi­tism in the Mus­lim world; the role of the Span­ish-based ele­ments of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the 9/11 attacks.

1. The broad­cast begins with the sub­ject of Kamal Nawash, a Repub­li­can can­di­date for the Vir­ginia state sen­ate and an inti­mate of the Islamist/GOP milieu.

“Kamal Nawash, an immi­gra­tion lawyer and legal direc­tor of the Amer­i­can-Arab Anti-Dis­crim­i­na­tion Com­mit­tee (ADC) since 1997, has thrown his hat in the ring as a Repub­li­can can­di­date for state sen­a­tor in the 31st dis­trict of Vir­ginia . . .”

(“Hus­sein Ibish’s Favorite Polit­i­cal Can­di­date?” by Daniel Pipes; 9/10/2003.)

2. Among Nawash’s sup­port­ers is Abdu­rah­man Alamoudi—an asso­ciate of Youssef Nada, Al Taqwa and Al Qae­da, as well as GOP big­wig Grover Norquist.

“Nawash is get­ting sup­port for his can­di­da­cy from some sus­pi­cious quar­ters. Abdu­rah­man Alam­ou­di, for­mer head of the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil whose con­tri­bu­tion was returned by Hilary Clin­ton, sent out a fundrais­ing let­ter urg­ing sup­port for Nawash: ‘I am urg­ing you today to ask that you join me in sup­port­ing . . . Kamal Nawash . . . Toward that end I per­son­al­ly con­tributed mon­ey to Kamal’s elec­tion cam­paign.’ And Grover Norquist, the Repub­li­can activist who paved the way for mil­i­tant Islam­ic groups to enter the Bush White House, is host­ing a fundrais­er for Nawash in his own house.”

(“Sept. 23, 2003 Update”; Idem.)

3. In addi­tion, Alam­ou­di is rep­re­sent­ed by Nawash’s law firm.

“Legal papers filed today indi­cate that Alam­ou­di is being rep­re­sent­ed by a team of three lawyers . . . and May Kheder,of Hana­nia, Khed­er & Nawash, P.C. in Falls Church, VA. The last of these, of course, is a part­ner of Kamal Nawash.”

(“Oct. 22, 2003 Update”; Idem.)

4. One of the most impor­tant ele­ments in the broad­cast is an inter­view from “Count­down with Kei­th Olber­mann” from Octo­ber 23. Infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by John Lof­tus cor­rob­o­rates Mr. Emory’s work­ing hypoth­e­sis that the 9/11 attacks were per­pe­trat­ed by an Under­ground Reich Fifth Col­umn over­lap­ping both the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the Al Taqwa/Al Qae­da net­works.

” . . . ‘MYERS (voice-over): Abdu­rah­man Alam­ou­di, a con­sul­tant to the Pen­ta­gon on the Chap­lain Pro­gram for more than a decade, now accused of help­ing Osama bin Laden and Hamas. Court doc­u­ments filed late last night, claim Alam­ou­di has pro­vid­ed ‘finan­cial sup­port to Hamas’ and ‘finan­cial sup­port to fronts for al-Qae­da.’ One of the groups alleged­ly tied to Alam­ou­di is a char­i­ty which gave this Vir­ginia post office as its address. Alam­ou­di was vice pres­i­dent. Who found­ed it? Abdul­lah bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s nephew. Also ring­ing alarms, Alam­oudi’s palm pilot which the gov­ern­ment claims includ­ed the names and num­bers of six des­ig­nat­ed glob­al ter­ror­ists. . .”

(“Count­down with Kei­th Olber­mann for Oct. 23”; MSNBC News; 10/23/2003.)

5. ” . . . Over the years, Alam­ou­di has been a famil­iar face in Wash­ing­ton. The Pen­ta­gon chose him to help select Mus­lim chap­lains. He met with Pres­i­dent Clin­ton, made six trips to Mus­lim nations as a good­will ambas­sador for the State Depart­ment, met with can­di­date George Bush. Last year, FBI direc­tor Rob Mueller even spoke to an orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by Alam­ou­di over the objec­tions of some agents. . . .” (Idem.)

6. ” . . OLBERMANN; NBC’s Lisa Myers on this extra­or­di­nary sto­ry in Wash­ing­ton. Join­ing us now, with more on the pur­port­ed dou­ble life of this promi­nent Mus­lim-Amer­i­can is John Lof­tus, host of ‘The Lof­tus Report’ and fre­quent guest on this show. John, good evening.” (Idem.)

7. “LOFTUS: Well, you know, it’s a fun­ny sto­ry. About a year-and‑a half ago, peo­ple in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty came and said-guys like Alam­ou­di and Sami al-Ari­an and oth­er ter­ror­ists weren’t being touched because they’d been ordered not to inves­ti­gate the cas­es, not to pros­e­cute them, because they were being fund­ed by the Saud­is and a polit­i­cal deci­sion was being made at the high­est lev­els, don’t do any­thing that would embar­rass the Sau­di gov­ern­ment. So, of course I imme­di­ate­ly vol­un­teered to do it and I filed a law­suit, against al-Ari­an charg­ing him with being a major ter­ror­ist for Islam­ic Jihad, most of his mon­ey came from Sau­di char­i­ties in Vir­ginia.” (Idem.)

8. “Now, Alam­oudi’s head­quar­ters were in the same place, he was raid­ed the same day, on March 20. An hour after I filed my law­suit, the U.S. gov­ern­ment final­ly got off its butt and they raid­ed these offices. And, the stuff that they’re tak­ing out of there now is absolute­ly hor­ren­dous. Al-Ari­an has now, final­ly been indict­ed, along with Alam­ou­di, today. But, who was it that fixed the cas­es? How could these guys oper­ate for more than a decade immune from pros­e­cu­tion? And, the answer is com­ing out in a very strange place. What Alam­ou­di and al-Ari­an have in com­mon is a guy named Grover Norquist. He’s the super lob­by­ist. Newt Gin­grich’s guy, the one the NRA calls on, head of Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers. He is the guy that was hired by Alam­ou­di to head up the Islam­ic insti­tute and he’s the reg­is­tered agent for Alam­ou­di, per­son­al­ly, and for the Islam­ic Insti­tute.” (Idem.)

9. “Grover Norquist’s best friend is Karl Rove, the White House chief of staff, and appar­ent­ly Norquist was able to fix things. He got extreme right wing Mus­lim peo­ple to be the gate­keep­ers in the White House. That’s why mod­er­ate [Mus­lim] Amer­i­cans could­n’t speak out after 9/11. Mod­er­ate Mus­lims could­n’t get into the White House because Norquist’s friends were block­ing their access.” (Idem.)

10. “OLBERMANN: How does this tie back into the thing that appar­ent­ly pulled the stop­per out of the drain, if you will-The devel­op­ments at Guan­tanamo Bay? How rot­ten is the sys­tem of the inter­preters and the chap­lains-the Mus­lim chap­lains that Alam­ou­di was involved in set­ting up?” (Idem.)

11. Islamist ele­ments of this Under­ground Reich milieu appears to have suc­cess­ful­ly infil­trat­ed the US mil­i­tary. “LOFTUS: It’s as rot­ten as it gets. Think of the Mus­lim chap­lain’s pro­gram that he set up as a spy ser­vice for al-Qae­da. The dam­age that’s been done is extreme. It was­n’t just send­ing home mom and dad mes­sages. From the pris­on­ers. These guys, this net­work in Guan­tanamo, stole the CIA’s brief­ing books. Every­thing that the CIA knew about al-Qae­da is now back in al-Qaeda’s hands. That’s about as bad an intel­li­gence set­back as you can get.” (Idem.)

12. “OLBERMANN: John, how does this end up? How far will the inves­ti­ga­tion into this nec­es­sar­i­ly have to go to get to the bot­tom of it?” (Idem.)

13. “LOFTUS: There’s a lot more to go. Norquist had a lot of oth­er clients. There’s a whole alpha­bet soup of Sau­di agen­cies that fund­ed ter­ror­ism in this coun­try. They had an awful lot of pro­tec­tion. And one of the things we may find about 9/11 is that peo­ple out in the field weren’t allowed to con­nect the dots and ques­tions will be asked whether guys like Grover Norquist were part of the prob­lem?” (Idem.)

14. Review­ing pre­vi­ous infor­ma­tion, the broad­cast under­scores the numer­ous con­nec­tions of Abdur Rah­man Alam­ou­di.

“At the net­work’s cen­ter is Abdur Rah­man Alam­ou­di, a Mus­lim-Amer­i­can activist who was indict­ed yes­ter­day in U.S. Dis­trict Court in Alexan­dria, VA. On mon­ey laun­der­ing and tax, immi­gra­tion and cus­toms-fraud charges. The 18-count indict­ment isn’t direct­ly relat­ed to the Vir­ginia probe, focus­ing most­ly on alleged ille­gal deal­ings with Libya. . . . In oth­er recent fil­ings, pros­e­cu­tors unveiled evi­dence that they say links Mr. Alam­ou­di to Hamas, the Pales­tin­ian group des­ig­nat­ed as ter­ror­ist by the U.S., and Osama bin Laden’s al Qae­da orga­ni­za­tion. Pros­e­cu­tors say Mr. Alam­oudi’s Palmpi­lot con­tained con­tact infor­ma­tion for sev­en men designed as ‘glob­al ter­ror­ists’ by the U.S. in freez­ing their assets. They includ­ed Sau­di busi­ness­man Yassin Qadi, and alleged sup­port­er of Hamas and al Qae­da, and Swiss financier Yusuf Nada, an alleged al Qae­da banker. . .”

(“Unrav­el­ing Ter­ror’s Finances” by Glenn R. Simp­son; Wall Street Jour­nal; 10/24/2003; p. A2.)

15. Among the fac­tors blunt­ing attempts at neu­tral­iz­ing the Nada/Al Taqwa milieu is the func­tion­al con­nec­tion between the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion’s cor­po­rate allies and firms con­nect­ed to Nada et al.

“One rea­son the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion gave for going to war in Iraq was Sad­dam Hus­sein’s alleged ties to ter­ror­ists. So it is iron­ic that one of the part­ners in a big Iraqi firm being used US con­trac­tors in Iraq is also a found­ing part­ner in an orga­ni­za­tion that’s been iden­ti­fied as help­ing fund al Qae­da. So far, how­ev­er, nei­ther the gov­ern­ment nor the con­trac­tors have shown much con­cern. Sadoon Al-Bun­nia is one of three prin­ci­pals in one of Iraq’s old­est com­pa­nies, the Al-Bun­nia Trad­ing Com­pa­ny. The Iraqi firm has become a major sub­con­trac­tor for US firms work­ing under US gov­ern­ment con­tracts in Iraq. But, as doc­u­ments obtained by The Nation from the Lugano office of the Swiss Fed­er­al Com­mer­cial Reg­istry show, Sadoon al-Bun­nia is also a found­ing part­ner of a Swiss-reg­is­tered firm called the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Cham­ber (MIGA), which the US gov­ern­ment and the Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil have des­ig­nat­ed as fun­ders of Al Qae­da.”

(“Strange Bed­fel­lows [The AIQ/Al-Bun­ni­a/Bech­tel Links] by Lau­ra Rozen; The Nation; 11/10/2003.)

16.

“MIGA is one of four­teen busi­ness­es con­trolled by Ahmed Idris Nasred­din and Youssef M. Nada. Then-Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill said in an August 29, 2002, news release that busi­ness­es in the Nasred­din-Nada net­work ‘appeared to be pro­vid­ing a clan­des­tine line of cred­it to a close asso­ciate of Usama bin Laden and as of late Sep­tem­ber 2001, Usama bin Laden and his Al Qai­da orga­ni­za­tion received finan­cial assis­tance from Youssef M. Nada. . . .”

(Idem.)

17. Haley Barbour—governor-elect of Mississippi—is among those whose busi­ness­es trans­act with the Nada-linked Al-Bun­nia firm.

” . . . Agree­ing with that assess­ment is Bech­tel, which signed up the Al-Bun­nia Trad­ing Com­pa­ny as its first Iraqi sub­con­trac­tor to work on the recon­struc­tion of Iraq’s Al Mat Bridge. . . .Anoth­er firm with close ties to the White House that’s angling to help clients win Iraq con­tracts, GOP lob­by­ist Haley Bar­bour’s New Bridge Strate­gies, proud­ly announces on its web­site that its local part­ner in a con­sor­tium bid­ding on a con­tract is ‘led by the Al-Bun­nia fam­i­ly, who are a lead­ing com­mer­cial group in Iraq with over 80 years expe­ri­ence in Iraq.’ ”

(Idem.)

18.

” . . . Fol­low­ing Ernie Fletcher’s cap­ture of the Ken­tucky gov­er­nor’s man­sion for the Repub­li­can par­ty for the first time in 32 years, Haley Bar­bour’s vic­to­ry in Mis­sis­sip­pi, which means all Deep South states are now in Repub­li­can con­trol, and Arnold Schwareneg­ger’s immi­nent assump­tion of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s gov­er­nor­ship, the Repub­li­can nation­al lead­er­ship rev­elled in strate­gic ter­ri­to­r­i­al gains . . .”

(“Repub­li­can Vic­to­ries in South Boost Bush Hopes for 2004” by James Hard­ing; Finan­cial Times; 11/6/2003; p. 2.)

19. In FTR#‘s 372, 412, Mr. Emory set forth his view that the present-day US could be com­pared to France in the pre-Sec­ond World War peri­od. In effect, there is a civ­il war under­way pit­ting ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the Under­ground Reich through struc­tur­al eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ships against patri­ot­ic domes­tic ele­ments. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the strug­gle encom­pass­es the con­flict under­way between the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion and ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty over the inva­sion of Iraq. (That affair can be seen as a trap which lured the US into a drain­ing con­flict with Mus­lim peo­ples in their native lands, what the Nazis called “The Earth Island.”)

“The Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s expo­sure of a clan­des­tine Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency oper­a­tive was part of a cam­paign aimed at dis­cred­it­ing US intel­li­gence agen­cies for their fail­ure to sup­port White House claims that Sad­dam Hus­sein was recon­sti­tut­ing Iraq’s nuclear weapons pro­gram, for­mer agency offi­cials said. In a rare hear­ing called by Sen­ate Demo­c­rat lead­ers, the offi­cials said that the White House engaged in pres­sure and intim­i­da­tion aimed at gen­er­at­ing intel­li­gence evi­dence to sup­port the deci­sion to make war on Iraq.”

(“Nam­ing of CIA Agent ‘Aimed to Dis­cred­it the Ser­vice’ ” by Edward Alden; Finan­cial Times; 10/25–10/26/2003; p. 3.)

20.

“Senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials in July revealed the name of Valerie Plame, a for­mer clan­des­tine CIA offi­cer and the wife of Joseph Wil­son, who was sent by the CIA in 2002 to assess claims that Iraq ws attempt­ing to pur­chase enriched ura­ni­um from Niger. Mr. Wil­son had angered the White House by con­clud­ing that there was no evi­dence to sup­port the claim, and then going pub­lic with that infor­ma­tion after the war. The Jus­tice Depart­ment has launched a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion to deter­mine the source of the leak, which in effect end­ed Ms. Plame’s career as a CIA oper­a­tive and may have endan­gered agency sources who came in con­tact with her.”

(Idem.)

21.

“Vince Can­nis­traro, for­mer oper­a­tions chief at the CIA, charged yes­ter­day: ‘She was out­ed as a vin­dic­tive act because the agency was not pro­vid­ing sup­port for pol­i­cy state­ments that Sad­dam Hus­sein was reviv­ing his nuclear pro­gram.’ The lead was a way to ‘demon­strate an under­ly­ing con­tempt for the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, the CIA in par­tic­u­lar.’ He said that in the run-up to the war with Iraq, the White House had engaged in unprece­dent­ed pres­sure on the CIA and oth­er intel­li­gence agen­cies to find evi­dence that Iraq had links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qae­da and that Mr. Hus­sein’s regime was try­ing to build a nuclear bomb.”

(Idem.)

22.

“While the intel­li­gence agen­cies believe their mis­sion is to pro­vide accu­rate analy­sis to the pres­i­dent to aid pol­i­cy deci­sions, in the case of Iraq ‘we had poli­cies that were already adopt­ed and they were look­ing for those selec­tive pieces of intel­li­gence that would sup­port the pol­i­cy’, Mr. Can­nis­traro said. In writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny, he said that Vice-Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney and his top aide Lewis Lib­by went to CIA head­quar­ters to press mid-lev­el ana­lysts to pro­vide sup­port for the claim. Mr. Cheney, he said, ‘insist­ed that desk ana­lysts were not look­ing hard enough for the evi­dence’. Mr. Can­nis­traro said his infor­ma­tion came from cur­rent agency ana­lysts.”

(Idem.)

23.

“Oth­er agency offi­cials, who said they had been col­leagues of Ms. Plame when she was trained as a CIA agent, said the leak could do severe dam­age to the morale of the intel­li­gence agen­cies. ‘The US gov­ern­ment has nev­er before released the name of a clan­des­tine offi­cer,’ said Jim Marcinkows­ki, a for­mer CIA case offi­cer. ‘My class­mates and I have been betrayed.’ ”

(Idem.)

24. Part of the Fifth Col­umn attack­ing the US is to be found with­in ele­ments of the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor.

“Accord­ing to a web-post­ing, Nawash spoke at a ‘Mus­lim Sol­i­dar­i­ty Day for Jus­tice and Peace’ ral­ly near the White House on May 24, 2003, pro­mot­ed by Inter­na­tion­al ANSWER . . .”

(“Sept. 23, 2003 Update” by Daniel Pipes.)

25. Anoth­er of the Islamists in the ANSWER orbit and a fel­low-trav­el­er of ter­ror­ist ele­ments is Imam Sir­aj Wahaj, named as an alleged unin­dict­ed co-con­spir­a­tor in a plot to destroy land­marks in New York City.

“The group will be joined by many peace, jus­tice, reli­gious and civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions and will include speak­ers such as . . . Imam Sir­aj Wahaj . . .”

(“Thou­sands to Protest Bush Attack on Mus­lims, Immi­grants, Civ­il Rights, and Civ­il Lib­er­ties;” Inter­na­tion­al A.N.S.WE.R. bul­letin.)

26.

” . . . Imam Wah­ha­j’s worlds col­lid­ed when the World Trade Cen­ter was bombed in 1993. The FBI inves­ti­ga­tion of the bomb­ing led to charges not only against the bombers but also a net­work of anti-Amer­i­can Mus­lims who planned to destroy the Unit­ed Nations’ head­quar­ters, the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge, Lin­coln Tun­nel and oth­er New York area land­marks. The FBI soon fig­ured out that two mem­bers of that net­work had wor­shipped at Masjid at-Taqwa: Sheik Abdel-Rah­man and Mr. Hamp­ton-El. In a Feb. 2, 1995, let­ter to defense lawyers in the land­marks-bomb­ing case, then‑U.S. Attor­ney Mary Jo White named about 170 peo­ple as ‘unin­dict­ed per­sons who may be alleged as co-con­spir­a­tors.’ Imam Wah­haj was on the list, but was nev­er charged. Ms. White declined to com­ment. . . .”

(“One Imam Traces The Path of Islam in Black Amer­i­ca” by Paul M. Bar­rett; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 10/24/2003; p. A8.)

27. One of the con­clud­ing ele­ments of the pro­gram under­scores the role of West­ern anti-Semi­tism in the con­tem­po­rary Mus­lim world. An arti­cle dis­cussing the stri­dent anti-Semit­ic speech giv­en by out­go­ing Malaysian prime min­is­ter Mahathir dis­closed that Hen­ry Ford’s The Inter­na­tion­al Jew (a major influ­ence on Hitler) is sell­ing well in Malaysia.

” . . . One book promi­nent in Malaysian book­stores has on its cov­er a Star of David super­im­posed on the stat­ue of Lib­er­ty. It is The Inter­na­tion­al Jew, an anti-Semit­ic tract com­mis­sioned in the 1920’s by Hen­ry Ford . . .”

(“Depart­ing Mahathir Shuns Diplo­ma­cy to the Bit­ter End” by John Bur­ton; Finan­cial Times; 10/23/2003; p. 16.)

28. Updat­ing infor­ma­tion about Balthasar Gar­zon’s inves­ti­ga­tion and indict­ment of ele­ments of Al Qae­da in con­nec­tion with 9/11, the pro­gram high­lights the role of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in con­nec­tion with the attacks.

” . . . Asked about the case, Gar­zon said the inves­ti­ga­tion of the alleged Syr­i­an immi­grant ter­ror­ist cell dates back, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, to Sept. 11, 1995. Alony fled Syr­ia in 1980, dur­ing an era when the Syr­i­an army was killing stu­dents it believed belonged to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a mil­i­tant Islamist group try­ing to over­throw the sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment. His arrival coin­cid­ed with many oth­ers in the alleged cell of Syr­i­an immi­grants work­ing for Al-Qae­da. . . .”

(“Spain Indicts Al-Jazeera Cor­re­spon­dent” by Kevin Hall [Knight Rid­der]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 11/2/2003; p. 21A)

29. One of the most unequiv­o­cal­ly out­spo­ken of the poten­tial Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates con­cern­ing Bush’s behav­ior in con­nec­tion with 9/11 is Gen­er­al Wes­ley Clark, Mr. Emory’s per­son­al choice as a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in 2004.

“In a blis­ter­ing review of Pres­i­dent Bush’s nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy, Gen. Wes­ley K. Clark said on Tues­day that the admin­is­tra­tion could not ‘walk away from its respon­si­bil­i­ties for 9/11.’ ‘You can’t blame some­thing like this on low­er-lev­el intel­li­gence offi­cers, how­ev­er bad­ly they com­mu­ni­cat­ed in mem­os with each oth­er,’ said the retired gen­er­al, the lat­est entrant in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial field. ‘It goes back to what our great pres­i­dent Har­ry Tru­man said with the sign on his desk: ‘the buck stops here.’ And it sure is clear to me that when it comes to our nation’s nation­al secu­ri­ty the buck rests with the Com­man­der in Chief, right on George W. Bush’s desk.’ ‘And,’ he added, ‘we’ve got to say again and again and again, until the Amer­i­can peo­ple under­stand: strong rhetoric in the after­math is no sub­sti­tute for wise lead­er­ship.’ ”

(“Clark Lays Respon­si­bil­i­ty for 9/11 at Bush’s Feet” by Katharine Q. Seelye; The New York Times; 10/29/2003.)