| June 29, 2005 | -
President George W. Bush gave a nationally televised speech about the war in Iraq to an audience of soldiers. Bush, who served in the Air National Guard, said there was “no higher calling” than military service and mentioned the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks five times. After the speech, there was some question as to whether the soldiers had clapped enough.
| Source:
The New York Times
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| August 18, 2004 | - The Sierra Club released a report denouncing the Bush Administration for lying about the risks posed by the smoke and dust in lower Manhattan after 9/11; the EPA was aware of the risks, from asbestos, concrete dust, glass fibers, and other substances, by September 27 but continued to claim that the air was safe.
| Source:
Newsday
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| August 1, 2004 | -
Kuwait banned Fahrenheit 9/11, and
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
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| July 30, 2004 | - the 9/11 commission, which runs out of funds next month, was seeking private donations so that it can continue its work.
| Source:
New York Times
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| July 23, 2004 | - The 9/11 commission released its report and catalogued the many failures of intelligence and law enforcement that permitted Al Qaeda to carry out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; the commission concluded that "we are not safe."
| Source:
New York Times
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| June 19, 2004 | - Dick Cheney said that he "probably" had access to better intelligence information than the 9/11 commission; the commission chairmen then called on Cheney to provide them with any documents that could substantiate his claims.
| Source:
New York Times
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| June 17, 2004 | - The 9/11 commission released two staff reports concluding that there is no credible evidence that Iraq ever entered into an alliance with Al Qaeda; the commission also detailed for the first time the surprising level of confusion and miscommunication among top administration officials on the day of the attacks.
| Source:
New York Times
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| June 4, 2004 | - George Tenet resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency; he claimed that he was quitting for personal reasons, though there was no shortage of professional ones. Much speculation followed concerning who would be next.
| Source:
Washington Post
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| May 3, 2004 | - President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney met for several hours with the 9/11 commission, though they refused to permit the interview to be recorded or transcribed; two Democratic members of the commission had to leave early because they had other appointments.
| Source:
Seattle Times
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| April 26, 2004 | -
Administration lawyers asked a judge to prevent a former FBI translator from testifying in a lawsuit brought by families of September 11 victims; the translator told the 9/11 commission that the government had considerable evidence months before the attacks that Al Qaeda was planning to use aircraft as weapons in the United States.
| Source:
Independent
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| April 17, 2004 | - The 9/11 commission concluded that the harsh immigration policies put in place after September 11 were useless.
| Source:
New York Times
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| April 15, 2004 | - President George W. Bush held a prime-time press conference and refused several times to apologize or accept responsibility for his government's failure to prevent the September 11 attacks.
| Source:
New York Times
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| April 15, 2004 | -
George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told the 9/11 commission that he received a briefing in August 2001 entitled "Islamic
Extremist Learns to Fly" but failed to act on the information.
| Source:
New York Times
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| April 13, 2004 | - The North American Aerospace Defense Command admitted that in April 2001 it rejected a training scenario in which foreign terrorists were to hijack a commercial airplane and try to crash it into the Pentagon; the scenario was considered unrealistic.
| Source:
Navy Times
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| April 9, 2004 | - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testified publicly and under oath before the commission investigating September 11; Rice acknowledged that President Bush had received a classified CIA briefing on August 6, 2001, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States," though she characterized the report as "historical information based on old reporting." She also acknowledged that the report mentioned the existence of Al Qaeda sleeper cells in the United States but "there was no recommendation that we do something about this." Rice also admitted that Richard Clarke, whose book on the Bush Administration's antiterrorism failures prompted her public testimony, sent her a memo in January 2001 in which he mentioned sleeper cells. Again, Rice said, "there was no mention or recommendation of anything that needs to be done about them." Rice said that she couldn't remember whether she had ever mentioned the existence of the sleeper cells to the president prior to August 6.
| Source:
New York Times
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| April 3, 2004 | - The White House acknowledged that it has withheld three quarters of the 11,000 pages of Clinton Administration documents that were supposed to be handed over to the 9/11 commission; after an outcry, administration officials agreed to reconsider.
| Source:
Reuters
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| March 31, 2004 | - President Bush backed down from his refusal to allow Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly under oath before the 9/11 commission.
| Source:
Associated Press
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| March 29, 2004 | - Condoleezza Rice did appear publicly on 60 Minutes and confirmed Clarke's claim, originally denied by the White House, that on September 12, 2001, President Bush ordered Clarke to focus on possible Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks, which the CIA had already concluded were carried out by Al Qaeda.
| Source:
New York Times
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| March 26, 2004 | - Bush Administration operatives were working very hard to discredit Richard Clarke, and Condoleezza Rice agreed to speak with the 9/11 panel once again but not publicly and not under oath.
| Source:
Reuters
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| March 25, 2004 | - Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism official who has criticized the Bush Administration for its poor efforts at fighting terrorism and its misguided invasion of Iraq, appeared before the commission investigating September 11 and apologized for the government's and his own failure to prevent the attacks. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice have all refused to testify publicly before the commission.
| Source:
Reuters
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| March 22, 2004 | - Richard Clarke, the former head of counterterrorism under Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, published a book in which he claims that George W. Bush has done a "terrible job" fighting terrorism. Clarke says that prior to September 11, Bush ignored warnings about the threat from Al Qaeda and that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in the days just after the attacks, wanted to bomb Iraq rather than Afghanistan because Iraq had better bombing targets. Clarke charges that the president made it very clear that he wanted to find a connection between September 11 and Saddam Hussein even though there was no evidence of such a link.
| Source:
CBS News
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| March 10, 2004 | - President George W. Bush said that he would try to find time to answer all the questions of the federal commission investigating the September 11 attacks.
| Source:
New York Times
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| March 7, 2004 | -
President Bush was criticized for exploiting
September 11 in his new campaign advertisements.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times, Newsweek
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| January 9, 2004 | - Former secretary of the treasury Paul O'Neill revealed in a new book that President George W. Bush was already looking for an excuse to invade Iraq during the first few weeks of his presidency. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it," O'Neill said. "The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'"
| Source:
CBS News
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| December 19, 2003 | - Thomas H. Kean, the chairman of the commission investigating the September 11 attacks, said that the hijackings probably would not have occurred if the FBI and the immigration service had been doing their jobs.
| Source:
New York Times
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| December 14, 2003 | - Other tapes revealed that Nixon was planning to use the Justice Department and the FBI to take revenge on his enemies once the Watergate scandal blew over. Nixon also thought that New York City "should go through a cycle of destruction."
| Source:
New York Times
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| November 18, 2003 | - Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan heard arguments over the indefinite detention of Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was arrested in Chicago last year and declared an "enemy combatant." A government lawyer said that "Al Qaeda made the battlefield the United States"; an opposing lawyer said that "the president seeks an unchecked power to substitute military power for the rule of law"; Judge Rosemary Pooler observed that "as terrible as 9/11 was, it didn't repeal the Constitution."
| Source:
New York Times
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| October 26, 2003 | - The chairman of the independent commission investigating September 11 threatened to subpoena the White House for documents that it has been refusing to turn over.
| Source:
Associated Press
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| August 22, 2003 | - An internal EPA report revealed that the Bush Administration forced the agency to lie about the air quality in New York City just after 9/11.
The agency, which was forced to filter all public statements through the president's National Security Council, had no basis for its claim that the air in New York was safe to breathe.
| Source:
Associated Press
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| February 5, 2002 | - A federal judge in New York opened hearings into whether the F.B.I. in its September 11 investigation had coerced and intimidated a Jordanian student into committing perjury.
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| November 27, 2001 | -
Spain announced that it would not extradite eight men who were arrested for participating in the September 11
attacks unless the United States agreed to give them a civilian trial; the military courts envisioned by the Bush Administration would violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
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| November 13, 2001 | - The government said it would no longer issue a running tally of the number of people arrested in its investigation of the September 11
attacks.
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| November 13, 2001 | - There were reports that the Pakistani who was arrested following September 11 and died in federal custody had multiple fractures and deep bruises on his body.
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| November 13, 2001 | - Verizon was continuing to charge residents and businesses who have been without telephone service since September 11.
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| November 6, 2001 | - In October, 415,000 Americans lost their jobs, one quarter of which were attributed to the September 11
attacks.
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| October 23, 2001 | - Credit cards belonging to the September 11
suicide bombers were still being used, authorities said.
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| October 16, 2001 | - Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been hiding out in an undisclosed location, observed that there might be a connection between the anthrax cases and the September 11
attacks.
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| October 2, 2001 | - The White House retreated from its claim that a threat to Air Force One was received on September 11 after no record was found of such a call.
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| October 2, 2001 | - It was revealed that in the days just after September 11 former president George Bush advised his son to tone down his bellicose rhetoric.
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| October 2, 2001 | - The percentage of Americans who said they were “completely satisfied” with their lives went from 30 to 40 percent in the days after September 11.
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| October 2, 2001 | -
Financial regulators said there was no evidence that terrorists had tried to profit from the September 11 attack by betting against airline and insurance stocks.
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| September 18, 2001 | - Congressional Democrats who previously were opposed to President Bush's missile-defense scheme, which would have proved utterly useless on September 11, said they were unlikely to oppose the President in this time of national crisis.
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