Colleen Rowley "Minded" During Testimony

[Ed Jewett]

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Colleen Rowley: Minders Ensured She Didn't Say Anything About 9/11 the FBI Didn't WANT Told, Even to Government Officials With Top Security Clearance



FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley was interviewed by Scott Horton, professor at Columbia Law School and Contributing Editor of Harper’s Magazine.
Rowley said that in her testimony to the Joint Intelligence Committee regarding 9/11, she was “minded”. Specifically, she said that “FBI minders” listened to her every word, to trail her and make sure that she didn’t tell government personnel with top secret clearance even higher than her own anything which the FBI did not want to be told.
While this might sound fantastic, it is nothing new.
Rowley said the same had happened to Daniel Ellsberg went to members of Congress with the Pentagon papers.

As I wrote a year ago:

9/11 Commission chair Thomas Kean points out that if "minders" had been present during the Commission's investigation, that would have been intimidation, which would have stemmed the flow of testimony from the witnesses:

I think the commission feels unanimously that it’s some intimidation to have somebody sitting behind you all the time who you either work for or works for your agency. You might get less testimony than you would.

However, that's exactly what happened to Kean's own 9/11 Commission.
Specifically:

A recently released 9/11 Commission memo [released in January 2009 from the Commission to the National Archives; referenced in the The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Finding Aid: Series Descriptions and Folder Title Lists, page 52, "Memo Concerning Minders Conduct"*] highlights the role of government “minders” who accompanied witnesses interviewed by the commission. It was added to the National Archives’ files at the start of the year and discovered there by History Commons contributor paxvector.
The memo, entitled “Executive Branch Minders’ Intimidation of Witnesses,” complains that:

• Minders “answer[ed] questions directed at witnesses;”
  
• Minders acted as “monitors, reporting to their respective agencies on Commission staffs lines of inquiry and witnesses’ verbatim responses.” The staff thought this “conveys to witnesses that their superiors will review their statements and may engage in retribution;” and
  
• Minders “positioned themselves physically and have conducted themselves in a manner that we believe intimidates witnesses from giving full and candid responses to our questions.”
  

The memo was drafted by three staffers on the commission’s Team 2, which reviewed the overall structure of the US intelligence community. One of the drafters was Kevin Scheid, a senior staffer who led the team. His co-writers were Lorry Fenner, an air force intelligence officer, and lawyer Gordon Lederman. The complaint was sent to the commission’s counsels, Daniel Marcus and Steve Dunne, in October 2003, about halfway through the commission’s 19-month life.
The memo makes clear that the problems were not occurring only with witnesses talking to Team 2, but also in “other teams’ interviews.” A hand-written note on a draft of the memo says, “not one agency or minder – also where we’ve sat in on other Teams’ interviews.”
According to the memo, some minders merely policed prior agreements between the commission and their parent agency about what the commission could ask witnesses, and others were simply there to make a list of documents the commission might want based on a witness’ testimony. However, some minders saw their role differently.
Intimidation through Physical Positioning
The three staffers argued minders should not answer questions for witnesses because they needed to understand not how the intelligence community was supposed to function, but “how the Intelligence Community functions in actuality.” However: “When we have asked witnesses about certain roles and responsibilities within the Intelligence Community, minders have preempted witnesses’ responses by referencing formal polices and procedures. As a result, witnesses have not responded to our questions and have deprived us from understanding the Intelligence Community’s actual functioning and witnesses’ view of their roles and responsibilities.”
The memo also describes the minders’ conduct in detail: “… [M]inders have positioned themselves physically and have conducted themselves in a manner that we believe intimidates witnesses from giving full and candid responses to our questions. Minders generally have sat next to witnesses at the table and across from Commission staff, conveying to witnesses that minders are participants in interviews and are of equal status to witnesses.”
The staffers also worried about minders taking “verbatim notes of witnesses’ statements,” as they thought this “conveys to witnesses that their superiors will review their statements and may engage in retribution.” They believed that “the net effect of minders’ conduct, whether intentionally or not, is to intimidate witnesses and to interfere with witnesses providing full and candid responses.”
Another problem with the verbatim notetaking was that it “facilitates agencies in alerting future witnesses to the Commission’s lines of inquiry and permits agencies to prepare future witnesses either explicitly or implicitly.”
Proposals
In response to this, the three staffers proposed not that minders be banned from interviews, but a set of rules governing minders’ conduct. For example, minders were to keep a “low profile,” sit out of witnesses’ sight, not take verbatim notes and not answer any questions directed at the witnesses.
Perhaps the most remarkable proposal is that the number of minders be limited to one per witness. The memo indicates that where an interviewee had served in multiple agencies, more than one minder would accompany the witness. The memo therefore requests, “Only one minder may attend an interview even if the witness served in multiple agencies,” meaning a witness would at least not be outnumbered by his minders.

As the Family Steering Committee (made up of 9/11 victims' family members) wrote in 2003:

The FSC [Family Steering Committee] is shocked with the use of “minders” in the interrogatory process. And, despite the Commissioner's similar objection to “minders”, as stated at the last press conference, “minders” continue to be present during witness examination and questioning. The FSC does not want “minders” present during any witness examination and questioning; it is a form of intimidation and it does not yield the unfettered truth.

Indeed, even 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton admitted that "it is very difficult to tell when a witness is being intimidated by a minder." Not only did the Bush administration adopt Communist torture techniques geared towards extracting false confessions, it also appears to have adopted Communist intimidation tactics.

2 comments:


Anonymous said... Wrong Scott Horton. You didn't leave a link, but I think you're referring to an interview by Scott Horton of Anti-War Radio. You can find the interview here:
http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/03/13/coleen-rowley/

Other than that, this is an excellent article. Rowley is of course the FBI agent that revealed that the US government had foreknowledge about Zacarias Moussaoui, which was suppressed by the FBI prior to 9/11. This leaves open the possibility of US government involvement in 9/11 to the extent of allowing the strike to happen.
March 17, 2010 7:40 AM


Balraj said... All 9/11 potential witnesses should start making informational home videos and stash with trusted friends and relatives with instructions to mail to multiple news outlets and internet webmasters should they meet with an untimely 'suicide'. Let the perps know that you have made a video.
This is a life-assurance policy.
March 17, 2010 9:50 AM

[David Guyatt]

More than interesting I think.

Whenever a Government sponsored Commission or Inquiry is held under the auspices of being independent, it is always important to try to learn the rules governing its actual operation ("Terms of Reference" in the UK), as it is here that government influence testimony to manipulate the outcome to the satisfaction.

[Ed Jewett]

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Chairs of Both the 9/11 Commission and the Joint Intelligence Inquiry into 9/11 Said That Government Minders Obstructed the 9/11 Investigation



As I detailed previously, both the Joint Intelligence Committee and 9/11 Commission investigations into 9/11 had government "minders" intimidating witnesses into not saying anything the government didn't like.
You may assume that the issue of "minders" is overblown, and is not really that important.
But, as the New York Times noted in 2003:

The panel [i.e. the 9/11 Commission] also said the failure of the Bush administration to allow officials to be interviewed without the presence of government colleagues could impede its investigation, with the commission's chairman suggesting today that the situation amounted to "intimidation" of the witnesses.
*** [9/11 Commission co-chairs] Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton suggested that the Justice Department was behind a directive barring intelligence officials from being interviewed by the panel without the presence of agency colleagues.
At a news conference, Mr. Kean described the presence of "minders" at the interviews as a form of intimidation. "I think the commission feels unanimously that it's some intimidation to have somebody sitting behind you all the time who you either work for or works for your agency," he said. "You might get less testimony than you would."
"We would rather interview these people without minders or without agency people there," he said.

And as I previously noted, a recently released 9/11 Commission memo complains that:

• Minders “answer[ed] questions directed at witnesses;”
  

• Minders acted as “monitors, reporting to their respective agencies on Commission staffs lines of inquiry and witnesses’ verbatim responses.” The staff thought this “conveys to witnesses that their superiors will review their statements and may engage in retribution;” and
  

• Minders “positioned themselves physically and have conducted themselves in a manner that we believe intimidates witnesses from giving full and candid responses to our questions.”
  

Still think this isn't an important issue?
Senator Bob Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and chair of the Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into 9/11, said in 2005:

The [9/11] commission's findings were based on an interview with al-Bayoumi in Saudi Arabia with Saudi Arabian officials present. "He had no motivation to speak truthfully as to his role," he said.

When government officials are present, it creates conditions where the witness "has no motivation to speak truthfully."

Bottom Line: The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Keane and Lee Hamilton, and chair of the the Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into 9/11, Bob Graham, said that minders obstructed the investigation into 9/11.
Shouldn't we believe them?