{"id":4816,"date":"2005-07-26T13:07:13","date_gmt":"2005-07-26T17:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4816.html"},"modified":"2005-07-26T13:07:13","modified_gmt":"2005-07-26T17:07:13","slug":"bushs-evolving-standards-on-security-clearances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bushs-evolving-standards-on-security-clearances\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush&#8217;s evolving standards on security clearances"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Think Progress <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2005\/07\/26\/bush-pulls-security\/\">found a real gem<\/a> that warrants a lot of attention.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, many members of Congress received an administration briefing on the threat of another attack. In fact, about three weeks after 9\/11, the Washington Post reported:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Asked whether more terrorist attacks are inevitable if the United States retaliates, [Sen. Richard] Shelby said, &#8220;You can bet on that.&#8221; \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 U.S. intelligence officials have told members of Congress there is a high probability that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden will try to launch another major attack on U.S. targets here or abroad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Immediately after that report, Bush issued an <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/wp-images\/upload\/bushrestrictedintel.pdf\">order<\/a> limiting access to classified intelligence only to 8 members of Congress &#8212; the Speaker of the House, House Minority Leader, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, and chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. <\/p>\n<p>In effect, the president yanked security clearances for 96 senators. In a report explaining why this was necessary, Gannett News Service reported on Oct. 1, 2001, that Bush was restricting information because, &#8220;The Washington Post reported last week that various lawmakers had been told there would be more terrorist attacks if the United States retaliated.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s all it took. Intelligence officials told lawmakers another attack was likely, a sentor told a reporter, and the White House acted swiftly to protect what it considered classified information. In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2001\/10\/20011009-13.html\">the president&#8217;s words<\/a>, &#8220;We can&#8217;t have leaks of classified information. It&#8217;s not in our nation&#8217;s interest.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If Bush were willing to even consider a similar standard <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4671.html\">for his own staff<\/a>, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby would have lost their clearance a long time ago.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update<\/em>: The math mistake in the fifth paragraph has been corrected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Think Progress found a real gem that warrants a lot of attention. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, many members of Congress received an administration briefing on the threat of another attack. In fact, about three weeks after 9\/11, the Washington Post reported: Asked whether more terrorist attacks are inevitable if the United States retaliates, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}