Flashback Bush Budget Cuts Emergency Preparedness From KOMO-TV Seattle
Excerpt: President Bush targeted scores of federal programs on Monday to make room for his $1.6 trillion tax cut, proposing to slash funds for emergency preparedness, urban police patrols, energy conservation and pediatrician training...
...The budget also would eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Project Impact, a $25 million effort to help communities get ready for natural disasters.
More Labels: bush, katrina, spending
Able Danger
Fear of Backlash Kept pre-9/11 data from FBIFrom the Washington Times
Excerpt: Pentagon lawyers, fearing a public-relations "blow back," blocked a military intelligence unit from sharing information with the FBI that four suspected al Qaeda terrorists were in the country prior to the September 11 attacks, after determining they were here legally, a former Defense Department intelligence official says.
Members of an intelligence unit known as Able Danger were shut out of the September 11 commission investigation and final report, the official said, despite briefing commission staff members on two occasions about the Mohamed Atta-led terrorist cell and telling them of a lockdown of information between the Defense Department and the FBI...
More Former Flight School Owner says US Intelligence Failure Ruined His LifeFrom the Herald Tribune (SW Florida)
Excerpt: ...The revelation had particularly strong ties to Venice because Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, who each piloted a hijacked jetliner into the World Trade Center, learned to fly at Huffman Aviation, a flight school that operated out of Venice Municipal Airport.
Huffman’s former owner, Rudi Dekkers, was angered that the government may have known about Atta but never shared it with the FBI or other agencies who could have stopped the terrorists.
“We are civilians here. We’re supposed to be protected, and we apparently were not,” Dekkers said.
Dekkers claims the fallout from unwittingly training the terrorists cost him his business, his reputation and his marriage. Huffman closed six months after the attacks.
“Everywhere I come, they say, ‘Are you not that guy that trained terrorists?’” said Dekkers, who now lives in Naples. “I am without a job right now. I have no income anymore. My life was destroyed.”
MoreLabels: al qaeda, FBI, pentagon, September 11
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