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by Craig Cox,
Utne.com
February 2003
Issue
A member of the
commission investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and
Washington said he will push for “a wide-ranging, aggressive” probe that
includes interviews with a less-than-cooperative White House. But how
forthcoming will the Bush administration be when the president’s own
brother’s name comes up in conversation?
The panelist,
retired Democratic Congressman Tim Roemer, told Time.com that the
investigation must go beyond the House-Senate inquiry that was chiefly
notable for its inability to interview top-level members of the Bush
administration. Officials such as Donald Rumsfelt, John Ashcroft, Colin
Powell, and Condoleezza Rice “were not questioned directly about issues
related to the September 11 attacks,” an oversight Roemer said needs to
be corrected.
But getting White
House cooperation will not be easy, said Senator John McCain
(R-Arizona), who sponsored legislation creating the commission. The Bush
administration, he said, “slow-walked and stonewalled” the congressional
inquiry. “I don’t see how you can have a thorough investigation without
talking to the people who were in charge throughout the time period
prior to 9/11,” he said.
Such an
investigation could reveal some embarrassing Bush family connections
with a company “that intersected the weapons and targets on a day of
national tragedy.” As Margie Burns reports in The American Reporter, an
electronic daily newspaper, Marvin P. Bush, the president’s younger
brother, was a principal in a company called Securacom that provided
security for the World Trade Center, United Airlines, and Dulles
International Airport. The company, Burns noted, was backed by KuwAm, a
Kuwaiti-American investment firm on whose board Marvin Burns also
served.
Securacom has
since changed its name to Stratesec, but is still backed by KuwAm.
Marvin Bush, who did not respond to repeated interview requests from The
American Reporter, is no longer on the board of either company and has
not been linked with any terrorist activities.
According to
Wayne Black, head of a Florida-based security firm, it is somewhat
unusual for a single firm to handle security for both an airline and a
airport. It’s also unusual for a firm linked so closely with a
foreign-owned company to handle security on such a “sensitive”
international airport as Dulles. “When you have a security contract, you
know the inner workings of everything,” he said. “Somebody knew
somebody,” he added, or the contract would have been scrutinized more
carefully.
Marvin Bush’s
alleged connections to these companies may shed new light on the Bush
administration’s determination in the days after 9/11 to push
legislation protecting foreign-owned security companies in the Homeland
Security bill. These
and other issues will be taken up this week, when Roemer and his
colleagues convene the commission’s first meeting.
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