Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Another Bush in the 9/11 bushes

Two planes hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001 were United Airlines planes, and another took off from Dulles International Airport; two, of course, slammed into the World Trade Center. But the Bush Administration has never disclosed the ties of a presidential brother and the Bush family with the firm that intersected the weapons and targets on a day of national tragedy.

Marvin P. Bush, a younger brother of George W. Bush, was a principal in the company from 1993 to 2000, when most of the work on the big projects was done. But White House responses to 9/11 have not publicly disclosed the company's part in providing security to any of the named facilities, and many of the public records revealing the relationships are not public.

Nonetheless, public records reveal that the firm, formerly named Securacom, listed Bush on its board of directors and as a significant shareholder. The firm, now named Stratesec, Inc., is located in Sterling, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., and emphasizes federal clients. Bush is no longer on the board.

Marvin Bush has not responded to repeated telephoned and emailed requests for comment on this story.

According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down." Yet instead of being investigated, the company and companies involved with it have benefited from legislation pushed by the Bush White House and rubber-stamped by Congressional Republicans. Stratesec, its backer KuwAm, and their corporate officers stand to benefit from limitations on liability and national-security protections from investigation provided in bills since 9/11.

The White House opposed an independent commission to investigate 9/11 until after the terrorism insurance protections and protections for security companies had safely passed Congress.
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Is there any other family that benefits so greatly from terrorism? Bin Ladens, you say? Okay.

Stratesec continued to refer to "New York City's World Trade Center" as a former client through April 2001. It listed Dulles Airport and United Airlines as former clients through April 2002.

As with the World Trade Center - which also had electronic badging, security gates, and CCTV - the ultimate problem with Dulles' security controls was not the controls themselves, but that they could be sidestepped. All the hijackers had to do was buy a ticket. As former FAA special agent Sullivan comments, "If they [attackers] knew about the security system, they knew how to bypass it."

One obvious question for investigators is how much potential hijackers could have known about the security system.


....but hey, don't ask what you don't want....you won't anyway.

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