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MEDIA ADVISORY:
Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments:
Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence

June 20, 2003

Sunday morning talk shows like ABC's This Week or Fox News Sunday 
often make news for days afterward. Since prominent government 
officials dominate the guest lists of the programs, it is not unusual 
for the Monday editions of major newspapers to report on interviews 
done by the Sunday chat shows.  

But the June 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press was unusual for the 
buzz that it didn't generate. Former General Wesley Clark told anchor 
Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a 
campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks -- 
starting that very day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 
11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to 
do so because of a lack of evidence.  

Here is a transcript of the exchange:  

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CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, 
starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism 
problem on Saddam Hussein."  

RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"  

CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people 
around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. 
I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this 
is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected 
to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your 
evidence?' And I never got any evidence."  

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Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story 
that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin 
reported: "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed 
into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to 
start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence 
linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon 
aide's notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info 
fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not 
only UBL." (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and 
Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, 
that the administration's response "go massive...sweep it all up, things 
related and not."  

Despite its implications, Martin's report was greeted largely with 
silence when it aired. Now, nine months later, media are covering 
damaging revelations about the Bush administration's intelligence 
on Iraq, yet still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories 
suggesting that the flawed intelligence -- and therefore the war 
-- may have been a result of deliberate deception, rather than 
incompetence. The public deserves a fuller accounting of this story.  

If you'd like to encourage media outlets to investigate this story, please 
see FAIR's Media Contact list: http://www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html

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Source: FAIR - http://www.fair.org/press-releases/clark-iraq.html

Cheers, Steve..

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