| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Newsmax: Kerry to possibly Tap Jane Garvey as Sec of Trans |
| 2004-08-25 |
| EFL from a tour de force. -snip- intro of Kerry's connection to Logan Airport security issues. Points aout that before Clinton made Garvey the head of the FAA, she was head of Logan Airport. Garvey's Failures Exhaustively Documented It is public knowledge that during the spring and summer of 2001, Garvey's FAA sent out a CD-ROM of potential terrorist threats prepared by her security chief, Mike Canavan, to 700 airlines and airport executives. The FAA also had extensive data about Al Qaida and bin Laden in its Criminal Acts Against Civil Aviation reports for 1999 and 2000. But when Garvey testified before the 9/11 Commission, she claimed ignorance of any threats — saying that she hadn't seen the CD-ROM until after September 11! Which was apparently her inexcusable excuse for failing to alert the National Security Council and President Bush! To wit, the 9/11 Commission's report, page 83, states: "
the FAA's intelligence unit did not receive much attention from the agency's leadership. Neither Administrator Jane Garvey nor her deputy routinely reviewed daily intelligence, and what they did see was screened for them. She was unaware of a great amount of hijacking threat information from her own intelligence unit, which, in turn, was not deeply involved in the agency's policymaking process. Historically, decisive security action took place only after (my emphasis) a disaster had occurred or a specific plot had been discovered." Further, according to Kevin Berger of Salon.com, commenting on reaction to the 9/11 Commission's Report: "The focus on the wrenching series of failures among intelligence groups is important and justified. But all of the international intrigue, not to mention partisan sniping over what president or government agency was at fault, has deflected attention from the one culprit that gets a universal thrashing in the 9/11 report: the Federal Aviation Administration. Jane Garvey's FAA, that is. More of Garvey's Failures Berger further documents the 9/11 Commission's findings of the grievous failings of the FAA under Garvey: -snip- 2. Although government watch lists contained the names of tens of thousands of known terrorists, including a State Department TIP-OFF list with 60,000 names, the FAA's own "no-fly" list contained names of just 12 terrorist suspects. 5. And most damning, Jane Garvey did not review daily intelligence and so was "unaware of a great amount of hijacking threat information from her own intelligence unit." It was also under Garvey that the then-Computer Assisted Passenger Profiling System, or CAPPS I was neutered. After 9/11, the program was renamed the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPs II, because, according to Sullivan, "of overzealous liberals, the American Civil Liberties Union and the diversity crowd who are hell-bent on insuring that political correctness is always implemented at the expense of our basic security." And Sullivan cites additional flaws in Garvey's FAA, all of them omitted from the 9/11 Commission's report. For instance: -snip- further details on FAA and Logan dereliction. The Garvey-Kerry Connection All of which brings us to Kerry's scariest choice. Of all the security experts in the United States — which include former or active police chiefs, retired FBI and CIA operatives and private companies that spend 24/7/365 assessing threats and formulating "coping" strategies — Kerry chose Garvey as an "expert" consultant IN CHARGE OF SECURITY for the Democratic National Convention. That's right, Jane Garvey, who was singled out by the "we won't point fingers" 9/11 Commission as taking action "only after a disaster had occurred 
" and whose FAA got "a universal thrashing" in the report. A commentary in Aviation Insight & Perspectives said that: "Appointing Garvey head of convention security is like making John Gotti the head of the FBI." But that's exactly what Kerry did. And now, according to the Journal of Commerce, Garvey's name "repeatedly surfaces as a likely candidate for transportation secretary" and she "is also privately advising the Kerry campaign on transport issues" (a role she denies is "formal"). Well, why not? After all, it was ultra-liberal Sen. Kerry and his ultra-liberal colleague, Sen. Ted Kennedy, who appointed Garvey to head the FAA in the first place. It is now crystal clear that Kerry, like Clinton before him, subscribes wholeheartedly to the Peter Principle! Sadly, according to Brian Sullivan, "one single recommendation from the Gore Commission in 1997 to harden cockpit doors and enforce rules to keep them closed would have stopped the 9/11 attack cold. If the FAA's Garvey, the darling of the Democrats, and DOT's chief Norman Mineta, the darling of the diversity crowd, hadn't been asleep at the wheel, 9/11 wouldn't have happened, plain and simple." But it did happen and now we're left to ponder how Kerry arrives at his disastrous choices? A Cast of Thousands According to recent reports, in contrast to the dozen or so experts that compose President Bush's campaign advisory staff, the Kerry campaign has 37 separate domestic-policy councils and 27 foreign-policy groups, each with dozens of members; a justice-policy taskforce and environmental taskforce that both include 195 participants; and 200 economic policy advisers. Ostensibly, none of them could come up with anyone more qualified and less tainted in matters of national security than Jane Garvey! Or perhaps they had no say in the matter and it was Kerry alone and his by now highly questionable judgment that brought about this odd choice. -snip- pro-Bush statements |
| Posted by:Super Hose |