Owl Farm Blog

Hello there. Thank you all for sending your news sources. I can’t post them all — soon, soon, we will have a comments section. soon come…below are some emails (click on the bottom link): But before that, let’s review an interview with Senator Hart regarding his take on the press — especially after he warned us of terrorist attacks eight months before 9/11. And subscribe to his blog "Matters of Principle."

Also, one important news source that I failed to mention yesterday:  The Economist.  yes, i was stupid to omit it. But my smartest friends reminded me! Jim Caruso texted me immediately (it’s the ONLY mag he reads cover to cover -kindle or otherwise) and Gary Hart, (also an Economist reader) after The New York Times (along with the Bush administration) ignored a third and final report in January of 2001 that terrorists would attack. Nobody listened, including the New York Times. Below is an excerpt of an interview Gary Hart granted the Woody Creeker in 2008:

 All of the people involved with Gary Hart’s warnings that "Terrorist are coming. They are going to attack us on American soil, possibly in large numbers."  delivered that report to the Bush administration Jan 31, 2001 — eight months before 9/11. Eight Months.

Anita Thompson: (Woody Creeker Magazine asking the Senator’s reaction to the press ignoring his warning) … Why do you think that nobody listened? Would they listen to you now?

Gary Hart: All of us involved in that were very popular after 9/11 and by and large and by journalists and others saying "Why didn’t we listen to you?" I’ve never been able to answer why people do what they do , and journalists particularly.

You answer that question, "Why didn’t you listen? "Well, first of all, the administration re-delivered our report after two and a half years. …But then we had a whole lot of other recommendations. We said, "Terrorist are coming. They are going to attack us on American soil, possibly in large numbers."  delivered that report to the Bush administration Jan 31, 2001 — eight months before 9/11. Eight Months. We talked to Colin Powell, we talked to Donal Rumsfeld, we talked to Condi Rice. Bush wouldn’t see us. Cheney wouldn’t see us.

They had blinders on about Iraq long before 9/11 — long before the War on Terrorism. They were going to get rid of Saddam Hussein. 

As for the press, the press has gotten frivolous. The news of the day, if you go back and read what they were reporting on in August, the summer of ’01: Elian Gonalez, the little Cuban boy, shark attacks on the Eastern Seaboard, and some scandal in Hollywood. So you could not even get The New York Times to focus on fourteen Americans who had lot of experience at this, saying terrorists are coming. So the press wasn’t doing its job and the administration wouldn’t listen to what we were saying.

AT: So that’s when the New York Times went down in their credibility for you?

GARY HART: When we issued our third and final report, 152 pages, we had a press conference in the United States Senate and there were like eight cameras there. Journalists were there. The guy from The New York Times Washington bureau was there, Steven Lee Myers. He sat there and got up halfway through the conference and left. We ha one of our advisers at the door, who teaches at Northwestern University say "Steve, why are you leaving?" 

Myers said, "Because none of this is going to happen."

he didn’t file a story. Now this is the most comprehensive review of US national security since 1947 and The New York Times, the next day, did not print one word because their reporter didn’t file a story.

AT: What papers do you read today? (joking) Obviously the New York Times.

Gary Hart: Well, with a pound of salt. I skim the internet, Huffington Post, The Economist, I read the Economist.

Selah.

It’s late. I’m going to bed. I’ll post what advice Senator Hart had for young journalists tomorrow.

your friend in Woody Creek,

Anita Thompson

In the meantime, Here is what he wrote in The NYTimes about Senator Byrd: 

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Robert Byrd was not happy with me during my first Senate campaign in 1974. He was touring the country campaigning for Democrats, presumably building up favors for a future campaign for majority leader, and he wanted to organize an event in Colorado that would feature him playing his fiddle. But my campaign, based on “new politics” and “new ideas,” did not seem compatible with his traditional hill-country fiddling. Looking back, I was wrong to turn him down. He would have been very well received.

Following his predecessor as majority leader, Mike Mansfield, Robert Byrd sought to help the progress of younger senators. In my case, he did so by naming me one of the new congressional observers to the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks in Geneva, which proved vital to my gaining an understanding of the intricacies of arms control negotiations.

Senator Byrd turned himself into not only a constitutional scholar but also an internationalist and something of a statesman. Though unable to depart from his often fierce protection of West Virginia’s economy, he even made efforts to adapt to the environmental age. Greater senators have undoubtedly gone before and will come after. But few will have demonstrated the up-by-the-boot-straps personal transformation shown by the extraordinary life of Robert Byrd.

— GARY HART, Democrat of Colorado, who served in the Senate from 1975 to 1987