[This is Part 3 of a 3 Part excerpt from Elizabeth de la Vega’s new book, United States v. George W. Bush et al., the case against the top officials of the Bush administration for defrauding the American people into war in Iraq, with a “hypothetical” indictment of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell. See Part 1 and Part 2.]
Testimony of FBI Special Agent Linda Campbell
Assistant U.S. Attorney: Good morning everyone. We’re back here in the case of United States v. George W. Bush et al. Let’s start by looking at Exhibit 1 in your packets. It’s a chart that lists the main points we’re going to cover in the grand jury.
Ex. 1
Evolution of the Fraud
* Bush, Cheney, et al. were predisposed to invade Iraq even before they were elected.
* They secretly began to plan the invasion immediately after September 11. Bush requested an Iraq war plan in November 2001 and began escalating military activity.
* They enlisted biased political appointees to find evidence to justify a war beginning in October 2001.
* They began, without a reasonable basis, to imply that Iraq was linked to the September 11 attacks and posed an urgent threat in the fall of 2001.
* They began a massive fraud campaign in September 2002 to overcome weak public support for an invasion and manipulate Congress into passing an authorization allowing the President to use force against Iraq.
* They invaded Iraq in March 2003, knowing that their stated grounds for war were false, fraudulent, and without reasonable basis.
Today, we’ll talk about the administration’s predisposition to invade Iraq.
Now, why is that relevant? Remember I told you that many fraud conspiracies begin as legitimate enterprises? They evolve into criminal activity when people begin to deceive others in response to problems or obstacles to achieving their goals. So, in any fraud case we need to know what the defendants’ original objectives were.
Would somebody go get our witness? Thanks. [Whereupon the witness enters the room and is sworn]
Q. Could you please tell us your full name and what you do?
A. My name is Linda Marie Campbell and I’m a Special Agent with the FBI — have been for sixteen years.
Q. What is your current assignment?
A. I’m one of eight agents on the task force that’s investigating whether the President and his senior advisers defrauded Americans about prewar intelligence. But normally my office is in Boston. Home of Tom Brady — the Patriot — and of course, Sam Adams — the beer and the patriot — with a small “p.” I do fraud cases, mainly.
Q. Could you tell us about your background? Sort of a Reader’s Digest version?
A. Sure. I was an Air Force brat, so we lived all over–Georgia, Germany, Hawaii–until I was about twelve, when we landed at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod. After Boston College, I started teaching English at Catholic Memorial. I was going to coach softball, go down the Cape in the summer, eat fried clams. But one day I just thought, you know, I really can’t stand talking about Hester Prynne for one more minute, and it seemed as if it would be wicked cool to become an FBI agent. So I applied.
Q. Has it been wicked cool?
A. Yes and no. One thing about the FBI is that they always send you somewhere that’s not where you want to be, even if no one else does want to be where you want to be. Does that make any sense? So I asked to go to Boston after Quantico . . .
Q. And where’d they send you?
A. Tulsa, Oklahoma. But only for two years, because I took a language aptitude test and, next thing I knew, I was at the Monterey Defense Language Institute, learning Russian. I worked in DC for a few years and finally got back to Boston last summer. Although, now I’m in DC again working on this case. I’m also on the Emergency Response and Disaster Recovery Team.
Not exactly condensed was it?
Q. No, but that’s ok. You were, in fact, part of the team at the Pentagon after 9/11, weren’t you?
A. Yes, I was. I will never forget it.
Q. Jurors, you recall that you may only consider evidence your hear from the witnesses? That means we occasionally present testimony about things people already know.
Like, in this case, September 11, 2001. What happened on that day?
A. On September 11, nineteen men hijacked four commercial airplanes — United Flight 175 and American Airlines 11 out of Logan, United Flight 93 out of Newark, and American Airlines 77 out of Washington/Dulles. They crashed two planes into the World Trade Towers in New York and one into the Pentagon. The fourth plane, United Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers stormed the cockpit. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed. It was a nightmare.
Q. Were you working at the time?
A. I was at firearms training, but I called my supervisor and told him I’d go wherever they needed me for disaster response. By 5:00 p.m., I’m headed to DC on the Mass Pike, with my Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee. One of the four essential food groups, by the way.
Q. Did you already know who committed the attacks?
A. Basically, yes. By late morning, really, everyone was talking about it having been al Qaeda and, of course, Osama Bin Laden. It was even on the radio. No specifics, but it was only a day or so before we heard those. The main hijacker was Mohamed Atta, who, along with 14 others, was from Saudi Arabia. Two were from Yemen and two were from Lebanon.
Q. We’ll have more about this later, but — bottom line — was there ever any evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 hijackings?
A. No, not a bit.
Q. But your investigation has shown, has it not, that before the war, a majority of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved?
A. Yes.
Q. Danny Crain — Special Agent Crain — will be testifying about that in more detail, but in the meantime, have you determined how people came to believe that?
A. Unfortunately, yes. President Bush — and Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld and Powell — deliberately gave people that impression, or allowed them to have it. That’s Danny’s area of testimony, I know, but let me say this: In fraud cases, we don’t have to prove that people were actually deceived, but the case is stronger when you can prove they were. And here we know that many people came to believe many things about Iraq that were just false–including that there was some 9/11 connection.
Q. Well, let’s turn to —
A. May I just add something?
Q. Of course.
A. Sometimes, the best way to understand the impact of fraud is not so much the number of victims, but the stories of the victims. Like in the movie Why We Fight, Wilton Sekzer. He was a retired cop whose son died in the World Trade Center. He strongly supported the war against Iraq, but only because he thought it was related to 9/11.
So, in 2004, when the President said not only that he had no evidence linking Saddam to the 9/11 attacks, but also “I don’t know where people got the idea that I connected Iraq to 9/11,” Mr. Sekzer was devastated. I’ll read what he said:
What did he [Bush] just say? I mean, I almost jumped out of the chair. I don’t know where people got the idea that I connected Iraq to 9/11. What is he, nuts or what? What the hell did we go
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