Air Force Officer Disciplined for Saying
Bush Allowed September 11 Attacks

Hijacker Attended US Military School

Jerry Isaacs (originally published 21 June 2002)

A US Air Force officer in California recently accused President Bush of
deliberately allowing the September 11 terror attacks to take place. The
officer has been relieved of his command and faces further discipline. The
controversy surrounding Lt. Col. Steve Butler's letter to the editor, in
which he affirmed that Bush did nothing to warn the American people because
he "needed this war on terrorism," received scant coverage in the media.

Universally ignored by the press, however, was that the officer was not
merely expressing a personal opinion. He was in a position to have direct
knowledge of contacts between the US military and some of the hijackers in
the period before the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade
Center and damaged the Pentagon.

Lieutenant Colonel Butler, who wrote in a letter to the editor of the
Monterey County Herald charging that "Bush knew about the impending
attacks," was vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language
Institute in Monterey, California — a US military facility that one or more
of the hijackers reportedly attended during the 1990s.In his May 26 [2002] letter to the newspaper, Butler responded to Bush supporters,
who had written the paper opposing the congressional investigation into the
September 11 events. He wrote:

"Of course President Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He
did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on
terrorism. His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama. His presidency was
going nowhere. He wasn't elected by the American people, but placed in the
Oval Office by a conservative supreme court. The economy was sliding into
the usual Republican pits and he needed something on which to hang his
presidency.... This guy is a joke. What is sleazy and contemptible is the
President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows
for political gain."

The letter provoked immediate retaliation against the 24-year Air Force
veteran. Butler was transferred from the Monterey installation and
threatened with court martial under Article 88 of the military code, which
prohibits officers from publicly using "contemptuous words" against the
president and other officials.

Last week the Air Force announced it had concluded its investigation of the
case and suggested Butler would likely face "nonjudicial punishment," such
as a fine or a letter of reprimand, rather than a stiffer sentence. If he
refuses this punishment, however, Butler, who is ready to retire, could
still face a court martial.

The issue is a particularly sensitive one for the Pentagon and the Bush
administration. While many people believe that the Bush administration
viewed September 11 as a priceless opportunity to implement an
ultra-reactionary program of militarism and repression, Butler is different.
His military assignment brought him into contact with at least one of the
alleged hijackers.

Shortly after September 11, several US news outlets reported that Saeed
Alghamdi — named as taking part in the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93,
which crashed in western Pennsylvania — had taken courses at the Defense
Language Institute, the US military's primary foreign language facility,
where Butler was a leading officer overseeing students (essentially, dean of
students).

Alghamdi, a 41-year-old Saudi national, was one of several alleged
hijackers, including accused ringleader Mohamed Atta, who reportedly trained
at US military facilities, according to a series of articles published
between September 15 and 17 in the Washington Post, Newsweek magazine, the
New York Times and several other newspapers.

On September 15, Newsweek reported: "U.S. military sources have given the
FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes
used in Tuesday's terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military
installations in the 1990s."

The magazine said that Saeed Alghamdi was among three who had taken flight
training at the Navy Air Station in Pensacola, Florida — known as the "cradle
of US Navy aviation" — which also administers training of foreign aviation
students for the Navy. The magazine, citing "a high-ranking Pentagon
official" as its source, reported that two others — both former Saudi air
force pilots who had come to the US — also attended such facilities. One
received tactical training at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama and
the other language training at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio,
Texas.

Over the next few days, more detailed information appeared in several other
newspapers. A September 16 article in the New York Times reported: "Three of
the men identified as the hijackers in the attacks on Tuesday have the same
names as alumni of American military schools, the authorities said today.
The men were identified as Mohamed Atta, Abdulaziz al-Omari and Saeed
al-Ghamdi.

"The Defense Department said Mr. Atta had gone to the International Officers
School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama; Mr. al-Omari to the Aerospace
Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas; and Mr. al-Ghamdi to the
Defense Language Institute at the Presidio in Monterey, Calif."

The Knight Ridder news service also reported that Saeed Alghamdi had been to
the Defense Language Institute in Monterey and the Associated Press cited
Air Force sources indicating that more than one of the hijackers may have
received language training at the installation.

The media dropped the story after the Air Force officials issued a cursory
statement aimed at preventing any further inquiry into links between the US
military and the terrorists. While acknowledging that some of the suspected
terrorists "had similar names to foreign alumni of U.S. military courses,"
the statement said discrepancies in biographical information, such as birth
dates and name spellings, "indicate we are probably not talking about the
same people." Without providing any substantiation, the statement suggested
the hijackers may have stolen the identities of foreign military personnel
who received training at the bases.

Following this less than convincing explanation, the Air Force refused to
release the ages, countries of origin or any other information about the
individuals whose names matched those of the alleged hijackers — making it
virtually impossible to verify the claim that these were not the same
individuals.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI also refused to make public any
information. Asked by Florida Senator Bill Nelson whether any of the
hijackers were trained at the Pensacola base, the Justice Department refused
to give a definitive answer, and the FBI said it could not respond until it
could "sort through something complicated and difficult," according to the
senator's representative.

To receive such training, the hijackers would have had connections to Arab
governments that enjoyed close relations with the US government. A former
Navy pilot at the Pensacola air station told Newsweek that during his years
on the base, "We always, always, always trained other countries' pilots.
When I was there two decades ago, it was Iranians. The Shah was in power.
Whoever the country du jour is, that's whose pilots we train."

Military officials acknowledged that the US has a longstanding agreement
with Saudi Arabia to train pilots for the kingdom's national guard.
Candidates receive air combat training and other courses on several Army and
Navy bases, in a program paid for by Saudi Arabia. Significantly 15 of the
19 hijackers were believed to be Saudi nationals.

According to its web site, the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language
Center in Monterey — founded in 1946 as the Military Intelligence Service
Language School — "provides foreign language services to Department of
Defense, government agencies and foreign governments" to support "national
security interests and global operational needs."

As vice chancellor for student affairs, Butler had extensive contact with
students, according to Pete Randazzo, a close associate of the officer and
president of the National Association of Government Employees Local 1690,
which represents civilian employees at the language school.

"He would go and have lunch with the students, sit in their classrooms. He
was a very caring officer over there," Randazzo told the Herald. Butler was
also navigator of a B-52 bomber during the Persian Gulf War, which made it
likely he was familiar with Saudi military operations, given the close
relations between the US and Saudi Arabia during the 1990-91 war against
Iraq.

In the 1990s, several officers were disciplined under Article 88 of the
military code for publicly denouncing Clinton, including an Air Force
general who went so far as to ridicule the president as a "gay-loving,
pot-smoking, draft-dodging womanizer" in front of 250 people at an awards
banquet.

With Butler's comments, however, the Pentagon faces a more delicate problem.
The Lieutenant Colonel may well know considerably more than he is saying
about US military-intelligence apparatus involvement in the September 11
events, and, on the eve of his retirement, took the opportunity to set the
record straight.