In Feruary of 2001 the Bush administration was handed the final section, Phase III, of the
Hart Rudman report. This bipartisan two and half year study of terrorism gave Bush a detailed map, a detailed set of directions as to how to make our nation safe. Hart-Rudman's final report, with its recommendation that the nation create a Homeland Security Department, was given to our new president because HR knew it would take a lot of political capital to implement its proposals. Yes, pre 911 it would take a leader with political capital, something new presidents have and HR knew it. Sadly, Bush threw the HR report in the trash and used his "capital" to pass tax cuts for his fat cat friends.
Our conservative brothers and sisters don't know much about Hart Rudman or many of the things Bush did and failed to do which left us vulnerable on 911. That is because they are fed lies by their controllers.
As a public service to our conservative friends I have created a short list of items, not a complete list by any means, but a short list of reality points they can check off as they watch the ABC/Disney propaganda fakeudrama.
Before we get started let's make a couple things clear.
One is that there is some discussion whether Hart Rudman acted upon quickly could have prevented 911. The report placed a good bit of importance on increasing communications between many government agencies. Tom Ridge said 7 months after 911 that those departments were communicating better. 7 months is the same time from when Bush received Hart Rudman and when the attacks of 911 occurred.
On Feb 9, 2001 Dick Cheney was given the definitive report documenting that the Al Qaeda was responsible for the Cole attack. The Bush administration did nothing.
Ragarding the "wall" please read this and this on the subject of wall because you have been lied to about it also.
Hart Rudman proposed a Homeland Security Department, which is something Bush fought against for a year and half. Remember that because it will be important later. Now let's see if any of these show up in Mickey Mouse's propaganda fakeudrama. Extensive back up and documentation and more will follows these points:
Hart Rudman's final report was given to the Bush administration in February of 2001:
Hart specifically mentioned the lack of preparation for "a weapon of mass destruction in a high-rise building." But the report was not simply alarmist. It was unusually constructive, avoiding grandiose language for a step-by-step blueprint of what urgently needed to be done to create a National Homeland Security Agency, revive the frontline public services, and pull together the forty discrete official bodies with responsibility for national security. [CJR - Jan 2002]
Taking national security and terrorism seriously, there were three bills proposed by congress to get the nation about protecting its citizens from terrorism.
Congressman Mac Thornton proposed a bill HR1158 which first went to committee in March of 2001. Designed to get the nation moving forward on security, Thorton's bill was modeled after Hart Rudman. Bush told the bill to pound sand.
Rep. Ike Skelton proposed a bill H.R.1292 which also first saw a committee meeting in March of 2001. Skelton's bill in essence said to the president, "The terrorists are coming to get us, do something NOW!!!" Bush punted, told Ike what to do with his bill. The last entry Thomas has on Skelton's bill is "8/10/2001: Unfavorable Executive Comment Received from DOD"
Here's a quote from Charles Boyd, executive director of Hart Rudman, when he stated this with regard to the bills proposed by congress in April of 2001:
One final point, if I may. All fourteen, without dissent, agreed to put this Government to see to the common defense. All fourteen, without dissent, agreed to put this subject first and foremost in the final Phase III report. All fourteen, seven Democrats and seven Republicans, are ready to promote this recommendation on a fully bipartisan basis. All agree, too, that some combination of the three bills under discussion today, modified somewhat, would constitute the fulfillment of the Commission's recommendations on homeland security at least in large part.
Bush told Hart Rudman and the congressional proposals(there was a third from congress) to jump in the lake - Bush said Cheney would have a go at securing our nation against a terrorist attack when he found the time and that he(Bush) would sit in on some of the meetings to make sure they were going well...Cheney NEVER found the time - his terror group NEVER met before 911. Apparently finding ways to pay off his buddies in the oil industry with his energy "task force" was more important to Dick Cheney than our nation's security.
When Bush announced the decision to ignore Hart Rudman and congresses efforts to push us into acting - Bush went so far as to say that the terrorist threat, though very real, was "not immediate". Lord only knows what idiot told Bush to add that to his statement but they did.
Fearing Clinton may get some credit if he used the two and half year bipartisan study of terrorism, Bush told the Hart Rudman to take a hike: Gingrich described it this way: "The administration actually slowed down response to Hart-Rudman when momentum was building in the spring," says Gingrich. [CJR - Harold Evans - Jan 2002]
Hart described it this way:
"Frankly, the White House shut it down," Hart says. "The president said 'Please wait, we're going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.' And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day." [Salon 9-20-2001]
Frustrated by a lack of action, Hart - visited the White House in an effort to get the administration to move faster. He met National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice on September 6, just five days before the terrorist attacks. She would, she said, "pass on" his concerns.[CJR - Harold Evans Jan 2002]
Though Bush's crack national security advisor talked tough, calling the Clinton Administration's approach "feckless" they in fact backed off an aggressive approach.
Army Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick said that whereas the Clinton administration had weekly meetings about how to get Bin Laden, in the months leading up to 911 despite the Bush administration's puffed up rhetoric he, "didn't detect any activity but what Dick Clarke and the CSG were doing." [WP - Jan 20, 2002]
The Bush administration did not deploy, as Clinton did, gunships and cruise missile capability in range of Afghanistan.
Again, though Bush talked tough to the Taliban, saying he would hold them accountable for any Al Qaeda attacks, after Cheney received the Feb 9, 2001 documentation which contained the definitive proof Al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the Cole, Bush did nothing. NOT A THING.
When military commanders said there were "gaps" in anti terrorism funding and suggested moving $600 million from Star Wars funding to fill the gap, on Sept. 9, 2001 Rumsfeld said he would recommend a veto of that.
Until the summer of 2001, Bush administration treasury secretary, "suspended U.S. participation in allied efforts to penetrate offshore banking havens, whose secrecy protects the cash flows of drug traffickers, tax evaders and terrorists."[WP - Jan 20, 2002]
If all this didn't expose what a short sighted and inept group we had in charge of our nation's security, there is more. For in fact, in some cases, the Bush administration did the EXACT opposite of what Hart-Rudman proposed:
The HR report said that we should use our National Guard in our domestic terror preparedness program but Bush shot a hole in that plan when he sent them off to be worn down in his plan free blunder in Iraq.
Hart Rudman said specifically NOT to use FEMA as it was structured at the time to handle homeland security. Hart Rudman said that FEMA could be used but only if the organization was revamped and its powers and funding were beefed up. Bush, in a classic "Brownie" moment, put FEMA which was run at the time by his campaign manager and Funerlagate figure, Joe Albaugh, in charge of nation's security. Then just to put an exclamation point on just how short sighted and unprepared he was for the presidency, Bush cut FEMA's budget by $200 million.
Obviously my little list here didn't touch on all the ways the Bush administration botched 911 preparedness, we didn't even touch on things like the August 2001 memo which Bush ignored and conservatives will be told by their Disney mind molders that it set Bush's heart on fire for terrorism prevention. But we do want make one last point...
Remember we noted that the Bush administration fought - FOUGHT - the creation of a Homeland Security Department as proposed by Hart Rudman in February of 2001 and the congressional bills proposed in March 2001? Well, in June of 2002 Bush's handlers finally agreed to work with congress to create the department.
What did Joe Allbaugh, Bush's campaign manager who Bush put in charge of our security in the months before 911 say about Bush's finally agreeing to the proposal?
Washington, D.C.-- I congratulate the President for his bold and innovative proposal. The American people deserve accountability and clarity, and this plan provides both. The new Department of Homeland Security will bring together the people and information needed to make America and all Americans safer. President Bush is an agent for change and this is a great step in the right direction.
Yes, in the Bush administration we not only have short sighted ineptness, we have arrogant, deceptive, short sighted ineptness.
_______
Below is the documentation for the quotes and info above and more...
Here's an article originally in the Columbia Journalism Review by Harold Evans
We were warned. Some of the best minds in the United States attempted to alert the nation that, without a new emphasis on homeland security and attention to terrorism, "Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers" as the result of terrorist attacks. The first warning came in September 1999, when former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, co-chairs, used those words in the first of three documents from an entity called the United States Commission on National Security, created during a rare moment of agreement between President Clinton and House speaker Newt Gingrich.
Then, seven months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the commission re-emphasized its warning, this time with a detailed agenda for action to make America safer from terrorism. The report was scary but it was also constructive and authoritative. And it is fair to say that most Americans never heard of it until after the attacks. ...
The report was a devastating indictment of the "fragmented and inadequate" structures and strategies already in place to prevent, and then respond to, the attacks on U.S. cities, which the commissioners predicted. Hart specifically mentioned the lack of preparation for "a weapon of mass destruction in a high-rise building." But the report was not simply alarmist. It was unusually constructive, avoiding grandiose language for a step-by-step blueprint of what urgently needed to be done to create a National Homeland Security Agency, revive the frontline public services, and pull together the forty discrete official bodies with responsibility for national security......
Hearings were scheduled for the week of May 7. But the White House stymied the move. It did not want Congress out front on the issue, not least with a report originated by a Democratic president and an ousted Republican speaker. On May 5, the administration announced that, rather than adopting Hart-Rudman, it was forming its own committee headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, who was expected to report in October. "The administration actually slowed down response to Hart-Rudman when momentum was building in the spring," says Gingrich. ....
Senator Hart visited the White House in an effort to get the administration to move faster. He met National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice on September 6, just five days before the terrorist attacks. She would, she said, "pass on" his concerns. ...
Commission warned Bush
But White House passed on recommendations by a bipartisan, Defense department-ordered commission on domestic terrorism.
Sept. 12, 2001 - WASHINGTON -- They went to great pains not to sound as though they were telling the president "We told you so."
But on Wednesday, two former senators, the bipartisan co-chairs of a Defense Department-chartered commission on national security, spoke with something between frustration and regret about how White House officials failed to embrace any of the recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism delivered earlier this year.
Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism -- which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying -- while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.
The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA's attention.
Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be taking the commission's suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. "Frankly, the White House shut it down," Hart says. "The president said 'Please wait, we're going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.' And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day."
A Strategy's Cautious Evolution
Before Sept. 11, the Bush Anti-Terror Effort Was Mostly Ambition
By Barton Gellman Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 20, 2002; Page A01
... Privately, as the strategy took form in spring and summer, the Bush team expressed disdain for the counterterrorist policies it had inherited from President Bill Clinton. Speaking of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, a colleague said that "what she characterized as the Clinton administration approach was 'empty rhetoric that made us look feckless.'"
Yet a careful review of the Bush administration's early record on terrorism finds more continuity than change from the Clinton years, measured in actions taken and decisions made. Where the new team shifted direction, it did not always choose a more aggressive path:
- The administration did not resume its predecessor's covert deployment of cruise missile submarines and gunships, on six-hour alert near Afghanistan's borders. The standby force gave Clinton the option, never used, of an immediate strike against targets in al Qaeda's top leadership. The Bush administration put no such capability in place before Sept. 11
- At least twice, Bush conveyed the message to the Taliban that the United States would hold the regime responsible for an al Qaeda attack. But after concluding that bin Laden's group had carried out the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole - a conclusion stated without hedge in a Feb. 9 briefing for Vice President Cheney - the new administration did not choose to order armed forces into action. ...
- In his first budget, Bush spent $13.6 billion on counterterrorist programs across 40 departments and agencies. That compares with $12 billion in the previous fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget. There were also somewhat higher gaps this year, however, between what military commanders said they needed to combat terrorists and what they got. When the Senate Armed Services Committee tried to fill those gaps with $600 million diverted from ballistic missile defense, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he would recommend a veto. That threat came Sept. 9.
- On May 8, Bush announced a new Office of National Preparedness for terrorism at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. At the same time, he proposed to cut FEMA's budget by $200 million. Bush said that day that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and "I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts." Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took place.
- Bush did not speak again publicly of the dangers of terrorism before Sept. 11, except to promote a missile shield that had been his top military priority from the start. At least three times he mentioned "terrorist threats that face us" to explain the need to discard the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
- ... And until the summer, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill suspended U.S. participation in allied efforts to penetrate offshore banking havens, whose secrecy protects the cash flows of drug traffickers, tax evaders and terrorists.
At the nexus of law enforcement and intelligence, where the United States has concentrated its work against al Qaeda since 1998, a longtime senior participant said he observed no essential change after the White House passed to new occupants.
"Ninety-nine point-something percent of the work going on and the decisions being made would have continued to be made whether or not we had an election," the career officer said. "I have a real difficult time pointing to anything from January 20th to September 10th that can be said to be a Bush initiative, or something that wouldn't have happened anyway." ...
Army Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick, who had come from top posts on the Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency to manage Clinton's National Security Council staff, remained at the NSC nearly four months after Bush took office.
He noticed a difference on terrorism. Clinton's Cabinet advisers, burning with the urgency of their losses to bin Laden in the African embassy bombings in 1998 and the Cole attack in 2000, had met "nearly weekly" to direct the fight, Kerrick said. Among Bush's first-line advisers, "candidly speaking, I didn't detect" that kind of focus, he said. "That's not being derogatory. It's just a fact. I didn't detect any activity but what Dick Clarke and the CSG were doing."
Thornberry proposes HR1158
Testimony of Congressman Mac Thornberry
Joint Hearing Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Economic Development, Pubic Buildings, and Emergency Management April 24, 2001
...
Partly because we have begun a new century and a new millennium, partly because there is a new Administration, and partly because more of us are realizing that the pace of change in the world around us is accelerating at an almost frightening pace, there have been a number of studies and reports in the last couple of years on the world security environment.
One overwhelming, common conclusion in them is that America and Americans are increasingly vulnerable to a broadening array of threats from a variety of actors around the world.
Status of HR1158:
3/21/2001: Referred to the House Committee on Government Reform.
4/23/2001: Referred to the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations.
4/24/2001: Joint Hearings Held by the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management and by the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations (Government Reform Committee).
Skelton proposes HR1292
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE IKE SKELTON
BEFORE THE TRANSPORTATION AND GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEES ON HOMELAND SECURITY ISSUES
APRIL 24, 2001
...
I think all of us here today would agree that the United States needs to improve its ability to provide security for our citizens, our territory and our infrastructure against terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, domestic terrorism is an increasing national problem, and the sad truth is that the federal, state and local governmental structures now in place do not operate in an efficient, coordinated and coherent way to provide adequate homeland security for our citizens. ...
Status of H.R.1292
3/29/2001:
Referred to the Committee on Armed Services, and in addition to the Committees on Transportation and Infrastructure, the Judiciary, and Intelligence (Permanent Select), for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
3/29/2001: Referred to House Armed Services
4/4/2001: Executive Comment Requested from DOD.
8/10/2001: Unfavorable Executive Comment Received from DOD.
3/29/2001: Referred to House Transportation and Infrastructure
3/30/2001: Referred to the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management.
4/24/2001: Joint Hearing Held by the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management and by the Subcommittee on National Security, Veteran's Affairs and International Relations (Government Reform).
3/29/2001: Referred to House Judiciary
4/19/2001: Referred to the Subcommittee on Crime.
3/29/2001: Referred to House Select Committee on Intelligence
Prepared Statement of Charles G. Boyd, Executive Director of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century
Before a Joint Meeting of the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations of the House Committee on Government Reform and the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, U.S. House of Representatives, April 24, 2001 .....
It is the view of the Commission that the three bills before the Congress do not essentially contradict one another. H.R.525, in our view, calls for a limited organizational adaptation. It is not fully consistent with H.R. 1158 but could be made so, for it captures the need for effective interagency processes as part of any solution. H.R. 1292 deals most essentially with the question of overall strategy and the need to devise coherent ways of designing budgets for homeland security that accord with strategy. While these matters stand separate from the proposals embedded in H.R. 1158, they express perfectly the sense of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century.
In the Commission's view, the United States needs to inculcate strategic thinking and behavior throughout the entire national security structure. I want to be clear, therefore, as to what the Commission's proposal for a National Homeland Security Agency is designed to do, and what it is not, in and of itself, designed to do.
We conceive of the National Homeland Security Agency is a part of, not a substitute for, a strategic approach to the problem of homeland security. Even with the creation of the National Homeland Security Agency, the National Security Council will still play a critical role in coordinating the various government departments and agencies involved in homeland security. The National Security Council also must play the key role in the government's overall strategy function. The Commission proposed three components for a homeland security strategy--to prevent, to protect, and to respond--to the problem of terrorism and other threats to the homeland. We believe that H.R. 1292 would facilitate the development of a serious integrated strategy for homeland security at the NSC level, even if its specific conclusions may differ from those of the Commission.
Having a strategy, and a coherent budget process to match that strategy, is in our view a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to repair the inadequacies in current U.S. Government organization.
We believe that the United States stands in dire need of stronger organizational mechanisms for homeland security. We need to clarify accountability, responsibility, and authority among the departments and agencies with a role to play in this increasingly critical area. We need to realign diffused responsibilities because, frankly, several critical components of U.S. homeland security policy are located in the wrong places. We also need to recapitalize several of these critical components, not least the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the Border Patrol.
Unlike H.R. 525, which establishes a policy council that duplicates existing NSC mechanisms, H.R. 1158 contends that we need a Cabinet-level agency for this purpose, and the Commission agrees. The job is too big, and requires too much operational activity, to be housed at the NSC staff. It is too important to a properly integrated national strategy to be handled off-line by a "czar." Certainly, no council or interagency working group that lacks a permanent staff will suffice. We believe that the importance of this issue requires an organizational focus of sufficient heft to cooperate with the Departments of State, Defense, and Justice in an efficient and effective way. H.R. 1158 is consonant with this aim.
The purpose of realigning assets in this area, as proposed in H.R. 1158, is to get more than the sum of the parts from our efforts. It does not propose vast new undertakings. It does not propose a highly centralized bureaucratic behemoth. It does not propose to spend vastly more money than we are spending now. It does propose a realignment and a rationalization of what we already do, so that we can do it right. It proposes to match authority, responsibility, and accountability. It proposes to solve the "Who's in charge?" problem. Most important, it proposes to do this in such a way as to guarantee the civil liberties we all hold dear.
More specifically, H.R. 1158 would consolidate border protection. ....
One final point, if I may. All fourteen, without dissent, agreed to put this Government to see to the common defense. All fourteen, without dissent, agreed to put this subject first and foremost in the final Phase III report. All fourteen, seven Democrats and seven Republicans, are ready to promote this recommendation on a fully bipartisan basis. All agree, too, that some combination of the three bills under discussion today, modified somewhat, would constitute the fulfillment of the Commission's recommendations on homeland security at least in large part.
Combating Terrorism: Options to Improve the Federal Response
Testimony to the U.S.House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management and the U.S.House Committee on Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations April 24, 2001
Frank J. Cilluffo
Chairman, Committee on Combating Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Terrorism, Homeland Defense Initiative
Centerfor Strategic & International Studies
We need to broaden our concept of national security planning to include CBRN terrorism and develop and implement an effective, comprehensive national counterterrorism strategy. In their proposed legislation, Congressmen Gilchrest, Thornberry, and Skelton, have done just that.
These three bills, H.R. 1292, Homeland Security Strategy Act of 2001, H.R. 1158, National Homeland Security Agency Act, and H.R. 525 Preparedness AgainstDomestic Terrorism Act of 2001, propose methods of reorganizing the federal government so as to efficiently and effectively implement antiterrorism and counterterrorism measures. These three approaches provide several solutions and putting them front and center during a hearing clearly indicates a willingness to determine the best solution. ...
If the president and Congress set their sights on the careful crafting and comprehensive implementation of a national counterterrorism strategy, it will happen. I am confident that President Bush and Vice President Cheney, in conjunction with the Congress, can and will rise to the challenge.
Statement by the President Domestic Preparedness Against Weapons of Mass Destruction
For Immediate Release - Office of the Press Secretary
May 8, 2001
Protecting America's homeland and citizens from the threat of weapons of mass destruction is one of our Nation's important national security challenges. Today, more nations possess chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons than ever before. Still others seek to join them. Most troubling of all, the list of these countries includes some of the world's least-responsible states -- states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life. Some non-state terrorist groups have also demonstrated an interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
Against this backdrop, it is clear that the threat of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons being used against the United States -- while not immediate -- is very real. That is why our Nation actively seeks to deny chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to those seeking to acquire them. That is why, together with our allies, we seek to deter anyone who would contemplate their use. And that is also why we must ensure that our Nation is prepared to defend against the harm they can inflict. ......
Therefore, I have asked Vice President Cheney to oversee the development of a coordinated national effort so that we may do the very best possible job of protecting our people from catastrophic harm. I have also asked Joe Allbaugh, the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to create an Office of National Preparedness. This Office will be responsible for implementing the results of those parts of the national effort overseen by Vice President Cheney that deal with consequence management. Specifically it will coordinate all Federal programs dealing with weapons of mass destruction consequence management within the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal agencies. The Office of National Preparedness will work closely with state and local governments to ensure their planning, training, and equipment needs are addressed. FEMA will also work closely with the Department of Justice, in its lead role for crisis management, to ensure that all facets of our response to the threat from weapons of mass destruction are coordinated and cohesive. I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.
No governmental responsibility is more fundamental than protecting the physical safety of our Nation and its citizens. In today's world, this obligation includes protection against the use of weapons of mass destruction. I look forward to working closely with Congress so that together we can meet this challenge.
FEMA Director Joe M. Allbaugh Statement Regarding Department Of Homeland Security
Release Date: June 6, 2002
Release Number: 02-072
Washington, D.C.-- I congratulate the President for his bold and innovative proposal. The American people deserve accountability and clarity, and this plan provides both. The new Department of Homeland Security will bring together the people and information needed to make America and all Americans safer. President Bush is an agent for change and this is a great step in the right direction.
http://archives.cnn.com/...
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN.