http://www.citizensforethics.org/files/White%20House%20Office%20Bullet%201.docWhite House Office
National News at the time the White House e-mail went missing
(**** = Dates specified by Waxman in January 17, 2008 letter to Fielding)
Note for all dates below: It is primary season for the 2004 presidential elections.
December 15, 2003:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
Saddam Hussein, once the all-powerful leader of Iraq, was arrested without a fight by American soldiers who found him crouching in an eight-foot hole at an isolated farm near Tikrit, haggard, dirty and disoriented. News of the arrest sent joyous Iraqis into the streets.
President Bush hailed the capture as a turning point in the history of Iraq, but warned Americans that the violence against United States forces occupying the nation would continue.
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan survived an assassination attempt when a large bomb detonated on a bridge just 30 seconds after his motorcade crossed over. It was the most serious attempt on his life since he sided with the United States in the campaign against terrorism.
December 16, 2003:
Despite Hussein’s capture there are many reports that violence and attacks continue in Iraq.
Howard Dean declared that ''the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer,'' provoking an avalanche of new attacks from rivals who have seized on Sunday's surprise news as a way of redrawing the foreign policy debate in the Democratic presidential campaign.
The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will intervene in a dispute between Vice President Cheney and two nonprofit organizations seeking information about the internal operations of the controversial White House energy policy task force he headed in 2001.
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
President Bush said he would leave it to the Iraqi people to determine if Saddam Hussein should be executed, and reaffirmed that his capture was not prompting the White House to contemplate a speedier U.S. exit from Iraq.
****Missing December 17, 2003:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
Violence Continues in Iraq After Capture of Hussein. American troops killed at least 17 Iraqis as repercussions of the capture of Saddam Hussein continued to be felt from Washington to Iraq.
France and Germany agreed to work toward a reduction of Iraq's foreign debt, marking a step forward in the American effort to rebuild Iraq and mend ties with the countries opposed to the war.
The case against Mr. Hussein will have a head start thanks to efforts by Iraqi exiles, Kurdish groups and international human rights organizations who have been collecting evidence over the past decade.
Iraq's interim foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, told the United Nations Security Council they had failed to help free his country from Mr. Hussein, and he chided its members for bickering over his country's future instead of coming to its immediate assistance.
Israel developed a risky plan in 1992 to assassinate Mr. Hussein at a funeral but dropped it after five Israeli soldiers were killed while training for the mission, according to Israeli news reports.
December 18, 2003:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
Saddam Hussein is now prisoner No. 1 in what has developed into a global detention system. It consists of facilities throughout the world that handle the hundreds arrested by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the wake of Mr. Hussein's capture, waves of elation and calls for revenge have coursed through Iran, where anger still blazes over the war with Iraq in the 1980's.
An explosion killed at least 13 people, and injured 22, after a truck collided with a bus in Baghdad. The Iraqi police initially reported a bomb to be the cause, but the United States military said later that tests showed no traces of explosives.
Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh of Iran said the country will sign an agreement allowing inspections of its nuclear sites.
December 19, 2003:
In a potential setback to the so far fruitless hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the head of the U.S. search team, David Kay, told administration officials he is considering leaving the job as early as next month, U.S. officials said.
A federal appeals court has concluded terrorist suspects held in secret U.S. custody on foreign soil deserve access to lawyers and the American legal system:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
An ambush in Baghdad left one American soldier dead and a second soldier and an Iraqi interpreter wounded.
A classified Bush administration report found that the largest counterterrorism exercise conducted by the federal government since the Sept. 11 attacks was marred by serious problems.
****Missing: December 20, 2003:
Libya has tried to develop weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles in the past, but has agreed to dismantle the programs, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday in simultaneous televised speeches:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
Army officers say the man who led American Special Operations forces to Saddam Hussein's hideaway, a veteran of Mr. Hussein's Special Security Organization, probably knew the former leader's whereabouts at any given moment, but he was not on anyone's list of top fugitives.
L. Paul Bremer III, the highest American official in Iraq, acknowledged that a convoy he was traveling in two weeks ago had been attacked. Neither he nor anyone else in the convoy, traveling in Baghdad, was hurt.
****Missing December 21, 2003:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
The United States will proceed cautiously in lifting sanctions in Libya in order to signal North Korea that it must end its nuclear program before any rewards can be given out, Bush administration officials said.
The death of a 22-year-old Ohio man while working on a sewer pipe in a trench 10 feet deep has mobilized his family to seek action. The case indicates flaws in the government's response to deaths on the job.
December 22, 2003:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
A lengthy investigation by American and European intelligence agencies and international nuclear inspectors of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, has forced Pakistan to question his aides and to confront publicly evidence that they sold crucial technology to enrich uranium to Iran, North Korea and other nations.
United States military officials warned that fresh intelligence indicates that Iraqi insurgents may be planning a new wave of violence timed to the Christmas holiday, in part to avenge the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Local officials said an oil pumping station near the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk came under mortar attack following a series of attacks on pipelines that were expected to add to the chronic fuel shortages.
American forces will expand deployment in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan to increase security so that reconstruction work can begin unmolested by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the top military commander said.
The Bush administration raised the nation's antiterrorism alert status a notch, indicating a newly heightened concern about the possibility of an attack in coming days. Millions of holiday travelers will be subjected to tighter security measures.
From 1982 to 2002, OSHA investigated 1,242 instances in which workers died because of their employer's ''willful'' safety violations. Yet in 95 percent of those cases, OSHA declined to seek prosecution, an examination of workplace deaths by The New York Times has found.
January 8, 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
The Bush administration has withdrawn the military team that was scouring Iraq for military equipment. The step was described by some as a sign that the caches of weapons cited as a reason for going to war will not be found.
Insurgents in Iraq fired mortar rounds at an American military camp, wounding 35 soldiers in an area used for living quarters. They were given first aid and evacuated for medical treatment.
President Bush urged Congress to pass his plan to give undocumented workers in the United States temporary legal status. But his proposal drew criticism from some groups involved in the issue for not going far enough to help immigrants and from others for rewarding people who had come into the country illegally.
An international group of 19 scientists has concluded that a warming climate will prompt widespread extinctions this century.
****Missing January 9th 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded that, despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no ''smoking gun'' proof of a link between the government of Saddam Hussein and Qaeda terrorists.
An American Black Hawk helicopter crashed near Falluja, killing all nine soldiers aboard.
The Bush administration is being forced to take sides in several internal Iraqi disputes and running into friction with groups long friendly to Washington, after insisting for months that Iraqis must determine their future under a kind of passive American supervision.
The American military announced the start of its largest troop movement in decades, with plans to send more than 240,000 troops to Iraq.
****Missing January 10th 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
The Supreme Court, significantly expanding its review of the Bush administration's treatment of those it deems ''enemy combatants,'' agreed to hear a challenge by an American of Saudi descent, Yaser Esam Hamdi, to his open-ended confinement in a military brig.
The Defense Department has granted Saddam Hussein prisoner of war status under the Geneva Convention, giving independent observers access to him for the first time since his capture. Information about him has been tightly guarded, although members of the Iraqi Governing council were allowed to confirm his identity.
A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Shiite mosque in Baquba, Iraq, as Friday Prayers drew to a close, killing 4 other people and wounding 37. Concerns arose among Iraqis that the attack was meant to ignite sectarian fighting, something that so far has been avoided amid other violence in Iraq.
The major political parties of the Iraqi Governing Council and Kurdish leaders agreed that the northern Kurdish region should keep much of its autonomy. The issue has emerged as the most volatile one confronting officials as they try to create a transitional government by July.
****Missing January 11, 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
More than 240,000 soldiers and marines are to move into and out of Iraq from now to May. The swapping of forces amounts to the military's largest troop rotation since World War II.
An unofficial American delegation to North Korea was shown bomb fuel at the country's main nuclear site, officials familiar with the visit said. North Korea declared that it had shown them a ''nuclear deterrent.''
American soldiers killed two Iraqi police officers and detained a third man in a gun battle in the volatile northern city of Kirkuk. The soldiers did not realize they were firing on policemen. It was the second time in three weeks that American soldiers have killed Iraqi officers in the area.
January 12, 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
President Bush was focused on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq from the start of his administration, more than seven months before the terrorist attacks that he later cited as the trigger for a more aggressive foreign policy, Paul H. O'Neill, Mr. Bush's first Treasury secretary, said in a television interview.
The most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq said members of an interim assembly must be chosen through direct elections, putting at risk plans to transfer sovereignty by July 1. He added that an interim constitution and any plan for American-led forces to remain in Iraq must be approved by elected officials.
The debate over President Bush's No Child Left Behind Law has resulted in a role reversal, with Democrats calling for state and local freedom.
****Missing January 29, 2004:
President Bush’s new budget projected that the new prescription drug program and Medicare overhaul was to cost one-third more than previously estimated. The president’s budget also predicted a deficit exceeding $500 billion for this year, congressional aides said Thursday.
The former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq on Wednesday blamed intelligence failures for the apparently incorrect conclusion that Saddam Hussein possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion.
January 30, 2004:
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice conceded that Saddam Hussein may never have held stocks of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, the first time a Bush administration official recognized this reality. The acknowledgment came as the president continued his efforts to convince the American public that the invasion had made the world safer.
Terror Attack in Jerusalem. A Palestinian policeman detonated a bomb packed with shrapnel aboard a bus in Jerusalem, killing himself and 10 others. Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the bombing.
****Missing February 1, 2004:
The White House bowed to mounting pressure and agreed to order an independent investigation into why the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction appears to have been so flawed.
At least 67 are killed and 247 wounded when two suicide bombers blow themselves up at the offices in Irbil of the two main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq.
****Missing February 2, 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
Two suicide bombing attacks killed at least 56 people and wounded at least 200 on the first day of a Muslim holiday in Erbil, Iraq. Celebrants had gathered in the separate headquarters of Iraq's two leading Kurdish political parties. The bombs exploded just 10 minutes apart and used the same method
Dr. A. Q. Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, has confessed to sharing nuclear weapons hardware, designs and information with North Korea, Iran and Libya for the last decade, according to an official and journalists who attended a briefing.
****Missing February 3, 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
The first official Army history of the Iraq war reveals that American forces were plagued by logistics problems, which senior Army officials previously played down.
The company said it would repay the government for overcharges estimated at $16 million for meals for U.S. troops in Kuwait last year, but did not admit to any wrongdoing.
President Bush submitted a $2.4 trillion budget that would substantially increase financing next year for national security but would cut or strictly limit spending on most domestic programs and, on paper at least, put the government on a path of declining deficits.
In offering a plan to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009, Mr. Bush ignored more than $1.5 trillion in tax cuts and spending commitments that come due shortly afterward.
The Bush administration said that the cost of United States military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan had been omitted from the budget request for 2005. But they said the White House would make a separate supplemental request, after this year's elections, seeking up to $50 billion.
February 6, 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, acknowledged for the first time that American spy agencies may have overestimated Iraq's illicit weapons abilities, in part because of a failure to penetrate the inner workings of the Iraqi government.
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, granted a full pardon to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, a day after Dr. Khan appeared on television and confessed to sharing nuclear technology with Iran, North Korea and Libya.
China is putting pressure on the Bush administration to intervene to prevent Taiwan from holding a referendum on relations with the mainland, calling the planned vote a ''dangerous provocation'' that could lead to a confrontation
****Missing February 7, 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
A bomb exploded inside a crowded subway train during the morning rush in Moscow, killing at least 39 people and wounding more than 130 in what officials suspect was the latest in a series of terrorist attacks linked to the war in Chechnya. Hundreds of passengers had to stagger through smoke-filled tunnels to reach safety.
An Iraqi military defector now identified as a fabricator provided some of the information that went into intelligence estimates that Iraq had stockpiles of biological weapons.
President Bush created a bipartisan commission to investigate shortcomings in the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq and to address problems posed by weapons proliferation. He gave the panel until after the elections to submit its conclusions.
Laura Bush is moving into a new role as a prominent surrogate for her husband in the 2004 campaign. She has showed herself to be more complicated and more immersed in White House policy than her public image suggests.
****Missing February 8, 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld offered an impassioned defense of the Iraq war, putting responsibility for it squarely on Saddam Hussein's refusal to abandon his illegal weapons program.
February 9, 2004:
The New York Times News Summary of the Day:
American officials displayed a detailed proposal that they said came from insurgents inside Iraq written to senior leaders of Al Qaeda asking for help in waging a ''sectarian war'' in Iraq in the next months.
The United States completed negotiations for a free trade agreement with Australia, and proponents called it a landmark deal that could increase American manufacturing exports by as much as $2 billion annually.
