Robert Scheer : The agency is withholding a damning report that
points at senior officials. From those who claim Bush will protect
us from terrorists, why was he asleep at the wheel before 9/11 ?
19 October 2004 By Robert Scheer - Los Angeles Times
The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
The agency is withholding a damning report that points
at senior officials.
It is shocking : The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA
report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names.
Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA
was completed in June, it has not been made available to the
congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study
almost two years ago.
"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level
people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner
before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official
who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is
potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because
it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before
9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."
When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice),
ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee,
said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent
a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe
that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said.
"We are very concerned."
According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition
of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive
17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has
been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now
by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman
of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief
by President Bush.
The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific
than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed
Sept. 11 commission and Congress.
"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger
at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility.
This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report
found very senior-level officials responsible."
By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for
holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss
nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation
for not delivering the report to Congress.
"It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the
intelligence official.
"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until
after the election," the official continued. "No previous director
of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing
a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."
None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's
great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation
into how the security of this nation was so easily breached.
In Bush's much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been bliss.
The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission,
for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure
was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families
of those slain.
And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath,
or on the record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the
commission members, with Vice President ***** Cheney
present, in a White House meeting in which commission
members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange
behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office
in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.
In September, the New York Times reported that several
family members met with Goss privately to demand the
release of the CIA inspector general's report. "Three thousand
people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held
accountable," 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.
The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman,
"fuels the perception that no one is being held accountable.
It is unacceptable that we don't have [the report]; it not only
disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people."
The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure
of Congress to gain release of the report have, said the
intelligence source, "led the management of the CIA to believe
it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless ...........
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| User: "abelincoln" |
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| Title: Re: War on Terror |
19 Oct 2004 09:19:31 PM |
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goss is a political hack. he only does what bush tells him to do. there
is reportedly a new NIE that says the iraqi situation is much worse than
bush says. bush won't let the CIA talk about that either.
that fact is that the CIA has been co-opted by their white house
customer and boss, bush.
you know the country is in trouble when the president refuses to let the
truth be known. fact is under goss and bush, we can't trust anything
the CIA says. tenet fucked up the iraqi intel so bad, primarily because
he didn't have the guts to tell bush what he didn't want to hear, but
also because the CIA made some big mistakes.
goss will perpetuate them and make them worse because his prime
directive, as a politician, is to make bush happy.
goss was a big mistake. his refusal to release info that makes bush look
like the fool he is, is proof of where his loyalty lies: with the
repugnant party, not the american people.
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