CIA Report on 9/11 Being Withheld From Congress Untill After Elections

[Booboo]

Posted this before but it got lost.. title didn't encourage reading as much=)


http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102004V.shtml

The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
By Robert Scheer
The Los Angeles Times

Tuesday 19 October 2004

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 Dick 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 the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA's leadership will have won and the nation will have lost."

I found this very interesting and aggravating at the same time. Withholding something like this that could definately sway peoples opinions until AFTER such an important election just seems wrong.

Thoughts?

[Mephisto2]

I guess it's too late, but can't this be made public under the FIA?

I'll make no predictions about its content.

Mr Mephisto

[Willravel]

A lot of stuff going on right now is both illegal and immoral. The only way things like this will stop is if these people are heald responsible for their actions. The word 'illegal' has no meaning if those who brake the rules are not heald responsible for it. We might as well not have rules in this case. It's silly for us to think that a govermental body like ours can rule itself. It's too easy for them not to punish themselves. So here they go, breaking all the rules and doing whatever they please; whatever suits their selfish needs.

I suppose after reading this, people will wonder when this will stop. I say again, this will stop when these people are heald responsible for their actions. They need their feet held to the fire for things like this. People, high up people according to this article, are getting away with terrible things. What if just by holding one person responsible for their action we could have prevented things like Guantanamo Bay or Waco? It seems important enough to try.

[neutone]

This makes me so mad, why can't the American people do anything about their leaders? They are puppetmasters and the US public lets them get away with it.

[TheFu]

I wonder if they mention the time when bin Laden was wide open and they needed Clinton's approval for an airstrike but he was busy watching a golf tournament and blew them off.

[tecoyah]

It seems the Patriot Acts' ability to increase CIA/FBI information gathering capabilities is somewhat limited. Perhaps there is a clause in Patriot Act II that will help in this type of situation?

[Mephisto2]

Originally Posted by TheFu

I wonder if they mention the time when bin Laden was wide open and they needed Clinton's approval for an airstrike but he was busy watching a golf tournament and blew them off.

Reference? Or is that just in your mind?


Mr Mephisto

PS - I'm not denying Clinton passed the chance to assassinate Bin Laden. He's admitted as much before. But I find it funny you refer to him and golf in a derogatory manner. Here's a quote for you.

"Now watch this drive."

I wonder who said that?

[roachboy]

well what you see in the above is clear enough:

the bush administration is in a position to identify its short term political calculations with matters of natinal security. and they do it. they have done it before, the are doing it now, and if re-elected will do it again.

this blurring points to a number of basic problems with the american system--for example, if fund-raising activities for a national election require that the president be a shill for donations for the next election almost as soon as the first is over, for example, then a significant aspect of being in office is also campaigning.

this in general is an index of how the blurring gets set up, how it is possible.

the bush people have taken full advantage of this. my sense is that they have been worse about it than previous administrations, more amanebale to a wholesale collapse of any division between the political interests of the president and the presidents party and matters particular to the functions carried out by the president once in office.

why is bush not being held to account for this?

partly because the bush squad did not invent this problem, the simply are cynical about it and willing to act on the basis of that cynicism.

partly because of how bush is being sold: he is constructed as a resolute Leader in conservativeland using a rhetoric of the Will framed by a paranoid and/or calculated set of references to the "war on terror"--- one function of this is to place bush in a position where he is not accountable to any empirical problems. what do empirical problems matter if the central questions are elaborated on the terrain of Will? what do problems of an illegal colonial war in iraq, lying to the american people and the international community about war, destroying american credibility globally, and on and on and on matter if the relevant questions pertain to "resoluteness"?


behind this is the problem of campaign financing, the cost of advertisments on television, etc etc which neither party has an interest in addressing seriously, which functions as the framework within which the american oligarchy functions. it is indeed expensive to persuade a population governed by oligarchy of the democratic nature of the regime.

this general matter entails other problems: that the election cycles is not legally limited to a particular, relatively short timeframe; that telvision stations are not required to provide free airtime to political campaigns as a function of television being a public service, the airwaves and cable waves being a public good, etc.

[SirSeymour]

Am I the only one here who read that and wondered what the real evidence behind the article is? One "anonymous souce" who is identified as an "intelligence officer" is not really actual evidence. At the moment, this is little better than hearsay.

Not that I don't admit it could be true but there is nothing concrete in this article at all.

[Delirious]

You could forego this altogether and blame Bush and his administration for not doing enough from the getgo thus allowing 9/11. So really who needs a report~

[cthulu23]

Originally Posted by Delirious

You could forego this altogether and blame Bush and his administration for not doing enough from the getgo thus allowing 9/11. So really who needs a report~

And who needs an actual opponent? Sometimes a straw man will do nicely.

[Booboo]

Originally Posted by SirSeymour

Am I the only one here who read that and wondered what the real evidence behind the article is? One "anonymous souce" who is identified as an "intelligence officer" is not really actual evidence. At the moment, this is little better than hearsay.

Not that I don't admit it could be true but there is nothing concrete in this article at all.

It was a 17-month investigation by the CIA (really 11 people I think). But do you really think that the whole thing is based on hearsay? And while it actually is only hearsay as of now, its because its being withheld! and no one really knows its contents.

Edit: oh, and this was only one article about the incident, you can find more if you look, that are from other sources.