It's these brain implants I got in the 90's.
Posted on 01/07/2005 1:05:17 PM PST by anniegetyourgun
WASHINGTON -- A report from the CIA's independent investigator is expected to conclude officials at the highest level of the agency are to blame for pre-Sept. 11 intelligence lapses.
The report by the CIA's inspector general, John Helgerson, which is nearly complete, concludes that senior leaders should be held accountable for failing to provide adequate resources for combating terrorism, the New York Times reports in its Friday editions. Among those who receive the most pointed criticism in a draft version are former CIA Director George Tenet and former Deputy Director of Operations Jim Pavitt, both of whom resigned last summer, the newspaper said. The report quoted current and former intelligence officials. The report has been reviewed by select government officials. A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the investigation.
A former intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that Tenet has reviewed a small portion of the report and was given an opportunity to respond. The official said the report discusses accountability for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - primarily based on the inspector general's review of a joint House-Senate inquiry into the attacks.
In a statement, former Tenet spokesman Bill Harlow said no one in the U.S. government was more aggressive dealing with the threat of terrorism before 9/11 than Tenet.
"The vast, vast majority of more than two-thirds of the top al-Qaida leaders that have been killed or captured have been taken out through the efforts of George Tenet's CIA," Harlow said.
"Mr. Tenet was correctly characterized by many as 'running around with his hair on fire' prior to 9/11, when others in government - including Congress and the executive branch - were downplaying his concerns."
Some in Congress have been eager to see the report released since CIA Director Porter Goss, a former Republican congressman from Florida, took over in September.
West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, wrote Goss in the fall about the report's progress and "the appearance that the inspector general's independence is being infringed."
The agency has said the report is not being stalled, and that Goss is carefully considering how to handle it, including what to do about forming an accountability panel.
It's these brain implants I got in the 90's.
While the CIA certainly bears a degree of blame, my true feelings of blame are towards the overall government attitude towards our enemies, illegal immigration, and the belief that it is better to be loved than feared.
The 9/11 report clearly documented the failures of our government to know what is going on. To think that the gov't spends billions on intel and did not have one spy deep in Iraq or Al Queada is maddness.
If GWB refuses to enforce immigration laws and refuses to make getting drivers' licenses harder to illegals and terrorists, we will be hit again, and we will say the same of him that we do Clinton.
Senate & Congress? I could not think of a more feckless bunch of do nothings and chicken littles. They too should be roundly blamed for their refusal to do the job.
Held responsible? Hardy har har... Bush gives them medals.
Tenet was a clintonoid political appointee. This is hardly a surprise. I never could understand why Bush kept him on, because Tenet spent the last four years undermining Bush every chance he got. In particular, he has gone out of his way to deny publicly and repeatedly that there were any connections between Saddam and 9/11, which was, and is, an outright lie. And he tolerated or encouraged the behavior of people like Valerie Plame and "Anonymous," whose main aim was to leak to the press and, you guessed it, undermine Bush.
These folks were much too busy with their political agendas to worry about catching spies, enemy agents, or terrorists.
Keeping him on was a mistake....probably a decision made out of tentativeness that existed pre-9/11. But the agency was in trouble long before this President came on the scene. I'm optimistic that Goss can steer the ship back to course.
First and foremost . . . Jimmy Carter.
Secondly . . . Stansfeld Turner.
Thirdly . . . Pee Wee Clinton -- he was looking for the next Monica instead of bin Laden.
Carter and Turner gutted the CIA, changed the rules where we couldn't play in the gutters with the bad guys, and their sanctimonious foolishness spawned all the Islamic terrorism we see all around us.
The reason we don't have any "on the ground" intelligence in the Middle East, like Israel does, is because Carter and Turner made it almost impossible for the CIA to recruit the bad guys as informants . . . and even someone as stupid as me knows that choirboys don't normally know any brainwashed Jackasses who are willing to strap bombs to their backs and walk into a crowded place and kill everyone in sight.
History will show that Jimmy Carter was the worst President the U.S. of A. has ever had and that his hands were . . . and forever will be . . . drenched in American blood.
History will show that Jimmy Carter was the worst President the U.S. of A. has ever had
So true.
Turner's gutting of the CIA is one of the least talked about things in the MSM when it comes to reporting on national security.
I don't want to ruin a pleasant Friday evening by thinking about this. Grrr
Good analysis, GD.
Me too, the only conclusion I could come up with was that there was trouble out there and keeping a Clinton appointee could help immunize his administration for the first year or so. As it turned out, this is what will happen. But why Bush has not closed the borders or reformed the CIA faster is a surprise to me unless congress had to be convinced that changes had to be made. So I suppose maybe that Tenet had friends in congress and maybe this is why Bush gave him an award before this report came out.
We have to decide whether to don the mantle of the world's superpower, with all that implies, (few real friends and many enemies), or to pass. No PC nonsense about whether pink panties on a prisoner's head insults his cultural identity worse than being put through Saddam's shredder. (I got that argument from my expensively Cambridge educated psychologist fool of a son, now happily residing in New Zealand. You should have seen his emails about Bush's reelection. Horror of horrors! Eeeek!!! What was he to say at cocktail parties? I kid you not. That's just what he said.)
Boy oh boy oh boy. You said it, and every word on target.
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