Posted on 08/24/2007 8:28:56 AM PDT by kellynla
The new report from the CIA's inspector general about the spy agency's pre-9/11 failings could be titled, "What We Did During Our Holiday From History." The stretch between the end of the Cold War and the Sept. 11 attacks was supposed to be a shiny new era of globalized peace and prosperity, to which an intelligence service was considered quaintly irrelevant.
The CIA conformed to the zeitgeist by remaining quaintly irrelevant. George Tenet presided over the agency, failing his way to the second-longest tenure of any director of central intelligence, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a $4 million book advance. He made the Peter Principle work for him not just by advancing to his level of incompetence, but by benefiting from it handsomely.
Congressional Democrats pushed for the release of the scathing IG report, completed back in June 2005, to embarrass the Bush administration. But most of the failures identified in the report took place during the Clinton administration, which set the CIA's skewed priorities and selected Tenet in the first place. President Bush should be embarrassed only because he didn't fire Tenet upon taking office or after 9/11, while Bush also has failed to undertake a serious retooling of the sclerotic bureaucracy that is the CIA.
Tenet took terrorism seriously, "sounding the alarm about the threat to many different audiences," in the words of the report. Maybe he should have gone on a lecture tour. Where Tenet fell down was in managing his agency. The thought may be father to the deed, but without the actual deed, the thought is only political cover in after-the-fact memoirs.
Tenet insists that he had a "robust plan" against al-Qaida. In reality, he only thought he had.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
AS I recollect the FBI and the CIA bureaucracies both dropped the ball badly with 9/11. The federal response... create yet another mutimillion dollar bureau, Homeland Security, to ignore warning signs and tell field agents to ignore obvious evidence. Makes me feel safer already. Think I’ll go hide under the bed.
Unfortunately, so many people are still convinced that the Clinton years were the best in the history of America. The truth will merely bounce off of them and they will enthusiastically pull the lever for Herself! to bring back the “good old days”
Be really refreshing if ONE time the NRO discovered the guts to attack the Clinton machine on ANYTHING.
Bill Clinton spent more time with Monica then he did with Tenet. If you want to blame someone for 09-11 NRO, look at where the buck was suppose to stop during the 1990s, not the flunky's.
Well, we had an Administration whose first order of business was to open the military to open homosexuals...
Following that, the next priority of business was to place 15% of the US economy under government control, i.e. the health care sector.
After that it was fun and games with interns and as a coup de gras, selling pardons, getting the wife elected to the Senate, and looting the White House! So you see there was very little time to do anything about the metastasizing threat of OBL and islamic terrorism, or even to meet with the CIA director or other national security parties. That Administration did however - according to Bubba - pass on detailed information concerning OBL and al Quaeda, and the heroic Richard Clarke was there to tell the incoming Admin all about it, if they had only listened to him!
To which I say B.S!
Oh, and I forgot to mention Waco and Elian Gonzalez among other things keeping the Clinton Admin busy.....
Just another Govt. agency that should be disbanded.
Along with the bureau of indian affairs,
I.C.C., dept. of Education, as well as many many others.
When this bozo cried during the ceremony marking his departure from the Agency, I swore I could hear James J Angleton spinning in his grave!
President Bush should have fired his sorry ass Septmber 12 2001!
“Think I’ll go hide under the bed.”
Don’t forget your duct tape.
LOL!!
All employees report to the outer parking lot and await a call to return to your office. If you have not been recalled in three days, look elsewhewre for work that pays as well if you can find it.
The CIA is FILLED with CABALISTS like Mary McCarthy and Valerie Plame types!
Don’t forget the Clintonian idea of using the CIA to train terrorists to terrorize civilians in the Krajina in Bosnia and in Kosovo.
I think they were pretty active and did a good job of training enemies of the United States.
The private sector doesn’t pay as much to sit on your big butt and shuffle paper like the govt. does.
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