A week's worth 9-11 smear-mongering by leading Democrats and their media handmaidens has failed to dent President Bush's popularity, according to the latest CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll.

More than three-quarters of those surveyed gave Bush a positive job approval rating, despite an onslaught of politically motivated accusations that administration officials failed to connect the dots on intelligence data that could have forewarned of the 9-11 attacks.

Sixty percent of those surveyed said the information available before the attacks would not have been enough for administration officials to have predicted what was coming.

Only 23 percent agreed that Bush officials made "a serious error" in not reading the tea leaves foreshadowing the attacks.

Leading Democrats began their full-scale assault last Thursday, with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton demanding, "What did the president know?" in advance of Sept. 11.

And while some, like House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, have softened their earlier rhetoric, on Friday Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Lieberman was still invoking Watergate-like phraseology to suggest a 9-11 scandal.

"I don't think the question is the old White House question about what did he know and when did he know it?" Lieberman told radioman Don Imus. "The really more important question, as we look back, is what was he told and when was he told it?"

The CNN-USA Today-Gallup survey polled 1,000 adults between May 20-22 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

Congress Will Grill FBI and CIA About 9-11

Jeff Johnson, CNSNews.com
Saturday, May 25, 2002

WASHINGTON – Joint congressional hearings into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will begin June 4, according to Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairmen of the select committees on intelligence.

"We are committed to giving to the American people a thorough and complete report of what happened on that date, and a set of recommendations as to what reforms will be necessary to reduce the likelihood of such an event occurring in the future," Graham said. "We owe it to the American people, to the innocent victims, and the families of those who died."

Goss agrees it is wise to reveal as much information as possible.

"The way to do this, to follow the path to truth, is to follow the breadcrumbs of fact rather than the breadcrumbs of opinion," Goss said. "We want to share as much as we can with the public."

Starting With Mueller and Tenet

What Goss calls a "very ambitious schedule" of hearings will begin June 4, with testimony from FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet, and continue through July and into August. Graham says the hearings will be closed, at first, while classified information that could reveal intelligence "sources and methods of operation" is discussed.

According to Graham, he wants to "have as many open sessions as we can."

"Part of our responsibility is to the American people and their understanding of what transpired," he said.

Graham responded to the lingering question of whether the attacks could have been prevented.

Hindsight

"No one can answer that question," Graham said. "There was no single piece of information that, on its own, would have led you to a further investigation that might have avoided September the 11th.

"But, the fact is, there was not a single piece of information, there was a series of pieces of information," he added.

Graham says some of the information uncovered by the special staff has shown that there were clues to the form of the attacks and even references to specific targets, but no one agency or department within an agency apparently had access to all of the information in the same place at the same time.

'Systemic Weaknesses'

The investigation has already revealed "issues that illustrate broader systemic weaknesses," Graham said.

"Why has it taken so long for the intelligence agencies to make the transition from their Cold War mentality to the much more complex world in which we live today?" asked Graham. "Why has there been this lack of imagination to see what appears to be neon lights of problems?"

Goss added that an examination focused only on the failings of intelligence personnel would come up short.

"It isn't just failure of human beings, if there are failures, that we're worried about. It's questions of our systems and our laws," he explained. "Are they adequate to deal with these situations?"

Both chairmen seemed puzzled by reporters' questions about the investigation "just getting started."

"We began this back almost three months ago," Graham noted.

"The agencies were put on alert a long time ago, after 9-11, and told, 'We'll be talking to you. Keep materials. Start thinking about what's coming down the road,'" Goss added.

In a "Dear Colleague" letter distributed late Thursday, Graham and Goss – along with the ranking members on their respective committees, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. – described their progress to date.

"The staff has thus far collected over 30,000 pages of relevant documents, culled from reviews of over 100,000 documents," the letter stated. "Interviews and discussions have been conducted with almost 175 individuals, resulting in almost 60 interview reports and additional memoranda."

Both men say the various calls for an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks are not detracting from their probe. They do believe that their committees, which routinely deal with intelligence matters, are best suited to investigate any potential failures in that arena.

"We are not in any way being deflected from out main mission," Goss said, "and our main mission is our joint, bicameral, bipartisan inquiry that is well under way and going fine."

Congressional Hearings Into Terror Attacks Start June 4
By Jeff Johnson
CNSNews.com Congressional Bureau Chief
May 24, 2002

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - Joint congressional hearings into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will begin June 4, according to Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) chairmen of the select committees on intelligence.

"We are committed to giving to the American people a thorough and complete report of what happened on that date, and a set of recommendations as to what reforms will be necessary to reduce the likelihood of such an event occurring in the future," Graham said. "We owe it to the American people, to the innocent victims, and the families of those who died."

Goss agrees it is wise to reveal as much information as possible.

"The way to do this, to follow the path to truth, is to follow the breadcrumbs of fact rather than the breadcrumbs of opinion," Goss said, adding, "We want to share as much as we can with the public."

What Goss calls a "very ambitious schedule" of hearings will begin June 4, with testimony from FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet, and continue through July and into August. Graham says the hearings will be closed, at first, while classified information that could reveal intelligence "sources and methods of operation" is discussed.

According to Graham, he wants to "have as many open sessions as we can.

"Part of our responsibility is to the American people and their understanding of what transpired," he said.

Graham responded to the lingering question of whether the attacks could have been prevented.

"No one can answer that question," Graham said. "There was no single piece of information that, on its own, would have led you to a further investigation that might have avoided September the 11th.

"But, the fact is, there was not a single piece of information, there was a series of pieces of information," he added.

Graham says some of the information uncovered by the special staff has shown that there were clues to the form of the attacks and even references to specific targets, but no one agency or department within an agency apparently had access to all of the information in the same place at the same time.

The investigation has already revealed "issues that illustrate broader systemic weaknesses," Graham said.

"Why has it taken so long for the intelligence agencies to make the transition from their Cold War mentality to the much more complex world in which we live today?" asked Graham. "Why has there been this lack of imagination to see what appears to be neon lights of problems?"

Goss added that an examination focused only on the failings of intelligence personnel would come up short.

"It isn't just failure of human beings, if there are failures, that we're worried about. It's questions of our systems and our laws," he explained. "Are they adequate to deal with these situations."

Both chairmen seemed puzzled by reporters' questions about the investigation "just getting started."

"We began this back almost three months ago," Graham noted.

"The agencies were put on alert a long time ago, after 9/11, and told, 'We'll be talking to you. Keep materials. Start thinking about what's coming down the road,'" Goss added.

In a "Dear Colleague" letter distributed late Thursday Graham and Goss - along with the ranking members on their respective committees, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) - described their progress to date.

"The staff has thus far collected over 30,000 pages of relevant documents, culled from reviews of over 100,000 documents," the letter stated. "Interviews and discussions have been conducted with almost 175 individuals, resulting in almost 60 interview reports and additional memoranda."

Both men say the various calls for an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks are not detracting from their probe. They do believe that their committees, which routinely deal with intelligence matters, are best suited to investigate any potential failures in that arena.

"We are not in any way being deflected from out main mission," Goss said, "and our main mission is our joint, bicameral, bipartisan inquiry that is well underway and going fine."

E-mail a news tip to Jeff Johnson.

Send a Letter to the Editor about this article.

This is good POLITICAL NEWS, vs. the leftist demoncrats but we still have this to contend with...

___________________________________________________

A failure of intelligence

Bureaucratic agencies and ineffectual lawmakers must shoulder a good portion of the blame

By Kenneth Allard

MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR

WASHINGTON, May 17 — Congressional leaders are calling for “tough inquiries” following revelations that President Bush was told last August by his intelligence advisors that the Osama bin Laden network might be trying to hijack American airplanes — fully one month before the tragic events of Sept. 11. But as the tough questions are asked over the next few weeks, expect some uncomfortable truths to emerge about dysfunctional intelligence agencies, and ineffectual, if not oblivious lawmakers.

THE STORY HAD barely broken before the harrumphs began on Capitol Hill. “Was there a failure of intelligence?” demanded House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo. “Did the right officials not act on the intelligence in the proper way?” The right answers, esteemed members of Congress, are YES and NO. But before charging off in high dudgeon, just remember one thing: the “failure of intelligence” is something for which you in Congress — on both sides of the aisle — must shoulder a good share of the blame.

For their part, all the president’s men and women have been falling all over themselves to point out that the warnings were vague. That they represented a range of possibilities, of which hijacking was only one. That these warnings had been heard many times before. That routine alerts (whatever that means) were quietly issued. And that hindsight is always 20/20. Senior officials — unnamed, of course — were even quoted in quasi-Nixonian phrases as saying that “it would be wrong” to conclude that the Sept. 11 hijackings had been predicted. And on and on.

WRONG QUESTION

There is an understandable tendency on the part of both Congress and possibly the American public to pose a similarly Nixonian question: what did the president know and when did he know it? This is tempting, but wrong. The only question which really matters is: Given the information in their possession, should the intelligence agencies of the United States have been able to predict the events of September 11th? From what we now know, that answer is necessarily incomplete. But there is no doubt whatever what the interim response should be: NO-especially not in the way they are organized on Sept. 10. Or, for that matter, the way they are organized today. Throughout our intelligence agencies, the Pearl Harbor syndrome is alive and well.

HIERARCHIES AND NETWORKS

The fact is that those agencies are hierarchies, meaning that they are bureaucracies that protect turf and regard information-sharing as an unnatural act. Hierarchies do three things to information: they control it, they add their own spin and they take time doing it. These tendencies are thrown into sharp relief when hierarchies take on networks, like those of Osama, the Cali drug cartel or even news networks like MSNBC. Networks are highly fluid structures that specialize in the rapid exchange of information — and they are notoriously disrespectful of bureaucratic boundaries.

But bureaucratic boundaries are characteristic facets of the American intelligence establishment. Their natural fault lines have been a constant obstacle, recalling one of the classic “laws” of defense guru Norman Augustine: that when sufficient bureaucratic layers have been superimposed upon one another, “it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.”

ROUTINE INTELLIGENCE DISASTERS

Those disasters have occurred with shocking regularity, especially when the fault lines involve the FBI and the CIA. In a bureaucratic division of labor dating back to the dawn of the Cold War, the FBI is charged with domestic counterintelligence and federal law enforcement, while the CIA handles all foreign intelligence. Basically, that breaks down into cops and robbers, each with its own supporting organizational culture. However reasonable on paper, such distinctions quickly break down when it comes to fighting networks, which is exactly what happens in the tricky business of detecting and catching spies. In the notable but hardly unique case of Aldrich Ames, an American traitor compromised the most sensitive US espionage operations against the Soviet menace, resulting in the deaths of a number of US agents.

The lack of effective FBI and CIA cooperation unquestionably prolonged his ruinous run.

TIGHTER INTEGRATION

The fact is that tightly integrated intelligence and counterintelligence is what it takes to uncover and stop Soviet moles — or of course Arab terrorists. That may be what rankles most about the FBI agent reports — from at least two different American cities — concerning Middle Eastern students enrolled in flight training who were notably uninterested in learning how to land their planes.

Intelligence agencies are hierarchies, meaning that they are bureaucracies that protect turf and regard information sharing as an unnatural act.

Why wasn’t that information integrated with the reports that the CIA was apparently getting from its own agents abroad concerning Osama’s intentions to hijack American aircraft? Why didn’t the American intelligence system redirect that information into a full-court-press investigation that certainly would have generated more leads and possibly even some arrests?

Eerily similar questions were once asked in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor when a far more limited American intelligence establishment was also unable to make timely use of the information already within its grasp. In his 1962 foreword to the classic study of Pearl Harbor, Harvard’s Thomas Schelling wrote: “Surprise, when it happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing. It includes neglect of responsibility but also responsibility so poorly defined or so ambiguously delegated that action gets lost. It includes gaps in intelligence, but also intelligence that, like a string of beads too precious to wear, is too sensitive to give to those who need it.”

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Exactly. And something very much like that is surely the case here, probably with information overload substituting for the glaring intelligence gaps of earlier times. But the most depressing aspect of the current revelations is how much they suggest that the Pearl Harbor syndrome is still operative, despite the billions we now spend on intelligence every year. Following the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, for example, the same sorts of deficiencies in our intelligence warning systems were being decried by Congress in almost exactly the same language used on the Hill today.

So if for no other reasons than force of habit, the usual suspects in Congress will certainly raise their customarily inane questions. But it is worth remembering that George Bush had been president for just under eight months when he received those warnings: Congress has been in charge of the intelligence agencies for a lot longer than that. Through authorizations, appropriations and direct oversight, Congress has benignly presided over the very same organizational problems and pathologies they now so self-righteously criticize. In the aftermath of 9/11, they show no sign of actually addressing those problems. With admirable consistency, Congress has also deftly avoided certain other responsibilities: They have yet to issue a declaration of war; and they have brought precious little leadership to the important task of realigning our domestic security defenses.

It brings to mind nothing so much as a jibe that former Navy secretary John Lehman used to toss back at his Congressional tormentors: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But absolute power without responsibility ... well now that’s really neat.

Kenneth Allard is a former Army colonel and an MSNBC military analyst

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