Posted on 08/25/2007 2:26:58 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
Lowry: The CIA's record leading up to Sept. 11 was one of failure By Rich Lowry Article Last Updated: 08/25/2007 09:07:06 AM MDT
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. He directed that such a plan be formulated, but according to the IG report, it never happened. Worse, Tenet did not ''work with the National Security Council to elevate the relative standing of counterterrorism in the formal ranking of intelligence priorities.''
In Tenet's defense, he operated within the context of a Clinton administration that basically was uninterested in intelligence. Tenet notes that the intelligence community lost 25 percent of its personnel in the 1990s and ''tens of billions of dollars in investment compared with the 1990 baseline.'' He implored the administration for funding increases in 1998 and 1999, but had to go ''outside established channels to work with then-Speaker Gingrich to obtain a $1.2 billion budgetary supplemental.''
Even with more resources, his managers repeatedly moved funds from counterterrorism programs to other needs, without ever raiding other programs to fund counterterrorism, according to the IG report. What could be more important than counterterrorism? Analytic resources were poured into addressing more pressing matters like the Balkans and the environment.
After 9/11, Clinton officials and Tenet argued whether the CIA had been granted the authority to kill Osama bin Laden, with the Clintonites, in a bout of retrospective bloodlust, insisting that it had. The IG report finds that restrictions on the CIA killing bin Laden had been ''arguably, although ambiguously, relaxed'' for a brief period in late 1998 and early 1999 (how Clintonian). But CIA managers refused ''to take advantage of the ambiguities,'' and even if they had, the agency didn't have the covert-action capability to kill bin Laden. Such was life during history's holiday.
What's more scandalous is how the CIA has escaped serious reform even today. Two CIA directors in a row have resisted the IG report's recommendation for an accountability board to evaluate the pre-9/11 performance of CIA officials. That word - not ''board,'' but ''accountability'' - raises hackles at Langley, where everyone is above-average at fighting al-Qaida. Even though as many as 60 CIA employees knew that two of the hijackers were in the U.S. before 9/11 and no one managed to get the word to the FBI, CIA Director Michael Hayden thinks holding anyone accountable for that or other failures would be ''distracting.'' And so the band plays on.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1940392/posts
Bali bomber warns of terror doom for Australia
News.com ^ | December 17, 2007 | Cindy Wockner and Michelle Cazzulino
Posted on 12/16/2007 1:27:18 PM PST by Son of Dis
IN a visit sure to anger the families of those killed in the 2002 Bali bombings, radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has been allowed to see the three death-row bombers in jail to offer them guidance.
Himself convicted then acquitted of his role in the murderous nightclub attacks which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, Bashir told the terrorists that they must be patient and not weak, and that they were mujahidin (holy warriors).
Also alleged to have been the spiritual leader of terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, questions are being asked why authorities allowed the 69-year-old to visit his one-time protege at Nusakambangan, an island prison complex off the southern coast of Java.
Bashir was among a group of Islamic preachers, family members and lawyers who visited the so-called smiling assassin Amrozi, his older brother Mukhlas and Imam Samudra on Saturday.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1940488/posts
(Failed) Asylum seekers paid to quit UK (given up to £4,000 to set up businesses back home)
The Sun (U.K.) ^ | December 16, 2007 | MICHAEL LEA
Posted on 12/16/2007 7:46:19 PM PST by Stoat
[You will want to read this one]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1940529/posts
Russia begins delivering nuclear fuel to Iran
AFP via translation | December 17, 2007
Posted on 12/16/2007 11:36:00 PM PST by HAL9000
via translation -
Russia has begun to deliver nuclear fuel to Iran Bouchehr
MOSCOW - Russia has begun to deliver nuclear fuel to the power plant in Iran Bouchehr, announced Monday the manufacturer Russian Atomstroïexport in a statement.
“On 16 December, Atomstroïexport began to deliver fuel for the first loading of the central Bouchehr which is built in Iran by Russian specialists under the supervision of the IAEA,” said the press release.
“The delivery will take place in stages over two months,” added the text.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1940540/posts
Free Trade Zones Ease Passage of Counterfeit Drugs
NY Times ^ | December 17, 2007 | WALT BOGDANICH
Posted on 12/17/2007 12:32:21 AM PST by neverdem
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1940597/posts
Putin Says He’ll Be Prime Minister
Breitbart.com ^ | Dec 17 08:49 AM US/Eastern | VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Posted on 12/17/2007 5:59:16 AM PST by ConservativeJen
President Vladimir Putin told a congress of Russia’s dominant party Monday that he would agree to become prime minister if Dmitry Medvedev is elected as his successor.
Putin’s statement virtually ensures that the 42-year-old Medvedev, seen as business-friendly and non-hawkish, will be elected president March 2.
When Medvedev got Putin’s endorsement last week, he quickly proposed that Putin become prime minister after the election. Putin had not publicly responded previously.
Putin told the United Russia congress that if he became premier, he would not seek to change the distribution of power between the president and prime minister. In Russia, the prime minister is a significantly less powerful figure than the president.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1235065/posts
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