Posted on 09/11/2009 5:29:59 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
You would think the identification and arrest of sleeper agents working for al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), and operating on U.S. soil in 2003, is a success story our intelligence and law enforcement agencies can rightly trumpet, no? Not according to Peter Bergen, who is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a national security analyst for CNN.
Writing about the inspector general's report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program and two other CIA analyses released on August 24, Bergen wrote the following on CNN.com:
Of the terrorists, alleged and otherwise, cited by the CIA inspector general that [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] fingered during his coercive interrogations, only Ohio truck driver Lyman (sic) Faris was an actual al Qaeda foot soldier living in the United States who had the serious intention to wreak havoc in America. However, he was not much of a competent terrorist: In 2002 he researched the feasibility of bringing down the Brooklyn Bridge by using a blowtorch, an enterprise akin to demolishing the Empire State Building with a firecracker.
Bergen made the same arguments in a piece for Foreign Policy.
Simply put, Bergen is wrong by a wide margin on both counts.
Iyman (not Lyman) Faris was not the only worrisome al Qaeda sleeper agent living on U.S. soil and identified by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during questioning. Bergen does not explain how he reached this conclusion in the face of substantial contradictory evidence; he just says it. And Bergen's dismissal
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of Iyman Faris as an incompetent is so obtuse that one has to wonder if Bergen is even casually familiar with Faris's case.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
The newly declassified documents, as well as other evidence, make it clear that intelligence gained during KSM's coercive interrogations led to the identification of at least three al Qaeda sleeper agents who operated on U.S. soil.
Jose Padilla (John Doe #2) was just a misguided yoot...
~~PING!
Thank you for the ping Starwise.
The left is working so hard for the enemies of this country that they hardly have to do anything themselves.
Found mention of this on the sidebar at the Long War Journal...
The newly declassified documents, as well as other evidence, make it clear that intelligence gained during KSM's coercive interrogations led to the identification of at least three al Qaeda sleeper agents who operated on U.S. soil.
Thanks for the ping
I felt a lot safer a year ago and then I do today!
FBI Informant Says Agents Missed Chance to Stop 9/11 Ringleader Mohammed Atta ~~~ Undercover Operative ‘One Million Percent Positive’ Attacks Could Have Been Prevented
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“I was right, I was a hundred percent right,” Assaad says of his suspicions. He says that when he learned that Atta was one of the 9/11 hijackers, when the FBI asked if he could identify any of the attackers, he was “very upset, angry” and cried.
“I curse on everybody,” Assaad says. “I destroyed half of my furniture. Uh, I went crazy.”
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