Could The CIA Have Achieved What al-Qaeda Did? [CIA IS Broken: Fire Leon Panetta]

Telegraph(UK) ^ | January 09th 2010

[Steelfish]

Could The CIA Have Achieved What al-Qaeda Did? The audacious al-Qaeda attack in Khost, Afghanistan and the failures to detect the Detroit bomb plot are indications of a broken CIA, writes Toby Harnden in Washington

Toby Harnden 09 Jan 2010

At the George Bush Center for Intelligence – better known as CIA headquarters – in Langley, Virginia there is a crisis of confidence. Last week, seven of its personnel returned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in flag-draped coffins. They were killed in an audacious attack in which a triple agent detonated a suicide bomb as he was debriefed at a remote base in Khost, Afghanistan. The agent, an al-Qaeda operative working for the Jordan's General Intelligence Service (GID) which in turn facilitated his working for the CIA, has been identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian trainee doctor.

The CIA dead included the CIA base chief, a mother of three and al-Qaeda specialist who was an alumnus of the Alec Station, the CIA unit that tracked Osama bin Laden. They perished just as the CIA was coming under political attack in Washington with the revelation that its station chief in Nigeria had been told by the worried father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that his son was involved with Yemeni Islamists.

A cable had been sent but it had sat in Langley without being actioned until after Abdulmutallab boarded a Detroit-bound plane with PETN sewn into his underpants. As details of the Khost attack first emerged, a blistering 26-page report by Major General Michael Flynn, the senior military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, was released. He charged that "the US intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy" in Afghanistan and "is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which US and allied forces operate".

[arasina]

Zero would just replace him with someone even worse.

[kinghorse]

Yeah sure, back in the day when we were on the come. (craps parlance). Now we are sitting on Don’t pass and these muslims are placing bets on the come.

[Carley]

Panetta was on vacation. He can’t be held responsible.

Same as Obamao. If you are not in D.C. it’s not your problemo.

[jwparkerjr]

IMHO, the CIA would be a lot more effective at the job they are supposed to be doing if they hadn't spent the years George Bush was in office hatching plans to mess with him and his administration. You will never convince me the entire Valerie Plame thing wasn't a CIA job from day one, starting with sending Wilson over to check on the yellow cake reports, telling the world he was sent by Dick Cheney.

I feel very badly for the CIA agents who lost their lives or were injured, and my prayers certainly go out to them and their families. But I still have a bitter taste when it comes to the CIA for damage they did in hopes of sinking the George Bush administration.

And the same goes for the State Department. One of the biggest mistakes Dubya made was not cleaning house the day he took office, especially following eight years of the Clintons.

[Steelfish]

Very true!

[piasa]

A cable had been sent but it had sat in Langley without being actioned until after Abdulmutallab boarded a Detroit-bound plane with PETN sewn into his underpants. As details of the Khost attack first emerged, a blistering 26-page report by Major General Michael Flynn, the senior military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, was released. He charged that "the US intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy" in Afghanistan and "is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which US and allied forces operate".