Another "Elvis Bin Laden" thread award winner!
Posted on 05/17/2002 9:04:21 AM PDT by nimc
Key CIA Task Force Leader Moved
May 17 — As the Bush administration defends its actions over information it had on possible terror attacks before Sept. 11, ABCNEWS has learned that the chief of the CIA's counterterrorism center has been moved out.
The center, led by Cofer Black for the past three years, is the lead CIA team tasked with finding indicted terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Sources tell ABCNEWS' Claire Shipman there will be more changes coming among the top figures in the CIA but President Bush still has faith in both George Tenet, the head of the CIA, and FBI director Robert Mueller.
The White House acknowledged this week that it had received intelligence in the weeks before Sept. 11 that terrorists might try to hijack U.S. jets, but said the information was too vague to act upon.
At a briefing with reporters Thursday, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice said the threats did not mention a specific time, place or mode of attack, and officials believed any such attack would be a "traditional" hijacking — not the Sept. 11 suicide mission that would turn passenger jets into missiles.
"It is always a question of how good the information is and whether putting the information out is a responsible thing to do," Rice said. "You would have risked shutting down the American civil aviation system with such generalized information. You would have to think five, six, seven times about that, very, very hard."
Rice stressed that there was no way anyone could have predicted that terrorists would use hijacked planes as missiles and attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"Had this president been aware that terrorists would have used airplanes as missiles and attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he would have acted on it," Rice said.
However, one man whose wife died on one of the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, Stephen Push, the co-founder of Families of Sept. 11, said he and many members of his organization are having a hard time accepting that explanation.
"I was very disturbed when I saw Condoleeza Rice's press conference yesterday," Push said today on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "In 1995, al Qaeda confessed that they were planning to slam planes into the United States. In July an FBI agent in Phoenix was concerned about the number of Middle Eastern men who were coming to the United States learning how to fly and they were concerned that they were connected with [Osama] bin Laden. In August, an FBI agent in Minneapolis was concerned that Zacarias Moussaoui was learning to use planes in this manner. … Did the president not have this information in front of him when he made decisions?"
Not true. He could have forbid darked skinned males with arab sounding names or passports from boarding planes bound for US air space. He then could have spent the rest of his tenure fighting the ACLU and the leftest news media, which would have immobilized his administration and ensured a one term presidencey.
Yes, I know they were. A number of them. How many were red herrings, tossed to our intelligence people to decoy them and divert their efforts from the intended targets? How many flights, domestic and foreign, come into a place like NYC in one day? What would it take to ensure the security of each and every one of these flights? How well tolerated would such measures be by the passengers and businesses who rely on air travel to conduct their affairs? Questions like these are not addressed by Mr. Push.
I have to agree with Cheney -- there is no substitute for destroying the enemy, and nobody ever won a war by following a strictly defensive strategy.
Hell, the average American watches West Wing and still thinks the DNC is in the White House. This may just backfire on the Demmos.
They will get results, but not what they expect. Green light for national security.
Excuse me, WHO WAS PRESIDENT IN 1995!?!?!?!? All roads lead to Rome, in this case, all evidence points to the PREVIOUS administration!
I know you're not suggesting that the Jones suit, which went on for years, tied up Clinton and all the resources of the executive branch, including the intelligence agencies. Bennett and his staff are the ones who had to put their time into that project, not Clinton -- and even Bennett somehow found the time to squeeze in lots and lots of work for other clients. All Clinton had to do was consult with his attorneys on an occasional basis and show up for one or two depositions. And the intelligence agencies weren't even involved in any of that. Go back and check Clinton's daily itineraries in 1995. They did not read --
Another "Elvis Bin Laden" thread award winner!
Clinton's the one who made the legal proceedings drag on, through his lying and his obstruction.
He may have made only one unwavering (unwaffling?) decision during his presidency... That his legacy was more important than the well-being of his fellow countrymen.
You're not expecting to win a point with logic are you? You're debating with a liberal. It has to be Bush's fault. It just has to be. So therefore, it is.
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