- The Real Danger of a Fake President:
Post-9/11 Reconsideration of The Placebo President
- What did he know. . . and when did he know it ?
play tape Q ERTY6BUMP!
Posted on 03/02/2003 12:30:32 PM PST by Mia T
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The Secret Sharer
Code Name Kindred Spirit
NOTRA TRULOCK'S BOOK "Code Name Kindred Spirit: Inside the Chinese Nuclear Espionage Scandal" is unique among histories of U.S. intelligence failures. It doesn't just describe what went wrong when the Clinton administration tried to handle China's theft of America's nuclear-weapon designs; it is also a firsthand account of personal and bureaucratic cowardice, incompetence, malfeasance, venality, and betrayal. It's enough to convince anyone but the most base or patriotic to avoid government defense work, or, if so employed, to proceed with extreme caution.
In this arena, as with work in large American organizations generally, no one is responsible for anything but success. Detecting or limiting failures is, at best, a dogcatcher's job: Nothing good can come from it, only resistance and denial from those whose performance, policies, or organizations might be questioned. To prevail in such ventures, one must have the support of both superiors and subordinates--as well as of outsiders who might benefit from such discoveries. Being right about what's wrong is not enough: One has topersuade those in charge that ignoring or glossing over a failure will be more>costly than addressing it.
Sadly, this is true even when one is trying to protect America's most important military secrets. One would think that getting the president and Congress to keep nuclear-weapon designs from a strategic competitor wouldn't require a complicated political defense or bureaucratic game plan. But, as Notra Trulock makes clear in describing the Clinton administration's prevarications and the unfocused, self-serving oversight of Congress, you'd be wrong. Certainly, "Kindred Spirit" puts a painfully bright spotlight on how the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Council, and the Department of Energy bungled and denied clear evidence that China was stealing nuclear secrets.
The FBI, we learn, couldn't or wouldn't investigate ten of the twelve spy leads it was given. It preferred to fight crime, and it was also conflicted--having previously employed two of the top suspects, Sylvia and Wen Ho Lee, as informants (a fact it conveniently kept to itself until late in the day). Meanwhile, the National Security Council and the Department of Energy were preoccupied supporting nuclear cooperation with China, particularly Chinese accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban. They chose to downplay China's nuclear spying and kept it from the public for nearly two and a half years. When their foot-dragging was finally exposed (too late to prevent further leakage), they simply did the dishonorable thing: attempted to discredit the official who most persistently tried to get them to act, Notra Trulock.
Congress similarly failed to get its oversight of Chinese spying on target. One committee wanted to assure continued funding for the national laboratory where most of the spying took place. Another broke the news on the scandal but then backed away and cut off contact with Trulock when administration officials raised the canard of racial bigotry. Yet another committee wanted to name names to reverse the damage, but decided to do so only when timely corrective action was no longer possible.
The final result was that Congress scampered to reorganize the Department of Energy, threw more money at counterintelligence, and then washed its hands of the matter. Follow-up was minimal and soon the Department of Energy was back to business as usual. The department's top counterintelligence post is now held by the FBI section chief who, despite pleas from his subordinates, stood by and withheld information in the Chinese case for nearly two years.
Early this January, the Department of Energy's inspector general reported that security at the laboratories is still egregiously lax. Foreign scientists from sensitive nations--including Iran--are still getting into these facilities without the required approval of the secretary of energy, necessary background checks, or clearance from counterintelligence officials. Again, officials say they are fixing things, but no one has been disciplined.
This sorry charade might be laughable if it weren't so worrisome. What chance do we have to detect domestic terrorists or nuclear dangers over the horizon if we can't even stop nuclear espionage after nearly a decade of repeated warnings? How are we to attract and hold on to the talent needed to alert us to these dangers if their reward for speaking up is punishment--and if the slow-rollers and foot-draggers are the ones who get rewarded? If we are serious about getting the answers and avoiding a future even worse than the recent past, we owe it to ourselves and our country to begin by reading Trulock's work.
Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington. © Copyright 2002, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
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*Thanx to Cloud William for text and audio
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LEFT-WING TALK RADIO 2: "It's the terrorism, stupid."
Hear clinton stupidity, smallness, banality, fecklessness, ineptitude, prevarication, corruption, perfidy and utter failure directly from the rapist, himself. clinton provides the perfect foil for Bush, who makes a cameo appearance or two.
Pay special attention to Dan Rather's little story about terrorism hitting the U.S. "bigtime" during the clintons' tenure.
In particular, connect the following dots: the '93 WTC bombing. a certain bin Laden protégé and clinton's admission that he passed up bin Laden. Note clinton's spurious argument for this monumental failure.
To this day, clinton seems not to understand that bin Laden is -- and was in 1996 -- an enemy of the state, not a simple criminal.
clinton still seems not to get it -- the same terrorist --the terrorist he refused to take--hit the same building in '93.
Notwithstanding this, to hear clinton tell it, his disastrous decision not to take bin Laden when offered on a silver platter by Sudan, (arguably the worst decision ever made by a president), derived from his scrupulous avoidance of abusing power and trashing laws...
Yeah, right.
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If the Powell evidence made anything plain, it's this: The idea of "monitoring" a dictator is ludicrous. Saddam is quite happy to participate for another decade or two in an eternal ongoing U.N. field study of dictatorship MARK STEYN, JUST LIKE MONICA. |
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The Powell evidence was, in fact, superfluous. For anyone capable of critical thinking, the absurdity of the task was self-evident. What the Powell evidence did make plain, however, was this:
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It is obvious to anyone who bothers to remove his political blinders. It is so patently obvious that even those whose political blinders are a permanently fixed fashion statement -- that is to say, even Hollywood -- can see it. (Just ask Whoopie Goldberg...or Rosie O'Donnell...) Bush's poll numbers are a reflection of this self-evident truth. What is manifestly obvious and confirmed on a daily basis is the plain fact that Democrats are, by definition, constitutionally unfit to navigate the ship of state through these troubled, terrorist waters. Democrats were unfit before 9/11, but few could see it then. It was 9/11 and its aftermath that made this truth crystal clear even to the most simpleminded among us. The unwashed masses, the uninformed, the disinformed can see it now. All America can see it now. Self-preservation is kicking in, trumping petty politics at every turn. And this is why Democrat demagoguery and stupidity and sedition are achieving new lows... We are witnessing the last gasp of a political relic. The Democrat party is not merely obsolete. As 9/11 and clinton-clinton-Daschle action and inaction have demonstrated, the Democrat party is very dangerous. We must now make sure that this fact, too, is obvious to all... |
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Investor's Business Daily
In this light, Clinton's order to the CIA that it not use "unsavory characters" to collect information pushes irony to its outer limits. |
Mochtar Riady's million kept tr42 afloat in 92.
Riady's Lippo was partnered with PRC intel front ChinaResources.
Riady's John Huang transferred CIA briefings to CR via Stephens, Inc.
Sandy Berger was the PRC's chief lobbyist at Hogan & Hartson.
tr42's major 96 donors Bernard L. Schwartz (Loral) and C. Michael Armstrong (Hughes) had given the PLA 100% missile reliability with their 200-page fax in 1995--which our DoD said May 1997 "damaged national security".
Wen Ho Lee had painstakingly downloaded our nuclear technology yet was protected for three years by Berger and Reno, traitors in their own right, as well as butt boy and butt butch for tr42.
tr42 gave the PRNK the keys to nuclear weapon manufacture in 1994 and his Crisco Kid Beer Reecharsun blasted Bush for labelling PRNK part of "the axis of evil".
Want more? Hitlery in '04.
Just as they covered up the association of McVeigh with the Iraqi John Doe Number Two and Nichols with Filipino Islamist terrorist groups--perhaps even meeting with Youssef.
Then there's the stinger-type attack on TWA Flight 800--oh, that's right, it was a center fuel tank explosion mimicking a missile--a hundred eye witnesses and the radar track of the small, fast boat to the contrary notwithstanding.
Now Senatrix Hitlery warns of stinger-type attacks at our nation's airports--begging the question what was whispered when Suha and Sooeey smooched?
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