We see reports of this or that and they are just hit pieces. The CIA is doing 10,000 times what we imagine.
As for the FBI I wouldn't wish them to go after anyone I hate on this earth. They are very professional and have a very hard entry screening requirement. They've had mistakes that were big like Waco and ruby Ridge but these were mainly management decisions at the top !
The crap in the press are reporters getting a few bits of info and then putting a puzzle together that ends up the way they want.
I would bet the CIA and FBI are 95% effective and they will never be 100% accurate.
They can't because of the human factor !
What did the media know, and when did it know it?Listening to the press brouhaha over the CIA's and FBI's 9/11 'failures', you'd get two distinct impressions:
1) Law enforcement, broadly speaking, had all the information necessary on September 10 to preempt September 11.
2) That the media -- shocked, stunned and amazed, of course (wink, wink) -- is only now uncovering this mother-of-all scandals.Both -- 1 & 2 -- are absolute bunk.
"The 9/11 Terrorists the CIA Should Have Caught", screams Newsweek's latest cover (Extra! Extra! Read all about it -- now available at newstands near you! Get your copy today!)
Two years before the 9/11 attacks, "the CIA tracked two suspected terrorists", Newsweek breathlessly declares, "then looked on as they re-entered America and began preparations for September 11. Inside what may be the worst intelligence failure of all."
Wait a second: If CIA, a whopping two years before 9/11, was tracking two of the hijackers, how is that "the worst intelligence failure of all"? (The 'report' is bejeweled with gems like 'the CIA already knew', 'the CIA had linked', 'the CIA tracked', 'the CIA...certainly knew it', 'agents discovered', 'U.S. intelligence began listening...on the telephone line', 'U.S. intelligence picked up repeated signals', 'intercepted conversations' -- all, inexplicably, in the context of a massive 'intelligence failure').
Go figure.
Granted Newsweek "reporters" aren't the sharpest pencils in the box, but this is getting ridiculous. It gives new meaning to the phrase *Intelligence failure*. Among 'reporters', brilliance has never been a strong suit, apparently.
That CIA declined to notify INS and FBI when Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar had re-entered the country reflects, not a 'failure' of intelligence, but traditional, inter-agency rivalry.
Among federal bureaucracies, turf wars and hoarding secrets are as old as the agencies themselves; only the profiteer editors at Newsweek -- who thrive on sensationalism -- would find anything stunning or earth-shaking about it.
Moreover, we're led to believe all of this is really new 'news', don'tchaknow -- part of a massive 'cover-up', only now being unearthed, thanks to the unflagging and assiduous folks at Newsweek magazine.
The editors must be laughing all the way to the bank. Speaking of profiting from 9/11.........
But is this stuff really new news, as Newsweek would have us all think?
Reed Irvine, media watchdog and Chairman of Accuracy in Media speaking at the group's annual conference, said the following (according to a summation of his remarks in the "AIM Report"):
"The FBI had not demonstrated great skill in finding possible Middle Eastern terrorists". He [Mr. Irvine] cited a high priority request from C.I.A. last August that two Arabs, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, be placed on a special watch list. Almidhar had been videotaped conferring with a bin Laden agent in Malaysia in Dec. 2000 or Jan. 2001. He and Alhazmi arrived in Los Angeles on the same plane on Jan. 15, 2001. It took over 20 months for the C.I.A. to ask that they be watched. They lived together at several different addresses in San Diego while going to a flying school. Alhazmi was listed in the 2001 San Diego phone book. The F.B.I. was unable to locate either one in the two weeks prior to Sept. 11."
Oops...when exactly did Mr. Irvine say this?
After the Newsweek "bombshell", of course -- right?
Wrong.
Mr. Irvine made these remarks back, way back, in October. Indeed, New York Times scribes David Johnston and Philip Shenon were well on to this story 7 months ago, filing a special report in the paper's October 6, 2001 edition.
The thrust of Newsweek's supposed 'bombshell' "revelations", to wit, the meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, the attendance of hijackers Alhazmi and Almihdhar, the C.I.A.'s tracking their whereabouts and the agency's belated notification of I.N.S. and other agencies -- all were reported on by Johnston and Shenon back in October.
New "news", eh? Yeah, right.
But could September 11 have been prevented, given what CIA and FBI were working with on September 10?
After hyping their story to death to sell magazines, even Newsweek meekly admits -- at the very end of their "report", of course -- it's a stretch to think so:
"But would even that have been enough? There's no doubt that Alhazmi and Almihdhar could have been stopped from coming into the country if the CIA had shared its information with other agencies. But then two other hijackers could have been sent to take their place. And...it's possible that agents could have identified all 19 hijackers and still not figure out what they were up to. That, one former FBI official suggests, could have led to the cruelest September 11 scenario of all: 'We would have had the FBI watching them get on the plane in Boston and calling Los Angeles', he says. 'Could you pick them up on the other end?'"So where's the story here, then -- why the media ballyhoo over old news?
I'll tell ya what this tempest in a teapot is about: It's the press's on-going effort to cripple the Bush administration politically, and to profit financially from the tragedy of 9/11. That's what. Nothing more complicated than that.
Despicable isn't strong enough a word for it, however.
But it ain't working; in fact, all attempts, whether by media slugs or political opponents, to weaken or hobble this President have boomeranged -- backfired, big time, and will continue to do so.
Incidentally, the Newsweek "bombshell" is already falling apart with reports late tonight that CIA, in fact, had notified FBI months earlier than the story implied.
So who is to blame for 9/11 -- who bears full responsibility?
Hey, here's a novel idea: The terrorists, that's who.
Anyway, that's....
My two cents....
"JohnHuang2"
Imagine this: cocktail parties in Paris, agents in allied governments, agents in the U.N., every manner of surveillance in Russia, every new technology that exists.
All of it worthless. If we think they can protect us from more 9/11's we are fools.