Congress calls for leak investigation: Presidential reprimand moves representatives to action

WASHINGTON, June 20 — The chairmen of a joint congressional committee investigating pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures said Thursday they have asked the attorney general to investigate possible leaks of classified information by the panel.

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“WE WILL cooperate with the FBI in any way possible” while the Justice Department and the FBI investigate if or how such leaks occurred, said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Vice President Dick Cheney had complained to the two chairmen earlier Thursday about leaks that he believed led to the disclosure of the National Security Agency’s Sept. 10 intercepts of at least two messages in Arabic. The messages suggested a major event was to take place the next day. At President Bush’s direction, Cheney called Goss and Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, “to express the president’s concerns about this inappropriate disclosure,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. Fleischer called the disclosure of the language of the NSA intercepts “alarmingly specific.” Although there had previously been reports of missed signals, Wednesday’s leak specifically quoted from intercepts, something that never is done, NBC News reported. The intercepts had been discussed with the committee over the last two weeks and particularly in testimony on Tuesday. Advertisement

Goss said the Justice Department investigation was necessary because committee members are entrusted to keep classified information secret, and undercover operatives or U.S. officials could be endangered by such leaks. “We’ve got people out in harm’s way who are conducting a lot of serious business,” Goss said.

ARABIC MESSAGES U.S. intelligence intercepted two Arabic messages the day before the Sept. 11 attacks that indicated an event was planned the following day, but the communications were not translated until Sept. 12, government sources said Wednesday. The NSA, which eavesdrops on communications worldwide, intercepted messages that said “tomorrow is zero hour” and “the match begins tomorrow,” sources said on condition of anonymity. Fleischer called the information that the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency are providing to the committee “extraordinarily sensitive.” “The selective, inappropriate leaking of snippets of information risks undermining national security, and it risks undermining the promises made to protect this sensitive information,” the White House spokesman said.

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“We do not know who did it,” Fleischer said, but Cheney’s phone call seemed to point a finger at the committees. Concern about possible leaks has been a key reason the White House has opposed setting up an independent commission to investigate the attacks. The commission has been sought by some lawmakers and relatives of the victims. Bush has said the intelligence panels were better-positioned to avoid leaks. They “understand the obligations of upholding our secrets and our sources and methods of collecting intelligence,” he said last month.

‘NOT A CREDIBLE WARNING’ On Wednesday intelligence officials strongly disputed reports that the intercepted conversations were a credible warning of the next day’s terrorist attacks. NBC News learned that the intercepted comments, which were discussed at a closed hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees, were not from any known members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, which U.S. officials blame for the attacks. And they adamantly told NBC News that any attempt to connect the conversations to the Sept. 11 attacks indicated a significant misunderstanding of signals intelligence. NBC News has learned that the conversations did not involve members of al-Qaida and that analysts believe they were merely “background chatter” like most NSA-intercepted material, which comes in at the rate or 2 million or more signals every hour.

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Intelligence officials maintained Wednesday that the words “the match begins tomorrow,” plucked from the data stream without context, were essentially meaningless because analysts could not know what the larger conversation was even about. A U.S. intelligence official, while declining to comment on the NSA intercepts, said a piece of raw intelligence that contains only a date provides little useful information. The official said that both before and after Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence frequently has received threat information that consists of only a date and a vague notion something will happen — and then, nothing happens. They suggested that the conversations had been leaked by opponents of the security agencies under investigation on Capitol Hill, among them the CIA and the FBI, which have been sharply criticized for failing to coordinate their efforts before Sept. 11. “Hill critics of the agencies have been peddling this for weeks,” one of the officials told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

"I watched Frank Gaffney, President, The Center for Security Policy, this morning on Fox and Friends. He stated that the leak was to a newspaper and that members of this Committee and their staffs will be taking FBI lie detector tests if they had access to this information."

Giggles! Lie Detector test, yeah! Maybe the staff, but the Member? NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Frank makes laugh! Where was Frank during the Clinton Administration when leaks were pouring out of federal agencies like a waterfall?

Yeah, yeah we are at war now thats different! Like OOTW did not place our guys in harms way!

...the entire committee and their staff should have been under surveilance from the very beginning.

Maybe they were....

CA....

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