Free Republic

Just broke during Brit Hume...chalk another resignation up

Porter J. Goss, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, delivered a long-awaited internal report to Congress on Monday night that is said to give a harsh assessment of the agency's performance before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mr. Goss, who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee before his appointment last year as head of the C.I.A., hand-delivered two copies of the classified report to staff members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. The copies of the report, which is several hundred pages, were placed in committee safes and were not to be opened at least until...

WASHINGTON, July 23 - In May 1998, George J. Tenet, then director of central intelligence, scrapped a heavily rehearsed raid to kidnap Osama bin Laden from his compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, according to the report by the Sept. 11 commission. Under the plan, developed from satellite photographs and on-the-ground intelligence, Afghan operatives would execute a daring kidnapping and later hand over Mr. bin Laden, the leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, to the Central Intelligence Agency. "No capture plan before 9/11 ever again attained the same level of detail and preparation," the report said. "Working-level C.I.A. officers were disappointed."...

Raising further questions about whether it's doing more harm than good, the commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks has revealed the identity of the CIA's top spymaster, a position considered so sensitive that in the entire history of the agency the anonymity of the person who holds it has never before been breached. Called to testify on Wednesday, James L. Pavitt, head of the CIA clandestine operations unit, told the panel, "I am not a public person." In a story headlined "Clandestine, Or at Least He Was Until Yesterday," the New York Times noted that the decision to out Pavitt...