Terror experts almost quit in frustration with Bush

[JoFerret]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=504776

The Bush administration's failure to prevent the 11 September attacks came under even fiercer scrutiny yesterday, when it emerged that two veteran CIA counter-terrorism experts were so frustrated in summer 2001 that they considered resigning and making public their fears about an imminent terrorist strike against US targets.

The shock revelation comes in new findings released by the federal commission investigating the attacks in 2001. These also show that John McLaughlin, deputy to the CIA director George Tenet, had told the panel he too was worried that not enough was being done.

According to this latest report, Mr McLaughlin had felt "a great tension, especially in June and July 2001", between the incoming Bush team's need to get a grip on the terrorism issue, and his own sense of urgency about the danger.

<more>

[yardwork]

1. Well I wish they had!

Or said something earlier!

[htuttle]

2. Why, I think it's starting to rain! (with quotes)

The Bush administration's failure to prevent the 11 September attacks came under even fiercer scrutiny yesterday, when it emerged that two veteran CIA counter-terrorism experts were so frustrated in summer 2001 that they considered resigning and making public their fears about an imminent terrorist strike against US targets.

The shock revelation comes in new findings released by the federal commission investigating the attacks in 2001. These also show that John McLaughlin, deputy to the CIA director George Tenet, had told the panel he too was worried that not enough was being done.

According to this latest report, Mr McLaughlin had felt "a great tension, especially in June and July 2001", between the incoming Bush team's need to get a grip on the terrorism issue, and his own sense of urgency about the danger.

[54anickel]

3. My God, what has happened to us

the human race in general. We worship the almightly dollar so much we will ignore decency, doing the "right" thing, human rights, wrong-doing and incompetence, etc, etc, etc and for what? Job security? It's not just in the corporate board rooms anymore, it's everywhere.

Sorry, but this just makes me ill.

[htuttle]

4. Not to get too far off topic...

But I don't think we're the 'higher species' we like to think we are.

Clever, full of promise, with occasional glimpses of what we could be, sure. By and large, however, we're still trained apes -- except a lot meaner, since we are kept under constant (and mostly artificial) stress. Try that with a box of lab mice, and they will end up killing each other.

The evolution of the human tendency to 'do the right thing' didn't start with me, and won't end with me. I will do what I can to help it along while I'm here, however.

We still have a very long way to go.

[jobycom]

11. Can you elaborate?

Was that a generalized observation, or were you referring to the intelligence experts who didn't resign? Or to Bush's lies?

If it was referring to those who didn't resign, they seem to be saying they didn't because they knew the new administration needed all the help it could get, not because they needed the money. At that level of government employment, the private sector is always more lucrative. I suspect they were trying to do the right thing instead of the easy thing.

But I'm not sure if that's what you meant. Sorry, I'm a bit slow tonight.

[pansypoo53219]

5. WTF?!?

WHY ISN'T THIS NEWS HERE.
why do we have to get this info from overseas? WHY?

[Imalittleteapot]

6. Reported in the UK. Why not here?

I go to the office with the news and the sources I get at DU and Buzz Flash and everyone thinks I'm crazy. Our "homeland" media is in the hands of BushCo and that's it. Screw Americans.

[wabeewoman]

8. Its extremely frustrating

I watched ABC news tonight and would have believed that Clark was a discredited not too good employee based on their coverage. They gave most of the time to the white house's rebuttal of his testamony. Pretty discouraging.....

[theHandpuppet]

9. NBC was even worse....

Brokaw had a *live interview* with Condi Rice, who can't be friggin' bothered to appear before the commission but has miraculously had time to appear on every friggin' show on TV.

Executive privilege and Consitutional principles my ass! This is outrageous! How the hell does that shameless liar sleep at night?

[dbt]

23. NBC = GE = Jet engines for the War Machine

Besides which, Brokaw was a Reagan worshipper by the end of Ronnie The Popular's* first term. These factors help explain the general whorishness of NBC.

Kill your TV before it kills you,
:argh:
dbt

*Thank you, John Fogerty

[jobycom]

12. People understood that Pravda was biased, but can't see it

now that it's our own media towing the government line.

Our media isn't state run, maybe, but with Michael Powell at the FCC, with anthrax being sent to newspaper editors who publish embarassing photos of the Bush kids, with Karl Rove's constant threats to individual journalists, and with the huge taxbreaks Bush gives to the parent corporations of the media outlets, we don't need to be state run.

[buycitgo]

19. they devoted TWENTY MINUTES to it on nightline

twenty minutes

scabrous, scurrilous smear job, designed to ruin his credibility.

very nausea inducing

[RamboLiberal]

15. Washington Post has it

The CIA now says that a controversial August 2001 briefing summarizing potential attacks on the United States by al Qaeda was not requested by President Bush, as Rice and others had long claimed. The Aug. 6, 2001, document, known as the President's Daily Brief, has been the focus of intense scrutiny because it reported that Osama bin Laden advocated airplane hijackings, that al Qaeda supporters were in the United States and that the group was planning attacks here.

After the highly classified document's existence was first revealed in news reports in May 2002 , Rice held a news conference in which she suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer. But Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic commission member, disclosed at the hearing yesterday that the CIA informed the panel last week that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA.

But a White House official who demanded anonymity replied: "We did request such a document. It's not out of the question that the CIA and others had the same idea."

<snip>

In the summer of 2001, veteran counterterrorism officers privy to reports on al Qaeda threats "were so worried about an impending disaster that one of them told us that they considered resigning and going public with their concerns," according to one of two staff reports issued by the commission yesterday. Senior CIA officials were also frustrated by some Bush appointees who were not familiar with surges in terrorist threat information and questioned their veracity, the report said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22231-2004Mar24_2.html

[enough]

7. kick (nt)

.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Great article. I agree, too bad it's has to be from abroad. Thanks. n/t

[jobycom]

13. John O'Neil did quit. If the media didn't cover that story

with all its ironies, you know they have a motive other than reporting the news or chasing the dollar. The story of a terrorism expert resigning in frustration and then being killed by the attack he had tried to warn them about would be great news, would sell tons of papers, and would be legitimate journalism.

So why did they never even mention it? Obvously their motives are elsewhere. Protecting Bush, for whatever reason.

They'll do it here, too. They'll find a way to turn this to Bush's advantage.

[bvar22]

14. Hey Jobycom, beat me to the post.

I was going to bring up O'Neil. I remember that he was frustrated by the bush* admn. refusal to look at Saudi as a source of terrorism. Rumor was that he was "told to lay off the bin Ladens and the Saudis." I know that was stated on DU several times,but I don't remember seeing credible documentation. Did you?

If we can find credible documentation, I'll start mailing the media. It would lend some credibility to this story, and be another straw on the camel's back.

[jobycom]

16. If I got it right

Most of O'Neil's comments were made to the French journalists who wrote the book accusing Bush of pushing the Taliban too hard. They reported the quote that Bush's admin told the Taliban that we would give them a carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs, or something to that nature, if they gave Bush the pipeline he wanted. The book was not widely believed in America. I don't know if O'Neil made any such statements to the American press.

That's a different book than the French accusation that Bush pulled off the whole attack and framed al-Queda, but our media sort of conflated the two, probably to undermine the charges in the first.

[Kucinich04]

17. The credible evidence...

Is in "The Forbidden Truth" by Brisard.

Try googling...

[jobycom]

25. That's the book

But its credibility has never been fully accepted by the American media.

And who wants to google at 2 in the morning :-)

[JohnOneillsMemory]

21. FBI Deputy Director John O'Neill's story would outrage every American.

If they ever heard it.

Now is the time.

It's frustrating to realize that information as political ammunition is wasted in the torrent of useless bullshit on TV unless it is framed in just the right circumstances at the right time to 'activate it' like some kind of binary agent.

Like Richard Clarke's book and testimony at the 9/11 hearings.

This is the time for the O'Neill story to make it all clear to TV Nation. Who will tell it?

[jobycom]

26. Let's all write to CBS News and ask why they don't

CNN is already in cover mode. CBS might respond.

[truthisfreedom]

18. if these stories manage to break here bush is completely and totally toast

i can't believe we had to go through 9-11, then 2.5 years of examining everything we could on the net, posting it here, realizing that we were exactly right about bushco and their tactics, and now we have to watch the truth be made public in foreign countries. i almost want to scream, but i know that all of this will result in cumulative erosion of bush's base. IT HAS TO.

[radfringe]

20. place your bets

will bush* white-wash team smear these two veteran CIA counter-terrorism experts as being:

1. disgruntled
2. partisan
3. unpatriotic
4. all of the above

[UpInArms]

22. this mal-administration doesn't care about the people

of this country, they only care about their own sorry asses.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtml

July 26, 2001 21:53:20

Ashcroft Flying High

(CBS) Fishing rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.

A senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats against any Cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself, in a speech in California, seemed unsure of the nature of the threat.

<snip>

Asked if he knew anything about the threat or who might have made it, the attorney general replied, "Frankly, I don't. That's the answer."

...more...

[dusty64]

24. The Democrats should

make an ad with all of these quotes from these officials with scenes of our chimp taking his record long vacation. I think even Joe and Jane Sixpack will be able to understand that.