9/11 report being delayed

Member

Why is the CIA suppressing its report on 9/11, that finds faults with the way the agency's failures leading up to that fateful day, until after the election? This report was complete in early summer. Aren't the american people entitled to see what it contains since Bush-Cheney have chosen to make terror a keystone issue in their campaign?

The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
* The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials.

Robert Scheer - LA Times
COMMENTARY

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."

According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.

The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."

By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.

"It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the intelligence official.

"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."

None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the security of this nation was so easily breached. In Bush's much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been bliss.

The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain.

And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.

In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met with Goss privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general's report. "Three thousand people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held accountable," 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.

The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, "fuels the perception that no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that we don't have [the report]; it not only disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people."

The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to gain release of the report have, said the intelligence source, "led the management of the CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA's leadership will have won and the nation will have lost."

Member

I'll be very honest. Although I'm a ABB person, I really think these reports are totally bogus. No one, from Clinton, Bush or any other official foresaw an event where an organized group could actually get hold of 4 passenger jets and crash them into buildings in such a coordinated attack. Sure there were reports from time to time that such an event could happen. But in our wildest imaginations it never occurred that a coordinated attack using several planes at roughly the same time could be carried out in the U.S.

The only reason 9/11 occurs is because pilots and passengers were systematically cooperated with hijackers prior to 9/11 because historically the planes were simply used to go somewhere else and then everyone would be released and simply late to their destination.

Can you imagine the uproar of the American people if Bush had instituted the same security we have at airports today prior to 9/11? We would have all thought he was crazy.

Like Pearl Harbor it was event that had to happen to point out our vulnerability. We have learned from it. When I fly now, everyone from passengers to flight attendants are aware of the actions of fellow passengers on a flight. That is the best defense against another 9/11.

Member

Hipster Doofus

Member

Member

Member

Adjunct

and this is a government bureaucracy problem not with any administration. We can point fingers all we want but this "system" has been in place for years.
Being a government employee I can tell you first hand how territorial people in this type of profession are. People do not see the big picture and want all the credit. Things would get done a lot better if more people focused on the big picture not the glory.

Member

Member

Member

Member

This comes as a surprise?

crazy cat lady

While I can see what GRR is saying, probably there wasn't much to be done, I would be interested to see what the report does say either direction, and the fact that it is being suppressed is more than a little troublesome to me.

Master of Prissface

I agree with GRR and I think this is just more sabotage by a desperate campaign to do anything they can to throw more suspicion on Bush and his staff. Funny how this is all coming out right before a very close election. And we're forgetting one point, if Clinton hadn't hamstrung the intelligence agencies to begin with, there wouldn't have been this lack of communication. But like GRR says, we can debate til the end of time whose fault it was. That doesn't bring back any of the victims, but squabbling about this does detract from the real matter at hand, making sure systems are put into place so that it never happens again, at any level.

Really, I find it amusing that the Democratic party doesn't even have enough faith in the strength of their own candidate to be able to run on his merits and not have to keep digging crap up to make Bush look bad. To me, that speaks volumes. The bulk of Kerry's rhetoric has always been "Bush did it wrong" rather than, this is what I will do.....especially in the debates. Am I the only person who notices this, whether you like Kerry or Bush?

Member

9/11 report being delayed

LIFEFORM SOCIAL COMMUNITY NETWORK