The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket(Bush suppressing damning report)

[RedEarth]

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

October 19, 2004

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."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer19oct19,1,654534,print.column?coll=la-util-op-ed

[MidwestTransplant]

1. EMAIL THE MEDIA WITH THIS STORY

it's huge.

[Stephanie]

2. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."

This is Beltway Codespeak - what does it mean? What is a "very senior-level official?" Would that describe Cheney?

[Moderator]

3. opinion, not LBN

[Kira]

4. Has Bob Graham

seen it? Maybe someone in the CIA will leak the info before the election. Do you think there are people actively trying to find out what is in it?