I think for mental health reason I will hang here for awhile and delete the bookmark to fadg. Some of the garbage posted there today makes me sick.
Every time I ran into one that was off the wall I would put them on ignore. I now have less than half the thread to read. I just don't want to see us become "right wing heaven." Hope a few on the left join us. And I will stomp on anyone who gets too personal. I love to needle, but let's keep it in bounds.
Here is the "New York Times" analysis of the 911 report. I am sure we will read a lot more in the near future.
9/11 Report Assails F.B.I. and C.I.A. for Failing to Detect Plot
By DAVID JOHNSTON
[W] ASHINGTON, July 24 - A Congressional report released today harshly criticized the performance of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. in advance of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying that the agencies missed numerous opportunities to disrupt the terror plot.
The report, issued by a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committees, provided the government's most comprehensive assessment to date of lapses and failings by intelligence agencies in the months before the attacks.
Representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency have said that the report offered little new information and that since the attacks they have taken many steps to expand and improve their counterterrorism efforts - including taking steps to share information and investigate terror threats more aggressively.
``While the report provides a snapshot of the F.B.I. at Sept. 11, 2001, the picture of the F.B.I. today shows a changed organization,'' Robert S. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, said in a statement today. One change, Mr. Mueller said, was that ``both in the field offices and at headquarters, the F.B.I. has made preventing future terrorist attacks a top priority.''
The report said that the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies had amassed a huge amount of information about Al Qaeda before the terrorist attacks, but it found that none of the intelligence indicated exactly how, when or where the attacks would take place.
But by the time of the attacks, the report said, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. had collected ``significant and relevant'' information about some of the men who turned out to be hijackers and found that warnings had circulated among intelligence officials in June and July 2001 saying that imminent attacks causing ``major casualties'' could occur without warning.
``The intelligence community failed to capitalize on both the individual and collective significance of available information that appears relevant to the events of Sept. 11,'' the report said.
``As a result, the community missed opportunities to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot by denying entry to or detaining would-be hijackers, to at least try to unravel the plot through surveillance and other investigative work within the United States, and finally to generate a heightened state of alert and thus harden the homeland against attack.''
The report renews a focus on Saudi Arabia and whether anyone in the kingdom may have known about the hijackings in advance. Saudi officials have denied any knowledge, but the report says Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi student who befriended two of the hijackers and helped pay their expenses, ``had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia.''
Some of the committee's findings were announced last December when the panel completed its seven-month investigation after nine public hearings and 13 closed sessions conducted. The panel produced a final report on its findings, but that document was classified, and disputes about what should remain secret continued until today's release of a declassified version of the report.
Deletions demanded by the Bush administration and the intelligence agencies angered some lawmakers, who said the White House should disclose more details, particularly a heavily edited 28-page chapter about the role played by Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, criticized the White House over the secrecy. ``I just don't understand the administration here,'' he said. ``There seems to be a systematic strategy of coddling and cover-up when it comes to the Saudis.''
But today's final report provides important new insights and many fresh details about the activities of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., unearthing intelligence reports, some dating to 1998, that indicated that Al Qaeda intended to strike at public places in New York and Washington, planned to use commercial aircraft in the attacks and even sent operatives to gauge airport security at a New York airport.
In contrast to the F.B.I.'s initial assertions that it knew of no one who had any contact with the hijackers prior to the hijacking and that the hijackers lived unobtrusively to avoid detection, the report identified 14 people known to the F.B.I. who had dealings with a total of four of the men who later took part in the hijacking.
The report found that for nearly two years before the attacks, the C.I.A. knew of the terrorist connections the two hijackers, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who in 2000 moved to San Diego and had numerous contacts with an F.B.I. informant.
An unidentified F.B.I. agent who was responsible for the informant told the committee, in previously undisclosed testimony, that if the C.I.A. had told the F.B.I. what it knew about Mr. Almidhar and Mr. Hazmi, ``It would have made a huge difference.''
``We would immediately go out and canvas the source and try to find out where these people were,'' the agent testified. ``If we locate them, which we probably would have, since they were very close, they were nearby, we would have initiated investigations immediately. ... We would have done everything. We would have used all available investigative techniques. We would have give them the full-court press.''
The report said the informant told the F.B.I. that he never knew that Mr. Almidhar and Mr. Hazmi were part of a terrorist plot. It concluded that the agent's beliefs about the possibility of finding Mr. Almidhar and Mr. Hazmi remain speculative.
``What is clear, however,'' the report said, ``is that the informant's contacts with the hijackers, had they been capitalized on, would have given the San Diego field office perhaps the intelligence community's best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot.''
nytimes.com |
