[IMC-US] CIA's 9/11 report suppressed until after election: LAT

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>Subject: [WMAPage] CIA's 9/11 report suppressed until after election: LAT
>Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 23:46:29 -0400
>
>http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer19oct19,1,6762967.column?col
>l=la-util-op-ed
>
>ROBERT SCHEER
>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."
>
>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."
>If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at
>latimes.com/archives.
>
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