[Mb-civic] ROBERT SCHEER The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer19oct19.story

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."


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