Addressing problems with the government's account

[thatsmystory]

The failure of key officials to follow standard procedure was not indicative of a systemic problem.

 

[defaultdotxbe]

Yes. They didn't do their jobs. Bush did nothing. Rice did nothing. Tenet failed to share crucial intel with the FBI in a timely manner. If it was permissable to watchlist al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar in late August then it was permissable to watchlist them much earlier. Tenet has never given a satisfactory answer to explain this failure. The fact that they were watchlisted in late August proves that the 'wall' excuse is nonsense.

congratulations, your hindsight is 20/20

 

[DGM]

Gorelick's point is that Ashcroft's Justice Department went beyond her restrictions. In Philip Shenon's book he writes that ALL the commissioners were upset with Ashcroft's accusations. The wall wasn't intended to prevent FBI from surveiling and arresting al Qaeda operatives. Reviews of the FBI's conduct in relation to the 'wall' restrictions were proven to be unfounded. I've already posted links.

Here is another that examines agent Bowman's decision: Cached text only

What exactly would they have arrested them for?

 

[SpitfireIX]

The failure of key officials to follow standard procedure was not indicative of a systemic problem.

Please explain exactly who failed to follow "standard procedure," and explain what "standard procedures" were not followed, and how you know that they were in fact "standard procedures."

 

[thatsmystory]

What exactly would they have arrested them for?

From The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright:

Because there was a preexisting indictment for bin Laden in New York, and al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were his associates, the bureau already had the authority to follow the suspects, wiretap their apartment, intercept their communications, clone their computer, investigate their contacts--all the essential steps that might have prevented 9/11. (pg. 330-331)

Soufan wondered why money was leaving Yemen when a major operation was about to take place. Could there be another operation under way that he didn’t know about? Soufan queried the CIA, asking for information about Khallad and whether there might have been an al-Qaeda meeting in the region. The agency did not respond to his clearly stated request. The fact that the CIA withheld information about the mastermind of the Cole bombing and the meeting in Malaysia, when directly asked by the FBI, amounted to obstruction of justice in the death of seventeen American sailors. Much more tragic consequences were on the horizon. (page 329)

Then the CIA chief drew Soufan aside and handed him a manila envelope. Inside were three surveillance photos and a complete report about the Malaysia meeting-the very material Soufan had been asking for, which the CIA had denied him until now. The wall had come down. When Soufan realized that the agency and some people in the bureau had known for more than a year and a half that two of the hijackers were in the country, he ran into the bathroom and retched. (page 362)

The Malaysia meeting (January 5-8, 2000) linked al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar to the Cole (criminal) investigation.

 

[thatsmystory]

Please explain exactly who failed to follow "standard procedure," and explain what "standard procedures" were not followed, and how you know that they were in fact "standard procedures."

The FBI has domestic jurisdiction in regards to terrorist investigations. If Tenet didn't agree with this he was free to resign. Why did his CIA withhold intel from the FBI regarding the presence of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar in the US? It isn't a minor detail. Imagine how helpful it would have been if the FBI had that intel in January 2000.

One would think a President and his National Security Advisor would have been more involved in making sure US intelligence was responding to the increased chatter. The record suggests Bush and Rice didn't have a clue. This is a problem considering they had access to sensitive classified intelligence.

 

[PhantomWolf]

The memo said that information could not be shared between Foreign intelligince gathering and Domestic criminal investigation. This was supposedly to insure that there were no signs of foreign intelligence being involved in domestic criminal investigations since they are forbiden by law to operate in the US. They didn't want to create a legal loophole for defendents to exploit (at least that is the story). The fact is the two groups were not sharing information, evn when it was legal because the line was fuzzy and they had been instructed to err on the side of caution.

I think this is an important point that needs repeating. The issue here was that information gathered overseas could not be used domestically because it may have been obtained in a manner considered illegal in the US. For instance, if the CIA tapped a phone in Spain and one of the recordiongs was of a US Citizen/Resident in the US speaking to the person in Spain, nothing said in that conversation would be allowed into court because of the method it was obtained, it is poisonous fruits, and everything subsequently gathered from that information is also out. This means that when the CIA discovered that the two were in the country, they couldn't tell the FBI anything about why they were wanted. They DID tell the FBI they wanted them though, but by then it was way too late, it was only about a week out from the attacks and no one knew where they were.

The CIA was slow on determining that they were in the country and involved with AQ because it took them time to determine who was involved in the Cole bombing and the two individuals weren't considered an issue until the CIA decided to go back and look at all of the people who had been involved with those that participated in the Cole Bombing. At that point the red flags were raised and they started looking, but by then it was simply far to late.

The reality of the situation is that the US was caught with its pants down. They believed that no one could possibly attack them from within and so were lax at protecting from internal attack. They believed that AQ would attack the more vulnerable areas of their influence, embassies and planes overseas, that if any tried to come in they'd be caught like Ahmed Ressam was in 2000. They believed that the oceans on either side of them protected them from attack and so slacked off. Yes they were asleep at the wheel, but that doesn't make it Bush's fault. Clinton wasn't any more awake and Gore would likely have missed it too. The fact that Bush actually kept on two individuals who should have gone with the old administration, Clark and Tenant, was a sign that his administration did consider that these areas were important. Both help politically appointed positions which traditionally would result in resignation and replacement on the introduction of a new administration, but Bush kept both on in their roles (the only thing he didn't do was leave Clarke as a member of Cabinet which isn't really unusual since the position was not a Cabinet position pre-Clinton's second term and because Clarke having been a member of the opposing Cabinet and administration because of that inclusion.)

Bush also reintroduced the daily CIA briefing, something that had been lost under Clinton, and had a far better working relationship with the CIA than Clinton did. He even requested the now infamous domestic terror daily briefing because he wanted to know what threats they were facing from that area. He, however, remained in the the Clinton mindset that Terrorist was not a big threat on the world stage. Instead he considered, like Clinton, that nuclear proliferation was the number one issue and that countries such as Iran, Iraq, Northern Korea, and Pakistan were the major issues in that area. (I'd also point out that I think he was also gunning for Saddam due to the attempted assassination of his parents and that he'd have gone after Iraq no matter what.)

In the end the failure was two fold. Partially it was "a failure of imagination." Not nessecarily from the guys at the bottom, I think a number of them were on the ball, but from the guys at the top who had a "It'll never happen to us" attitude and just refused to listen to what they were being told. The rest was a failure of Intelligence. While the CIA, FBI and so forth had information, they never had a way to put all of it together, and as a result nothing was ever concrete. Had Moussaoui's computer been able to be searched, and that information been able to be added to the worries of more Islamists training at various flight schools, the CIA's warning of possible hijackings, and some of the various groups who believed that attacks using planes was a possiblity, then the US security forces might have been able to figure out something that would have prevented 9/11, but even then, they were looking at a trying to do a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle without the box lid and with five other 2000 piece puzzles mixed into it, not an easy task at all.

Sure today we can look back and say there was this piece here, and that peice there and if this person had told that person this bit of information or that person had do this differently then something better would have happend, but that really is a 20/20 hindsight arguement. The fact is that looking at the situation pre-2001 it was far, far, far, far harder to pick out the right clues, especially in what was a glut of information and warnings that were overloading the system and distracting from what was real, what was an immediate threat and what was disinformation being feed into the system to cloud real attacks. Even today, they're going to have to be really luckly to get it right every time, and they only need to miss one clue and there could be a new 9/11.

 

[PhantomWolf]

The Malaysia meeting (January 5-8, 2000) linked al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar to the Cole (criminal) investigation.

And information the CIA gather overseas (Malaysia) could not be used in a domestic criminal case (The Cole) it would have been considered a breach of the Consititution on illegal search and sizeures since the CIA is not a law enforcement agency and does not and cannot gain warrents for it surveilence overseas thus making such actions illegal and impossible to use in US courts.

 

[Blender Head]

You referenced no such information

I never claimed to blame Clinton's advisor Jamie Gorelick for the so-call "Information Wall" pre-9/11

In an effort to not derail this thread I must say that I didn't know you've been in a drug-induced, self-caused coma for the past decade or so.

Carry on...

 

[defaultdotxbe]

And information the CIA gather overseas (Malaysia) could not be used in a domestic criminal case (The Cole) it would have been considered a breach of the Consititution on illegal search and sizeures since the CIA is not a law enforcement agency and does not and cannot gain warrents for it surveilence overseas thus making such actions illegal and impossible to use in US courts.

i honestly cant say im surprised to learn the bush admin cares more about upholding the constitution than the truth movement does

 

[PhantomWolf]

i honestly cant say im surprised to learn the bush admin cares more about upholding the constitution than the truth movement does

I would suggest that one could make an argument that they should have flagged the law and just told the FBI even knowing that it would screw any case, but just to stop any attack that might have been planned. Of course then you start flying into muddy waters with the possibility of lawsuits against the FBI and CIA as well as the agents involved losing their jobs or even facing legal prosecution themselves had nothing been found from such actions (and perhaps even if something was.)

 

[thatsmystory]

And information the CIA gather overseas (Malaysia) could not be used in a domestic criminal case (The Cole) it would have been considered a breach of the Consititution on illegal search and sizeures since the CIA is not a law enforcement agency and does not and cannot gain warrents for it surveilence overseas thus making such actions illegal and impossible to use in US courts.

My lack of legal knowledge makes it difficult to understand the complexities of the wall issue. That said, from what I understand CIA was not restricted from sharing surveillance intelligence with the FBI. The wall consisted of legal guidelines intended to ensure that the information sharing was done in a manner that didn't compromise criminal investigations. There is a big difference between no sharing and sharing allowed as long as legal guidelines were followed.

 

[PhantomWolf]

My lack of legal knowledge makes it difficult to understand the complexities of the wall issue. That said, from what I understand CIA was not restricted from sharing surveillance intelligence with the FBI. The wall consisted of legal guidelines intended to ensure that the information sharing was done in a manner that didn't compromise criminal investigations. There is a big difference between no sharing and sharing allowed as long as legal guidelines were followed.

Notice what you wrote there, "The wall consisted of legal guidelines intended to ensure that the information sharing was done in a manner that didn't compromise criminal investigations."

Illegally gathered information from overseas cannot be used in a US Court and anything gained from that information is also invalid. Thus if the CIA had given the FBI information on the two hijackers and the FBI had used that to arrest them, then found information regarding an attack, none of it would have been allowed to be used in a US court, it all would have been piosonous fruits. Thus their giving them the information had the potential to compromise any criminal investigation. That's the issue, how much is too much. In the end the CIA and the FBI worked on any information is too much so as to avoid giving too much. It was a bad decision, but a logical one.

It's also not unquie. The Justice Department can tell no one the dealings of a Grand Jury until it is finished, and then only the result. In 1995 the Whitehouse was wanting to know if there was anything that they could have Bin Laden charged with to give them an excuse to deal with him in Sudan.The Justice department told them that they had nothing, while at the very same time they were actually preparing a Grand Jury to indite him for funding terrorism against US interests. By the time that the Grand Jury handed down the inditement and the Justice Department moved against Bin Laden's Sudanese compound, the US State Department had put so much pressure on the Sudanese Government that they had kicked him out of Sudan. Had the US Law not prevented one department telling the others, including the Whitehouse itself, what was going on they could have had him back in 1995!

 

[Cylinder]

Classified evidence is a feature - not a bug.

 

[gumboot]

This sounds like an Ashcroft talking point. Illegal to surveil or arrest known al Qaeda operatives? Absurd.

On what grounds would you apply for a warrant to conduct surveillance on them or arrest them?

Let's not forget that the FBI had a suspected terrorist in custody (Moussaoui) but did not apply for a warrant to search his computer because they knew it would be turned down.

 

[gumboot]

My lack of legal knowledge makes it difficult to understand the complexities of the wall issue. That said, from what I understand CIA was not restricted from sharing surveillance intelligence with the FBI. The wall consisted of legal guidelines intended to ensure that the information sharing was done in a manner that didn't compromise criminal investigations. There is a big difference between no sharing and sharing allowed as long as legal guidelines were followed.

I think what you fail to understand is that these legal guidelines didn't just dictate how sharing was to be conducted, but dictated what intelligence could or could not be shared.

 

[gumboot]

From The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright:

The Malaysia meeting (January 5-8, 2000) linked al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar to the Cole (criminal) investigation.

Except that the FBI didn't actually know for sure who was behind the Cole Bombing until after 9/11. It's easy in hindsight to see that Al Qaeda did it, but the reality is that for months after the bombing neither the FBI or CIA actually had any solid theories on who was responsible.

 

[pomeroo]

Oh I forgot one. Some debunkers merely use 9/11 conspiracy as an excuse to make apologies for the present crooked administration and distract from their illegal war.

Your false claims of "crookedness" have been exposed and there was nothing illegal about the war. You are lying as usual.

 

[pomeroo]

Uh-oh JCM is not going to like this!

Your signature is dishonest.

 

[pomeroo]

Dave they were asked by VP Dick to limit their investigation to intel failures. You have your timeline out of order.


As well as the CNN
Bush asks Daschle to limit Sept. 11 probes article here:

If you really want to learn about the validity of the Commission, examine Bush and Cheney's original handling of the Commission and you can certainly understand why the Commission was viewed by many as simply a cover up.

One of the best analysis of the whole deal can be read here: 9/11 Commission: Opposition and Obfuscation
Very informative for both Bush supporters and haters.

Perhaps you can explain why many conservative pundits feel that Democrats on the 9/11 Commission allowed their fact-finding to be derailed by a partisan effort to whitewash Clinton and heap all of the blame on Bush. Clarke blasted Clinton's do-nothing approach in private, but his public testimony was altogether different, a one-sided excoriation of Bush. You fantasists pretend that the Bush-bashers on the commission were secretly covering up for him, but that's why you're called conspiracy liars.