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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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 Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 3:08 am Post subject: 9/11 Avoidable: Director of National Intelligence. |
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http://www.yahoo.com/s/681517
He testified to congress there wasn't enough attention paid to in-country threats and there was lack of coordination. The latter point is not new, the first one is, at least to me in terms of hearing someone actually say it.
This is important because the Bush Faction has always tried to claim they were watching al queda when they had refocused on Iraq early in the first term.
Thanks to cbclark for the link.
Last edited by keane on Thu Sep 20, 2007 5:02 am; edited 1 time in total |
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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 3:16 am Post subject: |
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The post above was during testimony the DNI was giving to extend and expand the new FISA law. Below, a former head of the department actually prepping FISA warrants said the DNI's testimony that FISA is inadequate is baseless.
Ex-Justice Department Official Contradicts Intel Chief
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By Spencer Ackerman - September 19, 2007, 5:42PM
...James Baker (not that James Baker), who until earlier this year helmed the Justice Department office in charge of preparing FISA warrants, testified to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the process in place for obtaining FISA warrants "worked during wartime."
Indeed, the portrait Baker painted of the FISA process doesn't bear much resemblance to the one on display from McConnell, who's been aggressively pushing to keep FISA's oversight role diminished.
Baker described FISA as an intelligence tool rather than a hindrance. The process yielded "information that the intelligence community could use to take action to thwart the activities of our adversaries, including terrorist groups." It was never the case that foreign-to-foreign communications, even those that passed through the U.S., were considered under the auspices of the act.
Supposedly, earlier this year the FISA Court abruptly ruled that such communications do indeed fall under FISA, prompting the issuance of warrants for foreign-foreign surveillance. (The ACLU has filed a motion with the court to declassify the ruling.) Baker's description raises questions about why the court would have committed such a stunning legal about-face.
McConnell, in an interview with the El Paso Times, claimed that FISA was a cumbersome process, requiring 200 man-hours for the production of a warrant for a single phone number, a statistic he stood by yesterday. Baker contradicted McConnell there as well.
Here's an exchange between Baker and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) about how long it takes to produce a FISA warrant.
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WILSON: In some of your answers to previous questions, you talked about the timeliness in terms of emergency warrants and the reputation of your office as being the rusty gate and so forth.
You responded that you do those as quick as you possibly can. And it can happen extremely quickly to get an emergency warrant. Have you ever been involved in an emergency warrant or emergency application for a warrant that's taken more than an hour?
BAKER: Yes.
WILSON: Have you been involved in one that's taken more than six hours?
BAKER: Well, I guess the question is -- let me back up -- what do you mean by it has taken more six hours? From the time that the -- what I assess that means is from the time that the intelligence agency...
WILSON: Let me clarify that for you. From the time that the intelligence agency says we've got a number we need to get up on it, to the time they can turn on the switch, does it take more than an hour.
BAKER: See, I can't answer that, because all I can control is the time that...
WILSON: Let's put it this way: From the time you were first informed that one would be required to when they were able to turn on the switch, were there any that took longer than six hours?
BAKER: Well, I'm not trying to be cagey, Ms. Wilson. I just simply -- I don't -- we did lots of these things. We did them all the time. We tried not to over-lawyer the situation, so we delegated authority to folks within our organization to take prompt action on these things.
Did some take more than six hours? Certainly possible. I don't know. I didn't -- we didn't keep track in terms of -- you know, we didn't keep statistics on that.
What I'm reporting to you, I believe, is that overall, my assessment is that the system was successful. Could the system have done more with more resources? Of course. |
Baker conceded that the intelligence community may have been frustrated with the pace of acquiring a warrant. But here he suggested that McConnell is misdiagnosing the problem: it's not FISA that takes so many hard hours, but the actual intelligence work itself that allows an agent to determine where surveillance should be directed.
Tomorrow McConnell goes before the House intelligence committee. Maybe he'll be asked to explain the discrepancy between his understanding of FISA and Baker's.
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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 3:27 am Post subject: |
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Expert: McConnell Claim "Totally Implausible"
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By Spencer Ackerman - September 19, 2007, 3:50PM
Yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Admiral Michael McConnell, casually informed the House Judiciary Committee that the FISA Court had gotten so restrictive that its rulings required the NSA to obtain warrants before spying on Iraqi insurgents that had kidnapped U.S. troops.
That sounded dubious to us. Would the FISA Court have really issued such a patently absurd ruling? And it turns out we're not the only ones. FISA expert Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies also finds McConnell's statement dubious.
"It's totally implausible, like the claim about the arrests in Germany. Doesn't NSA have collection capabilities in Iraq? If so, they are totally outside FISA," Martin says. "Even if they're taking the Iraqi insurgent calls off the wire in the U.S. talking to each other, they don't need a court order and no court is going to bar them. Or is it that the NSA is so incompetent that it doesn't know they are Iraqi insurgents talking to each other and they were just blindly searching all traffic, which the court said they weren't allowed to do?"
...Martin finds another problem with McConnell's testimony: it represents "selective disclosure of classified information to make a political point, in a way that can only be calculated to mislead, rather than inform."
Yesterday, McConnell asserted that President Bush had delegated him the authority to declassify information as he sees fit, thereby protecting himself from charges that he improperly disclosed information to the El Paso Times last month about the Bush administration's surveillance programs. Martin thinks that McConnell has disclosed that the NSA was surveilling the Iraqi insurgency, something she thinks should have remained classified. But now that the cat's out of the bag, she says, "they need to release the court opinions and legal arguments by DOJ" about the court's alleged rulings compelling the warrant on the insurgents.
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 4:44 am Post subject: |
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Those are very descriptive links, EFL.
It makes me feel all warm and informed inside. |
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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 4:58 am Post subject: |
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This is a well done OP. Very classy. (No sarcasm, seriously.)
Regarding the content...
Everything is preventable in hindsight. |
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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 5:05 am Post subject: |
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| Pligganease wrote: |
This is a well done OP. Very classy. (No sarcasm, seriously.)
Regarding the content...
Everything is preventable in hindsight. |
But he wasn't speaking in terms of hindsight. He didn't say, "preventable if." Beyond that, the evidence of the current administration getting off scent due to other game they selected rather than legitimately scared up during the hunt is pretty extensive. |
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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 5:24 am Post subject: |
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| keane wrote: |
| But he wasn't speaking in terms of hindsight. He didn't say, "preventable if." Beyond that, the evidence of the current administration getting off scent due to other game they selected rather than legitimately scared up during the hunt is pretty extensive. |
If you are implying that Bush and Friends dropped the ball on 911, I think the point is moot. But, if you're going to say that, you also have to implicate Bush, Sr. and Clinton. 9/11 wasn't planned and executed in 236 days. |
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mack4289
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 5:39 am Post subject: |
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This is the most commonly cited pre 9/11 intelligence failure:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/09/AR2005060902000.html
"In one particularly notable finding, the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine concluded that the FBI missed at least five chances to detect the presence of two of the suicide hijackers -- Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar -- after they first entered the United States in early 2000.
.... Even after the FBI learned that the pair had reentered the United States in August 2001, "the FBI did not pursue this as an urgent matter or assign many resources to it," the report found, noting that "it was given to a single, inexperienced agent without any particular priority." Agents within the bureau were also hampered by disagreements over the hazy rules governing the separation between criminal and intelligence investigations.
In the end, the report concludes, "the FBI was not close to locating Mihdhar or Hazmi when they participated in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001." |
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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 10:53 am Post subject: |
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| Pligganease wrote: |
| keane wrote: |
| But he wasn't speaking in terms of hindsight. He didn't say, "preventable if." Beyond that, the evidence of the current administration getting off scent due to other game they selected rather than legitimately scared up during the hunt is pretty extensive. |
If you are implying that Bush and Friends dropped the ball on 911, I think the point is moot. But, if you're going to say that, you also have to implicate Bush, Sr. and Clinton. 9/11 wasn't planned and executed in 236 days. |
The comments by the would appear to refute that. You seem willing to forget that Condi and George literally trash-canned everything they were given on Al Queda. When you have an issue in front of you that you ignore to pursue a phantom issue, things will be missed.
It doesn't make sense to go hanging people for simple error. Nobody is perfect. But to intentionally dismiss one threat, to pursue a personal vendetta or poorly veiled oil grab is not a mistake, it's more akin to malfeasance, or at least incompetence.
To accept your comments above you have to completely dismiss what we know about the administration dismissing Clinton's work left for them, you have to dismiss the warnings given them that summer and you have to dismiss O'Neil's description of the WH going into "Get me Saddam" mode from the very beginning.
I'm not willing to do that. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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I would say that Bush may have dropped the ball on 9/11. What's more important is that Bush dropped the ball after 9/11.
Now, keane, am I a neo-con always or only when I disagree with you?  |
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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 4:32 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
I would say that Bush may have dropped the ball on 9/11. What's more important is that Bush dropped the ball after 9/11.
Now, keane, am I a neo-con always or only when I disagree with you? |
One issue does not a C/N-C unmake. And, that we agree that he dropped the ball is not the most important issue: what should be done about it? For he did not drop the ball, he kicked it over the fence because he wanted to play other games. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 6:03 am Post subject: |
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keane"][
| Quote: |
| dismiss O'Neil's description of the WH going into "Get me Saddam" mode from the very beginning. |
That has been refuted several times.
| Quote: |
O'Neill: 'Frenzy' distorted war plans account
Rumsfeld: Idea of a bias toward war 'a total misunderstanding'
WASHINGTON (CNN) --Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said Tuesday his account of the Bush administration's early discussions about a possible invasion of Iraq has been distorted by a "red meat frenzy."
The controversy began last week when excerpts were released from a book on the administration published Tuesday in which O'Neill suggests Iraq was the focus of President Bush's first National Security Council meeting.
That started what O'Neill described to NBC's "Today" show as a "red meat frenzy that's occurred when people didn't have anything except snippets."
"People are trying to make a case that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration," O'Neill said.
"Actually, there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be regime change in Iraq."
The idea that Bush "came into office with a predisposition to invade Iraq, I think, is a total misunderstanding of the situation," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.
Bush administration officials have noted that U.S. policy dating from the Clinton administration was to seek "regime change" in Iraq, although it focused on funding and training Iraqi opposition groups rather than using military force. (Full story)
Retired Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he saw nothing to indicate the United States was close to attacking Iraq early in Bush's term.
Shelton, who retired shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, said the brass reviewed "on the shelf" plans to respond to crises with the incoming Bush administration.
But in the administration's first six months, "I saw nothing that would lead me to believe that we were any closer to attacking Iraq than we had been during the previous administration," Shelton told CNN.
O'Neill, former CEO of aluminum producer Alcoa, sat on the National Security Council during his 23 months as treasury secretary.
He was pushed out of the administration in December 2002 during a dispute over tax cuts and growing budget deficits, and was the primary source for author Ron Suskind's book, "The Price of Loyalty: George Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill."
"From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country," O'Neill is quoted as saying in the book.
"And, if we did that, it would solve everything. It was about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it -- the president saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do this.'"
But Tuesday O'Neill said, "I'm amazed that anyone would think that our government, on a continuing basis across political administrations, doesn't do contingency planning and look at circumstances."
Several Democratic presidential candidates seized on O'Neill's comments to argue that the Bush administration misled Americans about the drive to war with Iraq, where nearly 500 American troops have been killed since March.
Democratic front-runner Howard Dean used them as a jumping-off point to attack three rivals -- Rep. *beep* Gephardt and Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards -- who supported a congressional resolution authorizing Bush to act against Iraq.
"I would remind Iowans and others that a year ago, I stood up against this war and was the only one to do so of the individuals I have mentioned," said Dean, whose opposition to the war helped propel him to the top of the pack.
Bush repeated his position Monday that his administration turned to war with Iraq only after the September 11 attacks changed the way U.S. officials viewed Baghdad's suspected weapons programs.
That Iraq was a concern before that time was evident in July 2001, when national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN that Saddam "is on the radar screen for the administration," and senior officials met at the White House two days later to discuss Iraq.
During the same time, Iraq began dispersing aircraft and air defense capabilities in preparation for more aggressive U.S. airstrikes to enforce the "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq.
A senior administration official told CNN that early Bush administration discussions regarding Iraq reviewed existing policies and plans.
Officials were particularly concerned with enforcement of the "no-fly" zones, where Iraqi air defense forces had been taking potshots at U.S. and British warplanes since late 1998.
Rumsfeld said Tuesday that Iraq was the only place in the world where U.S. forces were being fired upon "with impunity," and "clearing it was something that needed to be addressed."
Richard Perle, a leading advocate of war with Iraq and a member of the independent Defense Advisory Board that advises Rumsfeld, told CNN the review was still under way when the September 11 attacks occurred.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/13/oneill.bush |
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