The real question: Has anything changed?

Don't think so.

What's the CIA gotten right lately? They followed up the 9/11 flop with a series of bungled moves and intelligence on Bin Laden. Then they followed that up with bad (false) intelligence on Iraq. Now they're purveying lines of bullshit on Iran. Bin Laden continues to run rings around them. And the CIA's been absolutely useless in arresting any known major Al Quaeda strike internationally.

So what's their cred? They claim to have foiled hundreds of Al Quaeda plots that they can't tell anyone about.

Gotcha.

I think Richard Clarke did a good job and Tenet's "hair was on fire" in the summer of 2001. The real culprit is George W. Bush who was asleep at the switch clearing brush in Crawford and was too dense to react to the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" briefing. Tom

. . . the CIA’s failure to ensure sharing of information with the FBI.

Failure? It's SOP -- or maybe, CYA!

On any given day CIA Ops is engaged in a number of unconstitutional and illegal activities for which, were they to become known in real time, the agency would suffer embarrassment and the involved agents could wind up in jail. Any information provided to outside agencies risks the possibility that one of those illegal activities will see the light.

Ergo: Keep your mouth shut around outsiders -- and most especially, when an FBI agent is within hearing.

Director Michael Hayden called the Inspector General's report something which he preferred not to publicize, however, the law required it. He reportedly believed that it would harm CIA morale in the field for what was not more than "well-ploughed ground." 

Is it well ploughed ground? Mark Riebling's book on the divide between the CIA and FBI entitled "Wedge: How the Secret War Between the FBI and CIA Has Endangered National Security" examined this topic in 1994 and republished in 2002 updating the analysis for 9-11.

In one article by Riebling I recall that he cited a DIA analyst's prediction well before 9-11 that the CIA/FBI gulf would result in an enemy attack exploiting their division.

In another, Riebling quotes one of America's better senators, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, about the CIA missing the boat on the dissolution of the USSR as we knew it:

"For a generation, the Central Intelligence Agency told successive presidents everything they needed to know about the Soviet Union," said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "except that it was about to fall apart."

And in the same piece, Riebling writes a fascinating account of how Sovietologists and Agency thinkers poo-pooed the predictions of KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn. Some highly placed ivory towers and vaunted bureaucracies were hostile to Golitsyn's predictions about the USSR in a book he wrote. Did they consider him to be a bearer of misinformation? Was he "inspiring" everyone?

Riebling points out that:

Golitsyn's analysis was as little appreciated within CIA as it was in the outside world. "Unfortunate is the only term for this book," an Agency reader noted in an official 1985 review. A CIA analyst took Golitsyn to task for making "unsupported allegations without sufficient (or sometimes any) evidence," and for this reason would be "embarrassed to recommend the whole."

Yet of Golitsyn's falsifiable predictions, 139 out of 148 were fulfilled by the end of 1993 -- an accuracy rate of nearly 94 percent. 

Riebling seems to have expressed well the CIA attitude in a William James quote, followed by his paraphrase of what may be a still-timely Golitsyn prediction that it *seems* the administration ignores to date:

Perhaps most fundamentally, as the philosopher William James once noted, "we tend to disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use." Who had any use, in the end, for Golitsyn's belief that the coming glasnost and perestroika would merely constitute the "final phase" of a long-term KGB strategy to "dominate the world"?

Looking at the resumes of those running the Russian Federation today, I find myself hoping that the last prediction is one of the six to ten percent erroneous predictions.

The story here is how so many puffed up luminaries ignored a person whose experience, intuition and thinking proved true in many instances about a longtime Cold War adversary. The arrogance of intelligentsia with tenure, party, and social connection can squelch information from sources that don't suit their pet claims to prominence. When that info is relevant and sound for national security needs, this arrogance takes a heavy toll in human life.

Meanwhile the WOT goes on as if all other national security matters disappeared after 1991. The WOT is not well defined enough to amount to more than a body count policy aimed at extremist muslim militants. A body count policy is what failed to win the anti-guerilla war in Vietnam, and it does not seem likely to "win" today.

The CIA suffers from institutional hubris. They believe that they won the cold war and could do no wrong.

They relied almost entirely on electronic surveillance. Their DC analysts had no field experience. The DC analysts looked down on the very few field operatives that reported from non-Soviet bloc countries as second rate.

Of these field operatives too many were Valerie Plames operating at an institutional level way above the typical informal structure of terrorist organizations.

Many of the CIA internal functions had been contracted out and there was very little contract oversight or enforcement. This led to an inability to rapidly change course when required.

This is even more prevalent today.

Even since 9/11 the CIA has failed to identify any real terrorist threat.

The few tactics that they could have exploited pre-9/11 were the interception of overseas phone connections and money trails all of which were leading through Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately the Saudi’s then and continue to be now an untouchable “ally”.

The criticism of Tenet should focus on his overall poor management and lack of vision in reforming the CIA structure and replacing the cold war veterans with troops better equipped to handle third world intelligence.

The belief that Tenet could have prevented 9/11if he had only done more to raise the alarm is misplaced. Can you really blame Tenet for not crying wolf when the people he was reporting to were too egotistical to even listen no matter what he said? His actions are really only an indication of his failure of moral character.

Bush would have dismissed Tenet immediately as he was completely reliant on Rice to handle every aspect of his foreign policy and security. Cheney at the time was focused on the new star wars program and too egotistical to believe that a non-State entity could really threaten the US.

The only people that had the experience and intelligence to truly perceive the threat that Bin Laden presented were being disenfranchised from the first day of the Bush administration. True professionals were perceived by the Bush political leaders as potential liberals and therefore could not be trusted and must be replaced with Bush loyalists regardless of the loss of competency.

Per the Rove policy implemented immediately upon Bush taking office, complete allegiance to Bush was required and no dissenting opinions would be tolerated. This was communicated throughout the entire Executive Branch. It was quite clear to every professional that their voices had been silenced.

Most of the institutional problems should have been fixed by Clinton. Somehow the earlier Clinton focus on Bin Laden through Sudan and the Cole incidents never translated into a values change within the intelligence community. How much of this failure can be traced to the loss of Executive focus during the Lewinsky debacle will never be known. Clinton also faced the weight of bureaucratic impetus that created organizational silos throughout the FBI, NSA and CIA and the strong control exerted by the DOD machinery within the National Security team.

The failure of 9/11 intelligence can not be blamed on any one individual or one Executive. As with any complex system failure the cause winds through a multitude of human and organizational breakdowns. Unfortunately, the last point of failure, in this case Tenet, usually ends up catching the blame no matter how unrealistic that conclusion.

The real problem for this country is that very little has changed within our intelligence community to this day. Institutional silos still exist and the basic organizational changes required at the CIA are bogged down in bureaucratic maneuvering for positional power. The burden of Iraq is also slowing change.

The Bush and company belief that electronic surveillance is the key means more wasted expense and political diversion from the real solutions of empowering the field operations and removing the military style management systems.

Yeah, but large parts of it actually knew what a putz Bush was. Ex-CIA people are among the most knowledgable of the people we have now, our real whistleblowers. The first guy who discloses what's really going on with the warrantless wiretapping will do this country a huge favor.

You can think of an institutional silo just like a storage silo. It is a tall vertical structure of hierarchal people within an organization that stores all of their information within that vertical hierarchy. No one is allowed to share information outside the silo at any level or keeping with the two dimensional model; horizontally outside of the hierarchy. This Silo can be completely within one organizational structure such as different divisions within a company or from one organization to another such as from the CIA to the FBI.

if i need to do that, then you have been a long time sleeping in your hammock.

and have missed most of everything. sort of like the johnson.

One thing no one has commented on is the Bush administration's political strategy in releasing this.

Clearly they want to firmly shift blame from the White House to the CIA.

And just as clearly this is coming up or being done as the sixth anniversary of 9/11 approaches.

But why now. They've been immune for years?

Is this an effort at legacy, do they have something else in the works, why are they trying to burn the CIA at this late date and exonerate themselves for 9/11. I haven't heard any crescendo of blame or antagonism directed at the White House, merely low ratings.

Exonerate themselves for 911?  They have ridden 911 like a white stallion into elections!  They have claimed it as an example of why no one should dare to vote for Democrats, who are soft on terror.  Without 911, we would not have GW's ass in the White House today!

Did Democrats use 911 as proof that Republicans can't be trusted to keep us safe?  Why not? 

Who knows how the historical legacy will read?  If they can fiddle with the facts in real time they may be able to do it historically as well.

Jan

Somehow they got the message out that because of 911 you MUST vote for George Bush! Can anyone enlighten me about that? Why did WE not seize THAT?

Since when has the Bush administration ever given a rats ass for Congresses opinions or requirements. They could have buried this report eternally, or redacted it up the wazoo.

it really depends on wether you believe Bush or not. the 9/11 commission was reconvened 3 times and many people, like myself, still have deep questions including the obvious ones: "why hasn't the pentagon released surveillance video of the plane hit?" or "why did Silverstein say 'let's pull it?'"

much of what the newspapers print is simply made up bs and plays out like a soap opera; my proof comes from many "inside sources," as well as military analysts and top CIA brass, who spoke to me on conditions of anonymity since they were not given the permission to speak publically about that disclosure.

To boldly go...

and, how much similarity is there between the executive summary and the report that it was apparently based on?

To boldly go...

*makes note* In... the ... future ... run ... bald ... candidates.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Well, if you check some of trhe idiotic crap that Larry has had to put up with in earlier posts you could see why he refers to "trolls". Nobody could be dumb enough to write that stuff without deliberately trolling (at least I hope nobody is that dumb - aside from Bush, of course).Tom

Val,

heh, truly. :-)

da jews did it...no wait! Clinton did it! Hillary, that is.

Especially if that same Democrat actually spends some of his money on a nice house and an expensive haircut!

you might also want to mention that this democrat also invested 16 million into a company that offered predatory loans to the poor-- even though this same democrat professed subprives were immoral.

To boldly go...

These guys are civil servants. Have you ever taken a good look at the hurdles you would have to go through to even have a negative comment put in their file, let alone actually terminate their employment?

The civli service regs have been put into place through the years by discussions held between attorneys hired by the civil service employees, and civil service attorneys hired by the administrators. Anyone want to take an educated guess as to which side wins?

The sad fact is, these folks may be top notched agents or.... they could be morons. We have no way of knowing which is which, and both have permanent jobs with pensions. There IS no accountability.

Why do you suppose it takes ten times as much funding to keep a government agency operating just enough to allow them to stand up every year and complain they are understaffed and underpaid The FDA just did this recently after the bad food and drug scare although their budget shows the agency budget has doubled, and it has 20% more employees than six years ago.

Apparently, congressional oversight is pretty much sightless... it's main function, as you can see everytime a congressman stands up and praises government employees at each speech (it's actually a requirement at many local levels...part of the union contract).

This is what's so frustrating about our involvement in Iraq. Most citizens are acutely aware of the inability of any agency to actually be trusted for performance. The Senate, Congress, and Administration, who are chronically involved with these same agencies just jumped right on the bandwagon to send our servicemen/women to their deaths, along with multitudes of Iraqi men, women, and children (including unborn fetuses still in the womb, for you Bush supporting so called pro life Christian Republicans).

The real news is that Tenet and McLaughlin failed to translate their tough rhetoric into practical action.

Appear on Television, appear at Congressional hearings, talk tough, do nothing. Get Medal of Freedom. (I hope he strangles on it) Standard procedure.
No different than a Drug Czar's babble.

Not long after Michael Scheuer retired from the CIA he started to make public appearances, as on C-SPAN. When I first saw him on Washington Journal he was highly critical of the Bush gang and their Iraq invasion, and their putting Osama and Afghanistan on the back burner. I saw him once or twice after this and it was the same condemnation of the Bush gang.

Then I didn't see him for a time until he appeared before a (Dem) Congressional Committee and here was a guy who had a conversion. Clinton did it! Clinton did it and anyone who speaks criticism of Bush's war on terror is a traitor.

I saw him on Washington Journal after his diatribe before the Congressional committte and he was hawking his books, and he was now a member of The Jamestown Foundation, a right wing think tank. Oh how far he traveled since the first time I saw him on C-SPAN.

It didn't take long for Scheuer to discover what many before him discovered; you can ride right wing bullshit to fame and fortune.

In the security camera footage I've seen, the aircraft was still coming in on a low angle. I don't know how you can say the grass was or was not damaged, as, very quickly, that area was covered with rescue personnel and equipment that certainly would have damaged the grass.

Incidentally, I was living and working about 4 miles away when it hit, and saw the impact site many times during repair. It's not at all unusual for wings of a crashing aircraft to fold back.

If you don't think an aircraft did it, what did? I'd appreciate some engineering detail, as I'm not without some knowledge of explosives. What happened to the people on board, especially well-known ones like Barbara Olsen?

Assuming WTC 7 was a controlled demolition, do you have an estimate of the amount of explosives that would have been needed, how they were gotten secretly into the building, and how they were applied to the structural members that are the usual attachment points in a controlled demolition? I'm not clear if you are suggesting controlled demolition for WTC1 and WTC2.

I still trim around my beard with Occam's Razor.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

It's a matter of public record that intelligence agency personnel are not covered by all civil service regulations, and the Office of Personnel Management has very little to do with what are called "excepted agencies". As a trivial example, while civil servants are in the GS series of grades and policies, civilian employees of the intelligence communities are under GG -- and do not have all the protections of GS employees.

There's quite a bit of difference in the personnel policies of FDA and CIA. Are you sure the FDA has the same responsibilities as six years ago? Six years ago, for example, you didn't need FDA approval for clinical computing systems, but now you need 510(k) approval.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

If you listen to the whole conversation the fire chief is talking about the futility of the situation and Silverstein throws in the towel at the end. There is never any mention of blowing charges, demolishing the building etc. Maybe that was all prearranged in wrecking crew code.

But to believe that you'd have to believe the fire chief and Silverstein were both in on the plot to destroy the WTC and kill hundreds of firemen, not to mention thousands of New Yorkers and attack their own city for the dubious "benefit" of helping George Bush and Dick Cheney start a war.

I've seen the Purdue computer sim video by the high rise building structural engineer. That evidence from an expert seems a lot more plausible than the evidence of a Philosophy professor from Duluth or a UL Labs electrical engineer who was fired for questioning UL's testing methodology.

There definitely is a 9/11 cover up. But I think it has to do with such things as complete and utter Bush Administration incompetence in the lead up to the attacks and the failure of those buildings to survive a direct hit by airliners as the architectural firm said they would.

BTW those jets had titanium engine shafts that probably tumbled thru those central steel pillars like a dum dum bullet thru a human torso. I may be wrong but I don't think Boeing or any other Western aircraft manufacturer had access to the USSR's titanium to build such strong engine shafts back in the 1960s when the WTC was designed. If the attackers had managed to hijack old 707s instead the buildings might have survived.

mark,

its more fun to believe 9/11 was an inside job. Its kinda like believeing in ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs and the Loch Ness Monster.
Oh, and Roswell.

The saboteurs obviously planted the charges on weekends and holidays, or are we talking about radio controlled planes?

what does the Loch Ness Monster have to do with 9/11? it's not clear to me that the "Loch Ness Monster" and 9/11 truth have anything in common.

If more people thought like you, they'd say that "1 + 1" doesn't have an answer because the "Loch Ness Monster" doesn't exist....

To boldly go...

You mentioned "proof" of something; proof of what and what is the proof. When you answer this I'll offer proof that Nessie exists.

Howard,

if you would stop asking silly questions and read what the man wrote you might learn something.

As to your skepticism about the existence of Bigfoot......

right! the powers that be know that stonewalling works great!

To boldly go...

Actually, I'm not speculating

you speculated on things like:

BTW those jets had titanium engine shafts that probably tumbled thru those central steel pillars like a dum dum bullet thru a human torso.

would've, could've and should've but all just a guess.

the NyTimes had a great article about magic and how magicians mislead people about cause and effect; the CIA would probably call this "covert ops in plain sight!"

To boldly go...

And candidates that know where every penny in their accounts at Vanguard is going.

As a liberal and environmentalist I went over every company in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund and researched what they did
as I didn't want to invest in companies who were bad actors. It took 18 months but I finally finished!

All my money is now stuffed in my mattress.

Take that John Edwards! :-)

The obvious WMD deceptions, which were always suspect and unsubstantiated, and yet you and others morphed these suspicions and unvetted intel into certainties based on a festering litany of falsehoods and cherrypicked, singlesourced, unvetted, dodgey deceptions designed to terrorize the American people and SELLING the war.

Your recent article in the NYT deceptively gave cover to the Bush governments socalled "surge" which is quite obviously a FAILURE. Military successes against insurgents armed with AK's, RPG's, and IED's against the hypersuperior firepower of the US military are given. Yet, the horrorshow security situation and grueling living conditions of the Iraqi citizenry, and the political progress toward a working governmet have obviously FAILED.

You are a (goodcopbadcop) element of the propaganda, disinformation, and slime coverns of the Bush government. Your trotted out amongst the complicit parrots in the socalled MSM at specific turning points to provide cover, push back, or heap praises on the Bush government's failing policies. Your glowing praises of the fascist policies of the Bush government prior to the war, your tepid criticism once things went pearshaped, and now tacit support again distort both your positions and the reality.

You are a socalled intelligence expert. What strategic gain can America ever glean from the Iraq debacle?

And please do not resort to the fascist mantra pimping democracies aborning in the ME, and a shining example of an Americanized democracy in the heart of islam and other such pipedreams and phatasmagoria. These visionairy hopes and pipedreams have no more basis in reality than the tooth fairy.

Any support of, apologizing for, defending, or in any way validating anything pimped by anyone in the Bush governmnent is a naked LIE.

Our enemies, and the real threats to America are safely entrenched in their redoubts in the Peshawar, beyond the reach of the America military because, the American military is not allowed into Pakistan. America under the Bush government is not focused on defeating the jihadist threats since we all but ignore the very real threats rapidly evolving in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, and choose to focus the bulk of our energies, resources, and credibilty to the nightmare in Iraq that benefits the fascists in the Bush government singularly and exclusively, and NO ONE ELSE!!!!!

Anyone pretending for one second that Iraq has any legitimate relationship with the socalled neverendingwaronterror is lying. Iraq is all about the oil, and the wanton profiteering ongoing in the private military, and private intelligence apparatus' winning openended, nobid, multi hundred million dollar contracts and having direct and indirect connection to cronies in the Bush government.

As a socalled intelligence expert, how do you possibly explain, and why do you not speak and act out on the Bush government shielding of the duplicitious Americanhaters in Saudi Arabia, who are now, always have been, and always will be the primary funding and nurturing source for all the jihadist mass murder gangs and the malignant depravity of wahabism and jihadist islam. The Saudi's may be "good friends' of the fascists in the Bush government, but are America's mortal enemy. Jihadist, nor wahabist were NOT operating in Iraq prior to the Bush government cataclysmic failure in Iraq.

Howard, you must have a very short beard;>

Personally, I think that a linear debunking of 9-11 conspiracy theories that concentrates on explosives and missiles is misguided, and is a red herring to throw people off the real trail, which is Dick Cheney and the War Games which were being conducted under his leadership on 9-11. Was it collusion or incompetence? While one could conceivably make a case for the latter if it were Bush, I find it harder to believe in Cheney's case. Allowing 9-11 to happen is a conspiracy, just not as spectacular as one involving planted explosives and phantom missiles, with the latter having the advantage of being easily smeared with the 'kook' label.

Also, while you rightly challenge people to make a positive case for how the explosives could be planted, my own approach is to look for form in negative space--in other words, the conspiracy takes form when you look at what hasn't happened; in the case of the WTC, why were all the remnants so quickly scrapped and buried without proper forensic analysis? Look at the aftermath of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis and you will find real forensics work being performed that did not happen at all with the WTC, whether it was onsite or at the Jersey dump site where they hauled the scrap to, prior to its quick dispatch.

Occam's Razor would dictate that the presence of a coverup would indicate something to hide, no?

mcs,

your posts are completely vacuous. You type but you say nothing.

The usual righteous indignation from the another liberal apologist for the CIA. What a crock.

The Central Intelligence Agency was chiefly responsible for the failure to protect this nation on 9/11. Not George Bush. Not Condoleezza Rice. Not even, pray tell, Darth Sideous Cheney.

Policymakers are the consumers of intelligence. It is not up to them to provide themselves with actionable intelligence. It was up to the CIA. Indeed, Tenet and Cofer Black running around with hair on fire in July of 2001 did appear to be enough to get Rice to notify the FBI, which she appears to have done. However, what really gets my goat is the mantra about the August 6th memo.

There was nothing actually in that memo but information that dated from 1999 at the latest. There was nothing actionable in it. Don't believe me? Go read it. Tim Weiner, whose towering history of the world's most incompetent and feckless intelligence Agency, Legacy of Ashes, points out that the Agency couldn't get anything more current than that about bin Laden's planning.

This is what the CIA doesn't want Democrats and Republicans to know about 9/11: at no time-AT NO TIME was it at all capable of providing Bush, Rice, or Rumsfeld with ANY actionable intelligence about the time, means, and method of attack. Period. Al Qaeda Prime always had both the strategic and tactical initiative from 1998 when the planning for the New York attacks began until September 11th. Period. End of Story. As long as they can get you and the media to beat up on the Administration about memos and Silver Bullets, then that salient fact of their own incompetence is ignored.

Hell, they've succeeded for this long. Why not keep on going? Especially with people like our Larry out there who can't appear to see the forest for the trees and gets lost in the minutiae of what Michael Schuer knew and when he knew it.

Not only did they never have the plan, they never were capable of getting the plan, because they never were capable of getting inside Al Qaeda.

However, what the CIA did need to do after 9/11 was survive in its current form. It knew what actually happened, and the IG's report is probably the tip of the iceberg. That last thing that Tenet and his people wanted was Husband Kimmel and Walter Short hearings, akin to the kangaroo court that FDR cooked up for the hapless Pearl Harbor pair in January of 1942. Unfortunately for America, Bush's dad ran the CIA and went easy on the Agency and the Director, so the rest is history.

The CIA made sure of it by pointing the Democrats in the direction of the Administration. You people reacted as they knew you would, like Pavlov's dogs. So you went after Smoke and Mirrors like the August 6th PDB.

Meanwhile, needed reform inside the CIA never occurred. Needed oversight never happened. Tenet was allowed to skate, and people bought the WMD palooka because they were conditioned not to trust the CIA's admonitions that they didn't know what they didn't know.

And they continued to be outwitted by Men in Caves.

The CIA will never, ever be reformed as long as both parties indulge in the kind of partisanship that allows thier incompetence to go unpunished. Nobody ever pays for anything at CIA: Angleton gave up the jewels to Kim Philby because they were friends, then cored out the Soviet Division with his paranoia. The Mossadegh Coup came out of their shop when Ike's first impulse was to buy Mossadegh off with a 100 million dollar loan. They became dependent on the Mossad for everything we know about the Middle East after Suez. They tried to overthrow Sukarno in a feckless coup in 1958. They allowed Jack and Bobby to turn CIA into a Murder Inc. against Fidel and Diem, with consequences that we know today. They never spoke up about Tonkin Gulf. They missed the Tet Offensive and the Yom Kippur War. They completely missed what was happening to the Soviet missile arsenal. They totally, and I do mean totally, missed out on the Khomeineist Movement in Iran (even though Khomeini was one of the Ayatollahs in the paid crowd of goons who overthrew Mossadegh back in '53...). Bill Casey ran wild in Central America and they enabled the whole Arms for Hostages scam the Iranians ran on us, and they have nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, on the Persians.

Our network in Iran got rolled up by the Revolutionary Guards years ago, about the same time Saddam rolled up whatever we had in Iraq.

In sixty years they've gotten jack sh*t right for the consumers of intelligence. They are a white elephant, but you Democrats faithfully attack the Administration in power and do their bidding for them. Guys like Larry come out here and can't see the forest for the trees.

The freaking band plays on, and its the American people who pay.

Someday, perhaps after the Giuliani Administration is done, there will be a Democratic President. It is then you folks will want a solid, well run intelligence agency. Perhaps then you won't put up with the arguments from CIA enablers like Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, and the cast of people like Tenet who tell us how good the CIA really is, if we only just knew, anymore.

But I won't hold my breath.

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."-Winston S. Churchill

A forensic analysis has to be looking for something. I have yet to hear a recognized structural engineer or explosives specialist propose a hypothesis that forensic analysis could prove or disprove.

While this is not my area of specialty, I think that your first statement is dubious or misleading; prior to any hypothesis being formed, the first step is to gather raw data--metallurgical and residue analysis, among other things. Whether anything could be 'proved' from this is debateable, however, what is not debateable is the fact that this data was not allowed to be collected, which is not SOP, and therefore, extremely fishy.

Again, this is something of a red herring, and by itself doesn't prove anything. However, its place in the mosaic of official coverups, secrecy and stonewalling presents the picture of a conspiracy--just not the wacky Roswell type.

You forgot Diem, Allende, Arbenz, Torrijos, and probably Wellstone.

While I'm sure there are still some 'angels' within the CIA, I think its main purpose has been to carry water for US govt hawks and corporate interests--assassinations and regime change are the fun stuff for these guys, not mere collection of intelligence, or the dirty work of infiltrating Al Qaeda. The knife is used to cut butter, not meat, and it is only as good as the hand that wields it.

As for Bin Laden's continued existence, that's a feature, not a bug--the Powers That Be have nothing to gain by his capture, in fact, they benefit handsomely from his continued existence.

is that the best you can do?

To boldly go...

sorry for respond under your name!

To boldly go...

Sorry but for clarity, I meant to say: (No one is saying the CIA is blameless) and later: (There are still many unknown unknowns relating to Bush governments spiriting out of the country of 140 Saudi nationals, including bin Laden family members in the dark hours and days after 9/11, some of which flights took place when every single American citizen was grounded.)
and below that: (You and Larry, and Rush and Coulter, and Bortz, and North, and Liddy, all the wingnutsia partisans can heap the blame for 9/11 the CIA, but history, the facts, the Constitution, and every principle this nation was founded upon, and long defend PROVES, it is the Bush government that bears responsibility for, (if they are not actually complicit in) the failures and the horrors of 9/11.

Nothing else went thru anywhere near that intact.

well, some people wonder why there was a pod under each of the planes and a flash of light just before they hit the buildings. some speculate that each plane launched a rocket before it hit the building-- to ensure that it penetrated the wall I suppose.

What did you expect them to do? Store the debris on the street?

in minneapolis, the 35W bridge collapsed and salvage workers weren't allowed to start moving the wreckage until it was analyzed.

Yes, I expected this systematic assessment in NY too but, instead, someone had the metal sent to china ASAP.

At the very least, such a study would have helped people like you, myself and others understand what happened.

To boldly go...

well, there was watergate; iran contra; "weapons of mass distruction in Iraq"; etc... and I'm not even a very good student of history!

the latest conspiracy is that "the congress accidently gave the president more spy powers than he wanted" as reported by the NyTimes.

I don't call these things conspiracies because, each time, the government intentionally performed the acts; some people call them conspiracies since people want to believe that government is somehow noble.

To boldly go...

Amateur scientists tend to look at background for their science, such as the known capabilities of explosives.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

You make my point. All of these actions were pretty much caught in a "timely" manner. It has been 6 years since 9/11 and not a single leak or individual screw up.

Believe me; they're not good enough to pull this off.

I gather that even if you are an amateur scientist, you don't want to discuss anything about the physics of explosives or engineering of controlled demolition. Instead, you prefer to blame it all on a murky conspiracy, or simply a collection of political cowards.

I'll have to remember that technique the next time someone pays me to do an analysis. No need for a thick report with analyses; I'll just tell them there was no political will to find out the truth.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

believe me, I just think it's interesting. I have no idea what the military has developed.

I'm much more concerned about transparency since any idiot can wonder why video footage of the pentagon crash hasn't been made available.

To boldly go...

Quite so. 

It's hard for some people to accept that screwy ex-soldiers can shoot well, or that guys with boxcutters can bring down a skyscraper.

Given that it was an event involving immense energies we should expect unusual results. And the real kicker is how can we believe any conspiracy surrounding it would hold? When Justice officials are ready to resign over such quaintly civilized issues as warrants, we expect to find a cadre of hundreds that willingly killed a few thousand civilians?

But CYA is a powerful force, usually finding allies. That conspiracy is likely quite real, whose first challenge was "My Pet Goat" and the lack of immediate action

I hadn't noticed this before.

the NyTimes is famous for writing a story about nuclear bombs killing people in Japan instantly, through explosion and denied that radiation kills slowly.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Yeah! That's the ticket. She's did it along with her huband, Bill!

Kevin Russell Cook

Despite the pointlessness of rocket pods on the 757s how the hell are you going to mount them at the Boston airport beforehand without anyone noticing?

the Pentagon incident is very thoroughly documented, and consistent with the aircraft hit.

if it's so "documented," let me see the footage shot by the security cameras around the pentagon. yes, they did release video but it wasn't conclusive given its poor quality and the video wasn't full frame video. until then, the terrorist plot conspiracy just doesn't make sense to me.

you certainly have interesting conjectures about why but I don't find your thinking process compelling. In my mind, the wreckage should have been studied, period and those apparently demolition sheared supports were important exibits.

To boldly go...

I suppose I might have some bias in having my house shaken by the crash

everyone believes there was an explosion but not everyone agrees on what exploded.

I am sufficiently content with the crash explanation there that I'm not going to waste energy looking for implausible other causes.

The 9/11 truth folks have the same "implausible attitude" as you do; so making such a statement really doesn't help. in fact, that's why the 9/11 commission did three different 9/11 studies because each one seemed to lack scientific and investigative rigor.

Heat, not impact, is the major cause of the collapse.

that's the theory that the "9/11 as is" proponents push. as I noted, people were standing by the broken windows and didn't seem to be affected by the heat.

Pod theorists also seem to be insistent on relying on visual evidence from films

visual evidence was used by Galileo in making the claim that the earth was round. the power of observation is very powerful. of course, people observe different things and that's why there's a debate on what actually happened on 9/11.

you mention JFK but, as far as I know, "the government" actually controlled a lot of the physical evidence in that case too.

To boldly go...

Heat, not impact, is the major cause of the collapse.

that's the theory that the "9/11 as is" proponents push. as I noted, people were standing by the broken windows and didn't seem to be affected by the heat.

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Obviously, I am a gummint stooge when I point out that the contribution of heat to the collapse was to the inner structural members, not at the windows.

I know but you're talking about chimney effects heating up steel to high tempatures.

Are you holding a seance with the victims of the floors that would have been heated most intensely?

i'm not sure what floors those would be. some people believe that a lot of the fuel was lost in the fireball upon impact.

To boldly go...

It was Osama that did it, it was George that flubbed the response.

I haven't read anything that would compel me to buy the "Osama did it line." and, oh yeah, Saddamm supposedly had weapons of mass destruction too.

if Osama was the lynchpin, the US would have captured him. instead, the government has been pinning the blame on Iraq. why they're doing this doesn't make sense to me.

Can we move on?

certainly!

To boldly go...

The fact that most hijackers were Saudi, that Osama claimed credit, and that AQ had achieved similar attacks previously doesn't convince?

The fact that the administration has been breathtakingly incompetent in every other arena doesn't suggest they could be equally inept in capturing Osama?

Iraq had to be blamed because there was no financial payoff in dealing with Osama, beyond eliminating the Taliban as uncooperative negotiating partners. Qui bono?

The crazies (neocons) wanted their new society in an industrial country, not a bunch of poppy farmers. Oil wanted to have control over Iraq's oil for either pumping or keeping it off the market. Rummy wanted better targets. And Bush wanted a real war, not a proxy fight in a weird lawless area (he announced this before he ran for Pres.). Thus Iraq.

Clear?

The fact that most hijackers were Saudi, that Osama claimed credit, and that AQ had achieved similar attacks previously doesn't convince?

soap operas are beloved by people even though they're totally false.

people on this blog have asked me why visual evidence is so important and, for example, I can point to the recent shakeup in the story of evolution! it now appears that an "evolved species" lived at the same time as it's ancestor.

So, I hear your story and it's quite powerful but power and truth are two different things.

Clear?

yes, your viewpoint is clear.

To boldly go...

I can see the resemblance Howard but I'm still trying to figure out who your dad is. ;-)

You think AQ was not responsible for the embassy bombings and the Cole? You think FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who was working on the Cole and found his subject, a sheik, had hosted a couple of 9/11 guys, was lying? That he made up the story of going into the bathroom and throwing up when he heard the news of the WTC attack? When there is a preponderance of interconnecting data supporting the obvious story, why look for mysteries? It only weakens the case against the true incompetence exhibited by the administration. You get ignored as the tinfoil-hat crowd.

Want to elucidate on that evolution story? It's a stretch.

So the most protected building in the world should show what its' security cameras cover to satisfy a few conspiracy addicts?

They would have to be really incompetent to release that....

But I forgot -- this isn't about the real world, is it?

Perhaps Congress could insist that the agencies stop trying to predict the future solely on the basis of perceived threat and instead act on the basis of capability.

Require that the number of trained anaylyst and language speakers be in rough proportion to the economies and populations of the countries involved.

As far as I can tell not even enough crash courses in Arabic have been required.

I'm a little amused that the Pentagon is the "most protected building in the world." It wasn't that long ago that the Metrobus lanes under the building were closed, when people realized that letting a potential bus bomb under your building might not be a good idea. Nevertheless, the Pentagon remains one of the major transportation hubs in the Washington DC metro area (almost all of the Pentagon is in Arlington, VA, but a little piece of reclaimed land is officially in DC).

It may be amusing to compare its level of protection with a few other buildings in the DC metro area:

1. National Reconnaissance Office (Chantilly, VA)


2. Central Intelligence Agency headquarters (Langley, VA), to say nothing of safehouses


3. Mars, Incorporated headquarters (McLean, VA)


4. National Security Agency Operations Building (Ft. George G. Meade, MD)


5. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Washington, DC

1. Any building at Area 51, NV


2. US Strategic Command HQ, Offutt AFB, NE


3. Pantex Plant, Amarillo, TX

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

there's a bit of truth in everything, for sure. when you find two beings that lived at the same time while the books claim that they lived at different times, that's a shakeup, yes.

it reminds people how much speculation and crap is printed and understood as fact.

To boldly go...