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Bob Baer's Pertinent Question
In a Time Magazine article TPMuckraker helpfully links us to, Bob Baer makes many relevant points, but among these is one pertinent question:
This leads to the question of what the CIA saw in Blackwater that the public still has not.
I think I can answer that question: Porter Goss hired them.
The journalists at CJR, in turn, point us to this WaPo story that includes some interesting material:
"In September, you are going to have a hurricane coming through Washington that is aimed right at the intelligence community," warned Porter J. Goss, the CIA's director from September 2004 to May 2006. He noted that a Justice Department inquiry is also pending into whether laws were broken when CIA officers destroyed videotapes of the harsh interrogations....
Goss said he had not been fully briefed on the details of the CIA activities in question, many of which are classified, so he could not confirm the reported involvement of Blackwater, now known as Xe Services LLC. A spokeswoman for the firm did not return a phone call Thursday, but two former intelligence officers familiar with the effort said the company had received millions of dollars for helping train and equip teams to undertake the killings.
Goss alluded to that effort, stating that "my standing orders were 'field-forward' mission."
"We wanted to catch the people who brought down the trade centers and killed innocent people and wanted to kill more," he said. "And we wanted to have every possible legal means at our disposal that we could to deal with them. That was certainly in my vision statement, and that is the briefing that was given to members of Congress" during his tenure.
"In my view, we should constantly be looking at all our options in terms of national security," Goss said. "Suppose you got a high-value guy, a terrorist, part of al-Qaeda, a radical fundamentalist trained to kill innocent people, who you cannot talk down from the tree. What happens when you actually find that guy? Do you send the FBI? That's probably not the best option for the tribal areas" in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
One motive the CIA might have for hiring contractors may be to add personnel without officially enlarging its bureaucracy, Goss said. "But it's also the case that there are some folks at retirement age who still feel like they have some horsepower left, so they go off into a consulting business and make themselves available."
A former intelligence official familiar with the effort said the decision to outsource a substantial portion of the program stemmed partly from the agency's close ties to Blackwater, which hired several of the agency's top executives, including former CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black and former deputy director for operations Robert Richer.
Well, Goss is invoking the GOP's standard excuses: Outsource our most vital secrets to mercenaries in order to keep down the "bureaucracy" (well, maybe Goss didn't realize that as a bureaucrat, he should have been outsourced too- but Republicans' distaste for bureaucracy and its attendant ossifications and taxpayer burden is curiously at odds with this fascinating detail regarding Goss' previous job before becoming CIA bureaucrat-in-chief-
Goss had planned to retire from Congress at the end of his last term, but Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney asked him to remain. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R- Illinois, arranged for a change in House rules that limit committee service to allow Goss to stay on the committee and to chair it.).
Hmmm. Goss' connections go to the very top. Seems like he really, really had to be on that House Intelligence Committee, and was willing to be persuaded- admittedly, by high-powered persuaders- to overcome his own scruples about term limits.
His resume is an illustrious one: here are two links to get you started.
There really is no end to his story, once you start delving into it.
This leads to the question of what the CIA saw in Blackwater that the public still has not.
I think I can answer that question: Porter Goss hired them.
The journalists at CJR, in turn, point us to this WaPo story that includes some interesting material:
"In September, you are going to have a hurricane coming through Washington that is aimed right at the intelligence community," warned Porter J. Goss, the CIA's director from September 2004 to May 2006. He noted that a Justice Department inquiry is also pending into whether laws were broken when CIA officers destroyed videotapes of the harsh interrogations....
Goss said he had not been fully briefed on the details of the CIA activities in question, many of which are classified, so he could not confirm the reported involvement of Blackwater, now known as Xe Services LLC. A spokeswoman for the firm did not return a phone call Thursday, but two former intelligence officers familiar with the effort said the company had received millions of dollars for helping train and equip teams to undertake the killings.
Goss alluded to that effort, stating that "my standing orders were 'field-forward' mission."
"We wanted to catch the people who brought down the trade centers and killed innocent people and wanted to kill more," he said. "And we wanted to have every possible legal means at our disposal that we could to deal with them. That was certainly in my vision statement, and that is the briefing that was given to members of Congress" during his tenure.
"In my view, we should constantly be looking at all our options in terms of national security," Goss said. "Suppose you got a high-value guy, a terrorist, part of al-Qaeda, a radical fundamentalist trained to kill innocent people, who you cannot talk down from the tree. What happens when you actually find that guy? Do you send the FBI? That's probably not the best option for the tribal areas" in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
One motive the CIA might have for hiring contractors may be to add personnel without officially enlarging its bureaucracy, Goss said. "But it's also the case that there are some folks at retirement age who still feel like they have some horsepower left, so they go off into a consulting business and make themselves available."
A former intelligence official familiar with the effort said the decision to outsource a substantial portion of the program stemmed partly from the agency's close ties to Blackwater, which hired several of the agency's top executives, including former CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black and former deputy director for operations Robert Richer.
Well, Goss is invoking the GOP's standard excuses: Outsource our most vital secrets to mercenaries in order to keep down the "bureaucracy" (well, maybe Goss didn't realize that as a bureaucrat, he should have been outsourced too- but Republicans' distaste for bureaucracy and its attendant ossifications and taxpayer burden is curiously at odds with this fascinating detail regarding Goss' previous job before becoming CIA bureaucrat-in-chief-
Goss had planned to retire from Congress at the end of his last term, but Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney asked him to remain. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R- Illinois, arranged for a change in House rules that limit committee service to allow Goss to stay on the committee and to chair it.).
Hmmm. Goss' connections go to the very top. Seems like he really, really had to be on that House Intelligence Committee, and was willing to be persuaded- admittedly, by high-powered persuaders- to overcome his own scruples about term limits.
His resume is an illustrious one: here are two links to get you started.
There really is no end to his story, once you start delving into it.
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Here are some of the "accomplishments" that Goss was responsible for, that made him a linchpin in Congress for Bush, Cheney, and the whole damn GOP obfuscation industry (personified by Dennis Hastert):
"During the years when Mr Goss's committee was entrusted with oversight of America's intelligence community, the CIA failed to predict in 1998 that India would conduct a nuclear test, or that al-Qaida would bomb US embassies in east Africa, US warplanes mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and a small al-Qaida motorboat blew a hole in the US navy destroyer USS Cole. Then came the attack by hijacked aircraft on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in September 2001."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/aug/13/usa.suzannegoldenberg
But the aforementioned worthies personally demanded that stay on as chair of this committee when Goss threatened (?) to retire.
Then he was promoted to DCI.
There was a site, a sort of "criminal wikipedia," that I linked to in a previous blog I wrote about Goss. The abysmal archives here are no help in determining if this "wikipedia" still exists, but it makes for amusing reading, providing it still exists.
August 24, 2009 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
The most pertinent question is not what Goss saw in Blackwater, but what the triumvirs who ruled us for most of this decade, Bush, Cheney, Hastert, saw in Goss.
August 24, 2009 8:13 PM | Reply | Permalink