| Date: | Tuesday June 10, @03:36AM |
|---|---|
| Author: | ewing2001 |
| Topic: | News |
| from the dept. | |
New article on VIPS about George Tenet
(Note: Please always check out our 911 Archive )
WASHINGTON -- President Bush "unquestionably" has confidence in CIA Director
"...Fleischer was asked during the daily White House briefing whether Bush still had "faith and confidence" in Tenet, a former intelligence officer and staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee who was named to the top post by Clinton in 1997 and confirmed by the GOP-led Senate. "Unquestionably," Fleischer replied without elaboration.
Separately, Raymond McGovern, a retired 27-year CIA veteran who serves in the leadership of Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, said some retired intelligence officers see the Bush administration positioning Tenet as the fall guy for allegedly flawed intelligence. "The smart money says he's being set up," said McGovern in an interview.
...U.S. occupation forces in Iraq have yet to find concrete evidence of the suspected chemical and biological weapons or the nuclear weapons materials alleged by Bush before the war as the cornerstone of his justification for cutting off U.N. weapons inspections and launching a U.S. invasion of the oil rich nation.
Bush continued to urge patience, telling a Cabinet meeting Monday that U.S. intelligence had been reporting for a decade that Iraq had programs to produce weapons of mass destruction. "I am absolutely convinced that with time, we'll find out they did have a weapons program," said Bush.
Bush also defended pre-war claims that the al-Qaida terrorist network had forged ties with Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Citing a New York Times report that quoted two high level al-Qaida detainees saying terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden had rejected ties with Hussein, Bush declared: "I guess the people that wrote that article forgot about al-Zarqawi's network inside of Baghdad that ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen named Foley." Bush was referring to Abu Musab Zarqawi, an alleged al-Qaida operative in Iraq who U.S. officials blame for arranging the October 2002 murder of Laurence Foley, a U.S. diplomat in Jordan.
...Bush's spokesman denied there had been a breakdown in intelligence. The absence of evidence does not suggest a "breakdown" of intelligence but merely the "need for patience" as 1,400 specialized personnel move into Iraq to search sites, interview former Iraqi weapons scientists and translate seized documents, Fleischer said. "This will take time, it will be done thoroughly, it will be done deliberately, and it will ultimately lead to the truth, and the truth, we fully expect, will match the statements you've heard," Fleischer said.
Fleischer said it would be "appropriate" for Congress to examine the intelligence that was available on Iraq before the war began, but said "there is nothing new here for members of Congress" who have been briefed all along on U.S. intelligence about the Iraqi threat.
Tenet accompanied Secretary of State Colin Powell to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 to lend his symbolic support to the Bush administration's most definitive presentation of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Yet one of Powell's central allegations -- that Iraq secretly tried to buy uranium from the west African nation of Niger to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program -- turned out to be based on a forged document -- a forgery known to lower level intelligence officials but not to the top echelon. Bush used the allegation of Iraq's purchase of uranium in Niger in his State of the Union address earlier this year. McGovern, the retired intelligence analyst, said he doubted the Bush administration would jettison Tenet. The CIA chief remains "too useful where he is," McGovern said. Tenet, who has close ties with both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, has been willing to cooperate with Bush administration efforts to portray suspected Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs as an imminent threat to the United States justifying military action, McGovern said. Sacking Tenet would risk the CIA chief telling "all he knows" about pre-Sept. 11 CIA warnings on al-Qaida that went unheeded by the White House, McGovern added.
RAY MCGOVERN
No one wants to believe that the attacks of Sept. 11 could have been prevented, but we do a disservice to our country if we stay in denial. No one wants to believe that President Bush had more forewarning than he acknowledges, but there is strong circumstantial evidence that he did.
Reviewing that evidence on May 26, The Washington Post's ombudsman, Michael Getler, alluded to one very telling sign from a conversation between CIA Director George Tenet and former U.S. Sen. David Boren over breakfast on Sept. 11. When an aide rushed up to tell Tenet of the attacks, Tenet's immediate reaction was: ``This has bin Laden all over it. . . . I wonder if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training?''
Getler notes that the reference is to Zacarias Moussaoui, the ''20th hijacker,'' who had been taken into custody in Minnesota four weeks before, after attracting suspicion at a flight school there.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the FBI did not tell the White House about Moussaoui until after Sept. 11.
But it is a safe bet that the CIA's Tenet did. Even before learning about Moussaoui,Tenet's President's Daily Brief of Aug. 6 bore the title ''Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.'' When analysts working in Tenet's Counterterrorist Center were warned about Moussaoui a few weeks before Sept. 11, it is inconceivable that they would not have told Tenet. He is, by law, ''the principal advisor to the president for intelligence matters related to national security,'' and is entitled to ``all intelligence related to the national security, which is collected by any department, agency or other entity of the United States.''
Tenet's people learned about Moussaoui in a back-door message from the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis enlisting the CIA's help in obtaining information on Moussaoui from French intelligence. The French promptly pointed out Moussaoui's affiliations with radical fundamentalist groups and Osama bin Laden. (The French service had been keeping close tabs on the likes of Moussaoui, having foiled a plan by Algerian terrorists to crash an airplane into the Eiffel Tower in 1994.)
American officials have acknowledged that they learned in 1996 that a pilot in bin Laden's network, Abdul Hakim Murad, had planned to use the training that he received at U.S. flight schools to carry out a suicide attack on the CIA headquarters or another large federal building in the Washington area.
Murad had been captured in the Philippines and was convicted in New York on charges of trying to blow up American jumbo jets over the Pacific. His confession formed the basis for a broader analysis prepared for the CIA in 1999 warning that bin Laden terrorists could hijack a jet and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.
On May 29, FBI Director Robert Mueller revealed that a May 1998 field report warned that the large number of Middle Eastern men in flight training in Oklahoma ''may be related to planned terrorist activity.'' Moussaoui did his flight training in Oklahoma.
On May 23, John Cooley reported in The Christian Science Monitor that, in the weeks before Sept. 11, Jordanian intelligence had warned U.S. counterparts that bin Laden terrorists were planning a major attack using aircraft inside the continental United States. The Jordanians had intercepted a crucial al Qaeda message that dubbed the operation ''the big wedding,'' but it did not identify the timing or the precise targets.
As warnings of a major terrorist operation against the United States poured in last summer, we know that George Tenet kept warning everyone who would listen. It seems to me certain that he would have kept the vacationing president up to date, including the fresh information on Moussaoui.
And that's probably why Tenet didn't get fired after Sept. 11. Instead, President Bush made an unusual appearance at CIA headquarters on Sept. 26, put his arm around Tenet and said:
``This is my report to the American people. We have the best intelligence possible, thanks to the men and women of the CIA.''
If only he had acted on it.
Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1964 to 1990, regularly reported to the vice president and senior policy-makers on the President's Daily Brief from 1981-85. He now is co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach ministry in Washington, D.C.
Moussaouis address, 209 Waldsack (Noman, Oklahoma), is only 3 mins away from the University of Boren.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity: A Memo to Bush on ...
... Memo For: President Bush. Re: War on Iraq. by Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity. Secretary Powell's presentation at the UN today requires context. ...
www.counterpunch.org/vips02082003.html - 26k - Cached - Similar pages
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity : Intelligence ...
... Intelligence Fiasco. By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. ... FROM:
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. SUBJECT: Intelligence Fiasco. ...
www.counterpunch.org/vips05012003.html - 59k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.counterpunch.org ]
CIA Veterans Speak Out
... MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity. ... Steering Group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. ...
www.commondreams.org/views03/0207-04.htm - 17k - Cached - Similar pages
We are Perplexed at the US Refusal to Permit the Return of UN ...
... by the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. May
19, 2003. ... Steering Group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. ...
www.commondreams.org/views03/0519-02.htm - 17k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.commondreams.org ]
WebActive: Pacifica's Peacewatch
... Today Peacewatch talked with Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran and a member of
the steering committee of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity or VIPS ...
www.webactive.com/pacifica/peacewatch/ peace20030603.html - 11k - Cached - Similar pages
WebActive: Pacifica's Peacewatch
... David MacMicheal is with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity or VIPS -
- -it's a group made up of former spies for the CIA and FBI who say the Bush ...
www.webactive.com/pacifica/peacewatch/ peace20030505.html - 12k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.webactive.com ]
No 1, 2003
... MEMORANDUM FOR: The President. FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity. Secretary Powell's presentation at the UN today requires context. ...
www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/20030113.php - 23k - Cached - Similar pages
AlterNet: Memo to the President
... rationale for war. MEMORANDUM TO: President George W. Bush FROM: Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Mr. President: Secretary ...
www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15127 - 25k - Cached - Similar pages
truthout - Why is US Refusing to Allow UN Inspectors into Iraq?
... Perplexed at the US Refusal to Permit the Return of UN Inspectors to Iraq By the
Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Common Dreams ...
truthout.org/docs_03/052103H.shtml - 16k - Cached - Similar pages
We Are Perplexed at the US Refusal to Permit the Return of UN ...
by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Dissident Voice. May 20, 2003.
May 19, 2003. ... Steering Group. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. ...
www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles5/ VIPS_UN-Inspectors.htm - 33k - Cached - Similar pages
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies.
printed from Ex-CIA : Sacking Tenet a risk for telling "all he knows" about pre-911 warnings on 2004-05-31 07:23:11