CIA SUPPRESSES REPORT ON 9/11

Robert Scheer outs the CIA suppression of its own investigation of the events of 9/11 until after the election.

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."
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In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met with Goss privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general's report. "Three thousand people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held accountable," 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.

The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, "fuels the perception that no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that we don't have [the report]; it not only disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people."

The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to gain release of the report have, said the intelligence source, "led the management of the CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA's leadership will have won and the nation will have lost."

This reminds me of the "good ole days" of CIA excesses, abuses and excuses within this country and around the world: Allende, infiltration of domestic student movements in the '60s and '70s, Iran-Contra, political assassinations, et al. I have great sympathy and respect for patriots such as Ray McGovern and the other VIP's (Veteran Intelligence Professionals) speaking the truth from the early days of the Bush administration, for those intelligence officials who leaked the truth about the BushCo pressure to produce "evidence" that would further their war goals, and for the intelligence professional who spoke to Scheer and revealed this latest outrage. But let's not forget that the intelligence agencies are also rife with right-wing partisans who abuse their secrecy and the power it lends them to forward their radical agendas, as well as bureaucrats who blow with the prevailing wind -- and the wind for at least the past four years has borne the stench of petroleum.

The SCLM should be making a very big deal about this "delayed" report. But then, one could say that about so MANY issues.