Re: [iwar] Some thoughts on the latest so-called scandal

From: e.r. (fastflyer28@yahoo.com)
Date: 2002-05-17 19:59:41


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Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 19:59:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: [iwar] Some thoughts on the latest so-called scandal
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 The question is were the I&W folks even listened to? I am also quite sure in burn bags, or now locked up in TSSCI documents is how the constant lack-on a nearly childish level- of the FBI and CIA to share info, lest talk it over occured.  The real failures are in the hands of the man who does not like to read breifing books and had made it painfully clear to his staff.  We are now all going to bed by 9pm in the halls of power. As harru Truman one said, "the buck stops on his desk and he gets paid to make the impossible decisions.  I hardly eat dinner before ten. And after JR's. recent trip to both the Gulf and Middle East, oddly enought Prince Abdullah flew to Texas-not Crawford.  Clinton was staying in a nice hotel  in Texas to rase funds ,and they talked almost all night long about how to de-escalate the tension in the region.  That is a biggie the media missed.  They must have wanted to go to bed early?
  Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> wrote: I find it interesting that in their effort to create controversy, the
media seems to miss the point - seemingly every time.  The latest Bush
scandal is a prime example.  Here's my take:

1) Nobody came up to GW on his ranch last August and told him that the
Al Quada was planning to run two jumbo jets into the WTC and one into
the Pentagon on 9/11.  If they would have, he would have told someone to
stop it from happening.

2) Intelligence almost never produces that sort of information.  It
produces lots of tidbits that, when put together and examined in
context, produce a picture - like an oil painting, not like a photograph.

3) It is the role of intelligence analysts to assemble the picture and
present it to decision makers and the role of those decision-makers to
take action.  For example:

When the intel report in the FBI about Al Quada folks preparing to run
planes into buildings showed up, it should have triggered an alert of
some sort to all FBI and CIA agents on related efforts so they would be
aware of the potential issues.  This would have come along with the
other 50 such alerts on that day.  Then, when the guy was arrested
(Massoui?), something should have clicked in one of the minds of the
involved agents.  They should have gone back and found the alert,
correlated it, and produced a warning indicating that similar patterns
should be sought throughout the US.  This alert should have gone to
several agencies - perhaps one of 5 that day, maybe fewer.  Systematic
searches should have been done with computer databases and on-the-ground
personnel, producing several other correlated events.  This should have
generated a much more serious warning calling for far harsher action,
like surveillance, covert searches, computer searches, wire taps, etc.

4) The breakdown came in the system of connecting the dots, from the top
of the administration to the bottom, lots of folks should have been
doing their job better. 

5) Blame - in my view - always accrues to the people in charge at the
time of the events.  I know it is unfair, but that's how I see it.  So
Clinton was responsible for the attacks during his administration, and
the economic boom, and the excesses, and so forth - Bush is responsible
for what's happening today.  If the intel community got weakened under
Clinton - perhaps so perhaps not - it is irrelevant.  When Bush took
over, he failed to recognize and compensate for it, so it's his fault.

Everyone is forgetting that things were going sour in the spring and
summer of 2001 because of the weakness of US foreign policy.  Now we
learn that Bush was preparing to attack Afghanistan anyway - to go after
bin Laden, etc.  Someone someday will start to ask whether the previous
year's efforts to abandon the leadership role of the US in the Middle
East tended to encourage or discourage this attack, and whether there
were lots of other dots not properly connected. 

At any rate, that's how I see it - opposing views welcomed.

FC
--This communication is confidential to the parties it is intended to serve--
Fred Cohen            Fred Cohen & Associates.........tel/fax:925-454-0171
fc@all.net            The University of New Haven.....http://www.unhca.com/
http://all.net/            Sandia National Laboratories....tel:925-294-2087


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