- The CIA leaked that infamous Aug. 6 memo mentioning a
possible terrorist hijacking to throw the blame on President Bush and cover
up its own incompetence, suggests the New Republic.
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- The left-leaning but respected magazine notes the meaningless
vagueness of the memo. "The real scandal, in other words, isn't Bush's
non-reaction to the CIA memo. It is the memo itself - which testifies powerfully
to the shoddy nature of the CIA's pre-9/11 anti-terrorism work," Richard
Miniter writes.
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- "But rather than focusing on CIA incompetence, the
media and congressional Democrats have used the memo to push the juicier
story of White House inaction. Which may be just what the people who leaked
the memo wanted - because the people who leaked it may be from the CIA
itself."
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- In an appearance Friday morning on Fox News Channel,
Miniter used stronger language than that. He indicated that though there
was no absolute proof of the CIA's guilt in leaking the memo to CBS (the
most anti-Bush of the non-cable networks), it was all but certain.
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- Asked why CIA Director George Tenet would do such a thing
to the president, Miniter responded that Tenet was a Washington insider
concerned mainly with protecting himself and diverting attention from the
failures of his own agency.
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- Don't forget, of course, that Tenet is a leftover from
Bill Clinton.
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- The article in the June 3 issue of New Republic details
the CIA's motive for back-stabbing Bush:
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- "The Agency has been defensive about its pre-9/11
failures from the start; and in recent months the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees' investigation into the intelligence failures preceding the
attacks has made it much more so. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman
Richard Shelby is on record as calling for CIA Director George Tenet's
resignation, and last month the committee forced Tenet's longtime associate,
L. Britt Snider, to resign as the committee's staff director.
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- 'CIA Is Obstructing'
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- "In response, the CIA is obstructing the investigation
as much as it dares. It has barred its employees from giving committee
staff its business cards, according to The Washington Post. And - using
a classic bureaucratic stalling tactic that won't win any friends on Capitol
Hill - Langley has refused to turn over documents it got from the FBI and
other agencies without those agencies' approval.
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- "Recently, when the Agency learned that some Senate
Intelligence Committee staffers faulted the CIA for failing to grasp the
significance of an April 2001 meeting in Prague between 9/11 ringleader
Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed al-Ani, the CIA suggested
that the meeting probably never occurred. (Had they grasped its significance,
they might have investigated Atta and found that he was in the United States.)
Unfortunately for Langley, Czech intelligence is standing by its story,
and a Czech member of parliament briefed by that nation's intelligence
service believes airport security cameras caught the meeting.
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- "Add to this the committee's apparent interest in
the CIA's long-standing inability to hire Arabic-, Turkic-, and other language
specialists; its legendary refusal to share information with other parts
of the government; and the fact that it analyzes less than 10 percent of
the data that its costly satellites collect, and you have an investigation
that frightens Langley to death," Miniter writes.
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- In addition to motive, the agency had opportunity. "Only
Tenet and a handful of top CIA officials would have had access to the August
6 memo. Which suggests that either they leaked it, or they allowed it to
fall into the hands of someone who did."
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- Miniter, a senior fellow at the Brussels think tank Center
for the New Europe, goes on to elaborate why it is unlikely the FBI or
congressional Democrats leaked the memo.
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- He concludes that "you can bet that a White House
with a deep hatred of leaks has already put out the bloodhounds to find
the source of this one. The CIA's effort to deflect the political heat,
in other words, may end up backfiring. And sometime later this year, don't
be surprised if Tenet quietly announces that he is leaving his post to
'spend more time with his family.' If he does, the August 6 memo will have
finally done some good after all."
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- http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/5/31/203026
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