New Investigation

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Sunday August 26, 2007
POLITICAL ESSAYS
New Investigation
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I've been closely reading the redacted Executive Summary of
the OIG Report on CIA Accountability With Respect to the
9/11 Attacks.  Not the report in full, mind you, but only
the edited version of the first section of the report. The
rest of the report is still top secret.  The full report's
dated June 2005.
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OIG = CIA's Office of Inspector General.
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The Senate/House intelligence committees that served up the
9/11 Joint Inquiry Report asked the OIG to make "Whatever
additional investigations were nessary" to find out which
among the CIA's employees "should be held accountable for
failure to perform" satisfactorily before 9/11.
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The OIG therefore assembled an Accountability Review Team.
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The main conclusion of the Team: "Concerning certain issues
...the Agency and its officers did not discharge their re-
sponsibilities in a satisfactory manner."
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Not just some of its employees, but the Agency itself did
not perform as expected!
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To clarify:
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"The Team found no instance in which an employee violated
the law, and none of the errors discussed herein involves
misconduct."
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Rather, the Team focused on "areas where individuals did not
...act 'in accordance with a reasonable level of profession-
alism, skill, and diligence,'" as laid down in CIA regs.
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Beyond individuals, however, "The findings of greatest con-
cern are those that identify systemic problems...."
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Systemic?  Not the same as systematic.
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Systemic  problems?  Not chance glictches.  Rather, disorders
affecting the whole body or significant parts of it.
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As the Team put it: "problems where the Agency's programs
or processes did not work as they should have," adding:
"the fact that failures were systemic should not absolve
responsible officials from accountability."
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Well, that's the big picture.  How about specifics?  Here's
eight mentioned in the 19-page Executive Summary.
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1
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"The Team recommends that an Accountability Board review
the performance of [the CIA's] Executive Director, the
Deputy Director of Operations, and the Chief of CTC [the
Counterterrorist Center] during the years prior to 9/11
regarding their management of the Agency's counterterrorism
financial resources, including specifically their redirec-
tion of funds from counterterrism programs to other priori-
ties."
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2
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"The Team recommends that an Accountability Board review
the performance of the [deleted] and [deleted] for failure
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to provide proper oversight and guidance to their officers;
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to coordinate effectively with other units;
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and to allocate the workload to ensure that KSM [Khalid
Shaykh Muhammed] was being covered appropriately."
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3
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"The Team also recommends that an Accountability Board
review the performance of the Chief of CTC for failure to
ensure that CTC units worked in a coordinated, effective
manner against KSM."
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4
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"...the Team recommends that an Accountability Board review
the performance of the [deleted] for failure to produce any
[deleted] coverage of Khalid Shaykh Muhammed from 1997 to
2001."
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5
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"The Review Team recommends that an Accountability Board re-
view the performance of the two Chiefs of CTC concerning
their leadership and management oversight of the watchlisting
program."
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6
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"The Team recommends that an Accountability Board review the
performance of [deleted] for failing to ensure that someone
in the [Usama bin Laden virtual] Station informed the FBI
and took appropriate operational action regarding [Nawaf]
al-Hazmi in March 2000.
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In addition, the Team recommends that the Accountability
Board assess the performance of the latter three managers
[in deleted above] for failing to ensure prompt action rele-
vant to al-Hazmi and [Khalid] al-Mindhar during several
later opportunities between March 2000 and August 2001."
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7
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"The Team recommends that an Accountability Board review
the performance of the two chiefs of CTC during the years
before 9/11 concerning their oversight of the Center's
practices in management of the detailee program."
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Detailee?  Someone assigned by their reguler unit to tem-
porary duty at another unit.
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Detailee program?  "CTC and UBL Station had on their ros-
ters detailees from many different agencies": FBI, NSA,
FAA, State Department, etc.
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8
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"The Team recommends that an Accountability Board review
the performance of the Chiefs of the CTC for their failure
to detail officers to NSA on a consistent, full-time basis
to exploit this material [raw SIGINT (signals intelligence)
transcripts] in the years before 9/11."
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OIG recommended the CIA Director set up an Accountability
Board "made up of individuals who are not employees of the
Agency...."  Oh, dear!
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So Cheney sent in Porter Goss to take Tenet's place.
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Under the August 22d headline "CIA Missed Chances to Tackle
al-Qaida," AP reports:
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"In October 2005, Goss rejected the recommendation for the
inquiry boards."
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Among Cheney's worries: Under pressure, one of the employees
being investigated might break and spill the beans about al-
Qaeda being nothing more than an invention to rile up the
homeland.
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After *one part* of the 2005 OIG report was finally released,
a chorus of CIA (Hayden) and ex-CIA (Tenet, Scheuer) tried to
turn that one part upside-down and inside-out.
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Scheuer?  He was chief of the UBL virtual station at the CTC.
He writes in the August 24th Washington Times:  "Because of
the [one part of the OIG] report, the CIA now stands as not
only the U.S. government's most successful counterterrorism
entity, but also its most honest."  Really!
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If anything's wrong, he writes, it's the fault of "Tenet and
his team" --"that gang of fools."
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Tenet?
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In his August 21st statement on that one part of the OIG re-
port, he writes of developing "innovative technologies to deal
with an illusive target."  He wished to say: an elusive, hard-
to-track target; but he knew al-Qaeda is an illusion invented
to make fools of the homelanders.  So out popped "illusive"
without his being aware of his *confession.*
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Hayden?  He frankly confesses he didn't want even one part of
the OIG report to get out.
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No one, so far as I know, has made the simplest demand:
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PUBLICATION OF *ALL* OF THE FULL REPORT
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OIG:
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OIG1
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or
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OIG2
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AP:
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AP
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Scheuer:
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Sch
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Tenet:
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Ten
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Hayden:
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Hay
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"Factionalism At The Top" essays:
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Essay1
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Essay2
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Essay3
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"Timing Treason" essay:
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Essay4
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