The Spy Factory details NSA's failure to share pre 9/11 intel and more.

CaliCoast · Feb 13, 2009

We all know that prior to Sept. 11, 2001, US intelligence agencies failed to "share" intelligence data with other government LEO agencies such as the CIA and FBI. Recently Nova aired an episode called, "The Spy Factory", which is an extension of James Banford's book, The Shadow Factory, and has shed new light into what exactly the NSA failed to share and how it may have helped law enforcement investigations prior to Sept. 11.

As some of you know the NSA was monitoring Osama bin Laden's satellite phone for many years as he communicated from Afghanistan to his telecommunications headquarters in Yemen. From monitoring his phone conversations, the NSA was able to pinpoint exactly who he was talking to. Now who do you think would be interested in what bin Laden was saying? The CIA of course. Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris, was the CIA's top agent at the newly formed bin Laden unit aka Alec Station. Now the NSA refused to give the CIA and Scheuer the transcripts of bin Laden's phone conversations since it is their policy to never share raw data. This is just one example.

What good is it if we can intercept actionable intelligence but do nothing about it or share it? The NSA have no arresting/authority powers like the FBI does.

I highly encourage any of you interested to watch the documentary as it goes into much more detail than this single post can.

If you do watch it, there's an interesting section that details how the NSA was tracking a Sept. 11 hijacker as he entered the US, his movements withing the US, his banking records and telephone conversations with bin Laden but failed to alert the FBI. There were even two CIA agents from Alec Station who wanted to alert the FBI but were prevented from doing so for bureaucratic reasons.

pineapple skunk · Feb 13, 2009

obama to the rescue

o wait

aaronman · Feb 13, 2009

And why was all this ignored in the 9/11 investigation?

To Obama: Reopen 9/11 Investigation

CaliCoast · Feb 13, 2009

aaronman said:

And why was all this ignored in the 9/11 investigation?

To Obama: Reopen 9/11 Investigation
Click to expand...

It's incredible to me that the 9/11 commission failed to investigate many issues and yet I'll hear people refer to the 9/11 Report as gospel. If you take a look at the lineup of the commission I guess it's actually not that hard to believe. Michael Scheuer does make a comment on how the 9/11 commission never investigated this subject as well.

aaronman · Feb 13, 2009

CaliCoast said:

It's incredible to me that the 9/11 commission failed to investigate many issues
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It was even admittedly 'set up to fail'. Given an initial budget of only $3 million, when the Clinton sex scandal received over $40 million.

Solomon: And you know, when you.. You've spoken with many of the witnesses, your Commission heard testimony from all sorts of different people. So when you hear these kind of ongoing allegations that there was conflicting reports of the witnesses; that the FBI confiscated tapes from the gas station across the road, that supposedly saw it within a day of it; that some of those witnesses disappeared.. what do you make of those kind of...

Hamilton: I don’t believe for a minute that we got everything right. We wrote a first draft of history.

We wrote it under a lot of time pressure, and we sorted through the evidence as best we could.

Now, it would be really rather remarkable if we got everything right. So far, of the things that have been brought up challenging the report, to my knowledge, we have more credibility than the challenger. But I would not for a moment want to suggest that that’s always true, either in the past or in the future. People will be investigating 9/11 for the next hundred years in this country, and they’re going to find out some things that we missed here.

So I don’t automatically reject all the evidence you cite. It may be we missed it, it may be we ignored it when we shouldn’t have - I don’t think we did, but it's possible.

Solomon: You write.. the first chapter of the book is 'the Commission was set up to fail.' - my goodness, for the critics - who suggest that it was indeed set up to fail as some kind of obfuscation - you certainly dangled a juicy piece of bait out there in the river. Why do you think you were set up to fail?

Hamilton: Well, for a number of reasons: Tom Kean and I were substitutes - Henry Kissinger and George Mitchell were the first choices; we got started late; we had a very short time frame - indeed, we had to get it extended; we did not have enough money - 3 million dollars to conduct an extensive investigation. We needed more, we got more, but it took us a while to get it.

We had a lot of skeptics out there, who really did not want the Commission formed. Politicians don’t like somebody looking back to see if they made a mistake.

The Commission had to report right, just a few days before the Democratic National Convention met, in other words, right in the middle of a political campaign. We had a lot of people strongly opposed to what we did. We had a lot of trouble getting access to documents and to people. We knew the history of commissions; the history of commissions were they.. nobody paid much attention to 'em.

So there were all kinds of reasons we thought we were set up to fail. We decided that if we were going to have any success, we had to have a unanimous report, otherwise the Commission report would simply be filed.

Solomon: I guess the question is, you know, if forty odd million dollars were spent investigating President Bill Clinton’s sexual infidelities, why did the American people and the world have to wait 441 days for a commission that was originally budgeted for 3 million dollars and given barely a year, and as you write in the book and document so well, was... had to fight to get access to even use its subpoena power very judiciously, for fear that there'd be a backlash against the Commission. I mean, an event as cataclysmic as 9/11, it begs the question: why was the administration so unwilling to budget this thing, and then Congress so unwilling to give money and let you guys go whole hog to do more?

Hamilton: (Laughs) I think basically it’s because they were afraid we were going to hang somebody, that we would point the finger, right in the middle of a presidential campaign - 'Mr. Bush, this was your fault' - or even Mr. Clinton. President Clinton was wary about this report too.

Now I want to say, eventurally both presidents cooperated, but it took a while. And it’s not too unusual for me to understand that they were skeptical. A commission that is created does not have automatic credibility - we had to work at that, we had to produce a lot of reports which were recognized, fortunately, to be professionally done, seriously done - and not out to hang anybody.

Click to expand...

Interview with co-chair 9/11 Investigation commissioner

maxrule · Feb 13, 2009

aaronman said:

And why was all this ignored in the 9/11 investigation?

To Obama: Reopen 9/11 Investigation
Click to expand...

Look no further than Jamie Gorelick.

9/11 Commission

According to Gorelick's op-ed letter in the Washington Post she states that: "At last week's hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft, facing criticism, asserted that 'the single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents' and that I built that wall through a March 1995 memo." See original memo: .

However, the report from the 9/11 Commission, co-authored by Gorelick, asserts that the 'wall' limiting the ability of federal agencies to cooperate had existed since the 80's and is in fact not one singular wall but a series of restrictions passed over the course of over twenty years. All members of the 9/11 Commission agreed that Gorelick played no significant role in damaging information sharing on terrorist activities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Gorelick
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Jamie Gorelick: My 'Wall' Still in Place

Former 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick is giving the Bush administration a bad report card for failing to implement post 9/11 counterterrorism reforms.

"I think we are less safe than we were 18 months ago," she told ABC's "Good Morning America." "We have a tremendous agenda. And we have just not been about doing what we need to make us safe."

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/6/91822.shtml
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The Spy Factory details NSA's failure to share pre 9/11 intel and more.

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The Spy Factory details NSA's failure to share pre 9/11 intel and more.

CaliCoast Med User

pineapple skunk 1989

aaronman n'wah

CaliCoast Med User

aaronman n'wah

maxrule keeper of the faith

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