JJB Blog

http://www
.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041101&s=scheer1019

The Bush Administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the ele
ction, 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 d
oing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed,” an i
ntelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that “the report i
s potentially very embarrassing for the Administration, because it makes it loo
k like they weren’t interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people i
n the government responsible afterward.”

When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) [I don't know what
Venice is referring to. Harmon is a US representative from California's 36th di
strict -JJB], ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, sa
id she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter fourteen d
ays ago asking for it to be delivered. “We believe that the CIA has been told n
ot to distribute the report,” she said. “We are very concerned.”

[snip]

By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a
report is national security. Yet neither [CIA Director Porter] Goss, nor [CIA
Deputy Director John] McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanatio
n for not delivering the report to Congress.

“It surely does not involve issues of national security,” said the intelligence
official.

“The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the ele
ction,” the official continued. “No previous director of CIA has ever tried to
stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this cas
e a report requested by Congress.”

[snip]

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