Her name is Alfreda Frances Bikowsky and, according to independent reporters Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, she is a CIA analyst who is partially responsible for intelligence lapses that led to 9/11. The two reporters recently released a “documentary podcast” called “Who Is Richard Blee?” about the chief of the agency’s bin Laden unit in the immediate run-up to the 9/11 attacks and featuring interviews with former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, former CIA agent Bob Baer, Looming Tower author Lawrence Wright, 9/11 Commission co-chairman Tom Keane, and others. In it, Nowosielski and Duffy make the case that Bikowsky and another CIA agent named Michael Anne Casey deliberately declined to tell the White House and the FBI that Khalid al-Mihdhar, an Al Qaida affiliate they were tracking, had obtained a visa to enter the U.S. in the summer of 2001. Al-Mihdhar was one of the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 77. The CIA lost track of him after he entered the U.S.

Bikowsky was also, according to Nowosielski and Duffy, instrumentally involved in one of the CIA’s most notorious fuck-ups—the kidnapping, drugging, sodomizing, and torture of Khalid El-Masri in 2003 (El-Masri turned out to be the wrong guy, and had nothing to do with terrorism). As the Associated Press’ Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo reported earlier this year, an analyst they described only by her middle name—”Frances”—pressed for El-Masri to be abducted even though some in the agency weren’t convinced he was the terrorist that Frances suspected he was. Instead of being punished or fired for the error, “Frances” was eventually promoted to running the Global Jihad Unit by then-CIA director Michael Hayden. According to Goldman and Apuzzo’s story, “Hayden told colleagues that he gave Frances a pass because he didn’t want to deter initiative within the counterterrorism ranks.”

Nowosielski and Duffy also contend that Bikowsky is the unnamed “particularly overzealous female officer” described in Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side who traveled to personally view Khalid Sheikh Muhammed’s interrogation despite having “no legitimate reason” to be there. Mayer reported that she attended the sessions because “she thought it would be cool”; her supervisors later reprimanded her with the admonition, “It’s not supposed to be entertainment.”

Michael Anne Casey, according Nowosielski and Duffy, is the name of the CIA analyst who sat on information about Al-Mihdhar obtaining a visa in 2001, at one point telling an FBI agent detailed to the agency, “Listen, it’s not an FBI case. It’s not an FBI matter. When we want the FBI to know, we’ll let them know. And you’re not going to say anything.”

The disclosures appear to have been inadvertent. In the “Who Is Rich Blee?” podcast, as well as a transcript of it available online, both Bikowsky and Casey are referred to exclusively as “[Frances]” and “[Michael].” But at some point this week, Nowosielski and Duffy posted on their web site a cache of email correspondence with the CIA’s public affairs office generated while pursuing the story. Among them was an email Nowosielski wrote to an unnamed CIA official last month laying out their argument for revealing Bikowsky and Casey’s names—and revealing that they were able to identify them not through a whistleblower or anonymous leak but “through internet research.” Here it is in full:

From: FF4 Films

Date: Thu, Aug 8, 2011 at 10:00 AM

Subject: CIA Public Affairs

To: (CIA Email Form)

To CIA Public Affairs Media Relations:

We wish to make you aware that we plan to release an investigative podcast on iTunes on Sunday, September 11, and a written piece in Truthout shortly thereafter which will name two of your employees, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky and Michael Anne Casey. Please take appropriate steps to ensure their safety, though our sources tell us both are currently working from CIA headquarters in Langley.

Evidence we have uncovered demonstrates that each failed to follow standard operating procedure on multiple instances with regard to an operation that surveilled two future 9/11 hijackers, one that many we interviewed feel was the single best opportunity to stop those attacks. Some of those failures appear to have been deliberate choices. Both women then failed to tell the full story to and/or ensure the full story was known by subsequent investigations.

Both were analysts, not operatives, before Sept 11th, so the CIA could have chosen to allow them to be named and held to account by subsequent government investigations. Instead, the Agency put them in the cover status, retroactively protecting their identities and allowing them to continue in important terror-related assignments in the field. We understand that Ms. Casey has multiple family members also working in the Agency.

Regarding Ms. Bikowsky specifically, we have learned that she may have misinformed the Congressional investigation on certain details. We have also confirmed that she is the CIA employee described in Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side as having been reprimanded for making herself involved in the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed without officially being assigned to do so. And another source who has read the CIA OIG Report into the Camp Chapman attack says she was named for accountability in that incident as well.

We wish to make clear that no source provided us with these names. We were given descriptions and various background details by multiple sources about two officers inside Alec Station in 1999-2001, one a red-headed thirtysomething supervisor later promoted to Deputy Chief and the other a young staff operations officer. We were then able through internet research to identify likely candidates for the names of these people. During interviews with those who might know, we would describe what Ms. Bikowsky did in this instance or Ms. Casey did in that and ask a question about it. The failure to correct us provided confirmation.

We are officially requesting to interview Ms. Bikowsky and Ms. Casey so that they might set the record straight in detail if we have been given bad information or misinterpreted the often murky facts surrounding these incidents. We are willing to move back our release date in order to include their interviews, though we would need to know that within twenty-four hours.

When you reply, we will send you a transcript of the podcast so that CIA may choose to respond. This response will be included on our web site, mentioned at the end of the podcast, and referenced in the Truthout piece. If you provide new details or explanations that are significant enough, we will re-work the podcast and Truthout write-up to reflect these revelations before release. We can be reached by reply email or at 317-698-xxxx.

Thank you,

Ray Nowosielski

FF4 Films

The reporters also posted the CIA’s reply, which seemed to confirm the identities: “We strongly believe it is irresponsible and a potential violation of criminal law to print the names of two reported undercover CIA officers whom you claim have been involved in the hunt against al Qa’ida.” Nowosielski and Duffy interpreted this as a threat and an attempt to censor their reporting, writing: “The federal law in question was later stated: the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The law has never before been applied to journalists who find information in open-source materials. This possible expansion of precedent fits an ongoing pattern of intimidation and redefining precedent regarding leaks and whistleblowers from the White House.”

Last night the former FBI linguist and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds caught wind of the correspondence and posted Bikowsky’s name on her blog: “Boiling Frogs Post has now confirmed the identity of the CIA analyst at the heart of a notorious failure in the run-up to the September 11th tragedy.” Cryptome’s John Young also published Nowosielski’s letter in full. At this point, Bikowsky and Casey’s identities as CIA analysts are fully disseminated across the internet. A Google search for either name immediately turns up web sites reporting their CIA affiliations. Likewise, a search for “Who is the director of the CIA’s Global Jihad Unit?” returns Bikowsky’s name in the first result.

(Their digital trails are, as one might expect, scant. A “Michael Anne Casey” turns up on LinkedIn as an “Independent Think Tanks Professional” in the Washington, D.C. area. In 2003, someone by that name was nominated as a foreign service officer for the State Department. In 2004, she was listed as a consular officer in Rome by the U.N.’s Committee on World Food Security, of which she was a member. Bikowsky was nominated to the foreign service in 2008.)

Unfortunately for Nowosielski and Duffy, they never intended to post the email containing Bikowsky and Casey’s names. Though they had hoped to publish the identities, the CIA’s threats had successfully intimidated them. Nowosielski wrote to Cryptome’s John Young at some point last night or this morning explaining that the email was posted in error and asking that he remove his copy; Young complied.

Nowosielski told Gawker via email, “We chose to censor the name at the request of CIA. Sibel chose to run the name for her story. We’ve asked that she remove any reference to our web site, where we did in fact censor the names for both the podcast and transcript. The post of the correspondence was an accident, a miscommunication with our webmaster that was quickly corrected. We frankly were scared of the CIA repercussions (regardless of the ethical issues involved here) and decided to censor. Simple as that.”

We contacted the CIA seeking comment about the disclosures, Nowosielki and Duffy’s reporting, and to ask if the agency did in fact threaten them with criminal prosecution if they published the names. Spokesman Preston Golson responded in a statement:

The CIA does not as a rule comment on the names of reported undercover officers.

The Central Intelligence Agency has a very different assessment, as you might expect, on these events, as did the 9/11 Commission. The CIA’s counterterrorism efforts have significantly degraded al Qaeda and produced valuable and timely intelligence, which has allowed the United States and others to take action countless times to save lives and disrupt plots.

Any suggestion that the CIA purposely refused to share critical lead information on the 9/11 plots with FBI is baseless.

Speculation and allegations such as these diminish the hard work and dedication of countless CIA officers who have worked tirelessly against al Qaeda both before and after 9/11-hard work that culminated in the operation that found Bin Ladin.

Golson did not ask us not to publish Bikowsky and Casey’s names.

The Associated Press’ Goldman, when asked if the “Frances” he referred to in his February story with Matt Apuzzo was indeed Bikowsky, referred us to AP spokesman Paul Colford. Colford declined to comment. It’s notable that Goldman, who presumably knows Frances’ identity, posted on Twitter a link to the correspondence while it was up on Nowosielski and Duffy’s site: “Web site reveals names CIA officers involved in 9/11 intelligence failure.” UPDATE: After we published this story, Goldman wrote on Twitter that “Retweeting is not a confirmation of anything.”

We asked Jane Mayer if Bikowsky was the woman she described as having crashed Khalid Sheikh Muhammed’s interrogation. She replied, “I identified everyone I felt was appropriate in my book, and am sorry not to be of more help but need to leave it at that.”

The post Gawker: Chief of CIA’s Global Jihad Unit Revealed Online appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Like FBI agent Ali Soufan and Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer before them, the podcast team, including John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski, are being subjected to intimidation and censorship by government officials over blowing the whistle on the true story surrounding two alleged 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.

The podcast originally scheduled for September 11th release presents a narrative of how three CIA analysts working under Richard Blee, the long unknown former head of CIA’s Bin Laden Station, deliberately misled their colleagues and withheld key intelligence from FBI and the White House regarding the presence of two known Al-Qaeda operatives in the U.S.

Four government investigations into CIA handling of pre-911 intelligence included personal details of the two CIA analysts and their actions. Nowosielski and Duffy deduced the identities of the two as yet unnamed CIA employees from internet research based on details provided from these and other open sources. When the producers used their full names in interviews, interviewees offered no correction. The CIA response provided the final confirmation.

In project updates posted at SecrecyKills.com the producers announced the delay of the podcast and posted background of a complicated case that involves dozens of violations of protocol, intimidation, and incidents of obstruction by the CIA, with the two yet named CIA analysts at the center of many of them.

Author and expert on the subject, Kevin Fenton, documents 35 such incidents between January 2000 and September 11th in his book, Disconnecting the Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed to Happen.

Pulitzer-prize winner Lawrence Wright, interviewed for the podcast, told producers the actions of one of the unnamed CIA analysts still employed at CIA amounts to obstruction of justice in the FBI’s criminal investigation of the deaths of 17 seaman aboard the USS Cole.

The producers are not the first subject to government censorship over this case. Last month The New York Times reported on CIA efforts to censor an autobiography by Ali Soufan, a front-line FBI counter-terrorism special agent. Prior to 9/11, Soufan was interested in Mihdhar and Hazmi because of links to the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. The CIA censored references to a passport photo of Mihdhar the CIA had withheld from Soufan, despite three written requests.

Scott Shane of the New York Times reports today that, “Mr. Soufan accuses C.I.A. officials of deliberately withholding crucial documents and photographs of Qaeda operatives from the F.B.I. before Sept. 11, 2001, despite three written requests, and then later lying about it to the 9/11 Commission.”

Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer, interviewed for the podcast, was himself intimidated, demoted and smeared by the Pentagon after he came forward to the 9/11 Commission with details of how, on three occasions, unnamed DoD officials prevented his Able Danger operation from meeting with the FBI prior the attacks.

In 2000 the Able Danger data-mining program placed Mohammed Atta in a Brooklyn terrorist cell but had also placed Hazmi and Mihdhar in a San Diego cell, the epicenter of intrigue around Alec Station’s Rich Blee, Tom Wilshere and the two as yet unnamed subordinates who themselves repeatedly withheld intelligence from the FBI. Though Shaffer was interviewed by 9/11 Commission’s Director Philip Zelikow and staffer Dieter Snell, the Commission left any mention of Able Danger from its final report.

In the planned podcast, 9/11 Commission Chair Tom Kean is asked about a scant footnote to Chapter 6 of the 9/11 Report referring to an intelligence cable, seen by 50 at the CIA, but prevented from reaching the FBI. For Kean the incident was not a case of bungling or intel ‘stovepiping’: “Oh, it wasn’t careless oversight. It was purposeful. No question about that in mind. It was purposeful.”

Whereas Kean explains it as a penchant for secrecy, Richard Clarke, the former head of counter-terrorism at the Bush White House, goes farther suggesting malfeasance and the possibility of illegal CIA-led domestic spying activity. Comments by Clarke released in a video in August led to a formal statement from George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee, and a response from the producers.

“This was perhaps the closest U.S. intelligence got to foiling the 9/11 plot,” explains Nowosielski, “but instead of stopping the attack, the CIA stopped intel on two high-value targets from getting to the right people, repeatedly. And still the CIA protects the individuals responsible by intimidating those who simply want to know the truth behind a shocking and possibly criminal pattern of obstruction”

In an email Thursday the CIA warned Nowosielski he could be subject to prosecution under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a law intended to apply to government employees who violate their security clearance and never used to convict journalists.

The producer’s online response: “The Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics states that ‘journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know’ and should ‘be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.’ The day that journalists’ exposés of wrongdoing within government agencies require the approval of those government agencies before release, that is the day that transparency and accountability are lost.”

John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski, both graduates of Chicago’s Columbia College Film School, produced the critically acclaimed 2006 documentary “9/11: Press for Truth.”

The post CIA Threats Delay 9/11 Documentary appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

“On Thursday, the CIA threatened the journalists behind Who Is Rich Blee? with possible federal prosecution if the investigative podcast is released in its current form.

We are delaying that release while we consult with others and weigh our options. A press statement with a more complete explanation will be made available at this site soon.”

Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, the filmmakers behind the documentary “9/11: Press For Truth” had been planning to release their new audio documentary “Who Is Rich Blee?” on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The post CIA Threatens "Who Is Rich Blee?" Journalists appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy produced the film “Press for Truth,” which documented the journey of four 9/11 widows as they lobbied the Bush White House to convene an independent commission to probe the attacks. They recently launched a new transparency web site SecrecyKills.com.

MP3 [1:08:53]

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The post Sibel Edmonds Interviews Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

I’ve written so many of these kinds of articles over the years, it pains me to have to do so again.

When 9/11: Press For Truth was released, there were some in the 9/11 Truth Movement who thought it was “soft and misleading.” Who said that it didn’t go far enough. That it was “disinformation.” Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the film. In fact, I think it’s the most dangerous 9/11 documentary in existence. However, because the naysayers had some “influence,” and because someone asked me for my opinion on the film, I wrote this. Just like I’m writing this article today. Just like I recently wrote this, and this. Let’s just say that I am tired of the games people play.

You may or may not have heard, but Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy recently released a video of an interview taken in 2009 of former Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke. They first debuted this interview at the Treason In America conference in March 2010.

How has this video helped those advocating for 9/11 Justice?

It brought attention to this cause at sites like thedailybeast.com, truthout.org, consortiumnews.com, washingtonpost.com, cbsnews.com, russiatoday.com, philly.com, theatlanticwire.com, sandiegoreader.com, wsws.org, boilingfrogspost.com, pubrecord.org, securitydebrief.com, and many other sites.

It brings attention to 9/11: Press For Truth. Phil Shenon from thedailybeast.com writes:

“The producers, John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski, had previously made a well-reviewed film documentary, Press for Truth (www.911pressfortruth.com), on the struggle of a group of 9/11 victims’ families to force the government to investigate the attacks.

Jason Leopold from truthout.org writes:

Duffy and Nowosielski, whose previous film, “Press For Truth,” followed four 9/11 widows as they lobbied the Bush White House to convene an independent commission to probe the attacks, have also launched a new transparency web site, SecrecyKills.com, set to go live this evening with a campaign aimed at further unmasking Blee.

It brings attention to the 2 hijackers in San Diego. Those same 2 hijackers that apparently received money that was connected to Prince Bandar’s wife. It brings attention to the 28 redacted pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry, which the Jersey Girls have been trying to get released for years.

Because of who Richard Clarke is, it got the attention of people who wouldn’t ordinarily write about 9/11 like David Swanson, to write about 9/11. It made Ray McGovern, who hasn’t written about 9/11 in years, to write about it again.

There are some who claim to be advocates for 9/11 Justice who are suggesting that this is a ploy to try and hide the “real story” about 9/11. I don’t know what the real story about 9/11 is. I know that there are a multitude of cover-ups, that there needs to be justice and accountability for what happened that day, that the families and the people of the world both require and deserve it, and that the “Post-9/11 World” needs to end. So far, this story about Richard Clarke seems to be helping us to do this.

However, to humor those individuals, let’s take a look at that theory. That would mean that Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, two people responsible for a documentary that is the most dangerous in existence to those attempting to cover-up what happened that day, were “in on it.” Not only is that absurd, it is laughable.

That would mean that the CIA Inspector General’s report that suggests that people “failed to meet an acceptable standard of performance, and recommends that an internal review board review their conduct for possible disciplinary action” is a figment of our imagination. That would mean that Porter Goss refused to release the report, and “asked Helgerson to modify the report to avoid drawing conclusions about whether individual CIA officers should be held accountable” in an effort to make it seem even MORE credible so it would fool even MORE people.

Sounds reasonable, right? Yeah, not so much.

Do I entirely trust Richard Clarke? No. However, as my friend Cosmos said, “there is no reason or need to trust Richard Clarke. For whatever reason, Clarke has presented to the world a major, high level contradiction within the government’s story that should be exploited for all it is worth towards the goal of legitimate inquiry into 9/11. There is no need to lionize Clarke or obscure his shady connections in order to do this.”

The post Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

“In early 2000, a number of more junior personnel (including FBI agents on detail to CIA) did see travel information on individuals who later became hijackers but the significance of the data was not adequately recognized at the time.”

Clark claims to have been very close to Tenet and to find this impossible to believe. Clarke maintains that the Director must have been informed and must have made the decision not to share the information with Clarke and others. Clarke speculates that the presence of these two al Qaeda members was kept secret because the CIA had tried to recruit, or “flip,” those al Qaeda members and failed. Yet he has no evidence of such attempts.

But why not report that you tried to recruit someone and failed? What is the reason not to report that?

It seems more likely to me that Clarke is going easy on Tenet. “The September 11th attacks could have been prevented” has an “Obama could have fought for progressive principles” ring to it; it builds in the assumption that those involved WANTED the attacks to be prevented. Whatever this other new report ends up meaning, the history of Able Danger, and of White House inaction, and of Clarke’s earlier revelations begins to suggest a pattern.

I hate to underestimate incompetence and petty infighting as explanations for things, but I also hate to accept as the only possible explanation Clarke’s theory — of which he himself does not seem at all convinced — as to why Tenet apparently withheld information. I asked FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds what she thought, and her reply suggested a level of contempt for both Clarke and Tenet: “I think sometimes it takes one evil fighting another evil to get to the truth. In this case, the clash of two guilty egos has helped unearth some truth on 9/11. Hope to have more clashes.”

I turned to Pentagon whistleblower Karen Kwiatkowski. She ought to have a sense of how accurate Clarke’s description is of standard practice versus inexplicable deviation from it. She seemed to think this new angle fit an existing pattern:

“[This] is just one more unanswered question regarding our own government’s involvement and possible complicity in the events. There are more gaping questions that lend credence to the theory that the U.S. government or parts of it were supportive and facilitated the 9/11 events (and the subsequent Amerithrax case). One, why was there no investigation of and no discussion of WTC 7 in the 9/11 commission report? And why has the case of the Israeli ‘art students’ (actually agents) who were tracking and had detailed operational intelligence on a significant number of the purported hijackers in this country in the months leading up to 9/11 never dealt with in a big way by any commission or any government agency? The after-the-fact lack of interest in these events kind of confirms the before-the-fact activities of those who were in a position to stop the attacks.”

Note that Karen does not here suggest, and neither do I have much use for theories to explain away what we know, theories that suggest there were no airplanes, no hijackers, etc., etc., some of which theories are extremely valuable but purely as entertainment. Rather, Karen is asking questions about things we don’t know, and things our government has gone to considerable lengths to avoid making known. When it comes to such matters, it’s hard to do better than turning to retired CIA officer Ray McGovern. I’ve just done so, and he hasn’t disappointed. Here’s a comment of McGovernian length and perception that he’s sent me:

“Withholding critical intelligence from the makers and implementers of security policy can be worse than lying. Of lying, we have plenty of evidence that former CIA director George Tenet is a serial offender — as is his long-time spokesman, Bill Harlow.

“But withholding intelligence on two of the 9/11 hijackers would have been unconscionable — the epitome of malfeasance, not just misfeasance. That’s why Richard Clarke’s conclusion that he should have received information from CIA about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, ‘unless somebody intervened to stop the normal automatic distribution’ is a most serious charge, given the role of the two in hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 on 9/11.

“Tenet has denied that the information on the two hijackers was ‘intentionally withheld’ from Clarke, and has enlisted former CIA operatives Cofer Black (more recently a senior official of Blackwater) and Richard Blee (a more shadowy figure) to concur in saying, Not us; we didn’t withhold.

“Whom to believe? It is a no-brainer. One would have to have been born yesterday to regard the ‘George is right’ testimony from Black and Blee as collaborative.

“Tenet is the same fellow who provided the ‘slam dunk’ on the existence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq, as well as the ‘artist renderings’ of equally non-existent mobile laboratories for developing biological warfare agents, based on unconfirmed information from the imposter code-named (appropriately) ‘Curveball.’ Tenet is the fellow who, under orders from Bush and Cheney, ordered up and disseminated a fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate on WMD in Iraq to deceive our elected representatives out of their Constitutional prerogative to authorize a war of aggression. Not small infractions.

“After a five-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Chairman Jay Rockefeller described the intelligence adduced under Tenet to ‘justify’ attacking Iraq as ‘uncorroborated, contradicted, and non-existent.’ Good enough to win Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom, though. It worked just fine for the purposes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, thank you very much.

“It is a matter of record that Tenet lies a lot — on occasion, demonstrating a sort of chutzpah on steroids. Recall, for example, Tenet telling Scott Pelley on ’60 Minutes,’ five times, in five consecutive sentences, ‘We do not torture people.’

“Tenet has lied about 9/11 too. The joint statement from Tenet, Black, and Blee, provided by Bill Harlow, concludes: ‘We testified under oath about what we did, what we knew and what we didn’t know. We stand by that testimony.’ Almost made me laugh….almost.

“In his sworn testimony to the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004, Tenet told the Commission under the prime-time klieg lights that he had not spoken to Bush — even on the telephone — during the entire month of August 2001.

“But Tenet did visit fly to see the President in Crawford — not once, but twice during August 2001, and briefed Bush again in Washington on the 31st. After the TV cameras at the 9/11 Commission hearing were shut off, Bill Harlow phoned the commission staff to say, Oops, sorry, Tenet misspoke. Even then, Harlow admitted to only Tenet’s August 17 visit to Crawford (and to the briefing on the 31st).

“How do we know Tenet was again in Crawford on August 24? From a White House press release quoting President George W. Bush to that effect — information somehow completely missed by our vigilant Fawning Corporate Media (FCM).

“Funny how Tenet could have forgotten his first visit to Crawford. In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet waxes eloquent about the ‘president graciously driving me around the spread in his pickup and me trying to make small talk about the flora and the fauna.’ But the visit was not limited to small talk.

“In his book Tenet writes: ‘A few weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to make sure the president stayed current on events.’ The Aug. 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief contained the article ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US.’ According to Ron Suskind’s ‘The One-Percent Doctrine’, the president reacted by telling the CIA briefer, ‘All right, you’ve covered your ass now.’

“If, as Tenet says in his memoir, it was the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB that prompted his visit on Aug. 17, what might have brought him back on Aug. 24? I believe the answer can be found in court documents released at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the fledgling pilot in Minnesota interested in learning to steer a plane but indifferent as to how to land it.

“Those documents show that on Aug. 23, 2001, Tenet was given an alarming briefing, focusing on Moussaoui, titled ‘Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.’ Tenet was told that Moussaoui was training to fly a 747 and, among other suspicion-arousing data, had paid for the training in cash.

“It is an open question — if a key one — whether Tenet told Bush about the two hijackers, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, while keeping that key information from the person who most needed it — White House counter-terrorist czar Richard Clarke. Clarke finds the only plausible explanation in his conclusion that Tenet was personally responsible. Clarke says:

“‘For me to this day, it is inexplicable, when I had every other detail about everything related to terrorism, that the director didn’t tell me, that the director of the counterterrorism center didn’t tell me, that the other 48 people inside CIA that knew about it never mentioned it to me or anyone in my staff in a period of over 12 months.’

“But Tenet’s aide-de-camp Bill Harlow has branded Clarke’s statements ‘absurd and patently false.’ The statement Harlow shepherded for Tenet, Black, and Blee adds ‘reckless and profoundly wrong…baseless…belied by the record…unworthy of serious consideration.’

“And Harlow never lies. Right. I’m reminded of Harlow’s reaction to Newsweek’s publication on February 24, 2003 of the remarks of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who had been in charge of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs for almost a decade before he defected to Jordan in 1995. Kamel did provide some information on residual, closed-down sites relating to WMD, and that information proved correct.

“Kamel ALSO said that after the first Gulf War in 1991:

“‘I ordered the destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons — biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed.’

“This was not at all what Bush, Cheney, and — by extension — Tenet wanted Newsweek readers, or the rest of us, to learn just three weeks before the U.S./U.K. attack on Iraq, ostensibly to find and destroy those threatening, non-existent weapons.

“So Bill Harlow rose to the occasion, telling the FCM that the Newsweek story was, ‘incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue.’ And the FCM said, Gosh, thanks for telling us.

“By all indications, Harlow is still able to work his fraudulent magic on the FCM, which has virtually ignored this major story since it broke several days ago. If Harlow says it’s not true…and throws in still more pejorative adjectives to dismiss what Clarke says, it is surely Richard Clarke who is not telling the truth. No matter Clarke’s well deserved reputation for honesty and professionalism.

“And so it goes.”

Yes, it is as likely as that the sky is blue that Tenet knew and that Tenet is lying about what he knew. But I’m interested in why. Did he try to convert two members of al Qaeda to his team and fail, and then choose to keep quiet about it, despite his established habit of trying to “cover his ass”? Wouldn’t his ass have been better covered by sharing the information? And wouldn’t we all then be better off, in particular the million Iraqis and thousands of Americans and Afghans who’ve paid for this malfeasance with their lives?

But what if, just as Obama’s actions make sense when we stop fantasizing about him being a liberal, Tenet’s actions make sense when we stop assuming his top priority was protecting the people of this country?

UPDATE:

Comment from Coleen Rowley:

“Richard Clarke is among the few high level counter-terrorism officials in the lead-up to 9-11 with the experience, insights and credibility to know what he’s talking about and to make logical deductions from the known facts.  His comments pertain to the still murky area as the CIA has never allowed any of its personnel to be fully debriefed about what transpired in the aftermath of the Kuala Lumpur meeting nor about the two known Al Qaeda members on the CIA’s terrorist list and who the CIA learned had come into California.  No one seems to have been forthcoming about why that important information was not shared in a timely manner with the FBI.  So Clarke’s educated hypothesis makes sense from what’s known.  And certainly CIA officials like Tenet and Cofer Black had every incentive and predisposition to not come clean afterwards.  Their reluctance to admit this and other mistakes and failures, given the ever-pervasive secrecy, was probably also used as a point of leverage to get them to go along with Bush’s plan to launch war on Iraq even though they all knew Iraq was not connected to 9-11.”

The post Richard Clarke Is Being Too Nice to George Tenet appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Clarke starts with the presumption that important information on the travel of future hijackers to the United States was intentionally withheld from him in early 2000. It was not.

He wildly speculates that it must have been the CIA Director who could have ordered the information withheld. There was no such order. In fact, the record shows that the Director and other senior CIA officials were unaware of the information until after 9/11.

The handling of the information in question was exhaustively looked at by the 9/11 Commission, the Congressional Joint Inquiry, the CIA Inspector General and other groups.

The 9/11 Commission quite correctly concluded that “…no one informed higher levels of management in either the FBI or CIA about the case.”

In early 2000, a number of more junior personnel (including FBI agents on detail to CIA) did see travel information on individuals who later became hijackers but the significance of the data was not adequately recognized at the time.

Since 9/11 many systemic changes have been made to improve the watchlisting process and enhance information sharing within and across agencies.

Building on his false notion that information was intentionally withheld, Mr. Clarke went on to speculate–which he admits is based on nothing other than his imagination–that the CIA might have been trying to recruit these two future hijackers as agents. This, like much of what Mr. Clarke said in his interview, is utterly without foundation.

Many years after testifying himself at length before the 9/11 Commission and writing several books but making no mention of his wild theory, Mr. Clarke has suddenly invented baseless allegations which are belied by the record and unworthy of serious consideration.

We testified under oath about what we did, what we knew and what we didn’t know. We stand by that testimony.

__________________________

Commentary on the above by Erik Larson:

Clarke finds it impossible to believe that Tenet and Black were in the dark about the efforts of Rich Blee and Tom Wilshire, w/ the help of some subordinates, to deliberately prevent the FBI from learning that Khalid Almihdhar had a US visa, and Nawaf Alhazmi and a “companion” had traveled to the US in Jan 2000. At the time, NSA and CIA had reason to believe these two were connected to Al Qaeda’s communications hub in Yemen; the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa which had killed over 200; and a summit involving high-level Al Qaeda operatives that had just taken place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

However, as Kevin Fenton documents in his book Disconnecting the Dots, there is no public documentary evidence that Tenet and Black were made aware of the presence in the US of these two, prior to Aug 22, 2001, and they may, in fact, have been unaware – or at least, they may have indicated to Blee and Wilshire that they did not want any documentary record of their being informed.

“In early 2000, a number of more junior personnel (including FBI agents on detail to CIA) did see travel information on individuals who later became hijackers but the significance of the data was not adequately recognized at the time.”

It is false that “the significance of the data was not adequately recognized at the time.” It is clear that Alec Station Deputy Chief Wilshire was aware of the significance of the data, because at the time it was learned that Almihdhar had a US visa, he instructed his subordinate, “Michelle”, to tell FBI detailee Doug Miller, who had recognized the significance of the data and was preparing to inform the FBI in a cable, that he was not to pass the info on to the FBI.

Shortly after that, Michelle sent a cable to several CIA stations informing them the info had been passed to the FBI, though it had not. The normal procedure when CIA passes info to the FBI is that there is not only a record that it was done, there is a record that CIA checked to confirm receipt; this documentation doesn’t exist, and CIA does not claim it does.

A CIA detailee to FBI, James, briefed two FBI agents, who were not CIA liaisons, about the Kuala Lumpur meeting – but failed to brief them on the only info that would be of particular interest to the FBI; that Almihdhar had a US visa. When another CIA officer was about to tell another FBI agent about these events, James briefed that FBI agent himself, and told the CIA officer he didn’t need to brief him. James was clear in his report about what he did and did not say.

It is unclear who may have read CIA Bangkok station’s March cable at the time re: Alhazmi and companion (Almihdhar) had traveled to the US, but the DOJ IG report notes a CIA cable in response that it had been read “with interest.” Wilshire did read this in May 2001, during the beginning of the period when reports were mounting of an impending Al Qaeda attack, and did not pass the info to the FBI, or do anything else with it apparently, even though his own emails in July, which Blee almost certainly received, make clear he believed Almihdhar would be connected to the upcoming attack.

Clarke surmises the reason this info was deliberately withheld was to protect an illegal CIA operation to infiltrate Al Qaeda in the US. Tenet, Black and Blee flatly deny this, and they may be right; Kevin’s documentation and analysis shows that the more probable explanation is that Blee and/or Wilshire were deliberate preventing the FBI from discovering and disrupting the 9/11 plot so that it could go forward. Even after the CIA began to pass on some info to the FBI in August 2001, Wilshire withheld other info and took steps to undermine FBI investigations.

“Clarke starts with the presumption that important information on the travel of future hijackers to the United States was intentionally withheld from him in early 2000. It was not.”

Even if this is true, why was this info not shared w/ him after Aug 22, 2001 when Tenet, Black and the FBI were officially made aware of it?

This Tenet-Black-Blee statement is very carefully worded, but does not get to the heart of the issues, and does not get any of these people off the hook for their pre-9/11 ‘failures’ and their obfuscations during the subsequent inquiries. They need to testify in public, under oath, with questions posed by an investigative body that is not compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest, the way the others were, especially the 9/11 Commission.

The post Statement from George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Clarke said that information about the two men was deliberately withheld from him in January 2000, at the time of a key al-Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which the CIA monitored. Clarke alleged that, based on his knowledge of how the CIA works, Tenet authorised the deliberate withholding. Clarke added that the information was clearly important in the summer of 2001, when the CIA knew that Almihdhar was in the country and, in the words of one of Blee’s former deputies, was “very high interest” in connection with the next al-Qaeda attack. However, the CIA continued to withhold some information from both Clarke and the FBI.

Mark Rossini, one of Blee’s former subordinates at Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, has previously admitted deliberately withholding the information from the FBI. According to Rossini, in early January 2000 he and a colleague, Doug Miller, knew they should notify the FBI that Almihdhar had a US visa and presumably intended to soon visit the US. Miller even drafted, but did not send, a cable informing the FBI of Almihdhar’s visa. However, Rossini says he and Miller were instructed by a female CIA officer known as “Michael” and Blee’s deputy, Tom Wilshire, to withhold the information.

The joint statement issued by these three men says that neither Tenet nor other senior managers were aware of the visa information at all. Neither of the two reports published after the attack, the heavily redacted 9/11 Congressional Inquiry report and the 9/11 Commission Report–the CIA inspector general’s report is still secret, except the executive summary–give the “who knew what when” for Almihdhar’s visa information. However, several CIA cables, readily accessible in the agency’s database, mentioned the visa.

Wilshire knew of the visa information; Blee almost certainly did, too. The 9/11 Commission Report states that Blee briefed his superiors, presumably including Black, about the Malaysia meeting. However, it is unclear from the report or any other source whether Blee mentioned the visa information. Some of the information Blee gave his superiors about the meeting was wildly inaccurate. For example, on January 12 he claimed the surveillance in Kuala Lumpur was still ongoing, whereas in actual fact Alec Station had sent and received several cables stating the attendees began to leave on January 8.

The joint statement quotes in support of its contention that senior management did not know of the visa information part of a sentence from the 9/11 Commission Report:

The 9/11 Commission quite correctly concluded that “…no one informed higher levels of management in either the FBI or CIA about the case.”

However, the ellipsis in the quote replaces the words,”It appears that,” indicating the commission was not entirely sure. The quote concerns the search for Almihdhar and his companion Nawaf Alhazmi in August and September 2001, not the passage of the visa information in January 2000, and the chapter from which it was taken was first drafted by Barbara Grewe, a Justice Department inspector general and 9/11 Commission staffer who was subsequently hired by a CIA contractor.

The statement, “The handling of the information in question was exhaustively looked at by the 9/11 Commission, the Congressional Joint Inquiry, the CIA Inspector General and other groups,” is also questionable. The body of the CIA inspector general’s report is still secret so its contents are unknown, but the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry did not even find Miller’s blocked cable, let alone ask him about it, and the 9/11 Commission Report is silent on the vast majority of specifics in Blee’s briefings to his superiors.

The CIA’s cable database contains records of who accessed what cable when, and a statement on which Malaysia cables Tenet read would go some way toward answering the question of what he knew. Blee’s written briefings would also be significant in this respect.

The lack of information the CIA leadership allegedly had in 2001’s “summer of threat” is even more puzzling. Tenet worked himself up into a near frenzy in the months before 9/11, mostly based on unspecific chatter about a forthcoming major bin Laden operation. For example, when Tenet demanded an immediate meeting with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, when Clarke, Black and Blee were also present, one of Tenet’s best arguments to support the idea that al-Qaeda would soon attack was, according to Tenet’s 2007 book, “late June information that cited a ‘big event’ that was forthcoming.” This is not so meaningful compared to the information the CIA had about Almihdhar and Alhazmi and should have presented to Clarke and Rice.

By late August 2001 Wilshire, and almost certainly Blee, knew that Almihdhar was in the US and Wilshire notified his CIA superiors that Almihdhar was “very high interest” in connection with the next al-Qaeda attack. If this information did not reach Tenet, as he claims, the appropriate question would again be: who failed to pass it on?

Kevin Fenton is the author of Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI Officials
Helped Enable 9/11 and Evaded Government Investigations.

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