posted
Months and months ago, I think in April, President Bush gave one of his few press conferences in large part to talk about the 9/11 commission. At the time, he answered a question with what he seemed to think was a fairly innoculous statement, but that sent warning bells flashing all through my head. I mentioned it in the thread we had about the press conference.
Since then, I've been waiting for it to come up. There seems to be a legion of people whose most fulfilling part of life now seems to be combng over anything Bush has said to look for place to attack him. That being so, as I thought that this betrayed a really scary aspect of the government's response to the terrorist attacks, I just figured that it would be something that people would jump on. But it hasn't turned out that way.
So, I'll restate what worried me, and worries me more now. Through the commission, we learned that the intelligence agencies received some indications - to forestall the apologists, among no doubt hundreds of other credible threats - that there was a big terrorist plot and that it likely involved something to do with planes. In a couple of instances of communication with the White House, the FBI noted this and claimed that they had 70 agents assigned to track this stuff down. Obviously, they didn't do a good enough job.
That's not the scary part. I'm completely willing to accept that 9/11 happened in large part because of institutional weaknesses in our intelligence agencies. As I've said, I am much more concerned about not being blown up than I am about blaming someone for what has already happened and can't be changed.
Here's what was for me the scary part. The morning of President Bush's press conference, the head of the FBI was in front of the 9/11 commission and he admitted that he had no idea how someone from his organization could claim that there were 70 people assigned to these threats. He said that most of the people who were claimed to be part of investigating it were in fact doing administrative tasks not really related to it.
Ok, so that's kind of scary, but again, not what really concerned me. Here's what did. When asked about this situation (that his administration was falsely told that 70 agents were on the case), President Bush replied by saying something along the lines of "Because I just found out about that this morning [as a result of the director's testimony], I haven't really had time to seriously think about it."
Doesn't that (the President's reponse) scare and anger the jeebily-jeebees out of anyone else? Isn't this a huge issue? I don't know, no one besides me (and the people I've talked to about it) seem to think so.
posted
Porter, I'll explain, but I'm really curious to see if anyone will make the link without me making it explicit. [edit]I'm honestly puzzled why no one has tweaked on this. It seems so clear to me and I have to wonder if it's because my perceptions are out of whack.[/edit] So, I'm going to wait a little bit to see if anyone sees it the way I do. To put it another way, if you think about it, can you explain why this would bother me so much?
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Oh, and if you want to actually see the shape of my issue with this, I talked about it in the thread I linked. It was issue number 2 in my post.
quote:To put it another way, if you think about it, can you explain why this would bother me so much?
Maybe because you've already assumed the government leaders are culpable for allowing this to happen?
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
I didn't get the impression from that quote that he literally "didn't think about it" (ie, that he blew it off) ... but rather that he hadn't had time to put it through enough serious thought and study to have what he considered to be an adequate response. I often feel the same way myself. If I get some new information from a single source, and am abruptly asked my opinion on it before I've had a chance to check other sources and study out the problem in light of the new information, I'm reluctant to offer an opinion, and freely admit that I'd like to give it some more thought first.
Where exactly is the scandal here?
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
See, this just doesn't seem to be something people are interested in. Paula pretty much got the nature of my complaint.
The President was told that 70 FBI agents were running down this one threat. For my money, that does a pretty good job of freeing him from blame in this area. It was a serious threat, but 70 agents dedicated to investigating it seems like a serious response. I would dare to say that it is likely that had 70 well-supported FBI agents been actively trying to track down these indications of threats that the terrorist attacks would have been prevented. I feel that the President, given the information that he was, was right to feel pretty secure that these threats were being dealt with effectively.
As things have come out through the 9/11 commission, I think that it's become pretty clear that President Bush reacted more or less reasonably in regards to the terrorists threats. Mistakes - serious ones - were made, but they were lower down in the chain and many were of an institutional nature. This issue of the 70 agents makes the President look almost good and makes prior Presidents look a little bad, in that they allowed these institutional problems to develop.
For me, it is how well what the President was told was the case most ikely would have worked that paradoxicly makes this such a big deal and makes the President look so bad. I think that it is reasonable to say that one of the primary questions regarding why the terrorist attacks weren't prevented was why our intelligence agencies failed. I think that it is further reasonable to say that one of the most important questions in this line of inquiry is why 70 FBI agents weren't able to run down these obviously credible threats.
I'm of the opinion that one of the best ways to prevent things from happening again is to figure out why they went wrong in the first place. As such, this is something that should have been looked into right away. The President should have known 2 and a half days after 9/11 that what he was told about these 70 agents was highly inaccurate. Instead, 2 and a half years later, he had to learn about it from testimony before an investigatory commission the formation of which he and his administration fought. That's scary to me.
President Bush and his administration took very definite action that they said was aimed towards preventing future terrorists attacks. I, and I think most other people, assumed that this action was guided by a knowledge of the failings that led to 9/11. However, if they never even asked once in 2 and a half years what was the deal with those 70 FBI agents, what the hell were they basing their decisions on? Seriously, I'd really like to know. What rationale do they have that they don't need to look at what happened to determine how to stop it from happening agin?
This quite frankly scares the heck out of me. I don't have confidence that the efforts put out in the last 3 years are based on careful consideration of what went wrong. In fact, President Bush's almost offhand remark makes me pretty darn sure that they aren't. I would love for someone to reassure me, to explain to me why this isn't something that I should be worrying about. If you could do that, I would be genuinely grateful.
Also, if this is anywhere near as scary as I think it is, why the hell isn't anyone else concerned about it?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
It means I think his alarm resembles paranoia more than it does a real thing to be alarmed at. I also believe it is due to an already-derived conclusion before the incident the topic involves took place.
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Justa, Sure I have. I specifically asked for someone to tell me why this isn't something I should be worrying about. I'll repeat, if you can explain to me why this is this the case, I'd be very grateful. You seem very confident that there's nothing to worry. What are your reasons for this?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
MrSquicky, all I can say is that you are asking us to come first from the point of view that they knew something was going to happen, when all evidence given has already shown that a single document passed the president's desk about it, carrying a couple paragraphs or so on that and many other possibilities. It is simply too far a stretch to assume that there was actual intel that such an operation was in motion, since all of the purported intel that has been made public points toward the agencies only being aware that this thing was on a list of many similar and dissimilar things that were possibly on some back-burner somewhere.
It's just too much of a stretch.
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posted
Huh, I think we may be having a communication problem. Could you maybe reflect to me what you think that nature of my concern is? I don't think we're talking about the same thing.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:When asked about this situation (that his administration was falsely told that 70 agents were on the case), President Bush replied by saying something along the lines of "Because I just found out about that this morning [as a result of the director's testimony], I haven't really had time to seriously think about it."
quote:President Bush and his administration took very definite action that they said was aimed towards preventing future terrorists attacks. I, and I think most other people, assumed that this action was guided by a knowledge of the failings that led to 9/11. However, if they never even asked once in 2 and a half years what was the deal with those 70 FBI agents, what the hell were they basing their decisions on? Seriously, I'd really like to know.
The simplest explanation, although not necessarily the correct one, may be that the failures leading to 9/11 were indeed reviewed and considered when the response to the terrorism threat was formulated, but that Bush was not fully informed of the particulars, or that he was unable to remember the details when he got the question, or that he perhaps -- not being at his best at non-scripted press conferences -- had previous knowledge about the screw-up with the 70 agents but were unable to frame an adequate response to the question and thus chose to fib a bit.
posted
Tristan, That's a plausible answer, although one that I'd need some evidence for. I consider the response to terrorism to be the most important thing that our President should be concerned with now and even the possibility of this scares me, let alone it being (I think) the most likely scenario.
Which leads me again to my second point. Why hasn't anyone else brought this question up? Doesn't what the President said, strongly suggest that he and his advisors didn't look at what happened with the 70 agents? If it was true that the President and his advisors didn't look at what the 70 FBI agents assigned to the terrorist threat related somehow to planes did, doesn't that strongly suggest that they didn't do a good job of reviewing the intelligence failures that allowed 9/11 to occur. If they didn't do a good job there, doesn't that strongly suggest that their plans to prevent something similar are likely to have deep flaws?
I am being honest here. I lost a lot of my feeling of security against terrorist attacks after hearing President Bush say this. The sequence I drew out seems very logical to me and it frightens me. To me, this isn't a matter of being anti-Bush. I really thought that he and his administration were working full out in good ways to prevent further attacks, but, after hearing this, I strongly doubt it. So again, why hasn't anyone else picked up on this? Is what I'm saying really not logical?
I'd love for someone to pose this question to the President or one of his representatives and have them give an answer that explains it (like what you said Tristan or something else). Right now, I'm living with the belief that our terrorist defensives were created without reference to the problems that allowed terrorists attacks. Like maybe they were an ideological knee-jerk response without reference to the facts of what happened. Deosn't that scare anyone else?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
The problem with our intelligence agencies has been developing since the 1980s, so it is systemic.
First and foremost is the increased emphasis of electronic monitoring of hot spots and groups rather than old-fashioned legwork. Remember when India and then Pakistan both popped nuke tests and the US government basically said, "Wow, we had no idea they were that far along!"?
Secondly, and possibly the most important, is that the FBI and CIA are both way to heavy in middle management and general administration. Those "70 agents" as the CIA director pretty much said included an awful lot of administrative folks. There were probably less than a dozen agents working directly on the case, overseen by section leaders, assistant-assistant undersecretaries, minor potentates and probably a human resources advisor, plus an on-staff attorney from the Justice Department to make sure they weren't breaking any laws.
Third, since the early 90s, there had been a bit of a "hands-off" between the CIA and FBI as they fought a budgetary turf war. Remember the WACO disaster? Basically the Justice Department didn't want anyone outside its offices involved. The FBI doesn't want the CIA to focus on domestic issues as that is its traditional bailiwick and the CIA certainly doesn't want the FBI to be able to look beyond our borders. Sadly, with terrorism plots, how in the world were these two going to get together to track foreign nationals in the US, funded from outside the country, with most of the high-level decision making taking place in Europe and the Middle East?
It really, really boggles the mind. Couple all of this with the CYA (cover your ass) attitude, a dash of he said-she said and a touch of plausible deniability and it just amazes me that the Guam Separatist Party hasn't successfully implemented their plot to hold the state of Rhode Island hostage yet.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
It doesn't bother you that the President of the United States of America prefers to be kept out of the information loop? Prefers to have information pre-censored by a handful of aides before hearing it? Before making a decision based solely on the recommendation of extremely biased sources/pre-screeners?
posted
It bothers me somewhat...but doesn't surprise me. Bush has had a Reaganesque style of hands-off management since the beginning of his administration. And he said in his 2000 campaign that his lack of foreign policy experience would force him to rely on subordinates. Not in those words, but that's the gist of what he said. Good post, Sopwith. I especially agree with ELINT winning over HUMINT.
posted
Bush thinks "intelligence" is overrated. When you've got God on your side, "intelligence" only meddles with your convictions. Just look at his face when he defends his position, or listen to him as he tries to speak off the cuff. Come on, people! Bush is always Right! Capital "R"!
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