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.good working relationship withWhile finding no  silver bullet or single intelligencePresident George W.Bush, butlapse that might have prevented the Sept.11 attacks, thehe was unable to get him to actreport identified numerous  failures to implement andquickly on al-Qaeda.After Sep-manage important processes and  follow through withtember 11, however, the Bushoperations. The report said (George) Tenet bearsadministration left nothing to ultimate responsibility for the CIA s lack of a unified,chance in fighting against terror-strategic plan for fighting al-Qaeda.The intelligenceism.According to Seymourcommunity  did not have a documented, comprehensiveHersh in Chain of Command, itapproach to al-Qaeda, the document said, and Tenetunleashed the CIA to undertake  did not use all of his authorities to prepare one.covert action against terroristsJoby Warrick and Walter Pincus,  CIA Finds Holes in Pre-9/11with no restrictions but deniabil-Work, Washington Post (August 22, 2007), p.A1.ity for the president.The supportfor the Northern Alliance led tothe overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and ended safe sanctuary for binLaden and the other leaders of al-Qaeda.But bin Laden and most of al-Qaeda s andthe Taliban s leaders were able to escape.Part of the reason for the escape was thereluctance of the Bush administration to commit American forces until it was too late.60 Central Intelligence AgencyIn the middle of the hunt for bin Laden and the wiping out of al-Qaeda s lead-ership, the Bush administration decided that Saddam Hussein and his weapons ofmass destruction were greater threats.Even prior to September 11 it was known inthe CIA that the Bush administration was eager to overthrow Saddam Hussein.Their reasoning was that deposing Hussein and establishing a favorable governmentin Iraq would produce a base of support in the Middle East for the United States,because it was apparent that there was no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Extreme pressure from the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, led byVice President Dick Cheney, for the CIA to produce intelligence justification to goto war with Iraq resulted in widespread dissatisfaction among CIA analysts.Manyof them believed that an Iraqi war would hinder the hunt for bin Laden and otheral-Qaeda leaders.They believed that the United States should concentrate exclu-sively on Afghanistan and the al-Qaeda network.Those analysts who were too vocalwith their dissatisfaction were fired, got transferred, or were severely criticized.Despite warnings from these CIA analysts about the lack of concrete intelligence,Tenet assured President Bush and his advisors that Iraq had weapons of massdestruction.The failure to find these weapons of mass destruction ended Bush sconfidence in Tenet.In the meantime, the rank-and-file of the CIA had becomecritics of the Bush administration.They issued a series of intelligence reports thatcontradicted or were critical of the premises of the Bush administration s occupa-tion of Iraq.Many of these reports were leaked to the news media.After Tenet s resignation, Bush appointed former Florida congressman PorterGoss to head the CIA.He had worked for the CIA in the 1960s, but most of hisknowledge of the CIA came from his seven years as chairman of the House Per-manent Select Committee on Intelligence.President Bush gave Goss a mandate tobring the CIA back to Bush s political team.A short time after Goss came intoLangley headquarters, senior CIA officials began to leave in droves.In April 2005the CIA inspector general s report surfaced that presented detailed criticism of theperformance of more than a dozen former and current CIA officials.Goss quashedthe recommendation that there be accountability boards to recommend personnelactions against those charged in the report.Despite this action, the clash betweenGoss s team and CIA veterans reached epic proportions.In the long run, however,it was Goss s inability to work with his nominal boss, John Negroponte, the direc-tor of national intelligence, that led to his demise.President Bush asked for andreceived Goss s resignation on May 5, 2006.His successor was U.S.Air Forcefour-star General Michael Hayden, the former head of the National SecurityAgency (NSA) and the number two person under Negroponte.See AlsoAlec Station; Counterterrorism Center; Goss, Porter J.; Tenet, GeorgeSee DocumentsDocument #11; Document #27Suggested ReadingRobert Dreyfuss,  The Yes-Man: President Bush Sent Porter Goss to the CIA to Keep theAgency in Line.What He s Really Doing Is Wrecking It, American Prospect (November2005), p.18; Tyler Drumheller and Elaine Monaghan, On the Brink: An Insider s Accountof How the White House Compromised American Intelligence (New York: Carroll and Graf,2006); Seymour M.Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (NewYork: HarperCollins, 2004); Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities beforeChomsky, Noam 61and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, Hearings before the Select Committeeon Intelligence U.S.Senate and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence House of Rep-resentatives (Washington, DC: U.S.Government Printing Office, 2004), 2 vols.; John Miller,Michael Stone, and Chris Mitchell, The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIAFailed to Stop It (New York: Hyperion, 2002); Timothy Naftali, Blind Spot: The Secret His-tory of American Counterterrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2005); James Risen, State ofWar: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (New York: Free Press,2006); George Tenet and Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (NewYork: Harper Collins, 2007).Chomsky, Noam (1928 )Noam Chomsky has long been an active critic of the U.S.government and its poli-cies, and his views on the events surrounding September 11, 2001, resonate inradical left circles in the United States [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]