more on Goss out

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Hitchens, Ralph" <Ralph.Hitchens () hq doe gov>
Date: May 8, 2006 9:42:33 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] more on Goss out

Tom Fairlie wrote:

> When exactly did the CIA have this "failure"?
> Was it on 9/11? No, [...] Everyone in the intelligence community  
> seemed
to know
> that such an attack was possible, and perhaps even probable. I don't
see any failure here.

I was in the intelligence community at the time, and (as I stated on IP
last year) it's not true that "everyone in the intelligence community
seemed to know that such an attack was possible, even probable."  There
was no hint of this in the declassified PDB of August 6th, and after
9/11 nobody -- nobody! -- in the IC stepped forward to take credit for
warning policymakers that something like this might happen.

Gordon Thomassen informed me last year about an airliner hijacking
suicide threat to the 2001 G-8 summit meeting in Italy, and also about
al-Qaeda having considered suicide hijackings back in the 1990s, but if
these indicators were taken seriously within the IC and related to Bin
Laden's threats to carry out attacks in the US, nothing has come out
about it in the aftermath of 9/11.

So yes, it was an "intelligence failure."

Concerning Goss's potential replacement, let me state my belief that
while Gen. Hayden did indeed famously misconstrue the Fourth Amendment
recently, he is nevertheless respected within the intelligence community
as a very competent, honest and forthright military intelligence
technocrat.  Whether he's the right man to head up the CIA is certainly
debatable, but it's worth noting that one of his NSA predecessors,
Admiral William Studeman, served as Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence back in the 1990s, and was well-regarded in that job.

Ralph Hitchens



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