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Sept. 11 insider tapped to lead CIA
Compiled by Bud Howell
Aug. 11 (AGR)— The Bush-Cheney ring has chosen Republican
Congressman and former CIA agent Porter Goss to become the new Director
of Central Intelligence, following the July departure of former director
George J. Tenet. On Tuesday, Aug. 11, President Bush announced the decision
to nominate Goss, a former spy. The announcement came as the CIA struggles
to repair a tarnished reputation amidst a massive intelligence reorganization
in light of intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks and the decision to invade Iraq.
Goss was a CIA officer in the 1960s in Central America and Western Europe,
and later served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The
Florida Congressman had planned to make his 2000 Congressional election
bid his last but decided to stay on after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks—
with encouragement from President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Congress later waived a rule that had limited Goss’s chairmanship
to six years, making way for Goss to serve an additional two years as
chief of the House intelligence committee.
The CIA nomination could situate Goss to become the nation’s first
national intelligence director, if Congress follows recent recommendations
to create that position, White House officials said. The CIA and other
intelligence agencies are under new pressure due to unspecific but ongoing
warnings from the Dept. of Homeland Security that terrorists intend
to strike the US sometime this year. Goss said in an interview Sept.
16, 2001 that he believed US intelligence had been “underfunded
and under-resourced” for a decade.
On Sept. 11, 2001 — five days before those remarks — Goss
met in Washington with Pakistani ISI Chief General [Mahmud] Ahmad during
Ahmad’s visit to Washington on behalf of the Taliban. Ahmad was
a friend of Mohammed Atta who was, according to the FBI, the lead hijacker
in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. According to news reports in late
2001 and early 2002, Gen. Ahmad ordered an aide to wire transfer $100,000
to Mohammed Atta. Ahmad soon resigned after the transfer was disclosed
in India and confirmed by the FBI.
As a Congressman, Rep. Goss has taken a proactive role in the “war
on drugs,” working to expand legislative authority for the Office
of National Drug Control Policy. In recent years, Goss has joined Florida
Congresswoman Katherine Harris — a close associate of the Bush
family and a key player in the controversial Florida recount of the
2000 Presidential Election — in promoting stricter federal drug
laws, frustrating the interests of citizens who favor personal medicinal
marijuana usage and oppose the expansion of mandatory drug testing programs.
Goss also served on the committee looking into allegations of CIA drug
trafficking.
Porter Goss awaits Senate confirmation hearings for his nomination,
which are set to take place before November.
Sources: Associated Press, CNN, MS-NBC,
New York Times, Reuters
US to get international election observers
By Jim Lobe
Washinton, DC, Aug. 11— An effort by more than a dozen
Democratic lawmakers to bring international observers to monitor the
November elections has paid off with an invitation by the State Department
to the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE).
The 55-nation group has already responded positively to the invitation,
although it has yet to determine how many observers will be sent and
how precisely they will be deployed. A delegation is scheduled to visit
the United States next month to nail down details.
State Department officials stressed that the OSCE delegation will not
have the authority to assess the fairness of the vote, but it will be
expected to issue a report on any problems or shortcomings as part of
a new program for all OSCE members.
In addition to Washington’s NATO allies, the OSCE consists of virtually
all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the new
states created out of the former Soviet Union in the Caucasus and Central
Asia.
Democrats greeted the announcement as a victory in their efforts to
draw international scrutiny to the elections process, particularly in
the wake of the 2000 presidential elections in which George W. Bush
squeaked out a tiny electoral majority, thanks to an especially controversial
vote count in Florida, despite losing the popular vote by some half
a million votes.
“It’s a step in the right direction toward ensuring that this
year’s elections are fair and transparent,” said Rep. Barbara
Lee, a California Congresswoman who was one of 13 lawmakers who asked
UN Secretary Kofi Annan to send UN observers to oversee this year’s
elections.
“Given the deeply troubling events of the 2000 election, the growing
concerns about the lack of necessary reforms and potential abuse in
the 2004 election,” the lawmakers wrote, “we believe that
the engagement of international election monitors can be the catalyst
to expedite the necessary reform, as well as reduce the likelihood of
questionable practices and voter disenfranchisement on Election Day.”
When the UN responded that the US government would have to make the
request in order for the world body to respond, the 13 lawmakers sent
a second letter to US Secretary of State Colin Powell asking for his
help in securing UN monitors.
The letters drew outrage from many Republican lawmakers in the House
of Representatives. They promptly attached an amendment to the 2005
foreign-aid bill banning the use of any of that money to finance UN
monitoring of the election.
“For over 200 years, this nation has conducted elections fairly
and impartially, ensuring that each person’s vote will count,”
said Rep. Stephen Buyer during debate on the floor of the House of Representatives.
“Imagine going to your polling place on the morning of Nov. 2 and
seeing blue-helmeted foreigners inside your local library, school or
fire station.”
While Powell did not act on the request for UN monitors, he did send
an invitation to the OSCE pursuant to special program that encourages
all member countries to observe each others’ elections.
“OSCE members, including the United States, agreed in 1990 in Copenhagen
to allow fellow members to observe elections in one another’s countries,”
Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Paul Kelly replied
in a letter to the 13 lawmakers. “Consistent with this commitment,
the United States has already invited the OSCE’s Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to observe the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential
elections.”
In fact, the OSCE also sent a small delegation of monitors to the 2002
mid-term elections, but the 2004 mission is expected to be much larger.
Nonetheless, the 2002 delegation, which observed voting in Florida,
submitted a critical report that included recommendations for improvements.
The invitation to OSCE drew scorn from far-right groups that apparently
were unaware of the 2002 mission.
“Obviously, somebody over at Foggy Bottom misread the Constitution,”
stated Tom Kilgannon, president of the Freedom Alliance, a Virginia-based
group founded during the Iran-Contra scandal in support of then-Lt.
Col. Oliver North. “According to our Founding Fathers, it is the
‘States’ -- not the ‘State Department’ -- which
are in charge of overseeing federal elections.”
In their letter to Annan and Powell, the Democrats cited a report by
the US Commission on Civil Rights that concluded that the 2000 electoral
process in Florida was flawed and that the “disenfranchisement
of Floridas’ voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of black
voters.”
They drew particular attention to the purging of names from voter-registration
lists, an issue that continues to draw controversy in Florida. In hearings
just last month, the Commission heard testimony indicating that purge
lists in some counties had not been updated and that several thousand
people were still wrongly listed as felons ineligible to cast ballots.
One non-governmental group, San Francisco-based Global Exchange, has
itself invited foreign observers who have monitored elections outside
their countries to observe the November balloting in at least six states,
including Florida.
“Our experience monitoring elections in ten countries around the
world has shown that the presence of non-governmental observers can
help boost public confidence in electoral processes,” said Ted
Lewis, who directs the group’s Fair Elections project.
Source: OneWorld.net
Bush team on defensive over al-Qaida
leak
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, Aug. 9 (IPS)— One of the greatest coups
in Washington’s nearly three-year war against al-Qaida has suddenly
turned sour with reports the White House prematurely exposed the identity
of a key source whose contacts and communication with the terrorist
group’s operational masterminds had yet to be fully exploited.
The source, 25-year-old computer wizard Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan,
had been cooperating with Pakistani police and the US Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) since he was quietly detained in Lahore on July 12, until
the New York Times published his name Aug. 3 after receiving a “background”
briefing by the White House.
The Bush administration, which had elevated the terror-warning level
in three US states on the basis of information acquired from Khan,
set up the briefing to dispel public skepticism about the terrorism
threat, particularly after it was disclosed that much of the information
on which it was based was several years old.
British and Pakistani intelligence agencies were reportedly furious
with the leak, which forced UK police to hurriedly round up 13 al-Qaida
suspects who are alleged to have been in email communication with
Khan. Five others who were sought by MI5 reportedly escaped capture,
and there is some question that the British had gathered enough evidence
to persuade a judge to keep the 13 detainees in custody, according
to published reports.
“The outing of Khan, probably the most important asset the US
has ever had inside al-Qaida, is a huge disaster and a setback to
attempts to finish off the top leadership of al-Qaida,” according
to Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan,
whose Web log (or “blog”), Informed Comment, is widely read
in Washington.
Two of those arrested by the British, Abu Issa al Hindi and Babar
Ahmed, however, are wanted by the United States. Ahmed reportedly
obtained detailed information about the movements of a US Navy aircraft
carrier, the Constellation, in 2001, six months after the al-Qaida
suicide attack on the USS Cole off Yemen.
Hindi was reportedly sent to the United States at around the same
time to carry out surveillance on key US-based financial institutions
in New York, Newark, in neighboring New Jersey, and Washington, DC,
which were named as likely possible targets when the terror alert
was elevated eight days ago.
Those tidbits are among what US officials have called a “treasure
trove” of information found on computers owned by Khan, who apparently
agreed to continue sending and receiving encrypted messages to his
al-Qaida contacts after his arrest in order to help catch other operatives.
Investigators reportedly found that one of the files on Khan’s
computer had been opened as recently as January, suggesting that an
attack on one or more of the financial targets — which included
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington
— may have been in an operational phase, justifying a heightened
alert.
It was the skepticism that greeted the alert, particularly after other
leaks confirmed the underlying evidence was at least three years old,
that spurred the White House to provide more information to reporters,
including Khan’s name.
Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, confirmed
briefing officials had given Khan’s name to the Times but insisted
he was identified “on background,” an assertion that caused
consternation among experienced journalists here, who know that everything
said by officials “on background” can be quoted so long
as the name of the briefing officials is not disclosed.
“The problem,” she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “is
that when you’re trying to strike a balance between giving enough
information to the public so that they know that you’re dealing
with a specific, credible, different kind of threat than you’ve
dealt with in the past, you’re always weighing that against ...
operational considerations. We think for the most part, we’ve
struck a balance, but it’s indeed a very difficult balance to
strike.”
But British Home Secretary David Blunkett suggested the balance had
been anything but well struck. In an opinion piece published Aug.
8, he was openly contemptuous of the White House’s management
of the information. “In the United States there is often high-profile
commentary followed, as in the current case, by detailed scrutiny,
with the potential risk of ridicule,” Blunkett wrote in The Observer.
“Is it really the job of a senior cabinet minister in charge
of counter-terrorism to feed the media? To increase concern? Of course
not. This is arrant nonsense.”
Pakistani officials, who have been under enormous pressure from Washington,
also expressed frustration. “This is a network that we are trying
to break,” said Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat, who denied
the information had been leaked from Pakistan. “It is in the
process of being dismantled, [but] the network is still not finished.”
Even staunchly loyal Republicans said the White House had made a serious
mistake. “In this situation, in my view, they should have kept
their mouth shut and just said, ‘We have information, trust us,’”
said VA Senator George Allen.
Some observers charged that the public skepticism surrounding the
administration’s conduct in the “war against terrorism”
had been largely induced by the government itself.
According to one recent poll, nearly 40 percent of the public believes
the White House is manipulating the threat level for political reasons,
a notion that gained more support when the Department of Homeland
Security raised the threat level to “orange” or “high”
on the morning after Bush’s Democratic foe, John Kerry, accepted
the presidential nomination, concluding a four-day party convention.
Similarly, the administration announced the arrest in Pakistan of
a senior al-Qaida operative, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, wanted for organizing
the 1998 suicide bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es
Salaam, on the third day of the Democratic convention, and three weeks
after The New Republic weekly quoted Pakistani intelligence officials
as saying the White House had asked them to announce the arrest or
killing of any “high-value [al-Qaida] target” any time between
July 26 and 28, the first three days of the Democratic Convention.
At the time, former CIA officer Robert Baer said the announcement
made “no sense.” “To keep these guys off-balance, a
lot of this stuff should be kept in secret. You get no benefit from
announcing an arrest like this.”
“By exposing the only deep mole we’ve ever had within al-Qaida,
it ruined the chance to capture dozens if not hundreds more,”
a former Justice Department prosecutor, John Loftus, told Fox News
on Saturday.
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