Visit the Schapira blog: What we know so far …

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!â€

And as far as “intelligence gaps” before 9/11, the only “intelligence gap” was between the ears of BushCo.

When I read that a field FBI agent had desperately sought and requested 70 (repeat 70) times in the weeks before 9/11 for approval from FBI headquarters to search through the personal effects of the al Qaeda guy arrested at a mid-West flight school, but was turned down each time, then I knew where the pre-9/11 intelligence failures occurred…BushCo.

BushCo could have easily turned to the FISA court for whatever was required to check the guy out. In fact, per FISA statutory requirements, BushCo could have conducted a warrantless search of this guy’s personal effects and then gone to the FISA court in the allotted time to get a retroactive search warrant.

BushCo, as well as Gen. Hayden, dropped the ball. And they know it. They downgraded the religious terrorism threat to a much lower priority than the previous administration, Clinton/Gore, had accorded the threat.

In other words, if a President Gore had been in the White House, with somewhat the same top-notch counter-terrorism intelligence officials in place who had already thwarted a number of al Qaeda attacks on U.S. soil (after the first 1993 WTC attack), then 9/11 wouldn’t have happened, in my view.

BushCo screwed up, and American citizens died. It’s as simple as that.

So, I wasn’t surprised when the horror of Hurricane Katrina happened.

BushCo Must Go!!!!!

Not just four own safety, but for the safety of our children, and the safety of children around the world.

BushCo Must Go!!!!!

The existence of FISA was not secret. The fact that you can get retroactive arrents was not secret. The fact that FISA nearly always approves those warrents was not secret.

So basically those defending the illegal wiretapping are saying that Osama that thought he was in the clear as long as Bush had to go to a court that almost never turns him down, or because Bush could spy and get the warrent later.

But now that Bush is bypasing FISA, it’s THAT that’s got Osama worried.

How lame an excuse.

In 2004 the CIA station chief in Baghdad was sending warnings every 60 days, in special messages known as “AARDWOLF” cables, about the deteriorating situation. This candid and largely correct reporting is said to have angered White House officials, who complained that the Baghdad chief was defeatist and not a team player. At the end of his tour, he was punished with a poor assignment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01660.html

Porter Goss, who was forced to resign Friday, was seen as an obstacle to an effort by John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, to focus the agency on its core mission of combating terrorism and stealing secrets abroad.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.c…..den07.html

My advise to folks who get attacked like this is to just break out and laugh and say something like “Tim, your head looks about to explode. You’re really feeling your Wheaties today.”

http://www.mahablog.com/2006/0…..bout-karl/

Was It About Karl?

All we know for sure is that we don’t know for sure why Goss resigned. If the only reason for the resignation is Goss’s poor job performance — which is not usually a firing offense among the Bushies — why so abrupt?

The two reasons Bushies lose their jobs is (1) they’ve become — or are about to become — a political liability, or (2) they spoke out against the White House Official Version of Reality. We have to assume Goss was about to become a political liability and had to be bounced asap.

One other possibility is that Negroponte wants something from the CIA he wasn’t getting, And it’s something he wants right now. Time is of the essence. Here’s a wild card thought — could this something have to do with building a legal defense for Karl Rove’s role in Plamegate? Conventional wisdom says that if Rove’s going to be indicted, it’s going to happen within the next week or two. That’s just seat-of-the-pants speculation, of course. But Dick Cheney’s running battle with the CIA is at the heart of the Plame mess, and part of Goss’s mission was to bring the agency to heel.