[Original title: "Sheer: Bush hiding CIA report that blames senior admin officials" ]
Robert Scheer: October 19, 2004
The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials.
It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until
after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector
general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to
the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.
"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing
their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence
official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very
embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't
interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government
responsible afterward."
When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member
of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra
(R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that
the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."
According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity,
release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an
11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director
John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and
chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by
President Bush.
The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the
earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and
Congress.
"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and
give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the
intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."
By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report
is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as
an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.
"It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the intelligence
official.
"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election,"
the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the
inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report
requested by Congress."
None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination
since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the security of this nation
was so easily breached. In Bush's much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been
bliss.
The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example,
agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement
led by the families of those slain.
And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the record.
Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick
Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed
to take notes. All in all, strange behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top
office in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.
In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met with Goss
privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general's report. "Three thousand
people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held accountable," 9/11 widow Kristen
Breitweiser told the paper.
The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, "fuels the perception that
no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that we don't have [the report];
it not only disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people."
The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to gain
release of the report have, said the intelligence source, "led the management of the
CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless the public demands an
accounting, the administration and CIA's leadership will have won and the nation will
have lost."
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Robert Scheer
Commentary
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Robert Scheer, a journalist with more than 30 years' experience, has built his
reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns appear in
newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines.
As Scheer creates his weekly national and local columns, he draws upon a wealth of
experience and knowledge. Between 1964 and 1969, he was Vietnam correspondent,
managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993, he served
as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, where he wrote articles on such
diverse topics as the Soviet Union, arms control, national politics and the military.
He is currently a contributing editor at The Times, as well as a contributing editor
for The Nation magazine.
Scheer has taught courses at Antioch College in San Francisco, New York City College,
UC Irvine, UCLA and UC Berkeley. He is now a Senior Lecturer at the University of
Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, where he teaches a course on
media and society.
Scheer also directs the Privacy Project at the Annenberg School. On Tuesday
afternoons, Scheer can be heard on the political radio program "Left, Right and
Center" on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica.
An accomplished author, Scheer has written six books including "Thinking Tuna Fish,
Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power"; "With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush
and Nuclear War" and "America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals."
Over the years, Scheer has been honored for his work, including his coverage of the
underprivileged and the welfare system. Recently, he was the 1998 honoree of the
Shelter Partnership, an organization of Los Angeles downtown businesses, and the USC
School of Social Work's Los Amigos award recipient. He has also received awards and
citations from Stanford University, the Moscow Academy of Sciences, UC San Diego and
Yale University.
Scheer was raised in the Bronx, where he attended public schools and graduated from
City College of New York. He studied as a Maxwell Fellow at Syracuse University and
was a fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley where he did graduate
work in economics. Scheer has also been a Poynter fellow at Yale, and was a fellow in
arms control at Stanford.
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