Panetta

1)The question is exactly the sincerity or patriotism of high ranking officials. Panetta has the double standard down pat. It's fine if citizens are considered unpatriotic for objecting to torture but it is never acceptable for the patriotism of high ranking officials to be up for review. They always act in good faith. As we learned during Iran-Contra, when high ranking officials commit crimes and make deals with publicly stated enemies (like Iran), it's perfectly ok because those crimes were committed in good faith.

2)The CIA has never accounted for their pre-9/11 conduct. To this day Alec Station officials have not explained their contradictory conduct. If al Qaeda was as dangerous as they stated publicly then why on earth did they withhold the fact that two al Qaeda operatives with links to Cole plotters were in the US?

3)Where is the CIA IG report on torture? Could Panetta be a bigger hypocrite? Don't tell me it's unfair to criticize the CIA while the public still doesn't know what the torture program was all about. Does Panetta realize that the public gets information that contradicts his good faith (and perfectly legal) narrative? When will CIA officials address FBI agent Ali Soufan's testimony? Soufan stated that legal methods were working while torture was counterproductive. As I have noted before, Scott Shane reported that one of the lead interrogators (who replaced Soufan) for high value detainees:

1)didn't speak Arabic
2)had no counterterrorism background
3)had no interrogation experience

This is absurd.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

The CIA will never account for their actions prior to 9/11 since they are trying to hide the fact that they with help from FBI HQ agents they had been working with knowingly, deliberately and intentionally allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to carry out the attacks on 9/11. The proof of this comes right from the US government’s own documents, and is summarized on www.eventson911.com along with PDFs of these government documents.

These documents prove that the CIA knew in July 2001 that Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were going to take part in the next big al Qaeda operation. At the time the CIA even knew that Nawaf al-Hazmi was already inside of the US preparing to take part in this attack. On August 22, 2001, the CIA and FBI learned that both Khalid al-Hazmi and Nawaf al-Hazmi were now inside of the US preparing to take part in this massive al Qaeda attack that the FBI and CIA had been warned about since April 2001.

Yet not only did the CIA and FBI HQ keep this information secret from the FBI criminal investigators who wanted to search for Mihdhar and Hazmi, but they worked to shut down this criminal investigation, the only criminal investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi that could have found them in time to have prevented the attacks on 9/11. The CIA and FBI HQ shut down this investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi even while knowing that thousands of Americans were going to perish as a direct result of their actions to block this FBVI investigation and search for Mihdhar and Hazmi.

your own website where you are trying to sell your book, dude.

OF 911. written by Robert Shopmeyer.
Get it at a bookstore near you!

You don't need to get the book to get all of the information off of this web site. It is all there including a complete summary so anyone can see what took place prior to the attacks on 9/11 at the FBI HQ and the CIA, that had allowed these attacks to take place. You can even down load any of the US official documents from this web site.

n/t

the poster routinely directs people to his website without ever disclosing that it's his website where his book is featured prominently for sale. Where I come from, that's considered underhanded, dude.

He said very clearly the info he was refering to on his website was avaiable for free.
Is that not cheap enough for you?

If he did he would realize the public won't learn what happened on 9/11 until 9/8/09 when John Farmer's book is released. At last we will get the real story.

Panetta is an advocate of the overreaction theory. This theory of 9/11 only makes sense if one simply ignores all the questionable conduct by government officials in the lead up to the attacks. And one must also ignore all the double standards of the WoT. For example, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were considered key allies in the WoT yet they had much closer links to al Qaeda than Iraq. It is absurd for Panetta to justify torture while pretending all the other questionable aspects of government conduct aren't relevant.

Why are officials like Tenet and Hayden considered credible? Have they ever accounted for their pre-9/11 conduct? No. Why were they considered credible in relation to the effectiveness of torture? One can make the case that the "lack of police state powers" excuse for 9/11 helped Tenet and Hayden evade blame for their bizarre conduct. Meaning they had a motive for going along with the Bush administration power grab. If one wants to make the case that these two officials truly believed that torture was necessary then one must deal with the public record that strongly suggests the torture was not effective in attaining reliable intelligence. Usually this problem is avoided by resorting to propaganda and fearmongering.

Are CIA employees paid? Are they forced to work at the CIA? Is it unfair to expect CIA employees to follow US laws? Panetta makes it sound like CIA employees are unpaid draftees. He suggests that it is unfair for such dedicated public servants to be held liable for breaking the law. I remember Tenet going on and on about his people at the CIA. How wrong it was for Congress, the media and the public to blame his people. One must ask the question--just how much did Tenet really care about his people when he went along with one sinister agenda after another? Withholding of al Qaeda information, agreeing to employ torture and lying about Hussein's WMD.

Where was the good faith from the CIA during Tenet's term as director?

Where was the good faith from the CIA during Tenet's term as director is clearly illustrated in his testimony to the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004:

WHAT GEORGE TENET TOLD THE 9/11 COMMISSION:

We now know that at the exact same time Tenet and Black on July 13, 2001, and July 23, 2001, had forbidden CIA Bin Laden Deputy Chief Tom Wilshire from giving the information on the Kuala Lumpur January 2000 al Qaeda planning meeting to the FBI Cole bombing criminal investigators, the very information that would have prevented the attacks on 9/11, they were having an urgent meeting in the White House with Rice and Clark, on July 10, 2001, and with Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, on July 17, 2001, describing a huge al Qaeda attack just about to take place inside of the US that would kill thousands of Americans.

So why did they forbid this information from going to the FBI criminal investigators when this was the very information that could have prevented the al Qaeda attacks that they were warning people in the White House about?

We also know from Tenet's testimony to the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004 that Tenet was hiding his meetings in August 2001 on August 17th the 24th in Crawford, and the 31st in Washington with the President of the United States from the American public.

At this hearing Tim Roemer asked the question: "If you, (George Tenet), knew that the al Qaeda terrorists were about to mount a huge attack inside of the US that would kill thousands of Americans why did he not tell the President about this in August?"

Tenet answered that he was in Washington DC and the President was in Crawford Texas, and that is why he had not told the President.

NOW THAT'S A HELL OF AN ANSWER!

Then Roemer asked why did he not pick up the telephone and call the President and give him this horrific information. After all, if the Director of the CIA had information on an al Qaeda attack inside of the US that would kill thousands of Americans, it would only seem logical that he would contact George Bush, the President of the United States at his earliest opportunity, and let him also know right away about this horrific terrorist attack, in order to save all of these people from being killed in these attacks.

This only seems logical!

And if there were ever a real ticking time bomb scenario, this had to be it.

But Tenet said he had not called the President in August to give him this information, and could not go beyond this as an explanation. George Tenet, Director of the CIA simply could offer up no possible explanation at all on why he had not called the President of the United States and given him this information.

And main stream media seemed unusually uncurious about any of this, none of this testimony on why 3000 were killed on 9/11 made it into the main stream newspapers for some unknown reason.

But Bill Harlow, the CIA spokesman came out after Tenet’s testimony and said Tenet had just misspoken numerous times. “Misspoken numerous times” is CIA speak for lied. He said that Tenet had flown down to Crawford on August 17, and has seen the President in Washington on August 31, and six more times in September before the attacks on 9/11. But Tenet in his own book said he had been in Crawford in a meeting with the President in late August.

And we now also know from the White House web site, that George Tenet had also flown down to Crawford and had a meeting with the President on August 24, 2001. This is after Tenet learned on August 23, that Moussaoui had been arrested after the FBI thought he was a terrorist learning to fly a 747, and also after he learned on August 23 that Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US in order to take part in a massive al Qaeda attack that would kill thousands of Americans.

So what did George Tenet Director of the CIA, who had all of this horrific information tell the President of the United States of America at these meetings?

It seems that after 7 1/2 year that we still do not know. But we do know he was willing to lie to all of the American people and to the 9/11 Commission, committing a major crime of perjury, in order to hide these meetings with the President from the American people. We also know after his testimony, which was broadcast to the world, that the White House for some unknown reason, did not call up the 9/11 Commission or George Tenet to correct the record, when both the President and Condoleezza Rice would have been at the meeting with CIA Director George Tenet and would have known he had deliberately lied to the 9/11 Commission and the American people.

But isn’t all of this what psychologists call "consciousness of guilt", something one only does if they have committed a crime and are aware that they have committed a crime !