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The backslapping Tenet made another fast friend of FBI Director Robert Mueller. The two conspired to fulfill White House wishes to magnify the threat from al-Qaeda about which, when all was said and done, relatively little was actually known. Exaggerating threats became a widespread cottage industry, as former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge learned as he struggled to keep color-coded warnings from being blatantly coordinated for the political purposes of the White House.FBI Director Rehearses
FBI Director Robert Mueller led the chorus, stating solemnly to Congress and anyone who would listen, � ���"Our greatest threat is from al-Qaeda cells in the United States that we have not been able to identify.� �� � Please, take a minute to think that sentence through. It may parse okay; but what does it really mean?
In February 2003 Mueller warned that hundreds of Al-Qa'ida operatives are hiding throughout the U.S. planning potentially catastrophic attacks, but that the FBI did not know who or where they are.
"It's sort of puzzling, I think, that you can have 100 per cent certainty about the weapons of mass destruction's existence, and zero certainty about where they are."
And so it was with al-Qaeda cells in the U.S.
Ready for this? There were no cells. And please, don't conjure up � ���"threatening� �� � groups like the feckless one from Lackawanna� ��"the entrapment case that was the best the FBI could do in manufacturing enemies within! Not to mention the most egregious example; i. e., the thousand immigrants detained for six to twelve months immediately after 9/11, with none� ��"not one� ��"being charged with terrorism.
Eager to please the White House, Mueller had learned to blow smoke, as we say in the trade.
What's the connection here with the CIA Inspector General's report? Just this: if the FBI director points to al-Qaeda cells� ��"real or imagined� ��"in the U.S. as the greatest threat to our national security, there is a high premium on what former President George W. Bush called � ���"the hunt.� �� � Smoke � ��˜em out; and find ways to make � ��˜em tell us who and where in the U.S. their compatriots are lurking.
Read the following excerpts from the CIA Inspector General report text (page 83ff) and weep:
� ���"According to a number of those interviewed for this Review, the Agency's intelligence on Al-Qa'ida was limited prior to the CTC (Counterterrorist Center) Program. The Agency lacked adequate linguists or subject matter experts and had very little hard knowledge of what particular Al-Qa'ida leaders� ��"who later became detainees� ��"knew. This lack of knowledge led analysts to speculate about what a detainee � ��˜should know,' vice information the analyst could objectively demonstrate the detainee did know".
� ���"When a detainee did not respond to a question posed to him, the assumption at Headquarters was that the detainee was holding back and knew more; consequently, Headquarters recommended resumption of EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques].
� ���"[a page-plus blackened] is evidenced in the final waterboard session of Abu Zubaydah. According to a senior CTC officer, the interrogation team considered Abu Zubaydah to be compliant and wanted to terminate EITs. [word(s) redacted] believed Abu Zubaydah continued to withhold information, [three lines redacted] at the time it generated substantial pressure from Headquarter to continue use of the EITs.
� ���"According to this senior officer, the decision to resume use of the waterboard on Abu Zubaydah was made by senior officers of the DO [Directorate of Operations]. [one line redacted] to assess Abu Zubaydah's compliance and witnessed the final waterboard session, after which, they reported back to Headquarters that the EITs were no longer needed on Abu Zubaydah.� �� �
In their � ���"Conclusions� �� � section, the IG uses bloodless prose to make this painful observation:
� ���"Agency officers report that reliance on analytical assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence may have resulted in the application of EITs without justification. Some participants in the Program, particularly field interrogators, judge that CTC assessments to the effect that detainees are withholding information are not always supported by an objective evaluation of available information and the evaluation of the interrogators but are too heavily based, instead, on presumptions of what the individual might or should know.� �� �
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