CIA Chiefs Quash Revealing Report Pointing Fingers For September 11

Detailed CIA report is ordered to be kept secret for fear that ‘prying eyes’ may uncover truth

 

By Greg Szymanski

 

An internal CIA report, naming individuals who may have been responsible for intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, has been kept secret despite public outcries and congressional demands to release the incriminating evidence. The delays began last July on orders from CIA’s acting director, John McLaughlin, and have continued since Porter Goss took charge last September. Critics claim President George W. Bush has personally directed Goss, a Republican partisan, to keep the names from “prying eyes” in order to hide the truth exposing either government incompetence or outright complicity.

Ever since 9-11, the public has called for government accountability, but the Bush administration has been trying to block truth-seeking efforts at every corner. The lack of government cooperation began with obstructing justice at ground zero by FEMA’s quick removal of hard evidence and continues now by keeping the CIA report secret.

In between, critics have compiled a laundry list of government cover-ups concerning 9-11, but answers have been slow in coming due to a complacent media and lack of government cooperation. The public clamor still remains hidden on cyberspace conspiracy web sites and in alternative publications, but recently two federal lawsuits surfaced, one concerning FBI whistleblower, Sybil Edmonds, and the other a RICO conspiracy action filed against Bush and 56 other defendants.

The Edmonds lawsuit has been dismissed by a partisan federal judge appointed by Bush, and the RICO action is still in the pretrial discovery stage.

“We are in the process of serving all the defendants, including President Bush, his father and many others. It’s not going to be easy; expect a long hard fight,” said Phillip Berg, the attorney who filed the federal action on behalf of William Rodriguez, a World Trade Center maintenance worker who claims to have evidence showing government complicity.

Besides the two lawsuits, a citizens petition has also been handed over to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer last November, demanding criminal action be taken against Bush and his cronies for complicity in 9-11.

An official spokesman for the attorney general’s office said no action on the petition has been taken.

And regarding the recent CIA internal report kept secret from congressional leaders and the public, this week a CIA spokesman would not comment about the status of the report or when it would be released.

To date the names in the report remain unknown. They were compiled by the CIA’s inspector general, who began an independent investigation in December 2002 after a joint 9-11 congressional task force sought answers for obvious intelligence irregularities surrounding the attacks.

The purpose of the report was to get the bottom of the intelligence breakdowns and to determine who should be held accountable for mistakes made. To date no one has been publicly held accountable or even reprimanded openly for obvious intelligence breakdowns.

Further, the CIA has not provided a reason for its reluctance to turn over the report, even after a letter was directly sent by top House leaders on the Intelligence Committee to former director McLaughlin, demanding accountability.

The letter, sent last September, has not been made public and has essentially been ignored by CIA officials.

Last October, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va), personally asked Goss to turn over names in the report, but his demand has also been ignored by the CIA.

Members of Congress expressed concern over the CIA’s failure to cooperate, saying it was a “definite departure from normal procedure.” House and Senate members are expected to further prod the CIA in turning over the sensitive report when the 109th Congress convenes.

This time help is expected to come from an outspoken critic, Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), who returns to the House after being ousted two years ago.

McKinney is one of the few elected officials who publicly claimed the Bush administration had prior knowledge of the events leading up to 9-11, saying the administration allowed the events to occur in order to reap huge profits from the invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Political insiders claim McKinney, who was the first black woman ever elected to Congress from Georgia in 1992, was then targeted by the GOP for defeat in 2002 due to her anti-administration public expressions.

McKinney recently won re-election and is expected to fight hard for those involved in the 9-11 truth movement despite its unpopularity on Capitol Hill.