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October 21, 2004
WHAT'RE THEY HIDING??
So you think that the Bush Administration has told you everything there is to know about 9/11 and what they knew before it happened, do you?
You'd be wrong.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the CIA completed an Inspector General's report on 9/11 back in June. But not only have we the people not seen it... the Congressional intelligence committees that ordered the study haven't seen it yet either. Why? It seems that the Bush administration has ordered the Agency to withhold the report until after the election.
Why on earth would Bush and his people do this? Simple. The report names names. It says exactly who was sleeping on watch. It tells you what Bush desperately does not want you to hear.
"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."
3000 Americans died, and the Bush Administration doesn't want you to know the truth until after the election. What are they afraid of?
I can hear it now... the Bush apologists complaining about that gol-durn liberal media out to get them once again. Because after all, if there's any news that's unflattering to conservatives, that's just because of the liberal media, right?
Well, except that one of the members of Congress who asked for the report is a Republican.
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.
Ah... now I get it. The report tells the truth -- and as we know, truth is something this administration is mightily challenged by. And this report holds members of the Bush administration responsible for some of the mistakes before 9/11 -- and as we know, responsibility is a foreign concept to a president who doesn't even think he's ever made a mistake.
So just remember, kids... the United States of America is currently led by a man who would prefer to hide the truth until after the election about an incident in which 3,000 of our countrymen died -- all so that he can hold on to the power he was given by the Supreme Court in December 2000.
Sure, other presidents in recent memory have hidden the truth as well. But you know... somehow, this seems just a little more egregious to me than "I did not... have... sexual relations with that woman..."
