George Tenet is pissed. He wrote a lengthy and disgusted response to this CIA Inspector General report, printed in the NY Times (August 21, 2007). Here is his closing line:

"But just as we owed it to the country to do better — the CIA IG owed it to the nation and the men and women of the intelligence community to do a better job in reviewing the circumstances that led to the tragedy of September 11th." --Former Director of CIA, George Tenet

What's gotten Tenet so frosty? I mean, he does admit that "...we owed it to the country to do better..."

The CIA's "Summary" doesn't spill too many beans, but in general language they hint at realities that other reports like the FBI Inspector General Report have already revealed.

"Concerning certain issues [unspecified], the ["Accountability Review"] Team concluded that the [Central Intelligence] Agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner.

That is a pretty powerful statement, depending upon what the "issues" actually refer to. The previous FBI IG report (2004) exposed how the CounterTerrorism Center (CTC) -- run by CIA -- deliberately blocked a memo from alerting the FBI about two of the purported 9/11 skyjackers.

Two of the alleged terrorists had multi-entry United States visas, and were observed at a "high level Al Qaeda meeting" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

An FBI official assigned to the CIA/CTC wrote the memo to inform his agency to look out for the terrorists, who later easily entered the US with valid visas. Believing that his memo was sent over to FBI, the FBI official was unaware that CIA supervisors had held the memo and never sent it to FBI.

Was this protection of known terrorists, and hiding them from FBI tantamount to treason ("aiding the enemy")?

That's a question we should not expect answered by the CIA, nor the FBI, nor the Congress apparently.

"The Team found no instance in which an employee violated the law, and none of the errors discussed herein involves misconduct."

So much for the "Accountability" part. We are back to the incompetence defense, where it is only possible to make "errors," and no one ever violates the law.

It should be noted clearly, here, that the CIA is itself a terrorist organization, and has terrorized populations around the world for sixty years now. It is well documented how CIA overthrew numerous democratically elected governments, and installed in their place "strong man" military dictators, like Saddam Hussein amongst numerous others, and aided them in creating fascistic police state apparatuses. The CIA has actively fought against democracy in a very real sense, for most of its sordid history. The CIA pioneered the use of advanced psychological torture techniques (illegal), and funded, trained and armed death squads from Asia to the Americas (illegal), as well as participated in the global narcotics trade (illegal) for a very, very long time.

So, when the CIA clears itself of any wrongdoing, one should keep a skeptical mindset at the very least.

The Admissions

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