noise's blog

The Watchdogs Didn't Bark

I read the book. Here are some observations:

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1) The mainstream coverage of this story has been awful. Mainstream journalists are quick to deride 9/11 truthers but have never accounted for their own conduct. By that I mean the al-Hazmi/al-Mihdhar story is an open conspiracy with no credible government explanation and some of the most respected journalists in the country have simply not covered it. Duffy and Nowosielski deserve credit for their effort.

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The withholding of info related to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar

Recently former FBI agent Mark Rossini and former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke have raised the issue of CIA withholding in relation to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. This is an aspect of 9/11 that the 9/11 Commission failed to investigate. Despite this failure the mainstream media still loves to pretend the 9/11 Commission did a super job. This endorsement is probably based in part on the fact that the mainstream media has done a horrible, horrible job of investigating this aspect of 9/11. Basically the media hides their own lack of investigation by pretending the 9/11 Commission did a thorough job. The withholding is not a small detail that has little import. The truth about the withholding will likely change the entire context of the war on terror. It is that important.

Clarke and Rossini have both obscured the conduct of the FBI in the withholding:

Rossini:

Dina did not know at all about the recruitment effort. Dina just knew that the methodology by which the CIA knew about these terrorists was via an “intelligence method”, (which Dina erroneously and innocently thought was protected then by the “wall”).

Kiriakou suggests Bikowsky pushed for the torture of Maher Arar

“I remember hearing some of the conversations – that, ‘This is the wrong guy, this is a mistake.’ And then one officer in particular (was) saying, ‘No, this is not the wrong guy. We’re going to take him.’ “She was certain that we had the right guy. That Maher Arar was an al-Qaeda whatever-he-was – a facilitator, or whatever – and we were moving forward with it.”

He wouldn’t identify the officer.

This is the wrong guy

Bikowsky and her colleagues at Alec Station have never explained their conduct in the lead up to 9/11. Keep in mind we have repeatedly been told by the media that Alec Station was obsessed with all things al Qaeda. Yet for some reason people like Blee, Wilshire, Bikowsky and Casey found it appropriate to withhold information about al Qaeda suspects at a time when Tenet was giving the White House panicked briefings of a possible attack.

Where are the interviews of Bin Laden unit chiefs?

Despite the highly classified world of special ops 60 Minutes has interviewed the Delta team commander involved in the Tora Bora hunt for Bin Laden and one of the Seals involved in the Abbottababad raid. For some reason the investigative journalists at 60 Minutes evidently don't believe it would be newsworthy to hear from Richard Blee or Rodney Middleton even though these guys headed CIA and FBI Bin Laden units in the lead up to 9/11.

Last year Lara Logan interviewed former FBI agent Ali Soufan. Posted on website was an accompanying article:

But, Soufan says he later learned the CIA knew - eight months before 9/11 - that this same operative had met in Malaysia with two terrorism suspects who would later hijack the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. And the CIA also knew that those two suspects were heading to the U.S.

"The agency knew that these al Qaeda operatives in Southeast Asia flew to America or they have visas to come to the United States, and somebody decided, 'Let's not share the information,'" Soufan said.

"And if it had been shared with you, what then?" Logan asked.

US media and the Mark Walhberg apology

The US media is especially proud of standing up for the victims of 9/11 by self righteously reporting the apology from Walhberg.Why is it that an actor is able to apologize for insensitive comments but intelligence officials and agents won't explain let alone apologize for getting a bunch of people killed? When US media could have stood up for the victims in a substantive way they failed to do so. As recently as September 2011, 60 Minutes countered former FBI agent Ali Soufan's credible accusation of CIA withholding of information by way of a CIA talking point:

The CIA told us any suggestion it purposely refused to share critical information on the 9/11 plots with FBI is "baseless" and "these allegations diminish the hard work and dedication of countless CIA officers."

The Interrogator

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