Mukasey: It wasn't Afghanistan

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has admitted that he garbled his claim about the pre-9/11 intercept of a call between an al-Qaeda facility overseas and the 9/11 hijackers in the US last week. Today he told the Senate:

"One thing I got wrong. It didn’t come from Afghanistan. I got the country wrong."
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2...340778#comments

I have been all over this and I know the other end of the call was in Yemen. Here is the timeline we compiled:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&projects_and_programs=complete_911_timeline...

This is a huge issue for us. If people knew that the NSA was intercepting calls between the 9/11 hijackers in the US and a phone registered to a guy (Ahmed al-Hada) who had previously helped bin Laden murder about 240 people (including 29 Americans), but didn't bother to trace the calls, what would they think about 9/11?

The 9/11 Commission knew about this, but included only two cryptic references to it in its report. This reflects very badly on the 9/11 Commission.

It seems apparent that

It seems apparent that Hayden is lying. I don't understand why citizens are expected to be cheerleaders for these officials. Authoritarianism isn't patriotic. How does it honor murdered citizens to accept BS from officials like Hayden? That makes no sense.

Hayden on the declassification of the CIA IG internal review executive summary:

While meeting the dictates of the law, I want to make it clear that this declassification was neither my choice nor my preference. Two Directors of National Intelligence have supported the agency’s position against release.

The long, grueling fight against terrorism, which depends in very real part on the quality of our intelligence, demands that we keep our focus on the present and the future. We must draw lessons from our past—and we have—without becoming captive to it. I thought the release of this report would distract officers serving their country on the frontlines of a global conflict. It will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed. I also remain deeply concerned about the chilling effect that may follow publication of the previously classified work, findings, and recommendations of the Office of Inspector General. The important work of that unit depends on candor and confidentiality. Link

Ground already well plowed? Yeah right.

Some of the leading advocates of (post 9/11) torture were officials named by CIA IG Helgerson in his internal review of pre-9/11 conduct. CIA officials seem to expect unconditional trust from the public in regards to the necessity of employing torture and warrantless spying programs. One wonders why on earth the public should trust them considering how unwilling they are to account for their own conduct in the lead up to 9/11. For example, Hayden has never explained his role in the pre-9/11 warrantless spying programs.

Mukasey switches his story like a second-rate criminal under

interrogation.

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2008/04/senators-grill.html

On his third question, Leahy asked Mukasey to clarify a recent comment he made in San Francisco where he implied that the failure to listen in on a phone call from Afghanistan to the United States prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks had cost 3,000 lives.

"Nobody else seems to know about this. Can you tell me what the circumstances were and why?" Leahy said.

"The phone call I referenced relates to an incoming call that is referred to in a letter in February of this year to House Intelligence Committee Chairman [Silvestre] Reyes [(D-Texas)] from Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and I," Mukasey said.

"One thing I got wrong. It didn’t come from Afghanistan. I got the country wrong," Mukasey continued without specifying the country where the call originated.

Mukasey, who used the phone call as an example to highlight the intelligence shortcomings before 9/11, did not explain why he included the comment to argue for expanded surveillance powers in a question-and-answer session after his speech on March 27.

"No FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] application should have been necessary to monitor a foreign target in a foreign country," Leahy reminded Mukasey. "We didn’t need it then. And we didn’t need it today."