From 9/11 to Mass Surveillance, The Man Who Knew Too Much - Thomas Drake on RAI (1/5)
Joe Sun, 08/02/2015 - 8:57am
From 9/11 to Mass Surveillance, The Man Who Knew Too Much - Thomas Drake on RAI (1/5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sngqrHapYGA
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Published on Aug 2, 2015
On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Drake, a former Senior Executive at the National Security Agency, says he was targeted by the NSA because he exposed that the agency had intel that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and because he blew the whistle on a massive secret surveillance program aimed at Americans
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The failed recruitment explanation
A theory to explain why the CIA sat on intel regarding al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar suggests the CIA was trying to flip them and thus they didn't want the FBI messing with their operation. Lately Thomas Drake also suggested the FBI was involved in a similar operation in his Real News interview series.
An obvious problem with this is that all the post 9/11 investigations and reforms were based on issues like lack of communication, not enough power for the intel agencies, too many civil liberty concerns, etc. It is unbelievably disingenuous for intel people to act like a throw away comment about some purported failed recruitment is a sufficient explanation. We got a police state/permanent war because the CIA/FBI tried to flip two al Qaeda guys and failed? Are these intel people for real when they say such things?
Another problem with such a theory is the lack of follow up. Are we to believe that once the flip operation went bad the only choice was to let things continue towards disaster? That is Richard Clarke's absurd conclusion. So how does Clarke explain CIA sharing in late August? How does he explain the FBI UBLU's conduct of continuing to withhold information about al-Hazmi and al-Mihhdar from the Cole investigators? He doesn't.
Bear in mind this is how sanctioned media coverage of 9/11 works. This is considered credible, sound analysis. One reason why people who question 9/11 are vilified by mainstream media and the intelligence community is because the government officials know their explanations are not credible. A good analogy would be the torture program. Advocates of the torture program harshly criticize anyone who dares to question the program's effectiveness. Or they will play the secret knowledge card. "We are in the know with access to classified intel and it all backs our claims." Their goal is to intimidate and bully their critics into acceptance. Yet even without access to classified information there is enough information in the public realm for an honest observer to conclude the torture program was garbage. So too there is enough information to conclude that the notion of a failed recruitment operation is not credible.