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Wiki Editor Helps Reveal Pre-9/11 CIA Mistakes

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-non-denial-denials dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Kevin Fenton was reading the Department of Justice's 2004 Inspector General report on pre-9/11 intelligence failures. Parts of it didn't make sense to him, so he decided to add the information in the report to Paul Thompson's 9/11 timeline at the wiki-style website History Commons. Eventually, Fenton's work led him to uncover the identity of a CIA manager who ran the Bin Ladin unit before 9/11, when agents there deliberately withheld information about two 9/11 hijackers from the FBI. That manager was named Richard Earl Blee and he is now the subject of a documentary by Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, of secrecykills.org, who confirmed his identity using techniques right out of the 70s film All the President's Men. Blee, along with Cofer Black and George Tenet, have found the work disturbing enough to release a joint statement denying some of the allegations."

2 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So what is new? by Runaway1956 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "no real evidence of any sort of high-level conspiracy"

    The CIA made lots of mistakes. The single worst mistake they made, was when they allowed the White House to influence their reports, and even to edit the data to support political agendas. The CIA could well have denied some of the bullshit gushing from the White House. While they couldn't get away with using the direct language that I tend to use, there are many ways to tell the world that the White House is lying, while making it sound like you really respect the wisdom of the Pres, VP, etc.

    I can forgive everything the CIA did and did not do - except for allowing Bush and Cheney to hijack the CIA's intelligence. They should have found a way to assert themselves, and to assert the real information.

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  2. The problem is naming them. by khasim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As far as I can tell, this is just one more example of how turf wars between the different agencies caused severe information gaps before 9/11.

    The difference is that the people RESPONSIBLE for those turf wars are now being IDENTIFIED by NAME.

    Look at how many "mistakes" were made on critical issues ... without anyone being identified or fired.