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 The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
 By Robert Scheer
 The Los Angeles Times
 Tuesday 19 October 2004
 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102004V.shtml

 The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials.

 It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11
 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by
 the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not
 been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that
 mandated the study almost two years ago.

 "It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were
 not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being
 suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me,
 adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the
 administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in
 terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible
 afterward."

 When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking
 Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and
 committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago
 asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not
 to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."

 According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of
 anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month
 investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled."
 First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the
 former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence committee)
who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.

 The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than
 the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11
 commission and Congress.

 "What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at
 individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report
 does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very
 senior-level officials responsible."

 By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back
 such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has
 invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report
 to Congress.

 "It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the
 intelligence official.

 "The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the
 election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever
 tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the
 Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."

 None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great
 determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the
 security of this nation was so easily breached. In Bush's much ballyhooed
 war on terror, ignorance has been bliss.

 The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for
 example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a
 grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain.

 And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the
 record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with
 Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which
 commission members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange
 behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office in the land based
 on his handling of the so-called war on terror.

 In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met
 with Goss privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general's
 report. "Three thousand people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been
 held accountable," 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.

 The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, "fuels the
 perception that no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that
 we don't have [the report]; it not only disrespects Congress but it
 disrespects the American people."

 The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to
 gain release of the report have, said the intelligence source, "led the
 management of the CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity.
 Unless the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA's
 leadership will have won and the nation will have lost."