NSA's Hayden denied foreknowledge of 9/11 despite intercepts [View All]

[phoebe]

so why does the Bush Admin. go on and on about keeping us safe from terrorists and using the NSA to do so..anyone else see the laughable irony??

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9149402/site/newsweek

The issue at the heart of the Tenet matter—the role in the intelligence community of the NSA, which eavesdrops on telecommunications through a sophisticated worldwide electronic-monitoring network—also inevitably raises questions about the NSA’s former director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, who has since been named by Bush to be principal deputy to the new director of national intelligence, John Negroponte. A spokesman for Hayden's office declined to comment on the CIA document.

The long-awaited CIA report—and its tough criticisms—have been roiling the U.S. intelligence community at least since last fall when, according to several accounts, Inspector General John Helgerson's office finished drafting it and sent it forward to Goss. But the CIA didn't deliver the document to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees—which had asked the CIA to conduct an internal review in response to Congress's own 9/11 inquiry—until last week. Intelligence officials say the delay was necessary in order to give current and former officials an opportunity to respond to the report's contentious contents.


more importantly:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a101702hayden

October 17, 2002: NSA Denies Having Indications of 9/11 Planning


NSA Director Michael Hayden testifies before a Congressional inquiry that the “NSA had no that al-Qaeda was specifically targeting New York and Washington ... or even that it was planning an attack on US soil.” Before 9/11, the “NSA had no knowledge ... that any of the attackers were in the United States.” Supposedly, a post-9/11 NSA review found no intercepts of calls involving any of the 19 hijackers. <9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 10/17/02; USA Today, 10/18/02; Reuters, 10/17/02> However, such hijacker calls were intercepted by the NSA (for instance, (see Spring-Summer 2000)).

People and organizations involved: National Security Agency, al-Qaeda, Michael Hayden


October 17, 2002: NSA Denies Having Indications of 9/11 Planning


NSA Director Michael Hayden testifies before the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry that the “NSA had no that al-Qaeda was specifically targeting New York and Washington ... or even that it was planning an attack on US soil.” Before 9/11, the “NSA had no knowledge ... that any of the attackers were in the United States.” Supposedly, a post-9/11 NSA review found no intercepts of calls involving any of the 19 hijackers. Yet, in the summer of 2001 (see Summer 2001), the NSA intercepted communications between Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and hijacker Mohamed Atta, when he was in charge of operations in the US. What was said between the two has not been revealed. The NSA also intercepted multiple phone calls from Abu Zubaida, bin Laden's chief of operations, to the US in the days before 9/11 (see Early September 2001). But who was called or what was said has not been revealed.