Ron Suskind: "The President Knows More Than He Is Letting On"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102906A.shtml

Journalist: "The President Knows More Than He Lets On"
By Matthias Gebauer and Georg Mascolo
Der Spiegel

Friday 27 October 2006

- snip -

For years, Ron Suskind has been considered one of the best- sourced reporters when it comes to the CIA or the US government. The author and former Wall Street Journal reporter has high- level access to sources in the US administration. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for his investigative reporting and his new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," has been the subject of critical praise around the world. In the book, Suskind describes how George W. Bush and his advisors completely reshaped US foreign and security policy after Sept. 11, how they hunted in vain for Osama bin Laden and turned torture into a regular part of CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists. In the exposé, Suskind also reports for the first time about terror attacks that have been successfully foiled and about one al- Qaida turncoat who served for years as an informant against bin Laden and Co. Suskind lives and works in Washington, DC.

- snip -

Spiegel Online: Why do you think the 14 prisoners were transferred from the Black Sites to Guantanamo?

Suskind: There was a debate simmering inside the US government for over a year. Since early 2004, when things really started to congeal, we were saying we need to think about an end game. People said you need to have a process that has a finish. We didn't have one. We were moving with a kind of improvisional urgency in that first year after 9/11 - the thinking was, just do anything. We need to find these people, we have almost no human intelligence, and these interrogations may be our most precious material. The years started to pass - and some of these people were not giving us much information in. Essentially we felt as through their yield had been harvested.

Spiegel Online: It seems clear that at a certain point CIA agents were asking for some clear assurances that they wouldn't be prosecuted.

Suskind: Absolutely. That cry has been at CIA for years, but it was not until recently that Bush decided to act. I think the White House decided that the fall of this election year would be the ideal time. So now they acknowledge that the Black Sites exist. I don't think there is any doubt that terror would be a key issue this fall in a mid-term election year.

MORE AT LINK

[al bupp]

1. Worth the read, thanks /nt

[BlooInBloo]

2. Well it's certainly not possible for him to know less...

[ewagner]

3. Good read

thanks for the link............. :hi:

[Peace Patriot]

4. "No human intelligence"? There was ALL KINDS of human intelligence

warning of 9/11, and numerous opportunities to stop it. And one of the human trackers of that intelligence--John O'Neil (who was following the Al Qaeda money trail in Yemen)--was purged from the FBI just before; and another--FBI agent Colleen Rowley, who had a member of Al Qaeda IN HAND, and was denied access to his computer (--a routine FISA request). Richard Clarke had plenty of human intelligence, and was running from Bushite to Bushite trying to convey his alarm, and get them to DO something.

Then, AFTER 9/11, the Bushites immediately focused on invading Iraq--where human intelligence CLEARLY INDICATED there was NO CONNECTION to 9/11, and in fact that Saddam was very hostile to Al Qaeda. Then, after that disastrous invasion--and the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and the torture of many innocents (people accused of stealing bread! --or guilty of NOTHING AT ALL), and the looting of both the Iraqi people, and us (--to the tune of ONE TRILLION DOLLARS, the tip of the iceberg of the deficit)--what do they do? They OUT one of our main sources of human intelligence on the ground in the Middle East--Valerie Plame (outed on July 14, 2003) and the entire WMD counter-proliferation network of covert agents/contacts that she headed with the Brewster-Jennings front company (outed on July 22, 2003, putting all our covert agents/contacts at great risk of getting killed, and disabling all projects).

-----

I've just gone and read the whole article at Truthout.org--and this excerpt above gives a wrong impression of what Suskind is saying.

Suskind dates the failure of the Bushites on intelligence to late 2002--after a year of torturing prisoners and getting nowhere--during the runup to the Iraq invasion, with the combined effect of the torture and the Iraq war being to shut down human intelligence sources on "terrorist" activity.

Suskind's main point (not revealed in the excerpts above) is that human intelligence has dried up as a consequence of torture--and I would contend as a consequence of this and other deliberate policies, of alienating the Arab world and even our allies, and purging and punishing honest intelligence gatherers and analysts. I don't believe there was EVER an honest effort on intelligence by the Bush Junta, nor any interest in their part whatsoever in keeping the U.S. safe. I think their sole purpose has been to loot and destroy our government in the interest of the super-rich, war profiteers and our Corporate Rulers. They are traitors. Suskind says they still have about a hundred prisoners at black sites around the world, where people are held in detention and tortured. I think what the Bush Junta is doing is covering its tracks, for past crimes--and laying down further plots against the American people and others, possibly to be sprung on any Democratic administration that takes power and has the balls to investigate them, or to try to limit the Corporate Rulers' power in any way.

He says that intelligence professionals are alarmed at the failures of the Bush regime, and cooperated with his book because of it. They're saying, "We need to have a real strategy here that is not only tactically forceful, but where the left hand of the US foreign policy doesn't undermine what the right hand is doing." Suskind says, "Right now we often run like a headless chicken. We need a strategy."

No strategy--after 6 years in power. What does that tell you? "The left hand undermining what the right hand is doing" on foreign policy. What does THAT tell you? They DON'T WANT a "strategy." They DON'T CARE ABOUT U.S. national security. They are looting and plundering and plotting, and covering their tracks. They have no sense of our nation, or of patriotism. They are global corporate predators run amok--with the entire resources of the U.S. government, the U.S. military and the U.S. economy and its many honest taxpayers at their complete disposal.

And now they have the capability--acquired between 2002 and 2004--of directly determining the outcome of our elections, with two corporations with very close ties to the Bush regime and to far rightwing causes now in control of all vote "counting" in this country, with electronic voting machines and central tabulators run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code.

That's what power does--it covers its tracks. And absolute power covers its tracks absolutely. One insider hacker, a couple of minutes, leaving no trace--that's all it takes to change thousands if not millions of votes. Undetectably. And if you have the power to detain people and torture and kill them, with impunity, in the name of the "war on terror," and you are as crooked as they come, what would YOU use that power for? To keep people safe?

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. The end message

the United States and its allies were winning this struggle up until around the end of 2002.
...
Spiegel Online: During that time there were also defections from al-Qaida.

Suskind: Yes, dissent (inside al-Qaida) helped to provide the seabed for human intelligence that the United States harvested, including Ali. He provided important tips right up until early 2005. And the Emir of Qatar gave us intelligence that helped us to catch Binalshibh, and Mohammed was turned over by another source. He got a $25 million reward and is now living somewhere in America with his family. These are human intelligence assets and they are the how you win these wars.

Spiegel Online: So things were going well ... at least until the Iraq war?

Suskind: You can almost mark by the day how our human intelligence assets have withered. The chances of someone coming to the US authorities in this period are slim to none and that will blind us at a time when the terrorist threat has metastasized into what I call the franchise model. It is particulary difficult to discover prior to the operational moment.

Spiegel Online: That has been a source deep frustration for the intelligence community.

Suskind: And that is why people in the counter-terrorism community in the United States are terrified at this point and why many cooperated with this book. They wanted to send out a signal and say: "We need to have a real strategy here that is not only tactically forceful, but where the left hand of the US foreign policy doesn't undermine what the right hand is doing." Right now we often run like a headless chicken. We need a strategy. And we need it immediately because, in some ways, we are less safe then we were on Sept. 12.

[KoKo]

6. kick.....