CIA Hiding - "Gravely Damaging Intelligence Gaps" (emptywheel)

[kpete]

Gravely Damaging Intelligence Gaps
By: emptywheel Tuesday June 9, 2009 12:19 pm

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Now, there's one obvious reason Panetta'd be fearful of releasing this stuff; he doesn't want to reveal how we prioritized the information we sought from Abu Zubaydah and Rahim al-Nashiri. Imagine the scandal, of course, if the cables were to reveal that the first questions we asked Zubaydah after waterboarding him in August 2002 pertained to purported ties to Iraq? (I have no evidence it was and the CIA said they didn't tie any Iraq questions to waterboarding--but that's the sort of question we ought to be asking.)

Ahem.

But I'm particularly interested in the key thrust of his concern: intelligence gaps. Panetta says the US citizens cannot have these documents because they'll reveal what we "did not know about enemies in certain time frames." It'll reveal "what the CIA knew--and did not know, i.e. intelligence gaps--at specific points in time on specific matters of intelligence interest."

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I can think of one really big intelligence gap that the CIA filled either before or after it started torturing Abu Zubaydah: the critical detail that Abu Zubaydah was not--as George Bush had proclaimed--the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, but was instead a sort of travel agent for a training camp that al Qaeda had tried to shut down as a competitor.

I can see why it'd be embarrassing to have to reveal that fact--not least because of the President's crowing about catching the purported mastermind of the attacks. After all, if Abu Zubaydah wasn't who we claimed him to be
--if he wasn't a top al Qaeda figure with actionable intelligence on upcoming attacks--then the whole torture thing becomes illegal.

more:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/06/09/gravely-damaging-intelligence-gaps/

I can see how Leon Panetta wouldn't want us to learn when the CIA found about this critical detail.

[Old and In the Way]

1. We know what this was all about.

A charade to give cover to the hostile takeover of Iraqi National Oil. The fact that the planning was happening before the attacks of 9/11 may or may not be coincidental. But the need to have "terrorists" and preferably "terrorists with ties to Saddam/Iraq" was paramount. Had to blur the two events together to make a casus belli to invade and occupy Iraq. The short incursion into Afghanistan was theater prep. If Al Qaeda was such a problem, why did we give safe passage to hundreds when they were cornered at Tora Bora? Probably to help destabilize the entire Mid-East and make the profits bigger and longer lasting. Why did they out a CIA NOC who was tasked with tracking real WMD in terroprist hands? Because the case was threatening to expose the fabrication of the planned war with Iraq...US security was never an issue with these criminals. Real terrorists might divulge real information. What they needed were patsies. Bush-Cheney needed their Ptomekin terrorists in their Ptomekin prison camp tortured to give Ptomekin confessions to distract from the Trillion dollar bamboozle give-away to their friends in Big Oil and Big MIC.

It's not the pictures and the acts of torture...they are obviously disgusting and beneath the principles that we supposedly stand for. No, the problem is in the words...the questions we asked and the Ptomekin answers we received. I suspect when the record is clear of smoke and mirrors, we'll find that most of these people were sold out dirt farmers. And the real terrorists, the ones that spend loads of money to make even bigger loads of money, are still safely protected behind their various government immunities.

[spanone]

2. the whole torture thing is ALREADY illegal.

[Uncle Joe]

3. I believe that was a use of sarcasm. n/t