Pre-9/11 intelligence

I strongly urge you to visit the Democracy Now site and listen to the interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, broadcast on Thursday, April 29. (By the time you read this, a transcript may be up.) Edmonds, as I hope you know by now, is the translator who has braved much harassment to present her first-hand knowledge that leading Al Qaeda operatives were wiretapped, and that these intercepts revealed detailed advanced information about the World Trade Center attacks. She will present testimony to that effect in the ongoing civil suit brought by 9/11 survivors.

Her revelations show remarkable courage. I know something about the translation business: Even in the private sector, professionals pride themselves on their discretion. They are like doctors or lawyers. Edmonds would not have come forward for anything less than dire reasons.

She says she cannot provide specifics (e.g., the names of those being surveilled) to the public. Moreover, her reports do not make clear to what degree this intelligence was squelched intentionally, as opposed to "honest" delays in translation. She does refer to key texts that remained untranslated until after the event, and other texts that were (deliberately?) translated in a misleading fashion.

Apparently, she now runs something of a risk every time she discusses this matter. The government has taken the position that even information made public can be "reclassified" -- a policy instituted for the purposes of CYA and lawyerly vengeance. This gambit targets whistleblowers without making life one whit more difficult for the folks under surveillance. It's not as though an Al Qaeda planner will forget something he saw on the net just because the data has been reclassified.

It is worth noting that the intercepts came from the NSA and were shared with CIA as well as the FBI. NSA and CIA both have their own translators. (CIA uses a translation unit called the JPRS, although probably not for material of this sort. I've been told they don't pay well, which may be one reason for their much-discussed difficulty in finding talent.) Could three different agencies have innocently dropped the same ball? Why bother to intercept terrorist communications if you're not going to listen to what they say?

I think much was known before 9/11. I think key information went into the unreleased pages of the August 6, 2001 briefing memo. And I think that's why a CIA leaker -- almost certainly not Tenet -- revealed the very existence of this memo to reporters.

Note the pattern: We were told that Bush would release every page of his military record. Many believe he did, yet he did not. We were told that the administration would release the August 6 PDB. Many believe it did; yet we received only a page and a half of twelve pages.

There will be a brouhaha about Bob Kerrey and Lee Hamilton walking out on the President and Vice-President during their non-testimonial testimony. I dislike Hamilton, so his seeming rudeness doesn't matter to me one way or the other; Kerrey disappointed me. I'm particularly interested to learn which questions were asked by commission member Tim Roemer, because Roemer is the only one -- so far -- who has voiced concern about the missing pages of the PDB. If Roemer is unable to pry those pages loose, perhaps that aforementioned CIA leaker would be so kind as to drop the other shoe...?