wrote:
(Issac Goldberg) wrote:
wrote:

[snip]

Do you think that Congress should double check every Navy inquiry,
or just the Liberty? If just the Liberty then please explain what
the Navy's court did wrong and how Congress may be able to fix.

IMO the Navy's court of inquiry has a better record of finding the
facts than Congress.

But in a high profile case, leaders of a Navy Court of
Inquiry are subject to pressure of the President if that
President wants it to reach a certain conclusion.

If you reject this claim then please give
examples of Navy courtof inquiry making mistake, and Congress fixing
them.

See the LA Times article below to see how the executive branch
may try to ‘manipulate' intelligence. .

Can Congress get more data?

A Congressional investigation can ask the CIA
to testify on all of the data that has been
collected.

A Navy court of inquiry can subpoena the CIA just like Congress can.
And since the Navy is better than Congress in keeping secrets, the
CIA will probably be more willing to coopertae.

There was a Navy employee a number of years back who
made copies of 500,000 classified government documents
and provided them to a foreign government. Your
assertion about the Navy being better at keeping secrets
is suspect.

Does Congress have deeper understanding of Israel?

A non sequitur with regard to the question of
whether the attack on the Liberty was intentional
or not.

You claim that Congress investigation will be "better."
I claim that for better investigation you should either have
the ability to collect more data, or the ability to understand
the data better. Do you reject my claim, yes or no?
And if yes then what is your counter-claim?

You, like Weeks, seek to muddy the waters. Congress
has been successfully investigating the executive
branch of government for 200 years. Your suggestion
that the executive branch investigate itself violates
the 'separation of powers' principle which has worked
so effectively since our Constitution was adopted.

Does Congress have better exprerts in
navies-at-war issues than the US Navy?

Congress can request the testimony of the US Navy's
finest experts, who are then obligated to give
truthful answers, or face jail terms.

You assume that in short time Congressmen can become better experts
than people who spent years in sea commanding ships. I don't know
what is the base of your assumption, but I can tell you that you
can force people to tell you what they know, but knoweldge and
understanding is very different thing. E.g. a clueless person
like you who has access to all the data and still has no clue.

One again, your arguments are so weak that you feel the need
to resort to name calling. Why has every previous Naval disaster
been investigated by Congress?

In other words, why should Congresss investigate the Liberty
incidence after the CIA concluded that the Israeli explanation
is reasonable.

Believe it or not, the CIA is not always right.

Believe it or not, Congress is not always right.

But they are independent and they do not serve
at the pleasure of the President.

Believe it or not, Joseph McCarthy "investigations" did not catch
a single Russian spy.

Maybe because he saw Communist spies under every bed?

Let's face it, when McCarthy accused President
Eisenhower's Secretary of the Army of supporting
Communism, it indicated a serious flaw in the
Senator's judgment. Not only did McCarthy fail
to prove the alleged leftist tendencies of the
Army Secretary, but McCarthy's bizarre behavior
was condemned by his Senate colleagues, after
which nobody took McCarthy seriously.

In fact, it was the Army-McCarthy investigation
itself which not only ended McCarthy's influence,
but it also ended the national witch hunt known
as McCarthyism.

Believe it or not, the Senate Watergate investigation
was partially responsible for the first Presidential
resignation in our country's history. If we had
adopted your suggestion of letting the executive
branch investigate itself, there is a good chance
Nixon would not have resigned.

Again, do you want to Congress to double-check everything that the
CIA say, or just the Liberty? And if just the Liberty then please
explain why the CIA can't be trusted in that case.

CIA Felt Pressure to Alter Iraq Data, Author Says

Agency analysts were repeatedly ordered to redo
their studies of Al Qaeda ties to Hussein regime,
a terrorism expert charges.

by Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, July 1, 2004

WASHINGTON — In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA analysts were
ordered repeatedly to redo intelligence assessments concluded that Al
Qaeda had no operational ties to Iraq, according to a veteran CIA
counter-terrorism official who has written a book that is sharply
critical of the decision to go to war with Iraq.


Agency analysts never altered their conclusions, but saw the pressure
to revisit their work as a clear indication that Bush administration
officials were seeking a different answer regarding Iraq and Al Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden, the CIA officer said in an interview with The
Times.

"We on the Bin Laden side [of the agency's analytic ranks] were
required repeatedly to check, double-check and triple-check our files
about a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq," said the officer, who
spoke on condition that he be identified only by his first name, Mike.

Asked whether he attributed the demands to an eagerness among
officials at the White House or the Pentagon to find evidence of a
link, he said: "You could not help but assume that was the case. They
knew the answer [they wanted] before they asked the question."

The officer is the author of a forthcoming book titled, "Imperial
Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror," published by
Brassey's Inc. of Dulles, Va. He is listed as "Anonymous" on the book,
which describes him as a "senior U.S. intelligence official with
nearly two decades of experience in national security issues."

The author has held a number of high-ranking agency positions,
including serving from 1996 to 1999 as head of a special unit tracking
Bin Laden.

The book was approved for publication by the CIA after a four-month
review — creating an unusual situation in which one of the secretive
agency's senior officers was offering public criticism of
administration policies and the prosecution of the war on terrorism.

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow emphasized that the opinions in the book
were those of the author, not the agency. He acknowledged that the
book's publication was awkward for an agency that sought to be
apolitical, but that the CIA found no classified material in it, and
therefore allowed its release.

Some have questioned the author's motives, noting that he was removed
as head of the Bin Laden unit in 1999 over concerns about his
performance. An intelligence official who has worked with the author
at the CIA said that he might have been embittered by his removal, but
that "people tend to think of him as a straight shooter."

Mike said he was removed from the post because agency leaders "thought
I was too myopic, too intense, too aggressive." He declined to
elaborate. But he insisted that he did not write the book to settle
scores.

"The important thing to me is that we're missing the boat on this
issue," he said.

The book has created a stir in intelligence and policymaking circles
for its scathing critique of U.S. efforts after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the book, Mike writes that the war in Afghanistan was in many
respects a failure because the United States waited nearly a month to
launch the invasion — allowing Al Qaeda operatives to flee — and
relied heavily on proxy Afghan forces that were not always loyal to
the U.S. cause.

The book asserts that invading Iraq has inflamed anti-American
sentiment to such a degree that it is minting a new generation of
terrorists.

"We have waged two failed half-wars and, in doing so, left Afghanistan
and Iraq seething with anti-U.S. sentiment, fertile grounds for the
expansion of Al Qaeda and kindred groups," he writes.

In an interview this week, Mike, who has close-cropped hair and a
beard, said Monday's transfer of authority to Iraq was likely to do
little to curtail insurgent attacks.

"Iraq, with or without a transfer of power, will be a mujahedin magnet
as long as whatever government is there is dependent on America's
sword," he said, adding that he thought his view was widely shared
among counter-terrorism officials at the CIA and other intelligence
agencies.

The stealth manner in which sovereignty was transferred this week in
Iraq — in a surprise ceremony two days ahead of schedule involving L.
Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, and the
country's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi — also sent a weak
signal, he said.

"From Bin Laden's perspective, we were afraid they were going to
attack us and we left like a thief in the night, with Bremer throwing
the keys to Allawi," he said. "They can only see this as a victory."

Mike's criticism of the war in Iraq echoes that of other prominent
counter-terrorism officials, including former White House aide Richard
A. Clarke. But he is the first active CIA official to make the
criticism publicly, albeit anonymously. Mike, however, faulted Clarke
and others who served in the Clinton administration for failing to
mount operations to capture or kill Bin Laden when the CIA had
intelligence on his whereabouts.

He said he thought Bin Laden would have been extremely reluctant to
enter a collaborative relationship with Hussein, in part because he
saw Iraq's military and spying services as inferior, incapable of
protecting the security of Al Qaeda plans and operations.

Mike said that because he did not work in the agency's Iraq section,
he could not assess the accuracy of claims that analysts were
pressured by the White House to tailor their assessments of Iraq's
alleged illicit weapons programs to help make the case for war.
Despite being forced to redo their work several times, he said,
counter-terrorism analysts never altered their conclusion that Iraq
was not working with Al Qaeda.

"There was pressure to perform. But to its credit, the intelligence
community as a whole said there was nothing" to suggest a
collaborative relationship, he said. "The director on down insisted we
call it straight."

Mike still serves in the agency's counter-terrorism center, but
acknowledges that he has been marginalized. "I get invited to speak"
on counter-terrorism at the Defense Department, the FBI and the
National Security Agency, he said, "but not within my own building."

He wrote an earlier book, also anonymously, on Bin Laden and Islamic
terrorism that was titled, "Through Our Enemies' Eyes."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,4236086.story