:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 7.24.2003 ::
:: "9/11 report cites intelligence lapses" ::
'Best chance' to foil terror attacks missed because information on 2 eventual hijackers not passed on to FBI office, inquiry finds
From an AP report
Originally published July 24, 2003, 8:54 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- Failure to share intelligence on two future Sept. 11 hijackers destroyed perhaps the best chance to stop the attacks, says the final report of a congressional inquiry that details a maddening government chain of actions not taken, information not shared and help not given.
The 850-page report, released Thursday, shows that wide-ranging parts of the nation's intelligence and law enforcement apparatus detected threads that were only later connected to the hijacking plot. Tips not shared with the San Diego FBI were key.
Taken together, the details show a pre-Sept. 11 federal government that handled terrorism information poorly and was unable to mount defenses against potential al-Qaida strikes inside the United States, according to congressional officials who put together the report.
OTHER REPORTS:
From the Austin American-Statesman:
Congress says U.S. intelligence missed changes to disrupt 9/11
The report, heavily redacted to protect classified information, provides new details about potential clues that were ignored or simply not shared between federal intelligence agencies:
— An FBI informant's contacts with at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in San Diego, "had they been capitalized on, would have given the San Diego field office perhaps the intelligence community's best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot."
— Parts of several intelligence reports warned about the possibility of an al-Qaida attack with airplanes in the United States, including one in December 1998 that referred to two individuals who had evaded checkpoints in a "dry run" at a New York airport.
— Several of the hijackers may have interacted with more than a dozen individuals known to the FBI because of current or previous investigations, contradicting earlier notions that the hijackers lived highly secluded lives and were therefore, difficult to spot.
Secrecy Surrounded US's Intelligence Before Attacks
From A Washington Post report:
President Bush was warned in a more specific way than previously known about intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda terrorists were seeking to attack the United States, a report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks indicated yesterday.
posted by me
:: 10:10:00 PM [+] ::
...
