# Bush Administration Blocks CIA 9/11 Report
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [October 20, 2004, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160 "2004-10-20T02:58:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@caphis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caphis)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/1 "2004-10-20T02:58:42Z")
I dunno if this has already been posted, but a cursory skimming didn’t suggest so…
The CIA’s 9/11 report is apparently [being blocked](http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer19oct19,1,654534,print.column?coll=la-util-op-ed) until after the election. Why? If there’s nothing damning to the administration, then the simple act of holding up the report is worse than the report itself.
Unless, of course, there IS something damning… :dubious:
I dunno if this belongs here or in GD, because I rarely venture into GD… but if it is deserving to go elsewhere, feel free to move it. I just anticipated some very Pit-ish responses.
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### Author:  [@Mac\_Guffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mac_Guffin)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/2 "2004-10-20T03:40:40Z")
Would you happen to have a link that doesn’t require registration to read it? I don’t wanna give the LA Times my E-mail addy, and BugMeNot doesn’t work on this version of Firefox.
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### Author:  [@caphis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caphis)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/3 "2004-10-20T03:51:32Z")
Username: sdmb1
Password: thedope
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### Author:  [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/4 "2004-10-20T05:49:31Z")
Is this new? Because I know it was mentioned when the 9-11 Commission report came out that a second report, covering whether Iraq WMD intelligence was “cherry picked” or not, wouldn’t be released until January 2005. It didn’t get a lot of coverage in the mainstream “liberal” media, but it was there.
Isn’t this the same thing?
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### Author:  [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/5 "2004-10-20T05:55:50Z")
I’m going to withhold judgment on this one.
The White House blocking the release of the final release of a CIA report is just way too obvious.
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### Author:  [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/6 "2004-10-20T08:23:31Z")
Here’s a blog that discusses it.
[http://www.robertscheer.com/](http://www.robertscheer.com/)
> [@](#):
>
> The 9/11 Secret in the CIA’s Back Pocket
> The Agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials
>
> October 19, 2004 – It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general’s office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.
>
> “It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed,” an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that “the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren’t interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward.”
>
> When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. “We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report,” she said. “We are very concerned.”
>
> According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been “stalled.” First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.
>
> The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.
>
> “What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that,” said the intelligence official. “The report found very senior-level officials responsible.”
>
> By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.
>
> “It surely does not involve issues of national security,” said the intelligence official.
>
> “The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election,” the official continued. “No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress.”
>
> None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration’s great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the security of this nation was so easily breached. In Bush’s much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been bliss.
>
> The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain.
>
> And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.
>
> In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met with Goss privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general’s report. “Three thousand people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held accountable,” 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.
>
> The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, “fuels the perception that no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that we don’t have [the report]; it not only disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people.”
>
> The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to gain release of the report have, said the intelligence source, “led the management of the CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA’s leadership will have won and the nation will have lost.”
I’d be outraged if I weren’t so completely unsurprised.
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### Author:  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/7 "2004-10-20T11:56:26Z")
I’m so jaded by now, I’m wondering if I even care before. If you’re delusional enough to vote for Bush at this moment, that report ain’t going to change a thing. I say let them sit on it.
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### Author:  [@RTA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTA)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/8 "2004-10-20T12:34:15Z")
Hopefully someone leaks it. (fingers crossed)
Though I concur that it won’t change the minds of Bush-voting shitheads, it could go a long way towards swaying those inscrutable undecideds.
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### Author:  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/9 "2004-10-20T12:53:19Z")
> [@RTA](#):
>
> Hopefully someone leaks it. (fingers crossed)
>
> Though I concur that it won’t change the minds of Bush-voting shitheads, it could go a long way towards swaying those inscrutable undecideds.
If anyone is undecicided at this point, they should locate the nearest bridge and jump off it. What the hell are they waiting for to sway them?
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### Author:  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/10 "2004-10-20T12:54:41Z")
Jesus, I need some coffee.
I’m so jaded by now, I’m wondering if I even care _anymore_
_Undecided_
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### Author:  [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/11 "2004-10-20T13:26:04Z")
> [@World Eater](#):
>
> If anyone is undecicided at this point, they should locate the nearest bridge and jump off it. What the hell are they waiting for to sway them?
Important stuff, like if a picture comes out of Kerry looking stupid riding a tank (like with Dukakis).
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### Author:  [@Homebrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Homebrew)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/12 "2004-10-20T13:27:59Z")
The problem, as I see it, is that so many Bush supporters don’t care about the failures before 9/11. They are pleased that Bush is “kicking ass” somewhere, anywhere, that he’s thumbed his nose at the UN, which they hate, and that he cuts taxes. They don’t care what problems these steps create, they only know that they like the action.
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### Author:  [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/13 "2004-10-20T17:56:54Z")
> [@Homebrew](#):
>
> The problem, as I see it, is that so many Bush supporters don’t care about the failures before 9/11. They are pleased that Bush is “kicking ass” somewhere, anywhere, that he’s thumbed his nose at the UN, which they hate, and that he cuts taxes. They don’t care what problems these steps create, they only know that they like the action.
I blame Hollywood, myself, …and all those video games they play…these folks are addicted to the feeling they get when:
“It blowed up, it blowed up real good.”
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### Author:  [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/14 "2004-10-20T19:55:35Z")
> [@Equipoise](#):
>
> Here’s a blog that discusses it.
>
> [http://www.robertscheer.com/](http://www.robertscheer.com/)
>
> I’d be outraged if I weren’t so completely unsurprised.
It looks like that’s a full article that you’ve quoted that has a copyright on it. You might wanna have a mod edit that for you.
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### Author:  [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2004, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/15 "2004-10-20T23:14:32Z")
> [@Revtim](#):
>
> Important stuff, like if a picture comes out of Kerry looking stupid riding a tank (like with Dukakis).
How about a picture of Bush looking stupid, like just about everywhere he goes? 😉
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2004, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/16 "2004-10-21T00:39:46Z")
> [@RTA](#):
>
> Hopefully someone leaks it. (fingers crossed)
Two weeks to go before the election, with so many people at the CIA pissed off that the Bush team has used the agency as scapegoats for the administration’s failures and manipulations, there’s no way this thing doesn’t see the light of day. I guaran-damn-tee every journalist worth his or her salt is riffling through the rolodex looking for somebody with access to (a) the report and (b) a photocopier who’s willing to anonymously stick it to these self-absorbed loons. I give it a week at most.
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### Author:  [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2004, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/17 "2004-10-22T00:45:11Z")
I sure hope somebody leaks the report. It was on the CIA website about 2 weeks ago. I bet the CIA people are getting tired of being the whipping boy, and for being blamed for reports that Bush ignored.
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2004, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/18 "2004-10-22T01:23:16Z")
Ask, and it shall be given…
[http://www.iht.com/bin/print\_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/10/21/news/intel.html](http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/10/21/news/intel.html)
**Pentagon official distorted intelligence, report says**
> [@](#):
>
> As recently as January 2004, a top Defense Department official misrepresented to Congress the view of American intelligence agencies about the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, according to classified documents described in a new report by a Senate Democrat.
>
> The report said that a classified document prepared by Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, did not accurately reflect the intelligence agencies’ assessment of the relationship, despite a Pentagon claim that it did…
Feith based intelligence. Swell. I’ll give this its own thread, maybe, 'cause this deserves some hopping up and down mad posting.
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2004, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/19 "2004-10-22T01:33:28Z")
> [@rjung](#):
>
> Is this new? Because I know it was mentioned when the 9-11 Commission report came out that a second report, covering whether Iraq WMD intelligence was “cherry picked” or not, wouldn’t be released until January 2005. It didn’t get a lot of coverage in the mainstream “liberal” media, but it was there.
>
> Isn’t this the same thing?
You may be thinking of the second SSCI report that’s due.
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### Author:  [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2004, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-administration-blocks-cia-9-11-report/270160/20 "2004-10-22T03:08:01Z")
> [@Homebrew](#):
>
> The problem, as I see it, is that so many Bush supporters don’t care about the failures before 9/11. They are pleased that Bush is “kicking ass” somewhere, anywhere, that he’s thumbed his nose at the UN, which they hate, and that he cuts taxes. They don’t care what problems these steps create, they only know that they like the action.
Might I respectfully suggest that this is an overly simplistic view?
Granted, there are republicans out there (and lots of 'em!) who fit your description to a T; but there are also lots out there who honestly believe that, all evidence to the contrary, Bush is trying to do what is best for the country and for the world as a whole.
There is even a segment of republicans who have grave misgivings about what the Bush administration is up to, but will still vote for him because they honestly feel that the alternative is worse.
Then there are republicans like myself who hate the fact that we’ll be voting democrat for the first time in our lives on Nov. 2nd. And praying that Kerry can live up to his own hype.
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