Wyden's Quixotic Quest

A Senator from Oregon is tilting at windmills if he thinks that this will work.

A Senate Democrat has asked CIA Director Porter J. Goss to declassify a 2005 report that criticizes senior spy agency officials, including Goss's predecessor, George J. Tenet, for missteps leading to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, complained to Goss in a Jan. 30 letter that the CIA has given unsatisfactory answers to Senate queries about what it is doing to release a censored version of the report by the agency's inspector general, John L. Helgerson.

Having to ask Porter Goss, of all people, to release this report ensures an unsatisfying experience.

Goss, as you will remember, was breakfasting with the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) on the morning of 9-11. The same spy chief who was reported to have passed $100,000 to Mohammad Atta, identified as the "ringleader" of the plot by our ever reliable mainstream media.

The secret report, which media accounts say recommended disciplinary action against Tenet and other former officials, presents a detailed internal review of how the spy agency mishandled the al Qaeda threat before the attacks, which prompted the U.S. war on terrorism.

Administration apologists are saying that it was the lack of warrantless eavesdropping capability that hamstrung our spooks from stopping the attack. Self-serving bullshit is the call here.

The Senate committee received a classified version of the report last summer.

A most intriguing fact. This means that Senator Wyden has seen the classified version and thinks that the American people would benefit from a public airing of this report.

Mark my words, if somehow the intelligence community decides to declassify and release the "whole report", it won't be the whole report.