Comments on: Fact-check, v.2

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 21:08:47 +0000

“As Al Qaeda” not “a.” This damn thing often posts my comment when I click on text to revise it. Oimoi, oimoi, pheu, pheu.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 21:04:57 +0000

Further to Brian and Ted, I picture the guy producing that bullet point wading through FBI investigations into, oh, just about anything, and seeing how he can refer to them a Al Qaeda investigations for the President’s big briefing. Now if you can call each G-man an investigation, so much the better. And why not.

By: Ted Barlow

Ted Barlow — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:52:27 +0000

I’m thinking “shameless ass-covering” more than “transparent lie”. That is, the person in charge offers a seriously misleading report, portraying ample FBI attention spent on OBL/AQ, in order to have an answer to the question, “What are we doing about this?” The testimony cited by Brian, in my mind, reinforces that reading.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:51:25 +0000

There’s no suggestion that they haven’t been able to verify the 70 full field investigations. What Roemer says they haven’t been able to verify is a “tasking” of field offices by HQ in relation to the specific threats identified in the summer of 2001. Of course, some of those threats were identified and analyzed by the FBI, so I’m not sure why there would be any record of HQ or the NSC, through the AG, directing those investigations. And there is some suggestion that the FBI did in fact put out communications to the field on the issue. See Gorelick’s questioning of Rice, in which she calls the communications “feckless.” Finally, my understanding is that the counter-terror efforts inside the FBI were coordinated by teleconference, which would explain the limited writings available on the subject. (The FBI briefings up were also generally unwritten, which has its advantages and disadvantages from a bureaucreatic CYA perspective.)

By: Dutch

Dutch — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:36:58 +0000

I did read that a bit differently. There were 70 FBI investigations related to al Qaeda. There was intelligence of a possible attack in the near future. Nobody told the FBI about that. Roemer was asking Rice wether it was her responsibility to make sure the FBI was informed. That is, “tasking” the FBI to connect this intelligence to their ongoing investigations. I think a bureaucratic mishap is more likely than a transparent lie.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:26:41 +0000

There was just an interchange between the commissioners and an FBI guy (sorry, I forgot the name) about that number. It seems that every individual working on OBL, including those chasing money trails, was counted as a ‘full investigation’. Slade Gorton was trying to argue that on its natural interpretation that sentence suggested everything was under control, which I think is a little too charitable to the administration, but it certainly sounds like a very bizarre counting scheme.