John LeBoutillier
Friday Sept. 21, 2001

This "war" is between those who 'know' the truth about Saddam's direct participation in this horrendous act of war against the United States of America and those who let him survive in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War.

That night, CBS News led off their evening newscast with the very same story!

And Thursday's New York Times front page featured a story about this "split inside the Administration" - and how Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld favored the targeting of Iraq. So, too, did Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Day by day - thanks to a free press - the truth is emerging about Iraq's crucial role in the attacks.

Yet last night President Bush carefully avoided any mention of Saddam Hussein. While specifically targeting the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, the President shied away from mentioning any other governments involved. This may be to preserve the advantage of surprise - or it may be because the Administration doesn't have the stomach for another war with Iraq.

The head of U.S. intelligence is George Tenent, Director of the CIA. Tenent is the lone holdover from the Clinton Administration. At the urging of his father, George W. Bush decided to keep Tenent in his job at Langley, Virginia.

Lost in the middle of this unfolding story is the pathetic performance of our own government to protect us.

Yes, changes have been made in recent years in our HUMINT (human intelligence) requirements. But there have been nothing but spending increases on intelligence each and every year - especially under Clinton's presidency. That was something I noted each of his 8 years: while he gutted the military, he always increased our intelligence budget. At the time it was speculated upon that perhaps the CIA had something (or many things) on Clinton and was able to 'bargain' with him for ever-increasing budgets.

One thing you must understand: the CIA is a government unto itself - a government within a government.

Anyone who doubts this is naïve.

It is a fact of life.

The CIA spies on other departments of the U.S. Government and places agents inside the House staffs, Senate staffs and inside its rival intelligence agencies - the NSA, the DIA and the service intelligence agencies.

The CIA keeps tabs on our own government much more effectively than they have spied on our enemies.

Even the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Porter Goss - charged with oversight responsibilities - is a former CIA Agent. And, in the CIA, there is really no 'former'. Once in, you're in for life.

Mr. Goss oversees the CIA as Chairman of that crucial committee. Do you honestly believe he is going to be objective about limiting, criticizing, cutting or rebuking the CIA?

One of the consequences of September 11 must be a top-to-bottom honest re-assessment of our failed intelligence apparatus.

Heads need to roll inside our own government for the failure of our government to protect us.

And many, many questions need to be answered. For example, how come Jane's Foreign Report already knows that the "operational masterminds of last week's attacks" were Imad Mughniyeh - a Lebanese head of overseas operations for Hezbollah, and Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian who has been tried in absentia, convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat.

Both men have been meeting regularly with Iraqi intelligence for the past 2 years.

Why wasn't our own intelligence aware of this? Or, if they were, why do they continue to 'steer the investigation away from Iraq'?

Jane's also reports that Mughniyeh "personally" murdered Beirut CIA station Chief William Buckley in 1984. That was 17 years ago! And he is still on the loose? Why - through four U.S. Administrations - has the CIA not caught and killed this bastard?

In the enthusiasm for President Bush's speech we must not lose sight of a basic fact: the September 11 attack could have been - and should have been - prevented.

We have a massive $60 billion per year 'Intel community' designed to prevent this type of attack.

They failed us badly.

The almost 7,000 dead victims could be alive today if we had gotten our money's worth.

As it now stands the CIA and our other related agencies are totally useless when it comes to protecting the people of the United States.

Terrorists on the official watch list fly into and out of this country - often using their real names as they go through our airports - and nothing is done!

So-called surveillance is ordered on 2 USS Cole bombing suspects who are in our country - and nothing was done!

Our intelligence has grown complacent, cocky, fat, lazy, too-rich - and not 'hungry' enough to remember the desperate days of World War II when our OSS performed heroically behind enemy lines to thwart Hitler and Japan.

We will not win this War on Terrorism until we rip apart and then rebuild our own very-lacking intelligence apparatus.