J. Cofer Black should make voters see red

Manchester Union Leader ^ | January 6, 2008 | Deroy Murdock

[billorites]

J. COFER BLACK is GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s chief weapon against Islamo-fascism. The former CIA official chairs Romney’s Counterterrorism Policy Advisory Group. Also, the 9/11 Commission, the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 and the CIA’s inspector general all condemn him for dropping the ball before Sept. 11, 2001. Black’s spot in Romney’s brain trust raises grave doubts about the former Massachusetts governor’s national-security judgment.

At CNN/YouTube’s Nov. 28 debate, Romney said that when pondering terrorist interrogation, “I get that advice from Cofer Black, who is a person who was responsible for counterterrorism in the CIA for some 35 years.” Actually, this is false. Black served the CIA for 28 years and directed its Counterterrorist Center (CTC) for less than three — from June 1999 to May 2002.

In January 2000, Black’s CTC briefed top CIA, FBI and White House officials on a 9/11 planning summit in Kuala Lumpur. Hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar attended. Alas, these two left Malaysia, then vanished in Bangkok.

But in early March 2000, the CIA learned that Hazmi had flown to Los Angeles that Jan. 15, as did Mihdhar.

“No one outside of the Counterterrorist Center was told any of this,” the 9/11 Commission Report states (page 181). “The CIA did not try to register Mihdhar or Hazmi with the State Department’s TIPOFF watchlist...”

In January 2001, the CIA tied Mihdhar to “Khallad,” an al-Qaida agent who bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000. “Yet we found no effort by the CIA to renew the long-abandoned search for Mihdhar or his travel companions,” the 9/11 Commission concluded (page 266). It added that then-CIA Director George “Tenet and Cofer Black testified before Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11 that the FBI had access to this identification from the beginning. But drawing on an extensive record ... we conclude this was not the case.”

Were Mihdhar “watchlisted,” he could have been arrested when he returned from Mecca on July 4, 2001. Instead, he resumed his mass-murder plans.

These botched opportunities also prevented the FBI from activating a California source who knew Hazmi and Mihdhar. “The informant’s contacts with the hijackers, had they been capitalized upon, would have given the San Diego FBI field office perhaps the Intelligence Community’s best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot,” the Congressional Joint Inquiry’s declassified December 2002 report heartbreakingly observes. “Given the CIA’s failure to disseminate, in a timely manner, intelligence information on the significance and location of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, that chance, unfortunately, never materialized.”

They finally were watchlisted on Aug. 23, 2001, 19 days before they plowed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

As for flagging Hazmi and Mihdhar, “It should have been done,” the former CTC chief told the Joint Inquiry. “It wasn’t ... And I think what contributed to that was (that) these same officers watching this operation were also doing a lot of other things.”

On Aug. 25, 2005, the Associated Press’ Katherine Shrader revealed that CIA Inspector General John Helgerson’s then-classified report “recommended disciplinary reviews” for Black, Tenet and former clandestine-service head Jim Pavett. “The former officials are likely candidates for proceedings before an accountability board,” Shrader wrote. Tenet’s successor, Porter Goss, took no disciplinary action.

Despite Helgerson’s rebuke, last April 26, Romney named Black “senior adviser on counterterrorism and national-security issues.”

The CIA declassified Helgerson’s 2005 report last Aug. 21, confirming that the inspector general recommended at least six times that the former CTC chief and others face an accountability board for financial mismanagement, poor coordination, incoherent leadership and more. In one episode, when the National Security Agency invited the CIA to examine transcripts of terrorist intercepts, “CTC sent one officer to NSA for a brief period of time in 2000, but failed to send others, citing resource constraints.”

Romney elevated Black to run his counterterrorism advisory board. Despite deep, declassified dismay with Black’s pre-Sept. 11 tenure, it’s been onward and upward for Black on Team Romney.

Few heads rolled after 9/11, despite the incompetence that allowed al-Qaida to massacre 2,978 human beings. Cofer Black kept his head, and now uses it to advise someone who promoted him in September, and praised him on CNN in late November.

This news should keep Republican primary voters wide awake at night.

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting. Does every candidate have a CT Policy Advisory Group Chair? Who are they? What did they know and when did they (not) know it?

[teenyelliott]

I don't know anything about the source who wrote the article, so I read this article with a grain of salt.

While no one can read everything about any one person in the government, everything I have ever read about Black was that he was VERY good at his job.

I don't like Romney for pres., but I have always admired Cofer Black.

I think this article might be cut and pasting individual quotes as a smear job.

[teenyelliott]

And while I am at it, you can thank the Clinton administration for establishing the no cooperation wall that was built between the FBI and the CIA, without which 9/11 could easily have been stopped.

Yet another reason that makes me think this article is coming from a leftie.

That, and it is the MSM, after all. ; )

[billorites]

Oh, everything you read these days is a smear job.

I don't like Romney either.

But I dislike him less than the others.

I plan to mark his name by accident tomorrow and so maintain some plausible deniability.

[billorites]

No, Deroy Murdock is not a lefty in the least.

But primary season results in intense polarization and exaggeration of what normally would be considered minor policy disagreements.

For that matter I really am doubtful that any minor interagency tweaking could have established procedures that would have prevented an unforeseen attack such as 9-11.

I think that's wishful thinking and second guessing.

Not that major procedural CT changes should not have been in place...

For the same reason I worry that we're still terribly vulnerable now.

[Lurker]

I plan to mark his name by accident tomorrow

Why vote for a liberal 'accidentally' when you can vote for a conservative on purpose?

Go FRED.

L

[billorites]

Well, Romney isn't a real liberal.

He's a semi-quasi-crypto conservative.

Late at night, when there's no one else is at home...

He dresses up in women's clothing as Jeanne Kirkpatrick and parades in front of the mirror.

It's uncanny really. Check it out.

But, please don't touch the hair.

He's got my vote tomorrow. I loved Reagan and I loved Kirkpatrick.

Romney's the first cross-dressing Mormon, drag queen, conservative Republican candidate. Sure it could be an issue at the convention on the first ballot perhaps, but we'll see.

Talk about inclusive!

Gotta love the pouty lips...

[teenyelliott]

For the same reason I worry that we're still terribly vulnerable now.

I agree, and disagree, because I am wishy washy.

After reading the 9/11 report, I was convinced that we were being protected by the Three Stooges.

However, I know from personal experience that there have been significant arrests and deportations since then, with all departments cooperating.

And I really don't think that the fact that we have had zero attacks since then can be completely attributed to luck.

That said, with the open borders and the "don't profile Middle Eastern men" pc crap, I believe that another attack could happen at any minute.

And my guy is Fred Thompson. So feel free to change your vote on my account. : )

To get elected in Massachusetts, ain't no way that Romney guy has a conservative bone in his body. He is just right of Fat Teddy, so they consider him a neocon.

[teenyelliott]

Dang, that’s funny!

[billorites]

I think you're judging Romney unnecessarily harshly vis a vis Massachusetts and his tenure as Governor.

Recall that he pulled off the trick of getting elected Governor as a Republican with a legislature that was 5:1 Democrat. Then, after 2004 and Kerrey's Presidential bid, it was more like 6:1 Democrat in Massachusetts.

I think he did admirably well with what he had to work with during his tenure as Governor. Unfortunaltely, or fortunately, the Massachusetts Constitution does not allow the Governor to rule by whim and fiat.

And yes, you're correct that post 9-11 reforms have made for greater improvements in security procedures.

I certainly agree.

Not necessarily those procedures that occur when I'm passing through airport security though...

[teenyelliott]

I just can't forgive Romney for increasing the taxpayers liability for subsidizing health insurance for the "less fortunate", making health insurance mandatory whether you can pay for your own health care or not, allowing the state to determine what you can afford to pay in premiums, penalizing employers per employee if they do not provide insurance, AND penalizing individuals on their taxes if they fail to do what the states now mandates.

Just one more finger in the pocket, and one more point for the nanny state.

I understand that it was written by democraps, but he signed off on it.

That makes me sick.

[billorites]

Yes, fair criticism.

[teenyelliott]

That, and his magic underwear.

[patriciaruth]

Personally, I have a soft spot in my heart for the “flies on their eyeballs” guy.