Posted on 06/19/2002 4:31:39 PM PDT by jern
WASHINGTON (AP) - Intelligence agencies aren't sure if a conversation in Arabic intercepted Sept. 10 was a warning of the next day's attacks at the World Trade Center and Pentagon ( news - web sites), an intelligence source said Wednesday.
The conversation intercepted by the National Security Agency suggested that a big event was to take place the next day. It was not translated until Sept. 12.
The conversation has been brought to the attention of the House and Senate intelligence committees who are conducting a joint inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks. The panel is investigating the events surrounding the attack, problems in counterterrorism efforts and how future attacks can be averted.
Even if the Sept. 10 NSA intercept was a reference to the next day's attacks, the conversation provided no information that authorities could have acted on, the intelligence source said. The mere mention of a date was insufficient to provide any clue of what was to come, the source said.
On Wednesday, the congressional panel spent a second day behind closed doors questioning the head of the NSA, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, as well as CIA ( news - web sites) Director George J. Tenet and FBI ( news - web sites) Director Robert Mueller.
Much of the questioning Wednesday addressed problems that have hindered intelligence-gathering, such as communications problems among agencies, a shortage of linguists and the difficulty of dealing with massive amounts of intercepted communications.
"There were missed opportunities for important information to be brought to the attention of law enforcement," said Sen. Richard Durbin ( news, bio, voting record), D-Ill.
Tenet was questioned in detail Tuesday about how the CIA had identified two of the future hijackers at a meeting with an al-Qaida operative in January 2000, but did little to alert U.S. law enforcement agencies.
Yet lawmakers said nothing they've heard so far offered clear evidence that the hijackings could have been prevented.
A U.S. intelligence official, while declining to comment on the NSA intercept, said Wednesday that a piece of raw intelligence that contains only a date provides little useful information.
The official said that both before and after Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence frequently has received threat information that consists of only a date and a vague notion something will happen — and then, nothing happens.
Lawmakers have declined to discuss the intercepts, citing the panel's secrecy. But on Tuesday, Sen. Richard Shelby ( news, bio, voting record), R-Ala., the Senate panel's top Republican, said that if certain information collected by the NSA had been translated and disseminated, "perhaps that would have been very useful."
Rep. Silvestre Reyes ( news, bio, voting record), D-Texas, said agencies collect "a tremendous amount of data" but using it to stop terrorism is difficult without knowing what kind of an attack is planned.
"Unless we have a clear understanding of a situation like 9/11 coming at us that we can isolate data, it would be pretty impossible," he said.
The intelligence hearings are scheduled to be opened to the public Tuesday, but several lawmakers say that could be postponed. They said the committee and staff need to sift through massive amounts of information and are working with the Justice Department ( news - web sites) to see what information can be presented in public.
Rep. Ray LaHood ( news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., said he doubts public proceedings will begin next week.
"We want to make sure that when we go public that the right people are there and are well prepared, so we don't look like we're flying by the seat of our pants," he said.
So what did Durbin expect? That W would Run around on the 10th and 11th screaming, "The sky is falling?"
On Thursday, several Congressional 'sources' were given permanent residence at Ft. Leavenworth for leaking classified information...
Film at 11.
- I thought Echelon intercepted and interpreted and transcribed all this (being speaker and language indemendent) in real-time -
- and THEN performed searches for words like 'bomb' and 'terrorist' and 'attack'?
I guess not ... huh ...
What did you say? I know, sometimes my peecee, too, ignores what I have typed and puts its own words in there instead.
Nope. The 'Rats are desparate and will do anything to reverse the current status of W's standing....
Hey,ah, I got this bridge for sale in Brooklyn, cheap. All the tolls go to you.......NSA has morphed into a quota hire morass like all the other government agencys.
The only change at NSA is them trying to get rid of the in-house maintenance crew and bring in private contractors.
They've got to get rid of the career desk-dorks that haven't been effective since Inman screwed up the joint.
On Thursday, several Congressional 'sources' were given permanent residence at Ft. Leavenworth for leaking classified information...
Dream on.
And any information that could possibly damage Bush will be leaked to CNNCBSNBCMSNBC etc. by Thurdsday...
Yes, there were -------- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/702728/posts
But of course! Bush should have signed an executive order preventing all men of middle eastern origin from flying on commercial flights, effective 6 am September 11, 2001. That would have solved everthing. And all the libs, like that weasel Durbin, would have been completely supportive of the President's bold step...
More "what did he know and when did he know it?" nonsense. Most people aren't buying this BS, to the utter dismay of the dims, who are fast approaching November 6 with no salient campiagn issues in their wagons.
This will disappear like a fart in the wind by Friday. Might get some "talking head" play on Sunday. But, there is no "there" there. IMHO, buddy.
Plus hurricane season's firing up. Cheer up, mate.
The one the Palestinians follow was a murdering pedophile. I speak of Mohammed. Mohammed the Pedophile.
There are some very good Freeper historians in here. Recently they quoted from historical texts which refer to this fact. I believe one of Mohammed the Pedophiles “brides” was nine.
In every post from now on, I propose we start calling him by his true and descriptive name: Mohammed the Pedophile.
What these stories all fail to communicate effectively is context - As the story does mention, we get many indications each day of potential terrorist activity. It is all too easy to go back and point at the evidence before 9/11, and say that it could have been stopped.
People talk about this like a bunch of FBI and intel officers went to work that week, and had nothing in their "in-basket" but this one potential threat, which they ignored.
However, the reality is pretty different - It is extremely difficult to identify which threats are real, and which are not, before the fact. Analysts were not dealing with the discrete elements of information that we see reported in the press, but instead were awash in noise, rumors, provocations, and one real threat - A needle lost in the haystack of analysis.
That is not to say there is not room for improvement. The FBI in particular is notorious for ignoring other agencies. Finding needles in haystacks is exactly what we pay intel analysts to do, and they clearly need to improve their processes, support systems, and training.
However, it is important to remember that omniscience is not in the budget, no matter what the budget is...
If Congress is truly interested in intelligence reform (and I rather doubt their sincerity), they might ask why the U.S. has entered every conflict for the past 50 years without enough qualified linguists and area specialists. Or why these career tracks are considered "dead ends" for officers, giving them little reason to acquire these vital skills. And better yet, ask why Congress didn't bother to increase funding for language training until after 9-11.
As a former spook, I can give you countless horror stories of our linguist shortage. During the Haiti operation in 1994, General Shelton's personal translator was a pediatrician from the Davis-Monthan AFB (AZ) clinic; the reason? She was one of the few folks in all of DOD who was fluent in Creole, Haiti's native tongue. In Somalia, we used Mohammed Farah Aideed's nephew as a translator (he was then a U.S. Marine) because we had few folks who could speak the local Somali dialect. And, in 1993, our RC-135 squadron at RAF Mildenhall in the UK began Balkans operations with exactly ONE qualified Serbo-Croat linguist. Needless to say, that poor airman busted every reg for maximum flying hours over the next five months, while NSA and the Air Force scrambled to get more Serbo-Croat speaks on the aircraft.
These perpetual shortages are inexcusable. And the blame lies squarely with DOD which has failed to accurately forecast the need for linguists, and Congress, which has never shown much interest in this problem until now.
General Hayden inherited an organization in deep, deep trouble. When he took over NSA a couple of years ago, the agency was literally in danger of going deaf--it's daily "haul" of intel information was dropping.
The reason? NSA failed to adapt to the communications and technology revolution. They viewed the internet the same way Bill Gates did (at least initially); something to play around with, a technical curiousity, but not something that would revolutionize the world. As a result, NSA's early foray into web-based intelligence collection was tenative, at a time the internet (and e-mail) were literally exploding.
Secondly, NSA remained configured too long for "traditional" communications methods. As long as the bad guys were using radio traffic and microwave relays, we were in great shape. What NSA failed to anticipate was the fiber optic revolution. Globally, we are laying fiber cable at a dizzying rate, and in places (Iraq, North Korea) assumed to be decades away from this type of capability. Collecting against fiber-optic based systems is extremely difficult; you've literally got to tap into the line to extract information.
Compounding these problems was an extremely entrenched civilian bureaucracy at NSA. The civilian mafia runs NSA, and is extremely resistant to change. Directors come and go, but these bureaucrats stay forever. They're the ones who ignored sea changes in the information business; instead, they wasted time (and money) on things like an unworkable analytical system that cost $400 million to kill.
General Hayden, IMO, has done an admirable job in trying to reform NSA. However, it's been very tough sledding and the job is far from complete. BTW, Congress should call the former NSA Director (Lt Gen Ken Minihan) and ask why he didn't initiate the reform process. Minihan fiddled during his watch and that's one reason NSA was in such serious trouble when Gen Hayden took over....
Looks like Echelon and those lovely other programs are quite as good as we thought they were.Yup - they gave us good real-time intel and plenty of information to work with before, during, and after 9-11 ...
Not!
"There was another post this morning about erroneous and deceptive translations (an FBI translator omitted translations of a suspect group, no details given)."How does this affect Echelon?
Answer: It doesn't.
I *still* want to know why Echelon is failing us -
- maybe we need a congressional inquiry into all those mythical dollars we spent on on a system that *doesn't work*!
(Tongue FIRMLY planted in cheek.)
Thank you both for your comments. I stand in awe at the expertise and lucid thinking I find everyday on the FreeRepublic.
Bump!
Note to congressional oversight source, the NSA is expert at setting "canary traps" and has access to a lot more about everyone than they share with oversight representatives. I expect to see some one in congressional oversight quietly retire soon.
Not smart to publically embarrass the spooks in the Puzzle Palace.
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