Rumsfeld Wary About Shuffling Spy Duties (national intelligence chief)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the acting director of central intelligence urged Congress on Tuesday to move cautiously in adopting recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. They also joined in opposing the commission's call for the C.I.A. to cede to the Pentagon the authority for covert paramilitary operations.

At the same time, both Mr. Rumsfeld and the acting C.I.A. chief, John E. McLaughlin, suggested that they were now grudgingly open to the commission's central recommendation: the creation of the post of national intelligence director to oversee the government's 15 intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and spy agencies within the Pentagon.

Both had opposed the concept, and what appears to be their change of heart reflects President Bush's recent announcement that he supports the idea of a national intelligence director, but one with less power than the commission envisioned.

Proposals to create a job of national intelligence director are gaining momentum on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers clearly worried that a failure to act quickly on the commission's findings could have repercussion in the November elections.

This week, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, a Republican, suggested that he was willing to oppose the White House and would introduce legislation to create a powerful national intelligence director who would have budgetary and personnel authority similar to that recommended by the commission.

In its report last month, the bipartisan panel said such a director was needed to end the turf battles and miscommunication that, it said, plagued the intelligence community before Sept. 11, 2001. Its recommendation would give the director substantial authority over the Pentagon, which is estimated to control nearly 80 percent of a $40 billion annual intelligence budget.

At an unusual midsummer hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of a flurry of Congressional hearings this month in response to the Sept. 11 report, Mr. Rumsfeld testified that the creation of the job "could conceivably lead to some efficiencies in some aspects of intelligence collection."

But he warned that "the devil is in the details" and that it would be a mistake to move hastily.

"I doubt that we should think of intelligence reform being completed in a single stroke," he testified. "We need to remember that we are considering these important matters while we are waging a war. If we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty would be great."

Even as Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. McLaughlin suggested that they could support creation of a national director post, they said they were opposed to another commission recommendation: the transfer of authority over secret paramilitary operations to the Pentagon from the C.I.A.

The commission's final report found that the C.I.A.'s paramilitary operations, like those used to root out terrorist leaders in Afghanistan and elsewhere, had a history of unsatisfactory results before the Sept. 11 attacks and that "the United States cannot afford to build two separate capabilities for carrying out secret military operations."

But asked about the proposal, Mr. Rumsfeld testified, "At the moment I certainly wouldn't recommend it."

"There are certainly things that the Central Intelligence Agency does that are covert that the Department of Defense ought not to do," he said. "They do things that are authorized by statute and by findings that we're not organized, trained or equipped to do and don't want to do."

Mr. McLaughlin agreed. "I would not accept this recommendation for a couple of reasons," he said, noting that the C.I.A. had a "niche role" in carrying out paramilitary operations that it would be difficult for the Pentagon to carry out.

"I think we have a perfect marriage now of C.I.A. and military capabilities," he said. "C.I.A. brings to the mix agility and speed. The military brings lethality. That was a combination that was so effective in Afghanistan," he said.

In urging unhurried deliberation on the recommendations of the commission, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. McLaughlin had a receptive audience on the Armed Services Committee, which traditionally defends the prerogatives of the Pentagon.

The committee's chairman, Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, opened the hearing with a statement suggesting that the commission had overreached in some instances, and that a hasty overhaul of agencies "could result in turbulence that might degrade the level of intelligence so essential'' in the war against terrorism.

He suggested that Congress, rather than creating a new post of national intelligence director, might instead provide greater authority to the director of central intelligence to direct the work of all 15 government spy agencies, perhaps even changing the title of the C.I.A. head.

Mr. Warner said that rather than provide direct budget authority to a national intelligence director, Congress might try to establish a more formal "partnership" in which the director would work with the defense secretary in presenting an intelligence budget and in choosing the leaders of Pentagon spy agencies, like the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

While several Senate committees are considering the commission recommendations at hearings this month, the job of writing legislation has been left to the Governmental Affairs Committee, which is expected to produce a bill by Oct. 1. House leaders have said they will have legislation ready by next month.

Given Gorelick's role in the 911 Atrocities
AND the coverup leading to them ....
inquiring minds want to reasonably know:
Why should anyone listen to anything she says before she goes to GITMO?

Who's Who on the 9/11 "Independent" Commission

"According to a 1998 Senate testimony of former CIA director James
Woolsey, powerful financier Khalid bin Mahfouz’ younger sister is
married to Osama bin Laden,. (US Senate, Senate Judiciary
Committee, Federal News Service, 3 Sept. 1998, See also Wayne
Madsen, Questionable Ties, In These Times,12 Nov. 2001 )
Bin Mahfouz is suspected to have funneled millions of dollars to the Al
Qaeda network.(See Tom Flocco, Scoop.co.nz 28 Aug. 2002)
Now, "by sheer coincidence", former New Jersey governor Thomas
Kean has business ties with bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi.
Thomas Kean is a director (and shareholder) of Amerada Hess
Corporation , which is involved in the Hess-Delta joint venture with
Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia (owned by the bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi
clans)...
Now you would think that being a business partner of the brother in
law and alleged financier of "Enemy No. 1" would also be considered a
bona fide "conflict of interest", particularly when your mandate --as
part of the 9/11 Commission's work-- is to investigate "Enemy No. 1".
"(Michel Chossudovsky, New Chairman of 9/11 Commission had
business ties with Osama's Brother in Law,
Centre for Research on Globalization, December 2002 )

On Aug. 22, 1996, just before the Democratic National Convention,
Ms. Gorelick oversaw a critical Justice Department meeting with the FBI.
Immediately after this meeting, all serious inquiry into the fate of TWA 800 came to an end.

Gorelick was instrumental in the corruption of TWA Flight 800 terrorism investigation

Obstruction of the Oklahoma Bombing Grand Jury Investigation
The Mysterious Jamie Gorelick Phone Call

Gorelick and Richard Clarke

Gorelick Memo Impeded Probe of Clinton Fundraising Scandal

DOJ Inspector General's report found that the wall impeded the campaign finance task force

Around June of 1996, Clinton made a written request via his legal counsel,
Charles Ruff, to Janet Reno's deputy Jamie Gorelick. Clinton wanted to know what the FBI knew about
Chinese contributions to the American 1996 campaign. As soon as FBI director Louis Freeh found this out,
he ordered the files witheld. In March, 1997, Clinton allows Red Chinese ships to dock near
US military installations. This hasn't happened since the 1950s.
Ginger Lew, a confidant of John Huang, went to the SBA in May 96. Sockowitz followed her to the SBA
on May 27, 1996. After 3 days, he was given Sensitive Compartmentalized Information
clearance, a level above top secret clearance by, and to, the Commerce Dept., to view sensitive files on encryption.
However, he never got clearance for the SBA, where the encryption files came from.
While Sockowitz returned to the Commerce Dept on Aug 2, 1996. While his successor was out of the office,
he took the files, claiming to the secretary he was "gathering personal items." Security
Violation 1: Sockowitz was not debriefed when he left Commerce. Violation 2: he was not debriefed
when he left SBA in Nov 1996. Oddly enough, Barbara Wise, a Commerce Dept staffer, was found
dead in her office on 11-29-96. She was one of Huang's associates.
Within 24 hours, Clinton made an unscheduled flight back to the Whitehouse from Camp David,
supposedly to get a book of poetry.
Source: Worldnet Daily 6-25-98

Commissioner Kean: "Ms Gorelick is one of the finest members
of the commission and one of the most bipartisan members.
People ought to stay out of our business"

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