Posted on 05/17/2002 9:04:21 AM PDT by nimc
Key CIA Task Force Leader Moved
May 17 — As the Bush administration defends its actions over information it had on possible terror attacks before Sept. 11, ABCNEWS has learned that the chief of the CIA's counterterrorism center has been moved out.
The center, led by Cofer Black for the past three years, is the lead CIA team tasked with finding indicted terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Sources tell ABCNEWS' Claire Shipman there will be more changes coming among the top figures in the CIA but President Bush still has faith in both George Tenet, the head of the CIA, and FBI director Robert Mueller.
The White House acknowledged this week that it had received intelligence in the weeks before Sept. 11 that terrorists might try to hijack U.S. jets, but said the information was too vague to act upon.
At a briefing with reporters Thursday, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice said the threats did not mention a specific time, place or mode of attack, and officials believed any such attack would be a "traditional" hijacking — not the Sept. 11 suicide mission that would turn passenger jets into missiles.
"It is always a question of how good the information is and whether putting the information out is a responsible thing to do," Rice said. "You would have risked shutting down the American civil aviation system with such generalized information. You would have to think five, six, seven times about that, very, very hard."
Rice stressed that there was no way anyone could have predicted that terrorists would use hijacked planes as missiles and attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"Had this president been aware that terrorists would have used airplanes as missiles and attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he would have acted on it," Rice said.
However, one man whose wife died on one of the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, Stephen Push, the co-founder of Families of Sept. 11, said he and many members of his organization are having a hard time accepting that explanation.
"I was very disturbed when I saw Condoleeza Rice's press conference yesterday," Push said today on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "In 1995, al Qaeda confessed that they were planning to slam planes into the United States. In July an FBI agent in Phoenix was concerned about the number of Middle Eastern men who were coming to the United States learning how to fly and they were concerned that they were connected with [Osama] bin Laden. In August, an FBI agent in Minneapolis was concerned that Zacarias Moussaoui was learning to use planes in this manner. … Did the president not have this information in front of him when he made decisions?"
Would also be a good time to come out in the next few days with complaints about the slow pace of confirmation, and note how most of the departments and agencies are still dominated by holdovers.
So was I, instead of doing her job fighting terrorists she had to go through this.
Yesterday the terrorists won a battle because the Administration was forced to defend itself against the Clymers.
Some of those heads might have rolled at an earlier time, if Bush hadn't had to contend with the Democrat's saying Bush was an illegitimate president with no mandate.
For months the Democrats hogtied Bush through obstruction and incessant attacks on his right to take office.
--Now they blame him for not taking enough decisive steps to prevent 9/11.
Claire Kneepads adores Bill Clinton. The leaks are coming from Clinton leftovers who see the writing on the wall. I don't even think Shipman speaks to any Bush people.
Sorry, Mr. Push, but you are barking up the wrong tree. All these briefings point back to the mid 90s when you-know-who was in charge. There was no way the President knew that the hijackings would occur in the manner they did. And what decisions was the President supposed to make, based on generalized info in briefings? In hindsight, it's easy to connect the dots.
Into the United States? Well, that certainly pinpoints the problem. All Bush had to do was close all the airports and air fields, permanently ground all civilian American aircraft and deny airspace entry to all foreign aircraft. A piece of cake.
The democrats are trying to gen up issues to win this year and in 2004. They are the party that gave us Monica Lewinsky, selling secrets to China for political contributions, Buddhist temple fund raisers for Al Gore and pardons for criminals and family members.
I for one don't think many voters will be fooled by little tommy dashole, al bore, hillary the commie, terry mc auliff the money launderer or any other exalted members of the left wing democrat party.
Herin lies the big problem- countless Arkansas law enforcement officers were rewarded for their faithfulness and silence with cushy FBI and CIA jobs by Clinton.
Alas, the average American thinks back no further than who won the WWF last month.
Bush should have done some massive housecleaning. He is often too nice for our own good.
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