December Surprise?

TAPped links to a pair of stories in the LA Times alleging that the CIA is sitting on a report on 9/11 requested by the House Intelligence Committee until after the election. Robert Scheer quotes his anonymous intelligence source as saying:

What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that. The report found very senior-level officials responsible….It surely does not involve issues of national security….The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election. No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress.

I should note that the last time I linked a claim of this sort from the LA Times, it was about a halt to major counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, and doesn't appear to have been borne out by subsequent events (though that, in a sense, requires a certain amount of speculation about what might otherwise have happened). Still, I report, and you… err, come to a conclusion. Got to watch those trademarks.

Comments

[R C Dean]

doesn't appear to have been borne out by subsequent events (though that, in a sense, requires a certain amount of speculation about what might otherwise have happened

Julian, if you are suggesting that Bush had not been planning an October offensive, then, after LA Times reported this, decided to go ahead in order to prove the LA Times wrong, well, I think its time to check your meds.

[Julian Sanchez]

Wow. I'm glad your first impulse is to attribute the most insane possible interpretation to that sentence. No, I just meant one can't know for sure whether they have or haven't scaled back their offensive because there's no way to know how aggressive they'd be if there weren't an election coming; no point of comparison.