What was the NSA doing on 9/11?

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7799

What was the NSA doing on 9/11?
by Margie Burns | May 30 2007 -


Today is May 30, 2007. Some of the questions below were posted on July 26, 2006, and they still haven't been answered, although they were not new at the time they were posted.

In all seriousness, gentlemen and ladies, what was our National Security Agency (NSA) doing on September 11, 2001?

General Michael V. Hayden, now head of the CIA, has testified before at least one congressional committee with some resentment about flak caught by the NSA for its performance leading up to 9/11. With all due respect, any touchiness should be directed elsewhere than at critics.

Nobody disputes the NSA's data-collecting capabilities. The NSA has the technology -- this item is not disputed -- to pick up phone calls, land line or cell; wires; emails; faxes; wire transfer -- you name it; if it's electronic, satellite, radio or ‘telephonic’ as the FBI puts it, they can get to it. This is the NSA area of specialization – huge area, global -- being able to reap enormous harvests of information from media around the world via transmissions including satellite. A delightful man with whom I used to ride the commuter train, who had recently retired from the NSA – “No Such Agency,” he’d said, when we did the usual where-do-you-work chitchat -- told me with a little twinkle in his eye, “You know that movie Enemy of the State ? We can do all of that.”

For further insight -- joking aside, watch the movie. BTW, one notes that the screenwriter is named Marconi; is a family scion giving some payback to the public, for what old Marconi the radio-waves guy unwittingly let the public in for? Anyway, the film is surprisingly well written.

Back to the NSA: no mere elected official can count on being able to check or monitor what the NSA is doing, either. Nor can any other entity among the raft of agencies in the Intelligence Community, including the two largest, the CIA and the FBI. Anyone who thinks there has been a new dawn of extensive coordination and information-sharing since 9/11 is living in a dream world. Major problems persist, including the ludicrous creation of a new and deeply troubled bureaucracy in the ‘Department of Homeland Security’ and its TSA (Transportation Security Administration, but called other names including “Terrorist Support Agency” by aviation security experts like former FAA specialist Steve Elson). But even leaving ‘homeland security’ and the TSA out of the equation – as some in the Intelligence Community are inclined to do – the CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon have their own problems. Summing up, (1) the Pentagon is mired down in debilitating internal strife: some of its better individuals are fighting a losing battle to ward off an ongoing White House campaign, in place since late 2000, to keep the U.S. Army off balance, while its worst brownnosers go along with the Army-weakening practices. (2) The CIA has undergone extensive reorganization, to put it politely, in the scandal and turmoil of White House and OVP efforts, connived at in some sectors of CIA, to use the CIA to get an illegitimate war going in the Middle East. And (3) the White House put the lid on the FBI within days after 9/11, and the Bureau has still not caught up on the equipment including computer equipment and other resources it needs to do genuine prevention and crimefighting.

[madrchsod]

1. i guess they were just doing their jobs

listening to our republic go down with the twin towers....

[AnnieBW]

2. Probably trying to hire more Arabic Linguists

to go through all of the "chatter".

[Hawaii Hiker]

3. Around the time shortly before & after 9/11, the FBI

was investigating an incall establishment (prostitution) in New Orleans...

There you go, the FBI worrying about f-ing call girls, in the days leading up to & shortly thereafter 9/11...What an utter waste of time & resources....

http://www.southerner.net/v3n1_2002/brothel.html

[soothsayer]

4. they were already doing their illegal wiretaps back then.

[EVDebs]

5. Remember that Gene Hackman movie The Conversation ?

They can do that stuff too...

(What is it with this Hackman dude anyway ? He's EVERYWHERE ! Inspired casting for Enemy of the State btw).

[ixion]

7. I heard Hackman refer to himself as a "such a whore" when it comes to making movies

I just think he really enjoys it...he also happens to be a pretty talented actor, IMO, albeit something of a hack. :)

[EVDebs]

6. A 'major policy shift' at NSA pre 9-11 ... this might interest you DUers...

"A top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity said that, after Bush took office, "There was a major policy shift" at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to "back off " from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the Bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off limits for investigation. Osama was the exception; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any investigation, "follow the money," was now violated, and investigations-at least before September 11-began to die."

from Khan Job: Bush Spiked Probe of Pakistan’s
Dr. Strangelove, BBC reported in 2001
by Greg Palast
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb04/Palast0212.htm

What do you think, babylonsister ?

[Demeter]

8. Being Subverted By the Bush Cabal

like every other functional piece of the government.