Clarke: CIA Had Low-Level Spies Inside Al Qaeda

[cal04]

The CIA (news - web sites) had some low-level spies inside al Qaeda in the three years before the Sept. 11 attacks, but none who could provide advance information about the group's movements, according to testimony released on Wednesday from a closed-door intelligence briefing in 2002.


The CIA did not have spies inside the network run by Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) until 1999, but "none of them very high-level," Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official, told the joint congressional committee investigating Sept. 11.

In a rare move, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 103-page declassified transcript of the June 11, 2002, closed-door briefing on its Web site late on Wednesday. Most of the information had been made public during subsequent open hearings and in the final report of the joint inquiry.

The CIA "never had anyone in position to tell us what was going to happen in advance, or even where bin Laden was going to be in advance," Clarke told lawmakers.On the three occasions when they thought they knew bin Laden's location, the CIA opposed taking military action, saying its sources were not good enough, he said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=4&u=/nm/20041118/ts_nm/security_qaeda_dc

[lebkuchen]

1. Speaking of CIA spies

how many more has the Bush administration outed since the onset of its latest Stalinist purge?

[Zerex71]

2. Yeah, that is until we outed one of our own moles.

True story -- go look it up.

[sjeberling]

3. Bush / Rice also outed a British MI-6 Informant

The computer guy at the end of August was MI-6. The source of any chatter was through him. MI-6 does not trush Bush anymore with any information.

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