Bush Wiretap Scheme = a Failed Intelligence System

What Bush's Wiretapping Scheme Really Reveals: A Failed Intelligence System

By Cheryl Seal

The other day, I took an "interactive poll" conducted by a very prominent international polling company (Zogby). As most know, polling companies are in most cases not responsible for the content of their polls. They conduct and analyze the results of polls ordered by clients. I stress this because John Zogby is a progressive, decent guy and I don't want to give him a "black eye."

That being said, the content of the poll I took made it quite clear how the mainstream media is able to spout poll results that seem to defy all logic and every day experience. For example, on NBC on Jan 30, an NBC/Wall St. Journal poll showed that a little over half of Americans "supported wiretapping without a court order." That contradicts earlier polls that showed that about 75-80% of Americans are against wiretapping of private conversations and that over half would support the impeachment of Bush if it was shown that he ordered illegal wiretapping.

So how did the folks at NBC/WSJ arrive at this new result? Easy! The wording of the question, which is rarely if ever repeated verbatim in the media reports, and for good reason - it would show the manipulations used. In the poll I took, the wording to the same basic question went, more or less, like this: "Do you approve of the government wiretapping citizens TO PREVENT A TERRORIST ATTACK". Now why would anyone in their right mind answer "no"? Of course, if said wiretapping prevented an attack - which the wording is presuming - most would answer yes. But none of the poll's wiretapping questions included any wording referring to legality - just as the NBC/Wall St. Journal question did not include the question of legality. How very different the response would be if the question were "Do you approve of wiretapping of private conservations of US citizens without a court order even if this wiretapping is illegal and has not been shown to be an effective deterrent to terrorist attacks?"

Because that would be the real question, the real issue. Aside from the matter of dubious legality, many intelligence experts say that the wholesale wiretapping currently going on actually makes detecting real "chatter" related to a possible attack much harder to identify. In fact, the MAIN ISSUE is not being addressed by anyone: Wholesale wiretapping is an act of total desperation by an administration which has trashed the effective intelligence system it once had. Through the combined effects of "bubble paranoia" (i.e. trust no one but a handful of insiders, like Cheney and Condi, with limited intelligence experience) and cherry-picking or subverting intelligence to fit an agenda, the Bush administration's intelligence system has been reduced to an ineffectual shambles. With hundreds still in Guantanomo, with two dozen villagers dead in Damedula, after alleged capture of a stable full of supposed "Al Qaeda masterminds" (given glitzy card-deck identities by the cowboy-style "round-em-up" folks at "Bush Intelligence PR Central"), Bush intelligence still has failed to capture Osama Bin Laden or any of his REAL mastermind lieutenants. Meanwhile, each and every day, over 600 attacks on US troops and civilians in Iraq keep on happening and the chances of a new domestic attack keep increasing.

The Clinton era intelligence community did not need wholesale wiretapping to prevent at least three threatened, potentially devastating, attacks, and to track down the culprits responsible for the first WTC attack. Yet the best people from the Clinton intelligence community were, essentially, sent packing by the Bush administration - including top Bin Laden hunter John O'Neill (who later died trying to save lives at the WTC on 9/11). Many very good CIA and FBI people have quit in disgust in the past five years. Now the administration relies on wholesale wiretapping, and trying to keep tabs on a wildly ballooning list of "domestic terrorist" suspects that now includes everyone from Quakers to some senior citizen groups!. There is no way this approach is keeping American safe - in fact, it is making it easier and easier for slick terrorists to go "under the wire." Does anyone really think that a smart terrorist bent on destruction will use a tappable phone or hang out in a titled organization? Hardly! So while the FBI agents are infiltrating small groups of peaceful antiwar protestors and listening to hours and days of fruitless phone conversations between some Green Card tech worker in Boston and his mom in Bombay (for example) they are, essentially, clearing the field for the most lethal people.

In short, no amount of wiretapping and phony polls designed to legitimize said wiretapping will help make America safer. The only thing that will help is a regime change here at home. I suspect there are more than a few intelligence people who are praying that Bush's impeachment comes soon - before it is too late.

http://cherylsealreports.com/failedusintelligence.html

Another symptom of failed intelligence: torture —Cheryl, Tue Jan 31 14:55