Comments (20)

Davis13 wrote on October 26, 2007 8:32 PM:

Limit the info to the public and maybe you can trick them again. I will no longer take anything any Republican says at face value. There is always an ulterior motive that will favor their party.

Arkinsaw wrote on October 26, 2007 8:53 PM:

Course they'll release whatever they want when they want to use the fear card or justify some decision they've made, like outing a CIA agent.

Steve5117 wrote on October 26, 2007 8:58 PM:

Tell the truth and shame the Devil has been interpreted by this administration to mean: How can we tell the truth when it will show just how unprofessional we have been and possibly cause harm to our satanic leader.

paul wrote on October 26, 2007 10:24 PM:

Knowing that someone without a clearance will read a summary of their work chills the speech of someone who is utterly anonymous?

a) the intelligence community is full of lily-livered wimps unwilling to stand by their work, even in redacted form

or

b) McConnell and his cronies are lying once again.

Which do you choose?

DallasNE wrote on October 26, 2007 10:38 PM:

The effect that is chilling is not as McConnell describes it.

Agents fear that giving "unvarnised advise" that goes public and doesn't toe the line of the Bush administration could cause one to be Plamed and lose their job. Now that is very chilling.

Frank wrote on October 27, 2007 9:43 AM:

Time to remove he entire imperial presidency and all its roots from every level of government.

We seem to have lost the wisdom concerning the advantage associated with frquent change over.

Clearly the public needs to assume they all lie all the time:the old saw that any one who can achieve the ***** office is probably unfit to fill that office needs to be a voter mantra.

ron wrote on October 27, 2007 10:03 AM:

No wonder the government is so totally f...ed up.

"Sixteen spy agencies....."??? Good thing we didn't have that many armies in WWII....we would all be speaking "Cherman"!

BT wrote on October 27, 2007 10:45 AM:

The goal is to control the message. By not generally releasing the NIE, they leak only what they want, leaving out annoying facts that might weigh unfavorably against the reality they're trying to create with what they choose to leak. That simple. This is not the first time this administration has stopped releasing reports.

Frank wrote on October 27, 2007 10:50 AM:

If voters have not previously seen it the

"Manifesto for the Christian Church" (a pdf document) can be found on the web. It should be required reading by which to develop an understanding of the fundamentalist movement now in the US government.

I suggest it should be read carefully and then compared to the history of this administration and their followers.

These are dangerous people who have acted on bogus intelligence, lied as a matter of policy,mismanaged a war , seriously endangered the US economy, alienated our allies, caused the death and injury of 100sK people and are involved in an attempt to salvage a cultural war that will continue into the lifetime of our great grand children.

And they manifesto is aimed at establishing a theocracy here to replace the current form of US government.

Don't believe it? Read the reference-it can be found on the internet and their are 125 of their ministers who signed it. in ~1986.

za wrote on October 27, 2007 12:40 PM:

Q: What's the cure for government secrecy?

A: More secrecy.

CruzBustamove wrote on October 27, 2007 5:20 PM:

"Referring to the public release of the reports, Shedd said during a Capitol Hill briefing: "It affects the quality of what's written.""
Not to mention the "truthiness"

CruzBustamove wrote on October 27, 2007 5:23 PM:

Oh, and never trust a man with a comb-over.

AT wrote on October 27, 2007 5:42 PM:

I am no fan of the rash of secrecy we've been having, but the declassification and public disclosure of NIEs is a new practice. I was an intelligence analyst with the government for about seven years and observed the NIE process. It is always a painful process to get all agencies to come to a general agreement for these documents even when the specter of publication and politicization isn't present. To think that introducing these elements into the stew will not harm the frankness of the product is naive. The way around this is to have the GAO produce a shadow NIE. They have the clearances and access to do the work and take in the conclusions of the intel agencies.

Dennis wrote on October 28, 2007 9:40 AM:

AT wrote on October 27, 2007 5:42 PM: "To think that introducing these elements into the stew will not harm the frankness of the product is naive."

I respect your experience. However, the "stew" of the White House and its followers has already corrupted the American government and the American people and cost the lives of untold thousands if not millions.

We are to the point that a huge majority of American people are almost afraid, and rightly so, to even look at one another, and have NO CONFIDENCE in the White House, the Congress, and no longer, even the Supreme Court.

My personal view is that all of the stalling of not providing documents is as much these individuals covering their own war crime asses (and other crimes) as looking out for the interests of the nation.

If we are to survive as a "free people", it's past time to clean out the "stew pot" and we can't do that until we know where the dirty spots are.

We can go back to being "secret" later.

Let's see the documents.

Shawn Fassett wrote on October 28, 2007 1:51 PM:

http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20070201_transcript.pdf

Hearing on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
The Nomination of Mike McConnell to Be Director of National Intelligence

February 1, 2007

SEN. WYDEN: One last question, if I might, Admiral. What can be done to get professionally written National Intelligence Estimates to this committee and to the Congress in a timely way?

We've now seen the most recently in the debate now, with respect to the new Iraq resolutions, the debate we're going to have, that the Congress didn't have that information so that you could consider it when you were writing these resolutions. I guess we're going to get this, you know, momentarily. We need to make sure that we get this information professionally done in a timely way.

What can be done to address that and to speed up the delivery of that information?

MR. McCONNELL: Senator, all I can tell you is I would look at the process. I'm being sensitive to your question, understanding your question, agreeing with your need to have the information to make the decisions you have to make.

So I would take a look at it, and see what -- if I could improve the timeliness in any way.

---

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Do you agre to send the intelligence community officials to appear before the Senate -- before our committee, and designated staff, when invited?

MR. McCONNELL: Yes, sir.

SEN. ROCKEFFER: Do you agree to provide documents or any material requested by the committee in order to carry out its oversight and its legislative responsibilities?

Mr. McCONNELL: I do, sir, with the caveats that we mentioned earlier, that sometimes it would be something beyond my control. But certainly provide you with what you need to do your oversight responsibilities.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Will you ensure that all intelligence community elements provide such material to the committee, when requested?

Mr. McCONNELL: Yes, sir.

shoot twice wrote on October 28, 2007 3:23 PM:

The message from the NIE should be clear and we will make it that way. Bush's policies are working and the NIE should make that clear.

biggerbox wrote on October 28, 2007 4:03 PM:

So, if I understand correctly, the assertion is that an anonymous analyst in one of sixteen agencies will be afraid to submit an opinion they believe to be true, for fear that, after it went through the interagency blender, it might get summarized in a document the public might read? Which would not be embarrassing if they were actually correct, I presume. So, what? They're afraid of looking stupid if reality later proves that the opinion was full of crap?

Normally, people taking care to be right so that they don't appear to be full of crap is understood as a good thing. It does, in fact, "affect the quality of what's written", in a positive way. Otherwise, people are free to generate any kind of Curveball-icious crap.

I thought the place for "unvarnished" opinion and information was much earlier in the process, before all the different agency come to agreement. Sanded and varnished, if you will. Which agreement is then summarized and declassified.

Doc Rock wrote on October 28, 2007 4:43 PM:

McConnell is a ventriloquist's dummy and Cheney's lips are moving!

parrot wrote on October 28, 2007 11:43 PM:

They're outting CIA agents to "protect you" but they can't bring themselves to actually provide you with any legitimate info? Of course, then there is Congress...

Dennis wrote on November 12, 2007 1:51 PM:

Welcome to the world of Communistic fears.

The very things that the U.S. government used to chide the Soviet Communists about doing to its citizens are the very same things the U.S, government is now doing to American citizens.

You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.