[CLUE-Talk] Bush to order bipartisian review of Iraq allegations of WMD

[Randy Arabie]

Quoting "G. Richard Raab" <rraab at plusten.com>:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Thursday 05 February 2004 08:20 am, Randy Arabie wrote:
> 
> 

> > You could probably dig up some estimates 
> > that differ, but I challenge you to find something that says the CIA
> > INCREASED it's "human sources" of intelligence during the mid-1990's.
> 
> In this day and age of the Internet, I can find anything that you want.

Yup.  http://spaceport666.tripod.com/newsbush.html

<---SNIP--->

> > We have far fewer agents 
> > in the field, and now rely too heavily on SIGINT.  The primary role of the
> > CIA has become one of intelligence analysis, rather than collection.
> 
> How do you know this? You are counting on info from an admin (or from 
> journalists of which on a few are really in the know) that has refused to 
> take a single bit of blame for screwing up (we all screw up ).

Yeah, I agree.

And, before anyone slings this at me...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,110545,00.html

<quote>
And I want to be very clear about something: A blanket indictment of our human
intelligence around the world is dead wrong. We have spent the last seven years
rebuilding our clandestine service. As director of central intelligence, this
has been my highest priority.

When I came to the CIA in the mid-'90s, our graduating class of case officers
was unbelievably low. Now, after years of rebuilding, our training programs and
putting our best efforts to recruit the most talented men and women, we are
graduating more clandestine officers than at any time in the history of the
Central Intelligence Agency.

It will take an additional five years to finish the job of rebuilding our
clandestine service, but the results so far have been obvious. A CIA spy led us
to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11th attacks. Al
Qaeda's operational chief Nashiri, the man who planned and executed the bombing
of the USS Cole, was located and arrested because of our human reporting. Human
sources were critical to the capture of Hambali, the chief terrorist in
southeast Asia, who organized and killed hundreds of people when they bombed a
nightclub in Bali.

So when you hear pundits say that we have no human intelligence capability, they
don't know what they're talking about. It's important that I address these
misstatements because the American people must know just how reliable American
intelligence is on the threats that confront our nation. 
</quote>

That's just a snip.  It's a very long transcript, and I have not read all of it.
  So, 1997.  It doesn't exactly mesh with the statement I made...I'm glad to
hear they have made changes since the mid-90's.

-- 
Allons Rouler!

Randy
http://www.arabie.org/