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After a report was delivered to Congress on the evening of August 23, information of a classified document spanning hundreds of pages detailing the Central Intelligence Agency's intelligence failures prior to Sept. 11 became known to the public.

CIA Inspector General John Helgerson told director Porter Goss that the findings warrant an accountability board to take disciplinary action against current and former CIA employees.

This accountability board being authorized by Goss, much less making groundbreaking findings, is highly unlikely. For one thing, Goss is an undeniably partisan appointee. He is the only congressman other than George Bush, Sr. to take over the top CIA post, and his investigation into the Valerie Plame affair has been practically non-existent.

Both presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush held the presidency during George Tenet's tenure, so any criticisms of Tenet will lead back to the presidency. Neither side wants that.

Clinton missed opportunities during his presidency to capture Osama Bin Laden, including in the fall of 2000, when spy planes over Afghanistan sent video feeds to the CIA, showing a man that many intelligence analysts believe is bin Laden (NBC).

Under the Bush Administration's watch, according to French intelligence, Bin Laden was treated in an American hospital in Dubai for 10 days in July 2001, where he was visited by a CIA agent.

Former CIA Executive Director A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard (March 2001-November 2004), should be a target of any investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks. Buzzy was the head of the A.B. Brown investment firm until 1998 when he came to the CIA as then-director George Tenet's counsel.

It was the Brown investing arm of Deutsche Bank/A.B. Brown (the largest bank in Europe) that in one trade made a $2.5 million profit in "put options" (bets a stock will fall) placed on United Airlines just prior to Sept. 11. That prize was never claimed.

Early this year, Krongard suggested capturing Bin Laden wasn't such a good idea, saying, "You can make the argument we're better off with him (at large). Because if something happens to bin Laden, you might fight a lot of people vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror."

Bin Laden was a CIA asset from 1979 to 1989, when he went under the codename of "Tim Osmond." The CIA's treatment of him, even after the rise of anti-Western Muslim extremism, leaves the possibility he remains an asset to this day. Also questionable was the Sept. 11 breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill of then House and Senate intelligence heads Porter Goss and Bob Graham with Mahmoud Ahmad, head of Pakistani intelligence. According to Indian intelligence, it was Ahmad's agency that had recently wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker.

The three were still eating as the planes hit the World Trade Center in New York. According to Senator Graham, during the meeting, "We were talking about terrorism, specifically terrorism generated from Afghanistan." Goss also has his hands dirty from Operation Mongoose (the plan to overthrow Castro) from his time as a CIA officer from 1962 to 1972.

As the 9/11 Commission showed, any investigative team from within the power structures of the U.S. government is going to come to the same conclusions: our government was not complicit, and any failings were an honest mistake.

Stephen Bollich is a journalism graduate student from Beaumont. He can be reached at sab0107@unt.edu

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