A British politician revealed that a turf war between the CIA and the FBI fumbled a massive intelligence-gathering mission very easily could have prevented the September 11th attacks.
In testimony to Parliament, British opposition security spokesman David Davis talked about how the dispute between the two agencies took too long and they missed a vital window of opportunity to spy on the Taliban prior to the attacks.
The issue dates back to 1998, when the Taliban was looking to set up a new phone network between the U.S. and Afghanistan, and was planning to do so with American and British business entrepreneurs.
The Afghanistan-based group was asking for entirely new phone equipment, that the U.S. government planned to bug before sending over to the Middle East.
But because the two agencies wasted a year to agree upon the office bureaucracy, they only settled the arrangement on September 8, 2001- three days before the attacks.
‘The plan was simple’ said Mr Davis.
‘Because the Taliban wanted American equipment for their new phone network, this would allow the FBI and NSA, the National Security Agency, to build extra circuits into all the equipment before it was flown out to Afghanistan for use.
‘Once installed, these extra circuits would allow the FBI and NSA to record or listen live to every single landline and mobile phone call in Afghanistan. The FBI would know the time the call was made and its duration. They would know the caller’s name, the number dialled, and even the caller’s PIN.’
Though the plan seems fool proof, Mr Davis places the blame of it falling through squarely on the office politics within the American intelligence agencies.
‘The FBI and the CIA spent more than a year fighting over who should be in charge,’ he said.
As a result, the formal arrangement for ‘Operation Foxden’ was not approved until it was too late.
‘A huge opportunity was missed,’ Mr Davis said.
The security spokesman is revealing his feelings on the issue because the U.S. has been very aggressive in keeping the bickering between the would-be business partners involved in the deal- which includes one American, Ehsanollah Bayat and two Brits, Stuart Bentham and Lord Michael Cecil- out of the courts.
The government has been able to do so by using the States Secrets Privilege allowance which helps keep potentially threatening- or embarrassing- lawsuits out of the public record.
Now, the British government is looking to yield a similar influence over their court system when it comes to issues of national security, and Mr Davis’ testimony was heard in relation to that debate.
{The Daily Mail/Matzav.com Newscenter}
Mr David Davis, British Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden, is a member of the ruling Conservative Party.
As the original Daily Mail made absolutely no reference whatever to Mr Davis’s political affiliations, one must assume that falsely stating that Mr Davis is the “British opposition security spokesman” is the result of over-enthusiastic editing at the Matzav.com “Newscenter”. Publishing falsehoods does not make for good and credible journalism.
Mr Davis’s website features all his previous assignments while his party was in opposition, but makes absolutely no mention whatsoever of any interests in defense. He was “shadow Secretary of State for the Home Department from 2004 until 2008, but does not appear to have displayed interest in defense matters.
This throws considerable doubt on the veracity of the report as a whole and on the professional abilities of http://www.matzav.com.
Olley North came to Congress in the 80’s and testified “the good, the bad, and the ugly” . He told them then that ‘there is a evil man out there who will destroy the world if not put under control’. But Congress knew better – they were busy being ‘politically correct’ and not allowing ‘covert operations’.
I knew right then and there that we were in BIG trouble. I did not know how big BIG.