Palast "Armed Madhouse" excerpt- The Khan job and the 'back-off' directive

[yodermon]

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=21033

On November 9, 2001, BBC Television Centre in London received a call from a phone booth just outside Washington. The call to our Newsnight team was part of a complex prearranged dance coordinated with the National Security News Service, a conduit for unhappy spooks at the CIA and FBI to unburden themselves of disturbing information and documents. The top-level U.S. intelligence agent on the line had much to be unhappy and disturbed about: a "back-off" directive.

This call to BBC came two months after the attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Towers. His fellow agents, he said, were now released to hunt bad guys. That was good news. The bad news was that, before September 11, in those weeks just after George W. Bush took office, CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) personnel were told to "back off" certain targets of investigations begun by Bill Clinton. He said there were particular investigations that were effectively killed.

<snip>

BBC got the call about Dr. Khan's bomb in November 2001 and reported it that night on the tube and in the London Guardian. Over two years later, on February 11, 2004, President Bush, at an emergency press briefing, expressed his shock—shock!—at having learned that Dr. A. Q. Khan of Pakistan was running a flea market in fissionable material. This indicated a major Bush policy shift since my last book and report. In 2001, regarding the Khan bomb, the administration dismissed our story as imaginary. With his 2004 press conference, the President shifted from obfuscation to prevarication, denial to mendacity.

<snip>

The U.S. government missed discovering Dr. Khan's radioactive fire sale because our agents were hard at work ignoring the Saudi money trail. If the agencies had not been told to "back off" the Saudis and Dr. Khan, would the U.S. have uncovered the nuclear shipments in time to stop them? We can't possibly know, but, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, it's amazing what you don't see when you're told not to look.

All roads lead to Darth, just ask Sibel & Valerie.

[blm]

1. Khan was a KNOWN factor going back to BCCI - he was part of Poppy Bush's

network of armsdealers and proliferators, drugrunners and moneylaundering experts.

Bush waited a good long time to work on covering Poppy's tracks where he could.

Why doesn't media ask WHY the Bushes are so protective of known terror networks and those that fund them for the last 30 years.