NSA FOIA Release Of CIA Docs: Bad News For Bush

Via Bryan of Why Now?, we are directed to the following info about the 120 CIA docs just released by the NSA under an FOIA request. From Jordan Michael Smith at Salon:

Over 120 CIA documents concerning 9/11, Osama bin Laden and counterterrorism were published today for the first time, having been newly declassified and released to the National Security Archive. The documents were released after the NSA pored through the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission and sent Freedom of Information Act requests.

... Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.

... The Pentagon approved the plan for surveillance purposes.

And yet, simultaneously, the CIA declared that budget concerns were forcing it to move its Counterterrorism Center/Osama bin Laden Unit from an “offensive” to a “defensive” posture. ...

...

So tell me again... just how are Republicans better than Democrats at counterterrorism? It seems to me that Bush administration's truly terrible judgment allowed this to happen despite an effective initial effort by the intelligence community. And now we have Republican asswipes blaming Democrats for 9/11. What a large, steaming pile.

The worst of it is that the release of these documents will change nothing. The MSM will not cover them, or will give them a single segment and then move on. Most Americans who would vote Republican in the first place will never hear of these documents, or will blame the source, or will find some other crack-brained way to defend their incompetent, negligent heroes. This should be an earth-shaking release... but it won't be even a tremor.