Inside Politics

Quote of the day

Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, was asked yesterday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” what he thought of former presidential running mate John Edward’s recent New York Times op-ed in which the ex-senator from North Carolina said he was wrong to vote for the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

“I said that before Senator Edwards wrote that,” Mr. Kerry said.

A failed panel

“It was interesting to hear from the 9/11 Commission again on Tuesday,” former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh wrote yesterday in an opinion piece on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

“This self-perpetuating and privately funded group of lobbyists and lawyers has recently opined on hurricanes, nuclear weapons, the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and even the New York subway system. Now it offers yet another ‘report card’ on the progress of the FBI and CIA in the war against terrorism, along with its ‘back-seat’ take and some further unsolicited narrative about how things ought to be on the ‘front lines,’ ” Mr. Freeh said.

“Yet this is also a good time for the country to make some assessments of the 9/11 Commission itself. Recent revelations from the military intelligence operation code-named ‘Able Danger’ have cast light on a missed opportunity that could have potentially prevented 9/11. Specifically, Able Danger concluded in February 2000 that military experts had identified Mohamed Atta by name (and maybe photograph) as an al Qaeda agent operating in the U.S. Subsequently, military officers assigned to Able Danger were prevented from sharing this critical information with FBI agents, even though appointments had been made to do so. Why?

“The Able Danger intelligence, if confirmed, is undoubtedly the most relevant fact of the entire post-9/11 inquiry. Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks and arrest terrorists. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it ‘was not historically significant.’

“This astounding conclusion — in combination with the failure to investigate Able Danger and incorporate it into its findings — raises serious challenges to the commission’s credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically insignificant itself.”

An opinion gap

Nearly half of Americans think torturing terror suspects to gain information can be justified, according to a survey published yesterday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The survey of 2,006 persons found that 46 percent thought torturing terrorists to gain important information was sometimes (31 percent) or often (15 percent) justified; 17 percent thought it was rarely justified; and 32 percent were opposed.

By contrast, the study found that of 520 opinion leaders questioned on the issue, no more than one in four thinks that torture of terrorist suspects can be sometimes or often justified, Agence France-Presse reports.

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