Jeff Stein

Film Exposes the Seduction of Secrecy

By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

"Eight years later came 9/11, famously labeled a failure to “connect the dots.” Eyewash. The CIA, FBI and others had dots. They hoarded them like marbles."

So, was the "failure to prevent" an intentional act to further an agenda, as well as treason and mass murder by US policy makers- or more like manslaughter, only involving "incompetence", criminal negligence, dereliction of duty and horrendous administrative and policy decisions rooted in ignorance, territoriality, ego, partisanship, spite, suspicion- or just the inevitable, "blameless" result an institutionalized culture of secrecy that "supposedly" has been changed? Instead of pursuing these questions, he continues with secrecy issues, the subject of the film being reviewed (in CQ Politics). Article has a nice summary of the bin Laden satellite phone-1998 NSA leak publication-Bush propaganda. In reference to abuse of secrecy:

"Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? A government of men, as it were, not laws.