1115.org

It’s starting to look to me like Dick Cheney’s Excellent Adventure has taken intelligence compartmentalization to previously unreached heights. They not only keep information from certain departments, they keep it from some men and then give it to their successors:

National Intelligence Director John Negroponte (2/2/06):

The U.S. spy agencies have not known where Osama bin Laden is hiding for some time, the nation’s top intelligence official said Friday in an Associated Press interview.

Negroponte’s replacement Jack McConnell is either better at Hide-N-Seek, or has received other information:

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Jack McConnell said al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan organizing new terrorist training camps.

McConnell’s testimony Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee was the first open declaration of bin Laden’s whereabouts by a U.S. intelligence official in years, ABC News reported.

McConnell said intelligence also indicated bin Laden’s top aide, Ayman al Zawahri was with him in the rugged mountainous region of western Pakistan, “and they are attempting to re-establish and rebuild and to establish training camps.”

And then we have everyone’s favorite intel hack clowning it up two years ago:

CIA director Porter Goss (6/20/05):

Asked if he had a good idea where bin Laden is, he said: “I have an excellent idea of where he is. What’s the next question?”

CIA director Porter Goss (11/29/05):

“We’re applying a lot of efforts to find out where they are.” He insisted the CIA knows “a good deal more” about the men “than we’re able to say publicly.”

This has turned into farce. Anyone who thinks that bin Laden has really been able to elude us for five-plus years is kidding themselves. If we wanted him, he’d have been a memory by now, either at Tora Bora or elsewhere. But that’s all the past. If “with us or with the terrorists” still stands, why aren’t we occupying Baluchistan and Waziristan right now?

via John