By Brian Carnell

Monday, September 30, 2002

In an article on The Nation's web site, Eric Alterman asks several rhetorical questions about the pre-9/11 investigation of Al Qaeda, including this question,

Why can't the CIA and the FBI talk to each other? Why can't either talk to the NSA? Microsoft could probably handle this one, too.

Is Alterman really this stupid? Did he completely miss the Church hearings of the 1970s?

The reason that the CIA, FBI and NSA limit their communications with each other is because after the revelations about internal security operations such as COINTELPRO, limitations on how the FBI could share information with spy agencies such as teh CIA and NSA were altered.

The FBI, in particular, tried to create a hard wall between itself and the CIA. During the trials of those accused of the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center, for example, the FBI refused to share many documents with the CIA -- even when it was sharing those documents with the defendants as part of the discovery process -- on the grounds that there was no evidence that the attack was state-sponsored and the CIA's jurisdiction does not included internal criminal matters.

Whether or not this was a wise policy is debatable, but isn't this exactly what the Left and The Nation in particular have demanded for years? After all, this was one of the central charges against COINTELPRO -- that through extensive sharing of information, the CIA was using the FBI to get around its prohibition against domestic spying.

Alterman will be glad to know that Congress did pass a piece of legislation designed to ensure greater future cooperation between the CIA and all levels of law enforcement -- it was called the USA Patriot Act (apparently Christopher Hitchens is too far to the right for Alterman's taste, but John Ashcroft is just right).

Source:

Just Asking . . . Eric Alterman, The Nation, September 19, 2002.

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