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The French Have Saved Us. (No, really!)
"Don't think because nothing hit New York, nothing was tried," says Swetnam, who used to be a CIA officer and a special consultant to the first President Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. "Plenty was tried, but everything was thwarted. And this might surprise you, but French intelligence was key." There have been at least four attempts uncovered in the past two years to strike the U.S., he says, including specific attacks on New York, but the plans were intercepted and the operations preempted. "The last one was a big attempt to strike our financial centers. A year before that, they were putting together a ricin attack. Both attacks were planned and staged from Great Britain," says Swetnam. Also, adds Redlener, "attacks on American and international schools overseas have been detected in advance and prevented."How is that possible, when the CIA's intelligence-gathering is supposedly in a shambles? Because of good friends in shadowy places. "The French intelligence services have been just phenomenal," says Swetnam. "We wouldn't have captured those cells in Great Britain if it wasn't for the French, as well as the British and Germans." Even the ISI—Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, which once used drug money to help finance the Taliban in Afghanistan—has become a crucial U.S. partner in the spy game. "They're really a bad intelligence service, in terms of morals, but really effective," says Swetnam. Posted by: Chuck 2004-12-10 |
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