WASHINGTON – A report by a presidential commission charged with investigating intelligence failures prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks finds that U.S. intelligence gathering is more awful than anyone even imagined. One central problem, according to the report approved by the nine-member bipartisan panel, is a lack of sharing between agencies, causing gaps in intelligence.
Explaining the lack of cooperation, FBI Director Robert Mueller said, “Well, I just don’t like the CIA, and I think they’re stinky. They’re stinky and they know they’re stinky, but they won’t admit it. So they’re actually stinky liars. That’s what they actually are.”
“They can say that, but they only know because they’re stinky,” CIA Director Porter Goss responded. “It takes one to know one. And besides, no one’s stinkier than a poopy-head FBI agent. Ask anybody. Everyone knows they stink the most.”
For his part, President Bush said he hoped the agencies could “put an end to such childish squabbles,” adding: “We all work for the same country–America. We should all be in the fight together, to work to protect the country and keep it safe and strong. Maybe if we worked for farty France or snotface Spain, it would be different. But we don’t. We work for the United States, and we should act like it.”
The commission’s report, which, like anything that might find truth, the president first opposed, stopped short of accusing the Bush administration of pressuring intelligence agents and agencies to manufacture or manipulate information in order to make a stronger case for invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein.
“Yes, they stopped short,” Vice President Dick Cheney said outside his office. “That’s because I never pointed a loaded gun at each agent’s head when they were about to sign off on certain pieces of intelligence. That didn’t happen. And I didn’t do that with this commission, either. They were free to write their own report. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get this human body-shaped duffel bag into the trunk of my evilmobile.”
The report did bluntly point out that U.S. intelligence still knows “disturbingly little” about terrorist threats and capabilities, sometimes “less now than it did five or ten years ago.” “No one should feel safe at all,” said a CIA insider who preferred to remain nameless. “Like, at all. I’m not sure these guys would know if Bin Laden was in the CIA cafeteria. Shit, have we looked there?”
Ironically, former CIA Director George Tenet, who was at the agency’s helm at the time of the 2001 attacks, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in December, 2004. “Well, why not give it to him?” Bush asked. “I mean, have we been attacked since? I think not. I mean, have we? I’m asking you. Seriously. Have we?”
