Thanks drasto at Metapop for posting this link today. I followed the popdex link over to his blog and voila. "Another intelligence analyst who saw the writing on the wall [more inside]" This story, in conjuntion with our present 911 hearings and stories by Clark, well really now, don't you think that there is rather mounting and credible evidence that the US administration has been ingnoring vital information? Since Condi is not testifying, and I did watch the C-Span hearings thus far, Rumsfeld appeared incompetent, Clark appeared truthful, and the Bushies again try spin and character assassination to discredit. All part of a day's work, n'est ce pas?

http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=8758
Ex-Spook Sirrs: Early Osama Call Got Her Ejected
by Gail Sheehy

"President George W. Bush has a bold plan: to gradually shift American intelligence operatives—now free from hunting down Saddam Hussein—to Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden.

To Julie Sirrs, it’s a case of too little, too late. A former military analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, Ms. Sirrs was the first intelligence officer to report on the significance of Osama bin Laden moving his terrorist operation from the Sudan into Afghanistan. She wasn’t listened to five years ago, and though she’d like to speak before the Congressional 9/11 commission, it is unlikely that she will be listened to now. Her story is a tableau of tangled politics and internal wrangling that got in the way of vital intelligence-gathering leading up to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

To find Mr. bin Laden now, Ms. Sirrs said, "would be a huge symbolic victory for the U.S.

"But the fact he has been able to elude us for so long would allow any followers to spin his story as a martyr," she said. "Those roles have shifted to other people, so Al Qaeda could still go on very well without bin Laden."

Five years ago, Ms. Sirrs warned of an equally diabolical jihadi terrorist leader who also remains at large—Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Egyptian doctor, the chief military-operations planner for the Al Qaeda network, has become the movement’s mouthpiece while Osama is on the run. His most recent taped message, broadcast on Al-Jazeera last week and said to be authentic by the C.I.A., warned: "Bush, strengthen your defenses and your security measures, for the Islamic nation which sent you the legion of New York and Washington brigades has determined to send you legion after legion seeking death and paradise."