Reality Check: The CIA & Former Bush Chief Speechwriter

By Debbie Schlussel

So, yesterday, we learned that–just like with 9/11–the CIA knew about and was investigating Northwest Airlines Flight 253 Islamic terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Some reports say the CIA was following his whereabouts and actions as far back as August.

cia abdulmutallabmugshot

AND–just like with 9/11–the CIA didn’t communicate this with other agencies. Uh, wasn’t this problem supposed to be fixed eight years ago?

Remember when it came out that the CIA was surveilling 9/11 terrorist hijackers Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar (including when the landed on U.S. soil) well before 9/11, and didn’t communicate this to the FBI?

We now know the same thing happened with Abdulmutallab.

And, given this (and all the other info about the CIA that anyone with even an inkling , it’s kinda funny to note the title of President Bush’s former chief speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen’s new book, out in January:

How the CIA Kept America Safe

Hilarious. Kinda like these book titles: “How Bernie Madoff Made You Billions,” and “The Octomom’s Birth Control Techniques.”

In fairness, the full title is, “Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack,” but 1) Bush was no less pandering to Muslims and inviting of an attack (in fact, Bush is the reason for affirmative action for Muslims like Nidal Malik Hassan in the military–remember that attack?), and 2) HUH–the CIA Kept America Safe? Only if you’re on crack.

Yeah, um, how the CIA “Kept America Safe” when 3,000 people died on 9/11 and how the CIA “Kept America Safe” by the sheer luck that a crotchbomber’s explosive failed to ignite sufficiently.

Wow, thank G-d the CIA is “Keeping America Safe.” Riiiight.

PUH-LEEZE. The CIA has always been dominated by the same pan-Arabist, lefty, patrician bureaucrats who populate the State Department. And the two agencies have the same “Screw America’s Safety” philosophy and have for decades.

Is Thiessen the same guy that wrote the “Mission Accomplished” speech? Gotta be.

The laughable Thiessen book is published by Regnery, the same company that usually publishes good books, but which also published Ted Nugent’s lecture to Black people about sexual ethics, even though he’s fathered seven kids with five women (three of whom he never married); and is the famed publisher of the book by Carrie Prejean, the “strong, moral, conservative woman,” with a gazillion sex tapes and nude photos, which she blamed on the wind and the photographer.

For anyone who relies on the CIA to keep America safe, I have some land in the Sahara desert or Gazastan (take your pick) to sell you.

Now, we know why this guy was Bush’s chief speechwriter.