The Path Back to 9/11

Isn't it strange.  In a rare moment of candor, or perhaps shoddy editing, 60 Minutes allowed their Sunday guest--a former CIA terror warrior with a long record of battling AQ--to utter the following on air:

Lara Logan: And what did you see there?

Hank Crumpton: We saw a security detail, a convoy and we saw bin Laden exit the vehicle.

Lara Logan: Clearly?

Hank Crumpton: Clearly. And we had-- the optics were spot on. It was beaming back to us, CIA headquarters. We immediately alerted the White House. And the Clinton administration's response was, "Well, it will take several hours for the TLAMs, the cruise missiles launched from submarines, to reach that objective. So you need to tell us where bin Laden will be five or six hours from now." The frustration was enormous.

Lara Logan: So at that moment you wanted to kill him?

Hank Crumpton: Yes.

Lara Logan: But you couldn't get permission?

Hank Crumpton: Correct. He couldn't get permission to do anything, including allowing the CIA's Afghan agents on the ground to attack bin Laden's compound. That missed opportunity in the late summer of 1999, led Crumpton and his CIA team to figure out how to arm the Predator drone with hellfire missiles.

Anyone following along would not be surprised. His story backs up people like Michael Scheuer, former head of the Alec Station UBL unit and it follows pretty close to the scene in "Path to 9/11" that the Clintonistas didn't want shown.  Perhaps CBS felt safe to air it with UBL now killed by another Democrat president and Bush safely retired in Dallas (and maintaining media silence). Romney is running on the economy.

Meanwhile some in the intelligence business are still piping hot mad over the presumed US leak about super double agent underwear bomber 2.0.  Everyone presumably except the US elite media.