other space. raises this much more important future question which is intelligence has been wrong, presented in the oval office and been wrong, predictive intelligence from the bay of pigs to vietnam right up to the iraq war. what are you going to bring to it as president when these difficult questions come up where the intelligence may be imperfect? another dimension is not only what was just talked about in terms of them not having the experience of looking at what is good and bad intelligence that bush administration particularly the cheney wing of the foreign policy establishment was cherry picking raw intelligence. they were looking for the
important future question which is intelligence has been wrong, presented in the oval office and been wrong, predictive intelligence from the bay of pigs to vietnam right up to the iraq war. what are you going to bring to it as president when these difficult questions come up where the intelligence may be imperfect? another dimension is not only what was just talked about in terms of them not having the experience of looking at what is good and bad intelligence, that bush administration particularly the cheney wing of the foreign policy establishment was cherry picking raw intelligence. they were looking for the stories they wanted to have
documents, the raw intelligence says all the haqqanis wanted was money. and so why were those five added to this mix by the white house? we ll see because the haqqani network asked for $1.2 million from the new york times to get their writer back and they got it. so this could happen too. let s talk about the conditions that you understand that he went through. according to your sources, this eclipse group has been out there. they say he was caged, true, but he also was allowed to carry an ak-47 at times and play soccer with them. he became one of them. he at least showed he was trying to build an affinity with them. my concern right now is people are going to jump to some conclusions that may or may not be accurate. the responsibility of his chain of command, and somewhere along that line there is a united states army general who is responsible for convening what s called an article 32 investigation. it s the military version of a grand jury.
intelligence committee, any democrat still out of the loop until sunday. what is absolutely outrages, he s breaking the law and sending this fab5 of terrorists, taliban in exchange, he says, for a u.s. army hostage, not a prisoner of war, and doesn t tell the congress the law specifically requires that he do so. why didn t he tell? and why did he add them to the mix? because everything i know about this exchange had to do with the people who were holding him, not the taliban but the criminal network and all they wanted was money. wait a second. if they wanted money and all they got were five guys that were not related to them, why did they give them up? my guess is the hakanis didn t get anything unless it was the money. what needs to be answered now, brian, is the congress needs to go back to this white house and demand to know was a ransom paid. because all the documents that i have seen, all the intelligence that i have seen, the eclipsed
i think the material is over the transom, raw intelligence. if you can imagine sergeants, soldiers, sitting in, forward operating bases in afghanistan, they get information from afghan sources. some of whom may be paid for the information, may be sympathetic to the afghan spy service. they walk in, and they say, i saw such-and-such. or the americans seek out the information. it s very raw intelligence. so i don t think that makes it particularly sensitive. it s classified, but it doesn t have the highest classification. it s not like american generals discussing with each other their upcoming plan for kandahar. so the value of this is, it gives us a more intimate pore the extra, if you like, of what the american soldiers are up against, day to day, with the afghan taliban who are