White House Refuses Release of Full NIE Intelligence Report

It appears that while the Bush administration is so willing to release the conclusions of the NIE report, they refuse to release the entire report. This is from The Washington Post:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House refused Wednesday to release the rest of a secret intelligence assessment that depicts a growing terrorist threat, as the Bush administration tried to quell election-season criticism that its anti-terror policies are seriously off track.

Press secretary Tony Snow said releasing the full report, portions of which President Bush declassified on Tuesday, would jeopardize the lives of agents who gathered the information.

It would also risk the nation's ability to work with foreign governments and to keep secret its U.S. intelligence-gathering methods, Snow said, and "compromise the independence of people doing intelligence analysis."

"If they think their work is constantly going to be released to the public they are going to pull their punches," Snow said.

You've got to love the PR-spin here--we can't release the report because it will jeopardize the lives of the agents making this report. And even worst, if the agents realize that their work is released for public scrutiny, then they will only write analysis that is "politically correct." Where have we heard this lame excuse before--how about where the Bush administration can't reveal the secret evidence they have on the Gitmo detainees, or the secret prisons, or the use of torture, or just about every scandal and disaster they wish to keep hidden from the American public? Now the Bush administration refuses to release the entire NIE report. The Bush administration knows that if they release the full report, it is going to add more fuel to this controversy--President Bush has added plenty of fuel to this controversy by releasing the four pages of NIE conclusions just one month before the midterm elections. The conclusions are just about as damaging to the Bush White House as ever--you'v got to wonder what is in the rest of the report here.

But there is more excuses here. How about this one:

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, warned, however, that releasing more of the intelligence assessment could aid terrorists. "We are very cautious and very restrained about the kind of information we want to give al-Qaida," Hoekstra said.

This is not about releasing information to al Qaeda--This is about releasing information to the American public! It is amazing at how these excuses keep coming up about revealing any details of the Bush administration's scandals and disasters of the war in Iraq, their Great War on Terror, secret prisons, Gitmo, use of torture--they don't want the American public to understand the true nature of not only this administration incompetence, but also the criminal nature the Bush administration has become. All of these excuses are major CYAs.

Release the full frickin' report!