The headline on this Lev Navrozov column poses a great question:

Do Western Intelligence Agencies Exist?

If you want the answer, look at the famous super-duper extra-top-secret mega-classified CIA “Presidential Daily Brief” of August 6th 2001 that would supposedly have prevented 9/11 if only Bush had “acted” upon it. From the fuss about its unprecedented declassification, you’d think there was stuff in it that regular folks wouldn’t know. Instead 90% of what it contains could be gleaned from watching cable. The most lavishly funded intelligence agency in the Western world led off its analysis with its top piece of “classified” “intelligence”:

Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and ‘bring the fighting to America’.

Amazing. Your crack CIA operative knows how to go into deep cover in his rec room and pose as an average American couch potato by switching on the TV. Then, just when the rest of the country is settling in for the “Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman” rerun, he surreptiously flips the remote to CNN.