He's got more information to produce his arguments than you could ever get

This is not necessarily true. Within the CIA, there exist 'blinders' or strong walls between various departments. Many people who work there don't know what their collegues are doing. Nor do they ask.

This compartmentalization exists to limit damage should an employee prove shall we say, "less than trustworthy." One low-level person wouldn't be in a position to gain lots of info. But it doesn't foster quick response times and it doesn't foster new ways of thinking.

In my estimation, there are people out there, journalists, authors, think-tank people, even some bloggers, who know more about al Qaeda than people inside the CIA or FBI. In fact, there are senior analysts at the CIA who intentionally sit on or ignore information that doesn't fit in with thier pre-conceived notions about what al Qaeda is and isn't.

It's scarcely any wonder that dots don't get connected. For example, during 2001, there was extraordinary activity in the illicit diamond market in Liberia and Sierra Leone. After the 9/11 attacks, Douglas Farah from the Washington Post uncovered the story and reported it.

When he came back to the states, he met with the CIA:

We met around a small wooden table in a conference room of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Lemonade and water were provided. The agents introduced themselves, using first names only. Most had notebooks, and one woman held a folded map of Monrovia. I wasn't sure what to say. As a journalist, I was uncomfortable briefing goverment officials. Yet I felt I had a duty to in this case, where the information could stop a terrorist attack or save lives.

I had dealt with the CIA for years, and the relationship was professional if not cordial. In El Salvado and Colombia I had reported extensively on some of the unsavory aspects of the agency's relationship with members of death squads and drug traffickers. There were occasional clashes, but I felt we had mutual respect.

So I told my story...the analysts asked a barrage of questions...one agent in particular was uncovinced. He suggested the RUF had set me up in an elaborate scheme to discredit Taylor. Or perhaps, he said, one faction of the RUF was trying to set up another faction. I responded that if he had spent any time with the RUF he would know the leaders there, even if clean and sober, couldn't plan that. They had no knowledge or understanding of the international media...

It was clear from the questions that some of the agents were concerned I was going to write that there had been a massive intelligence faliure in their not detecting the diamond trail. Knowing that the intelligence and law enforcement agencies were already reeling from the criticisms leveled at them for failing to stop 9/11, I adressed the issue head on. I said I didn't view this as a result of either carelessness or stupidity. The CIA had lost more assest in West Africa than almost anywhere else in the world after the Cold War. MAny stations around the continent, which had been used primarily as recruiting grounds for Soviet bloc agents, were closed or cut to the bone. With the Cold War over, the stations were deemed redundant...

After almost two hours, the meeting drew to a close. The most antagonistic agent stood up to leave. "If this had been happening, we would have known about it," he said. "This may be ties to Hezbollah or someone there, but not to al Qaeda."

...Almost two years after my initial publication on al Qaeda's foray into the diamond trade, the CIA still maintained there was no link, despite corroborating evidence found by others. Instead, in our dealings, the officers became more and more defensive and antagonistic.

I was baffeled and prodded my sources for an explanation. I requested several times, in writing, comment from the CIA fro this book and my stories. There was no respose, not even a formal rejection of my requests. The only comment I got was in a brief December 2002 telephone conversation with Bill Harlow, chief CIA spokesman, when I asked for comment on my second, more detailed story on al Qaeda's diamond trade. He told me the story was a "pile of horseshit."

Another source who worked with the CIA said that, after each diamond story I wrote, congressional representatives would demand answers, often asking why a newspaper reporter seemed to know more about al Qaeda finances than the government. "It just really pissed them off," my friend said. "They were not about to investigate a story they had no stake in. So they just kept saying it wasn't true."

But it was more than that. It turened out the CIA believed I had information I would publish that would be even more embarrassing than the diamond stories. I didn't know it at the first briefing, but I soon dug up what the CIA really reafed and thought I already had: The CIA had twice ignored compelling information that would have shed light on the diamond trade between Liberia's Taylor and those close to al Qaeda. Nothing their agenst could have known would have stopped 9/11, but there were terrified of new intelligence failures being exposed.

"What you have to understand is that following 9/11, the CIA got hammered," said one of my sources who worked extensively with the CIA. "Their first, and sometimes only, reaction to new revelations, revelations that made it appear they didn't know what was going on, is to cover ther collective ass." It turned out there was something there to try to cover.

The CIA's position was becomeing untenable to Conress and the few government investigators who were paying attention. The BBC did a documentary, using none of my primary sources, and found and filmed former RUF fighters who know and did business with the al Qada diamond buyers. On camera, the diamond miners identified the two al Qaeda operatives our of rows of photographs and said the two had bought large amounts of diamonds. When the BBC reporters asked the CIA for comment, a spokesperson "strongly urged" the station not to run the story, saying it would be a disservice to its viewers. The BBC, having corroborated the information on the ground, with the confirmation from British intelligence, ran the story...

...the most telling new evidence supporting the story was in the findings of the UN-backed Special Court... David Crane...named the court's lead prosecutor, told me he had verified about 80 percent of my findings from completely different sources...

...Crane went public with his statements linking al Qaeda to the West Aftrican diamond trade several times, and his comments were much harder to dismiss than my newspaper stroies. Bu the CIA quietly put out the word that I was using Crane for my own purposes, and stuck to their statements that al Qaeda's presesnce in Liberia and Sierra Leone was a fiction...

Because few knwe the full story beind the CIA's reluctance to investigate the diamond story, the agency's attitude was puzzling even inside U.S. intelligence circles. Other intelligence agencies found the evidence convincing. In a highly classified, limited circulation report, another intelligence group that monitors West Africa foudn the West African diamonds-al Qaeda link probable. The report found no smoking gun, but outlined why the transactions were "probable" and logical. "The CIA won't beleive this happened unless you show them a receipt for diamonds signed by bin Laden," said an official who saw both reports. "Even then, they would probably say it didn't prove anything."

Sorry about the long length of that, but I thought it was important. So here we have a picture of the CIA missing something, both because of physical and structural limitations. But then, strangely, the CIA goes into a denial/misinformation cycle so extreme that they attempt to impede any further investigation.

The CIA isn't covering up information here to gain or maintain an advantage over the enemy, al Qaeda, but to avoid criticism and accountability. The CIA is fighting to maintain the status quo. The Agency has become so rigid that it cannot accept entire categories of new information. Farah also says that the CIA denied reports of al Qaeda activity in the tanzanite trade, in a Wall Street Journal article by Robert Block and Daniel Pearl.

So you'll forgive me if I don't put much faith in the veracity of this new book by Anonymous.

The quoted information above was all taken from pp 84-95 of Blood From Stones: The Secret Network of Financial Terror, by Douglas Farah. It is superb.