CNN reported earlier today that Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, was told that
there was no terrorism review in CFIUS' DPW case review.
King said the officials told him after he asked about investigation into possible terrorist ties: "Congressman, you don't understand, we don't conduct a thorough investigation. We just ask the intel director if there is anything on file, and he said no."
"There was no real investigation conducted during the 30-day period," King, who has been a vocal critic of the deal, told CNN. "I can't emphasize this enough."
"When I hear the administration saying they want to educate the Congress and the American public, they should be educating themselves," King said. "They should do the investigation they should have done after the 30 days."
I suppose, the intel director (John Negroponte) didn't have the 2002 Al Qaeda letter warning UAE officials of terrorist infiltration of their government, or the CIA's mention of repeated meetings between the UAE royal family and bin Laden. Perhaps he had misplaced his copy of the 9/11 Commission Report:
The United Arab Emirates was becoming both a valued counterterrorism ally of the United States and a persistent counterterrorism problem. From 1999 through early 2001, the United States, and President Clinton personally, pressed the UAE, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off its ties and enforce sanctions, especially those relating to flights to and from Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/11.
It's quite likely, he never received the Coast Guard memo questioning the deal:
"There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that precludes an overall threat assessment of the potential DWP and P&O ports merger. The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities."
Or, equally likely, referencing any associated files never occured at all. Because, surely, the UAE has a history of links to terrorism and support for extremism. If Rep. King's information is correct, the intel director has zero information on file related to the United Arab Emirates and terrorism. If that's the case, god help us all. My pedestrian access to Google and a couple of books has turned up more information than the intel director reported to possess.