Reply #18: From the old DU thread I linked above about the Energy Task Force docs [View All]

[Stephanie]

I just reread it and it's pretty interesting to see that all the stories DU was hot on last July/August are the ones finally breaking in public awareness now. Here is the first post. Any reporter who wants to be six months ahead of the pack should come to DU for thier news tips! It's interesting that in the thread there is discussion about why we are rehashing "old" news! Of course we had the AWOL story in 2000, so I guess we are actually three years ahead of the curve.

Connect the Dots, America!
Edited on Wed Aug-06-03 02:09 AM by Stephanie

Where's the outrage!

• PNAC makes a plan to control the ME, and installs a puppet chief exec who will do their bidding.
  
  
• Dick and his oil pals get together in spring 2001 to divvy up the Iraqi oil fields, way before 9/11, way before the "drumbeat for war."
  
  
• PNAC creates it's own private intel agency to conjure up imminent-threat evidence to justify the Iraq invasion.
  
  
• The Bush* admin receives many, many warnings before 9/11, ignores them all, then does everything it can to prevent an investigation. When Congress does investigate, the WH censors the report.
  
  
• And then the wife of the whistleblower who calls them out on their biggest, most outrageous lie, is outed by someone in the White House as an undercover CIA agent.

This goes way beyond mere scandal.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92372,00.html
Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Detail Iraqi Oil Industry
Friday, July 18, 2003

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq's oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group.

Judicial Watch (search), a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled "Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."

The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries.

The papers were dated early March 2001, about two months before the Cheney energy task force completed and announced its report on the administration's energy needs and future energy agenda.<more>



http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html
The spies who pushed for war
Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian

As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.

It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.

This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.

According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency. <more>



http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1004773,00.html
Don't blame September 11 on spy failures, says report
Gary Younge in New York
Thursday July 24, 2003
The Guardian

Nothing could have been done to stop the terrorist attacks on September 11 even though an FBI informant had contact with two of the suicide hijackers a year before they were carried out, according to a congressional report into intelligence lapses preceding the destruction of the twin towers, to be published today.

But despite objections from some senators a crucial 28 pages of the 900-page report, which criticises Saudi Arabia for its lack of interest in clamping down on Islamist extremists, has been removed from the final document.

Saudi Arabia was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers yet remains a close and important ally of America in the region. The omission of criticism of Saudi Arabia was condemned by the Democratic senator and presidential hopeful, Bob Graham, a former chairman of the joint house and Senate intelligence committee.

"I start from the premise that in a democracy, the people should know as much as the government knows unless there is a very compelling case that the information threatens American security interests," he said. <more>



http://www.nynewsday.com/news/ny-uscia0722,0,2289800.story?coll=nyc-topnews-short-navigation
Columnist Names CIA Iraq Operative
By Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce
Washington Bureau
July 21, 2003, 9:48 PM EDT

Washington -- The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing "two senior administration officials."

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday Monday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity -- at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.

"It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.<more>