Reply #1: My letter to Levin [View All]

[Occulus]

regarding this:

Dear Senator Levin:

laweekly.com has published, in its Feb. 20-26 issue, an interview with Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, a former political/military desk officer at the Defense Department's NESA office.

The interview can be found at http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php and I would recommend you read it if you have the time and haven't already done so.

Senator, I am writing you today not only to inform you of this interview, but also to express my alarm at what this woman is saying. If she's telling even half the truth, there needs to be a Congressional investigation into the entire Iraq situation and the run-up to the invasion. Figuratively speaking, the Office of Special Plans in particular should be publicly dissected with surgical steel. What this woman has to say is deeply alarming:

"I can give you one clear example where we were told to follow the party line, where I was told directly. I worked North Africa, which included Libya. I remember in one case, I had to rewrite something a number of times before it went through. It was a background paper on Libya, and Libya has been working for years to try and regain the respect of the international community. I had intelligence that told me this, and I quoted from the intelligence, but they made me go back and change it and change it. They’d make me delete the quotes from intelligence so they could present their case on Libya in a way that said it was still a threat to its neighbors and that Libya was still a belligerent, antagonistic force. They edited my reports in that way. In fact, the last report I made, they said, “Just send me the file.” And I don’t know what the report ended up looking like, because I imagine more changes were made.

On Libya, really a small player, the facts did not fit their paradigm that we have all these enemies."

This is along the lines of an open accusation. While I have long presumed that the people are not told certain things, I had been hoping that outright lying, manipulation of official intelligence to promote a political agenda, and collusion between multiple agencies to do the same were only figments of my imagination. I am saddened and troubled to find this to be the case.

The following quote only bolsters this argument:

"LA Weekly: Let’s clarify this. Talking points are generally used to deal with media. But you were a desk officer, not a politician who had to go and deal with the press. So are you saying the Office of Special Plans provided you a schematic, an outline of the way major points should be addressed in any report or analysis that you developed regarding Iraq, WMD or terrorism?

Kwiatkowski: That’s right. And these did not follow the intent, the content or the accuracy of intelligence . . .



LA Weekly: They were political . . .

Kwiatkowski: They were political, politically manipulated. They did have obviously bits of intelligence in them, but they were created to propagandize. So we inside the Pentagon, staff officers and senior administration officials who might not work Iraq directly, were being propagandized by this same Office of Special Plans."

Thiese statements should not go unanswered. Please, look into this. I cannot have faith into my government if I know that it is cherry-picking intelligence to support a political agenda.

Thank you for your time.

me

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What ya think?