Craig Unger:The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed

[cal04]

The Bush administration invaded Iraq claiming Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. As much of Washington knew, and the world soon learned, the charge was false. Worse, it appears to have been the cornerstone of a highly successful "black propaganda" campaign with links to the White House
By CRAIG UNGER

(snip)
To trace the path of the documents from their fabrication to their inclusion in Bush's infamous speech, Vanity Fair has interviewed a number of former intelligence and military analysts who have served in the C.I.A., the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), and the Pentagon. Some of them refer to the Niger documents as "a disinformation operation," others as "black propaganda," "black ops," or "a classic psy-ops campaign." But whatever term they use, at least nine of these officials believe that the Niger documents were part of a covert operation to deliberately mislead the American public.

The officials are Bearden; Colonel W. Patrick Lang, who served as the D.I.A.'s defense intelligence officer for the Middle East, South Asia, and terrorism; Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell; Melvin Goodman, a former division chief and senior analyst at the C.I.A. and the State Department; Ray McGovern, a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years; Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia division in 2002 and 2003; Larry C. Johnson, a former C.I.A. officer who was deputy director of the State Department Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993; former C.I.A. official Philip Giraldi; and Vincent Cannistraro, the former chief of operations of the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center.

In addition, Vanity Fair has found at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union in which analysts at the C.I.A., the State Department, or other government agencies who had examined the Niger documents or reports about them raised serious doubts about their legitimacy—only to be rebuffed by Bush-administration officials who wanted to use the material. "They were just relentless," says Wilkerson, who later prepared Colin Powell's presentation before the United Nations General Assembly. "You would take it out and they would stick it back in. That was their favorite bureaucratic technique—ruthless relentlessness."

All of which flies in the face of a campaign by senior Republicans including Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to blame the C.I.A. for the faulty pre-war intelligence on W.M.D. Indeed, the accounts put forth by Wilkerson and his colleagues strongly suggest that the C.I.A. is under siege not because it was wrong but because it was right. Agency analysts were not serving the White House's agenda. What followed was not just the catastrophic foreign-policy blunder in Iraq but also an ongoing battle for the future of U.S. intelligence.

much more
http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/articles/060606fege02

[peacetalksforall]

1. What a terrific title - thanks for posting. nt

[yurbud]

2. k & r

[peacetalksforall]

3. The opening paragraph is spectacular. The last sentence in the first

paragraph hits in the gut -

"Nevertheless, the consequences of the robbery were so great that the Watergate break-in pales by comparison.?

Kick and recommend.

No registration to read the article.

[teryang]

4. Brilliant journalism!

What I found remarkable about Rumsfeld was his open proposal and endorsement of a P2 Special Operations Group, his group of pre-emptive provocateurs in the Pentagon designed to foment "terrorism" in order to stomp it out. This is an obvious reference to the SOG operated from the white house during the reagan years by George H.W. Bush and the Italian fascist operation promoted by the CIA.

Aren't they clever?

[NotfooooldbyW]

5. Who Cares? It looks as if We Care.

There's a way to break the Bush Regime wide open on the subject of blaming the CIA for their lies. Bear with me, but there's an Iraqi named Amir Al Saadi. He's been silenced somehow and news about his whereabouts has dried up. If we can get him speaking out on the Front Page of Washington Post or NYT, the following Bush myth is over. I want to arouse curiosity on this person. He will bring Bush down if we can find him.

The most egregious ongoing cover-up on Iraq belongs to the Republican controlled Administration and Congress that has placed blame (see para A) entirely on the CIA/Intel Community for the Iraq WMD intel failure. Congressional investigators, and for some unknown reason, the news media, have chosen to ignore finding out who decided to ignore a bonafied offer by the Iraqis that would have taken away absolutely every excuse that Iraq was invaded as a result of intelligence failure by the CIA. Poor unsuspecting Bush couldn't help it.

Did the CIA or did the Bush Administration decide to ignore the offer (see para B) made by Amir Al Saadi, which was reported by Fox News early on during the UN's latest rounds of inspection in Iraq? If President Bush is the decider, as he claims, then the intel failure buck stops entirely at his Oval Office desk.

(Para A) US Senate Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction; March 3 1,2005: We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure. Its principal causes were the Intelligence Community's inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence. On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude.

(Para B) FOX NEWS - December 22, 2002 - Saddam Hussein's adviser Amir al-Saadi on Sunday invited the CIA to send its agents to Iraq to point out to U.N. inspectors sites the Bush administration suspects of weapons development. Al-Saadi also said during a news conference in Baghdad that Iraq was prepared to answer any questions raised by the United States and Britain. "We are ready to deal with each of those questions if you ask us," he said.

The statement in the Senate Report is genuinely troubling, "Its principal causes were the Intelligence Community's inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence."

That is a lie of monumental size and consequence. The ability to collect good information and evidence was handed to President Bush on a silver platter months before he ordered the invasion to get rolling. And now the mass coverup of those Iraq peace initiatives are coupled with the mysterious disappearance of Amir Al Saadi. He's gone, vanished, no word about him for the past 18 months. The only thing to get Saadi's dissappearance, following US custody in Baghdad, on the cable news channels would be to have a young beautiful blonde female dissappear with him. That may have happened. Saadi's wife and daughters who were living in Germany have also vanished.

I'm betting the CIA is blameless on rejecting Al Saadi's offer. I'd say it was the President of the United States who is to blame and who is leading the cover-up of the peace offers. The first step to unraveling this cover-up is to find Al-Saadi. Why is no one looking for him? Not even the Red Cross or Amnesty International reports on his status anymore. They used to...... until the Kay and Duelfor reports were finalized finding no evidence of WMD or WMD programs in Iraq. Then Bush and Congress blamed the CIA.

[MADem]

6. This is a MUST READ piece--it's incredibly detailed

To trace the path of the documents from their fabrication to their inclusion in Bush's infamous speech, Vanity Fair has interviewed a number of former intelligence and military analysts who have served in the C.I.A., the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), and the Pentagon. Some of them refer to the Niger documents as "a disinformation operation," others as "black propaganda," "black ops," or "a classic psy-ops campaign." But whatever term they use,

at least nine of these officials believe that the Niger documents were part of a covert operation to deliberately mislead the American public.

The officials are Bearden; Colonel W. Patrick Lang, who served as the D.I.A.'s defense intelligence officer for the Middle East, South Asia, and terrorism; Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell; Melvin Goodman, a former division chief and senior analyst at the C.I.A. and the State Department; Ray McGovern, a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years; Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia division in 2002 and 2003; Larry C. Johnson, a former C.I.A. officer who was deputy director of the State Department Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993; former C.I.A. official Philip Giraldi; and Vincent Cannistraro, the former chief of operations of the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center.

In addition, Vanity Fair has found at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union in which analysts at the C.I.A., the State Department, or other government agencies who had examined the Niger documents or reports about them raised serious doubts about their legitimacy—only to be rebuffed by Bush-administration officials who wanted to use the material. "They were just relentless," says Wilkerson, who later prepared Colin Powell's presentation before the United Nations General Assembly. "You would take it out and they would stick it back in. That was their favorite bureaucratic technique—ruthless relentlessness."

All of which flies in the face of a campaign by senior Republicans including Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to blame the C.I.A. for the faulty pre-war intelligence on W.M.D. Indeed, the accounts put forth by Wilkerson and his colleagues strongly suggest that the C.I.A. is under siege not because it was wrong but because it was right. Agency analysts were not serving the White House's agenda....

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. An excellent, detailed article on who forged, and who misused them

even after they'd been repeatedly discredited. Thanks for posting it.

[Jack Rabbit]

8. As if we didn't know this

All of which flies in the face of a campaign by senior Republicans including Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to blame the C.I.A. for the faulty pre-war intelligence on W.M.D. Indeed, the accounts put forth by Wilkerson and his colleagues strongly suggest that the C.I.A. is under siege not because it was wrong but because it was right. Agency analysts were not serving the White House's agenda.

Impeach, remove, redition to The Hague.

[checks-n-balances]

9. Isn't Craig Unger the guy who subbed for Olbermann last night?

This guy is wonderful!