Tyler Drumheller's story

[Guest guest]

" Stevo " <blue_meanie_9

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 23:21:54 -0700 (PDT)

Tyler Drumheller's story

 

 

 

60 Minutes produced a segment with an interview with Tyler Drumheller,

the now-retired CIA officer who was head of covert operations in

Europe during the lead up to the Iraq War. " Josh Marshall gets it

right when he interviews Tyler himself and finds the elephant in the room.

 

Video-WMP

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/60-Minutes-Tyler.wmv

Video-QT (not the full segment)

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/60-Minutes-Tyler.mov

(CBS has video and the transcipt)

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtml

 

http://crooksandliars.com/

 

 

 

 

Tyler Drumheller's story

Will the Media investigate?

 

 

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008284.php

 

(April 23, 2006 -- 07:49 PM EDT)

 

By now you've probably seen or heard about the 60 Minutes segment with

the interview with Tyler Drumheller, the now-retired CIA officer who

was head of covert operations in Europe during the lead up to the Iraq

War.

 

I just got off the phone with Drumheller. But before we get to that,

let's run down the key points in the story.

 

First, Drumheller says that most folks in the intelligence community

didn't think there was anything to the Niger-uranium story. We knew

that in general terms; but we hadn't heard it yet from someone so

closely involved in the case itself. Remember, the CIA Station Chief

in Rome, the guy who first saw the documents when they were dropped

off at the US Embassy in October 2002, worked for Drumheller.

 

Second, Drumheller told us a lot more about the case of Naji Sabri,

Iraq's Foreign Minister, who the CIA managed to turn not long before

the war broke out. Drumheller was in charge of that operation. The

White House, as Drumheller relates it, was really excited to hear what

Sabri would reveal about the inner-workings of Saddam's regime, and

particularly about any WMD programs. That is, before Sabri admitted

that Saddam didn't have any active programs. Then they lost interest.

 

Now, if you didn't see the episode you can catch most of the key facts

in this story at the 60 Minutes website.

 

But here's an angle I'm not sure we're going to hear much about.

 

Drumheller's account is pretty probative evidence on the question of

whether the White House politicized and cherry-picked the Iraq

intelligence.

 

So why didn't we hear about any of this in the reports of those Iraq

intel commissions that have given the White House a clean bill of

health on distorting the intel and misleading the country about what

we knew about Iraq's alleged WMD programs?

 

Think about it. It's devastating evidence against their credibility on

a slew of levels.

 

Did you read in any of those reports -- even in a way that would

protect sources and methods -- that the CIA had turned a key member of

the Iraqi regime, that that guy had said there weren't any active

weapons programs, and that the White House lost interest in what he

was saying as soon as they realized it didn't help the case for war?

What about what he said about the Niger story?

 

Did the Robb-Silverman Commission not hear about what Drumheller had

to say? What about the Roberts Committee?

 

I asked Drumheller just those questions when I spoke to him early this

evening. He was quite clear. He was interviewed by the Robb-Silverman

Commission. Three times apparently.

 

Did he tell them everything he revealed on tonight's 60 Minutes

segment. Absolutely.

 

Drumheller was also interviewed twice by the Senate Select Committee

on Intelligence (the Roberts Committee) but apparently only after they

released their summer 2004 report.

 

Now, quite a few of us have been arguing for almost two years now that

those reports were fundamentally dishonest in the story they told

about why we were so badly misled in the lead up to war. The fact that

none of Drumheller's story managed to find its way into those reports,

I think, speaks volumes about the agenda that the writers of those

reports were pursuing.

 

" I was stunned, " Drumheller told me, when so little of the stuff he

had told the commission's and the committee's investigators ended up

in their reports. His colleagues, he said, were equally " in shock "

that so little of what they related ended up in the reports either.

 

What Drumheller has to say adds quite a lot to our knowledge of what

happened in the lead up to war. But what it shows even more clearly is

that none of this stuff has yet been investigated by anyone whose

principal goal is not covering for the White House.

 

 

-- Josh Marshall

 

" When the people fear the government, that is tyranny.

When the government fears the people, that is liberty. "

 

- Thomas Jefferson