Guest guest Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 NHNE News ListCurrent Members: 1438Subscribe//archive info at the bottom of this message.------------A SPY SPEAKS OUTCBS 60 MinutesSunday, April 23, 2006http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlWhen no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Bushinsisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faultyintelligence. But a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller -- a 26-yearveteran of the agency -- has decided to do something CIA officials at hislevel almost never do: Speak out.He tells correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in theintelligence community but in the White House. He says he saw how the Bushadministration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit thepresident's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye tointelligence that did not.............VIDEO & AUDIO FEEDS:REAL AUDIO VIDEO:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlSTREAMING FLASH:http://tinyurl.com/nhhwpWINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER:http://tinyurl.com/q62ksMP3:http://tinyurl.com/qrvq4............"It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it¹s an intelligencefailure. It¹s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure,"Drumheller tells Bradley.Drumheller was the CIA's top man in Europe, the head of covert operationsthere, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the WhiteHouse promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn¹t:"The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen oneway or the other," says Drumheller.Drumheller says he doesn't think it mattered very much to the administrationwhat the intelligence community had to say. "I think it mattered it ifverified. This basic belief that had taken hold in the U.S. government thatnow is the time, we had the means, all we needed was the will," he says.The road to war in Iraq took some strange turns -- none stranger than adetour to the West African country of Niger. In late 2001, a month after9/11, the United States got a report from the Italian intelligence servicethat Saddam Hussein had bought 500 tons of so-called yellowcake uranium inorder to build a nuclear bomb.But Drumheller says many CIA analysts were skeptical. "Most people came tothe opinion that there was something questionable about it," he says.Asked if that was his reaction, Drumheller says, "That was our reaction fromthe very beginning. The report didn't hold together."Drumheller says that was the "general feeling" in the agency at that time.However, Vice President Dick Cheney thought the story was worthinvestigating, and asked the CIA not to discount the story without firsttaking a closer look. So, in February 2002, the agency sent formerambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate."If Saddam Hussein had acquired 500 tons of yellowcake uranium in violationof U.N. sanctions, that would be pretty serious, wouldn¹t it?" Bradley askedWilson."Absolutely. Certainly. And the fact that there was an allegation out therethat he was even attempting to purchase 500 tons of uranium was veryserious, because it essentially meant that they were restarting theirnuclear programs," Wilson replied.Wilson spent eight days in Niger looking for signs of a secret deal to sendyellowcake to Iraq. He spoke to government officials who would have knownabout such a transaction. No one did. There had been a meeting betweenIraqis and Nigerians in 1999, but Wilson was told uranium had never beendiscussed. He also found no evidence that Iraq had even been interested inbuying uranium."I concluded that it could not have happened," Wilson says. At the end ofhis eight-day stay in Niger, Wilson says he had no lingering doubts.When he returned, Wilson told the CIA what he had learned. Despite that,some intelligence analysts stood by the Italian report that Saddam Husseinhad purchased uranium from Niger. But the director of the CIA and the deputydirector didn¹t buy it. In October, when the president¹s speechwriters triedto put the Niger uranium story in a speech that President Bush was scheduledto deliver in Cincinnati, they intervened.In a phone call and two faxes to the White House, they warned ³the Africastory is overblown² and ³the evidence is weak.² The speechwriters took theuranium reference out of the speech.Meanwhile, the CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq¹snuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq¹s foreign minister, had made a deal toreveal Iraq¹s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of theoperation."This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein. Someone who would knowwhat he was talking about," Drumheller says."You knew you could trust this guy?" Bradley asked."We continued to validate him the whole way through," Drumheller replied.According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news aboutthe Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House,including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.At that meeting, Drumheller says, "They were enthusiastic because they said,they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis."What did this high-level source tell him?"He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program,"says Drumheller."So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authorityfrom a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an activeprogram for weapons of mass destruction?" Bradley asked."Yes," Drumheller replied. He says there was doubt in his mind at all."It directly contradicts, though, what the president and his staff weretelling us," Bradley remarked."The policy was set," Drumheller says. "The war in Iraq was coming. And theywere looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify thepolicy."Drumheller expected the White House to ask for more information from theIraqi foreign minister.But he says he was taken aback by what happened. "The group that was dealingwith preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longerinterested," Drumheller recalls. "And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?'And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regimechange.'""And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that youhad this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilledwith that," Bradley asked."The first we heard, they were. Yes," Drumheller replied.Once they learned what it was the source had to say -- that Saddam Husseindid not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMDprogram, Drumheller says, "They stopped being interested in theintelligence."The White House declined to respond to Drumheller's account of Naji Sabri¹srole, but Secretary of State Rice has said that Sabri, the Iraqi foreignminister turned U.S. spy, was just one source, and therefore his informationwasn¹t reliable."They certainly took information that came from single sources on uranium,on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroborationat all and so you can¹t say you only listen to one source, because on manyissues they only listened to one source," says Drumheller."So you¹re saying that if there was a single source and that informationfrom that source backed up the case they were trying to build, then thatsingle source was ok, but if it didn¹t, then the single source was not ok,because he couldn¹t be corroborated," Bradley asked."Unfortunately, that¹s what it looks like," Drumheller replied."One panel after another found that agencies were giving conflictinginformation to the president," Bradley remarked.Drumheller admits they were. "And that's the problem. No. There was no onevoice in coming out of the intelligence community and that allowed thosepeople to pick and choose those bits of information that fit what theywanted to know."A few weeks after Sabri told the CIA that Iraq had no active nuclearprogram, the Niger uranium story seemed to get a new life: Documents thatsupposedly could prove that Saddam had purchased uranium from Africasuddenly surfaced in Rome. The documents came from Rocco Martino, a formerspy for Italian military intelligence.For years, Martino operated in a shady intelligence underworld, buyinggovernment secrets and then selling them to the highest bidder. Martino toldCBS News that a colonel in Italian military intelligence arranged for him tobuy classified documents from a woman who worked in the embassy of Niger.One set of documents showed Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger.What did he think when he first looked at the documents?"I thought I had my hands on some important papers. And this same woman wastelling me that they were very important," says Martino.In October 2002, Martino tried to sell the documents to Elisabeta Burba, areporter for an Italian news magazine. She had purchased information fromhim in the past."When you saw the documents, what did you think?" Bradley asked Burba."I was puzzled because actually, if those documents were authentic, theywould have been the 'smoking gun' that everybody was looking for in thatmoment," she replied.But Burba quickly suspected the documents had been forged. "The more Ilooked at them and then the more I found strange things or inconsistencies,"she says.Burba says the documents looked like were bad forgeries. She gave copies ofthe papers to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. It was the first time the U.S.government had gotten its hands on the documents at the heart of the Nigerstory.Drumheller says the CIA station chief in Rome, who worked for him, told himhe didn't believe it. "He said, 'It's not true. It's not; this isn't real,'"Drumheller recalls.When the documents arrived in Washington, State Department analysts quicklyconcluded they were suspect. One analyst wrote in an e-mail: "you¹ll notethat it bears a funky Emb. of Niger stamp (to make it look official, Iguess)."The Washington Post recently reported that in early January 2003, theNational Intelligence Council, which oversees all U.S. intelligenceagencies, did a final assessment of the uranium rumor and submitted a reportto the White House. Their conclusion: The story was baseless. That mighthave been the end of the Niger uranium story.But it wasn¹t. Just weeks later, the president laid out his reasons forgoing to war in the State of the Union Address -- and there it was again."The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently soughtsignificant quantities of uranium from Africa," the president said."I didn¹t even remember all the details of it because it was such alow-level, unimportant thing. But once it was in that State of the Unionaddress, it became huge," says Drumheller."So, let me see if I have it correctly. The United States gets a report thatSaddam is trying to buy uranium from Africa. But you and many others in ourintelligence community quickly knock it down. And then the uranium story isremoved from the speech that the President is to give in Cincinnati. Becausethe head of the CIA, George Tenet, doesn't believe in it?" Bradley asked."Right," Drumheller appeared.It then appeared in the State of the Union address as a British report.Drumheller, who oversaw intelligence operations for the CIA in Europe doubtsthe British had something the U.S. didn't. "No. I don¹t think they did," hesays.The British maintain they have intelligence to support the story -- but tothis day, they have never shared it.The White House declined 60 Minutes' request for an interview for thisstory, but Dan Bartlett, Counselor to the President, wrote us:"The President¹s convictions about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD werebased on the collective judgment of the intelligence community at that time.Bipartisan investigations S found no evidence of political pressure toinfluence the pre-war intelligence assessments of Iraq¹s weapons programs."And he added: "Saddam Hussein never abandoned his plan to acquire WMD, andhe posed a serious threat to the American people and to the region."On March 7, 2003, the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agencyannounced that the Niger uranium documents were forgeries. The Bushadministration went to war in Iraq 12 days later, without acknowledging thatone of its main arguments for going to war was false.Four months later, Wilson, who had gone to Niger and found nothing tosubstantiate the uranium rumor, went public and wrote a piece for The NewYork Times claiming that the Bush Administration had "twisted" theintelligence on Iraq:"This was really an attempt to get the government to acknowledge that the 16words should never have been in the State of the Union Address. It was assimple as that. If you are going to mislead the American people and you'recaught at it, you ought to fess up to it," says Wilson.One day after Wilson's piece appeared, the White House acknowledged thepresident should not have used the uranium claim. But according to newlyreleased court records, the vice president¹s chief of staff, Scooter Libby,leaked classified intelligence to reporters a day later in an effort tobolster the uranium story. What Scooter Libby didn¹t tell reporters is thatthe White House had been warned before the State of the Union speech not touse the Niger uranium claim."At the same time they were admitting the words should not have been in theState of the Union address, they were, we now know, sending Libby out toselectively leak only those pieces that continued to support this allegationthat was baseless. In other words, they were furthering the disinformationcampaign," says Wilson."The American people want to believe the president. I have relatives whoI've tried to talk to about this who say, 'Well, no, you can¹t tell me thepresident had this information and just ignored it,'" says Drumheller. "ButI think over time, people will look back on this and see this is going to beone of the great, I think, policy mistakes of all time."------------ABOUT THOSE IRAQ INTEL COMMISSIONSBy Josh MarshallTaking Points MemoApril 23, 2006http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008284.phpBy now you've probably seen or heard about the 60 Minutes segment with theinterview with Tyler Drumheller, the now-retired CIA officer who was head ofcovert 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'srun down the key points in the story.First, Drumheller says that most folks in the intelligence community didn'tthink there was anything to the Niger-uranium story. We knew that in generalterms; but we hadn't heard it yet from someone so closely involved in thecase itself. Remember, the CIA Station Chief in Rome, the guy who first sawthe 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'sForeign Minister, who the CIA managed to turn not long before the war brokeout. Drumheller was in charge of that operation. The White House, asDrumheller relates it, was really excited to hear what Sabri would revealabout the inner-workings of Saddam's regime, and particularly about any WMDprograms. That is, before Sabri admitted that Saddam didn't have any activeprograms. Then they lost interest.Now, if you didn't see the episode you can catch most of the key facts inthis story at the 60 Minutes website (see above for links).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 whetherthe 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 intelcommissions that have given the White House a clean bill of health ondistorting the intel and misleading the country about what we knew aboutIraq's alleged WMD programs?Think about it. It's devastating evidence against their credibility on aslew of levels.Did you read in any of those reports -- even in a way that would protectsources and methods -- that the CIA had turned a key member of the Iraqiregime, 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 theyrealized it didn't help the case for war? What about what he said about theNiger story?Did the Robb-Silbermann Commission not hear about what Drumheller had tosay? What about the Roberts Committee?I asked Drumheller just those questions when I spoke to him early thisevening. He was quite clear. He was interviewed by the Robb-SilbermannCommission. 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 onIntelligence (the Roberts Committee) but apparently only after they releasedtheir summer 2004 report.Now, quite a few of us have been arguing for almost two years now that thosereports were fundamentally dishonest in the story they told about why wewere so badly misled in the lead up to war. The fact that none ofDrumheller's story managed to find its way into those reports, I think,speaks volumes about the agenda that the writers of those reports werepursuing."I was stunned," Drumheller told me, when so little of the stuff he had toldthe commission's and the committee's investigators ended up in theirreports. His colleagues, he said, were equally "in shock" that so little ofwhat they related ended up in the reports either.What Drumheller has to say adds quite a lot to our knowledge of whathappened in the lead up to war. But what it shows even more clearly is thatnone of this stuff has yet been investigated by anyone whose principal goalis not covering for the White House.------------NHNE News List:To , send a message to:nhnenews- To , send a message to:nhnenews- To review current posts:nhnenews/messagesPublished by David SunfellowNewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)eMail: nhneNHNE Website: http://www.nhne.org/Phone: (928) 282-6120Fax: (815) 642-0117Appreciate what we are doing?You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=8173P.O. Box 2242Sedona, AZ 86339 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 see..wot i find funny..in a sad sick sorta way hordes of ppl knew this already.... it was all over the alternative press... Everyone else knew that there weren't any WMD's anymore in iraq.... everyone else knew there were huge rifts appearing in the CIA, NSA, Pentagon and state department, over intelligence and wot was being said. It just has taken the maon stream press HOW MANY YEARS TO CATCH ON????? sheesh Colin Sky Apr 25, 2006 1:15 AM ^*+ oh dear what a leader.... NHNE News ListCurrent Members: 1438Subscribe//archive info at the bottom of this message.------------A SPY SPEAKS OUTCBS 60 MinutesSunday, April 23, 2006http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlWhen no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Bushinsisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faultyintelligence. But a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller -- a 26-yearveteran of the agency -- has decided to do something CIA officials at hislevel almost never do: Speak out.He tells correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in theintelligence community but in the White House. He says he saw how the Bushadministration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit thepresident's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye tointelligence that did not.............VIDEO & AUDIO FEEDS:REAL AUDIO VIDEO:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlSTREAMING FLASH:http://tinyurl.com/nhhwpWINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER:http://tinyurl.com/q62ksMP3:http://tinyurl.com/qrvq4............"It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it¹s an intelligencefailure. It¹s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure,"Drumheller tells Bradley.Drumheller was the CIA's top man in Europe, the head of covert operationsthere, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the WhiteHouse promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn¹t:"The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen oneway or the other," says Drumheller.Drumheller says he doesn't think it mattered very much to the administrationwhat the intelligence community had to say. "I think it mattered it ifverified. This basic belief that had taken hold in the U.S. government thatnow is the time, we had the means, all we needed was the will," he says.The road to war in Iraq took some strange turns -- none stranger than adetour to the West African country of Niger. In late 2001, a month after9/11, the United States got a report from the Italian intelligence servicethat Saddam Hussein had bought 500 tons of so-called yellowcake uranium inorder to build a nuclear bomb.But Drumheller says many CIA analysts were skeptical. "Most people came tothe opinion that there was something questionable about it," he says.Asked if that was his reaction, Drumheller says, "That was our reaction fromthe very beginning. The report didn't hold together."Drumheller says that was the "general feeling" in the agency at that time.However, Vice President Dick Cheney thought the story was worthinvestigating, and asked the CIA not to discount the story without firsttaking a closer look. So, in February 2002, the agency sent formerambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate."If Saddam Hussein had acquired 500 tons of yellowcake uranium in violationof U.N. sanctions, that would be pretty serious, wouldn¹t it?" Bradley askedWilson."Absolutely. Certainly. And the fact that there was an allegation out therethat he was even attempting to purchase 500 tons of uranium was veryserious, because it essentially meant that they were restarting theirnuclear programs," Wilson replied.Wilson spent eight days in Niger looking for signs of a secret deal to sendyellowcake to Iraq. He spoke to government officials who would have knownabout such a transaction. No one did. There had been a meeting betweenIraqis and Nigerians in 1999, but Wilson was told uranium had never beendiscussed. He also found no evidence that Iraq had even been interested inbuying uranium."I concluded that it could not have happened," Wilson says. At the end ofhis eight-day stay in Niger, Wilson says he had no lingering doubts.When he returned, Wilson told the CIA what he had learned. Despite that,some intelligence analysts stood by the Italian report that Saddam Husseinhad purchased uranium from Niger. But the director of the CIA and the deputydirector didn¹t buy it. In October, when the president¹s speechwriters triedto put the Niger uranium story in a speech that President Bush was scheduledto deliver in Cincinnati, they intervened.In a phone call and two faxes to the White House, they warned ³the Africastory is overblown² and ³the evidence is weak.² The speechwriters took theuranium reference out of the speech.Meanwhile, the CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq¹snuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq¹s foreign minister, had made a deal toreveal Iraq¹s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of theoperation."This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein. Someone who would knowwhat he was talking about," Drumheller says."You knew you could trust this guy?" Bradley asked."We continued to validate him the whole way through," Drumheller replied.According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news aboutthe Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House,including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.At that meeting, Drumheller says, "They were enthusiastic because they said,they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis."What did this high-level source tell him?"He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program,"says Drumheller."So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authorityfrom a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an activeprogram for weapons of mass destruction?" Bradley asked."Yes," Drumheller replied. He says there was doubt in his mind at all."It directly contradicts, though, what the president and his staff weretelling us," Bradley remarked."The policy was set," Drumheller says. "The war in Iraq was coming. And theywere looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify thepolicy."Drumheller expected the White House to ask for more information from theIraqi foreign minister.But he says he was taken aback by what happened. "The group that was dealingwith preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longerinterested," Drumheller recalls. "And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?'And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regimechange.'""And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that youhad this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilledwith that," Bradley asked."The first we heard, they were. Yes," Drumheller replied.Once they learned what it was the source had to say -- that Saddam Husseindid not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMDprogram, Drumheller says, "They stopped being interested in theintelligence."The White House declined to respond to Drumheller's account of Naji Sabri¹srole, but Secretary of State Rice has said that Sabri, the Iraqi foreignminister turned U.S. spy, was just one source, and therefore his informationwasn¹t reliable."They certainly took information that came from single sources on uranium,on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroborationat all and so you can¹t say you only listen to one source, because on manyissues they only listened to one source," says Drumheller."So you¹re saying that if there was a single source and that informationfrom that source backed up the case they were trying to build, then thatsingle source was ok, but if it didn¹t, then the single source was not ok,because he couldn¹t be corroborated," Bradley asked."Unfortunately, that¹s what it looks like," Drumheller replied."One panel after another found that agencies were giving conflictinginformation to the president," Bradley remarked.Drumheller admits they were. "And that's the problem. No. There was no onevoice in coming out of the intelligence community and that allowed thosepeople to pick and choose those bits of information that fit what theywanted to know."A few weeks after Sabri told the CIA that Iraq had no active nuclearprogram, the Niger uranium story seemed to get a new life: Documents thatsupposedly could prove that Saddam had purchased uranium from Africasuddenly surfaced in Rome. The documents came from Rocco Martino, a formerspy for Italian military intelligence.For years, Martino operated in a shady intelligence underworld, buyinggovernment secrets and then selling them to the highest bidder. Martino toldCBS News that a colonel in Italian military intelligence arranged for him tobuy classified documents from a woman who worked in the embassy of Niger.One set of documents showed Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger.What did he think when he first looked at the documents?"I thought I had my hands on some important papers. And this same woman wastelling me that they were very important," says Martino.In October 2002, Martino tried to sell the documents to Elisabeta Burba, areporter for an Italian news magazine. She had purchased information fromhim in the past."When you saw the documents, what did you think?" Bradley asked Burba."I was puzzled because actually, if those documents were authentic, theywould have been the 'smoking gun' that everybody was looking for in thatmoment," she replied.But Burba quickly suspected the documents had been forged. "The more Ilooked at them and then the more I found strange things or inconsistencies,"she says.Burba says the documents looked like were bad forgeries. She gave copies ofthe papers to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. It was the first time the U.S.government had gotten its hands on the documents at the heart of the Nigerstory.Drumheller says the CIA station chief in Rome, who worked for him, told himhe didn't believe it. "He said, 'It's not true. It's not; this isn't real,'"Drumheller recalls.When the documents arrived in Washington, State Department analysts quicklyconcluded they were suspect. One analyst wrote in an e-mail: "you¹ll notethat it bears a funky Emb. of Niger stamp (to make it look official, Iguess)."The Washington Post recently reported that in early January 2003, theNational Intelligence Council, which oversees all U.S. intelligenceagencies, did a final assessment of the uranium rumor and submitted a reportto the White House. Their conclusion: The story was baseless. That mighthave been the end of the Niger uranium story.But it wasn¹t. Just weeks later, the president laid out his reasons forgoing to war in the State of the Union Address -- and there it was again."The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently soughtsignificant quantities of uranium from Africa," the president said."I didn¹t even remember all the details of it because it was such alow-level, unimportant thing. But once it was in that State of the Unionaddress, it became huge," says Drumheller."So, let me see if I have it correctly. The United States gets a report thatSaddam is trying to buy uranium from Africa. But you and many others in ourintelligence community quickly knock it down. And then the uranium story isremoved from the speech that the President is to give in Cincinnati. Becausethe head of the CIA, George Tenet, doesn't believe in it?" Bradley asked."Right," Drumheller appeared.It then appeared in the State of the Union address as a British report.Drumheller, who oversaw intelligence operations for the CIA in Europe doubtsthe British had something the U.S. didn't. "No. I don¹t think they did," hesays.The British maintain they have intelligence to support the story -- but tothis day, they have never shared it.The White House declined 60 Minutes' request for an interview for thisstory, but Dan Bartlett, Counselor to the President, wrote us:"The President¹s convictions about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD werebased on the collective judgment of the intelligence community at that time.Bipartisan investigations S found no evidence of political pressure toinfluence the pre-war intelligence assessments of Iraq¹s weapons programs."And he added: "Saddam Hussein never abandoned his plan to acquire WMD, andhe posed a serious threat to the American people and to the region."On March 7, 2003, the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agencyannounced that the Niger uranium documents were forgeries. The Bushadministration went to war in Iraq 12 days later, without acknowledging thatone of its main arguments for going to war was false.Four months later, Wilson, who had gone to Niger and found nothing tosubstantiate the uranium rumor, went public and wrote a piece for The NewYork Times claiming that the Bush Administration had "twisted" theintelligence on Iraq:"This was really an attempt to get the government to acknowledge that the 16words should never have been in the State of the Union Address. It was assimple as that. If you are going to mislead the American people and you'recaught at it, you ought to fess up to it," says Wilson.One day after Wilson's piece appeared, the White House acknowledged thepresident should not have used the uranium claim. But according to newlyreleased court records, the vice president¹s chief of staff, Scooter Libby,leaked classified intelligence to reporters a day later in an effort tobolster the uranium story. What Scooter Libby didn¹t tell reporters is thatthe White House had been warned before the State of the Union speech not touse the Niger uranium claim."At the same time they were admitting the words should not have been in theState of the Union address, they were, we now know, sending Libby out toselectively leak only those pieces that continued to support this allegationthat was baseless. In other words, they were furthering the disinformationcampaign," says Wilson."The American people want to believe the president. I have relatives whoI've tried to talk to about this who say, 'Well, no, you can¹t tell me thepresident had this information and just ignored it,'" says Drumheller. "ButI think over time, people will look back on this and see this is going to beone of the great, I think, policy mistakes of all time."------------ABOUT THOSE IRAQ INTEL COMMISSIONSBy Josh MarshallTaking Points MemoApril 23, 2006http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008284.phpBy now you've probably seen or heard about the 60 Minutes segment with theinterview with Tyler Drumheller, the now-retired CIA officer who was head ofcovert 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'srun down the key points in the story.First, Drumheller says that most folks in the intelligence community didn'tthink there was anything to the Niger-uranium story. We knew that in generalterms; but we hadn't heard it yet from someone so closely involved in thecase itself. Remember, the CIA Station Chief in Rome, the guy who first sawthe 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'sForeign Minister, who the CIA managed to turn not long before the war brokeout. Drumheller was in charge of that operation. The White House, asDrumheller relates it, was really excited to hear what Sabri would revealabout the inner-workings of Saddam's regime, and particularly about any WMDprograms. That is, before Sabri admitted that Saddam didn't have any activeprograms. Then they lost interest.Now, if you didn't see the episode you can catch most of the key facts inthis story at the 60 Minutes website (see above for links).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 whetherthe 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 intelcommissions that have given the White House a clean bill of health ondistorting the intel and misleading the country about what we knew aboutIraq's alleged WMD programs?Think about it. It's devastating evidence against their credibility on aslew of levels.Did you read in any of those reports -- even in a way that would protectsources and methods -- that the CIA had turned a key member of the Iraqiregime, 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 theyrealized it didn't help the case for war? What about what he said about theNiger story?Did the Robb-Silbermann Commission not hear about what Drumheller had tosay? What about the Roberts Committee?I asked Drumheller just those questions when I spoke to him early thisevening. He was quite clear. He was interviewed by the Robb-SilbermannCommission. 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 onIntelligence (the Roberts Committee) but apparently only after they releasedtheir summer 2004 report.Now, quite a few of us have been arguing for almost two years now that thosereports were fundamentally dishonest in the story they told about why wewere so badly misled in the lead up to war. The fact that none ofDrumheller's story managed to find its way into those reports, I think,speaks volumes about the agenda that the writers of those reports werepursuing."I was stunned," Drumheller told me, when so little of the stuff he had toldthe commission's and the committee's investigators ended up in theirreports. His colleagues, he said, were equally "in shock" that so little ofwhat they related ended up in the reports either.What Drumheller has to say adds quite a lot to our knowledge of whathappened in the lead up to war. But what it shows even more clearly is thatnone of this stuff has yet been investigated by anyone whose principal goalis not covering for the White House.------------NHNE News List:To , send a message to:nhnenews- To , send a message to:nhnenews- To review current posts:nhnenews/messagesPublished by David SunfellowNewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)eMail: nhneNHNE Website: http://www.nhne.org/Phone: (928) 282-6120Fax: (815) 642-0117Appreciate what we are doing?You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=8173P.O. Box 2242Sedona, AZ 86339 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 HiFraggle You can bet if we knew they did. It must have served their purpose to keep quiet. Jo - fraggle Tuesday, April 25, 2006 4:40 PM Re: oh dear what a leader.... see..wot i find funny..in a sad sick sorta way hordes of ppl knew this already.... it was all over the alternative press... Everyone else knew that there weren't any WMD's anymore in iraq.... everyone else knew there were huge rifts appearing in the CIA, NSA, Pentagon and state department, over intelligence and wot was being said. It just has taken the maon stream press HOW MANY YEARS TO CATCH ON????? sheesh Colin Sky Apr 25, 2006 1:15 AM ^*+ oh dear what a leader.... NHNE News ListCurrent Members: 1438Subscribe//archive info at the bottom of this message.------------A SPY SPEAKS OUTCBS 60 MinutesSunday, April 23, 2006http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlWhen no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Bushinsisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faultyintelligence. But a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller -- a 26-yearveteran of the agency -- has decided to do something CIA officials at hislevel almost never do: Speak out.He tells correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in theintelligence community but in the White House. He says he saw how the Bushadministration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit thepresident's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye tointelligence that did not.............VIDEO & AUDIO FEEDS:REAL AUDIO VIDEO:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlSTREAMING FLASH:http://tinyurl.com/nhhwpWINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER:http://tinyurl.com/q62ksMP3:http://tinyurl.com/qrvq4............"It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it¹s an intelligencefailure. It¹s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure,"Drumheller tells Bradley.Drumheller was the CIA's top man in Europe, the head of covert operationsthere, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the WhiteHouse promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn¹t:"The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen oneway or the other," says Drumheller.Drumheller says he doesn't think it mattered very much to the administrationwhat the intelligence community had to say. "I think it mattered it ifverified. This basic belief that had taken hold in the U.S. government thatnow is the time, we had the means, all we needed was the will," he says.The road to war in Iraq took some strange turns -- none stranger than adetour to the West African country of Niger. In late 2001, a month after9/11, the United States got a report from the Italian intelligence servicethat Saddam Hussein had bought 500 tons of so-called yellowcake uranium inorder to build a nuclear bomb.But Drumheller says many CIA analysts were skeptical. "Most people came tothe opinion that there was something questionable about it," he says.Asked if that was his reaction, Drumheller says, "That was our reaction fromthe very beginning. The report didn't hold together."Drumheller says that was the "general feeling" in the agency at that time.However, Vice President Dick Cheney thought the story was worthinvestigating, and asked the CIA not to discount the story without firsttaking a closer look. So, in February 2002, the agency sent formerambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate."If Saddam Hussein had acquired 500 tons of yellowcake uranium in violationof U.N. sanctions, that would be pretty serious, wouldn¹t it?" Bradley askedWilson."Absolutely. Certainly. And the fact that there was an allegation out therethat he was even attempting to purchase 500 tons of uranium was veryserious, because it essentially meant that they were restarting theirnuclear programs," Wilson replied.Wilson spent eight days in Niger looking for signs of a secret deal to sendyellowcake to Iraq. He spoke to government officials who would have knownabout such a transaction. No one did. There had been a meeting betweenIraqis and Nigerians in 1999, but Wilson was told uranium had never beendiscussed. He also found no evidence that Iraq had even been interested inbuying uranium."I concluded that it could not have happened," Wilson says. At the end ofhis eight-day stay in Niger, Wilson says he had no lingering doubts.When he returned, Wilson told the CIA what he had learned. Despite that,some intelligence analysts stood by the Italian report that Saddam Husseinhad purchased uranium from Niger. But the director of the CIA and the deputydirector didn¹t buy it. In October, when the president¹s speechwriters triedto put the Niger uranium story in a speech that President Bush was scheduledto deliver in Cincinnati, they intervened.In a phone call and two faxes to the White House, they warned ³the Africastory is overblown² and ³the evidence is weak.² The speechwriters took theuranium reference out of the speech.Meanwhile, the CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq¹snuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq¹s foreign minister, had made a deal toreveal Iraq¹s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of theoperation."This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein. Someone who would knowwhat he was talking about," Drumheller says."You knew you could trust this guy?" Bradley asked."We continued to validate him the whole way through," Drumheller replied.According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news aboutthe Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House,including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.At that meeting, Drumheller says, "They were enthusiastic because they said,they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis."What did this high-level source tell him?"He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program,"says Drumheller."So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authorityfrom a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an activeprogram for weapons of mass destruction?" Bradley asked."Yes," Drumheller replied. He says there was doubt in his mind at all."It directly contradicts, though, what the president and his staff weretelling us," Bradley remarked."The policy was set," Drumheller says. "The war in Iraq was coming. And theywere looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify thepolicy."Drumheller expected the White House to ask for more information from theIraqi foreign minister.But he says he was taken aback by what happened. "The group that was dealingwith preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longerinterested," Drumheller recalls. "And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?'And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regimechange.'""And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that youhad this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilledwith that," Bradley asked."The first we heard, they were. Yes," Drumheller replied.Once they learned what it was the source had to say -- that Saddam Husseindid not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMDprogram, Drumheller says, "They stopped being interested in theintelligence."The White House declined to respond to Drumheller's account of Naji Sabri¹srole, but Secretary of State Rice has said that Sabri, the Iraqi foreignminister turned U.S. spy, was just one source, and therefore his informationwasn¹t reliable."They certainly took information that came from single sources on uranium,on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroborationat all and so you can¹t say you only listen to one source, because on manyissues they only listened to one source," says Drumheller."So you¹re saying that if there was a single source and that informationfrom that source backed up the case they were trying to build, then thatsingle source was ok, but if it didn¹t, then the single source was not ok,because he couldn¹t be corroborated," Bradley asked."Unfortunately, that¹s what it looks like," Drumheller replied."One panel after another found that agencies were giving conflictinginformation to the president," Bradley remarked.Drumheller admits they were. "And that's the problem. No. There was no onevoice in coming out of the intelligence community and that allowed thosepeople to pick and choose those bits of information that fit what theywanted to know."A few weeks after Sabri told the CIA that Iraq had no active nuclearprogram, the Niger uranium story seemed to get a new life: Documents thatsupposedly could prove that Saddam had purchased uranium from Africasuddenly surfaced in Rome. The documents came from Rocco Martino, a formerspy for Italian military intelligence.For years, Martino operated in a shady intelligence underworld, buyinggovernment secrets and then selling them to the highest bidder. Martino toldCBS News that a colonel in Italian military intelligence arranged for him tobuy classified documents from a woman who worked in the embassy of Niger.One set of documents showed Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger.What did he think when he first looked at the documents?"I thought I had my hands on some important papers. And this same woman wastelling me that they were very important," says Martino.In October 2002, Martino tried to sell the documents to Elisabeta Burba, areporter for an Italian news magazine. She had purchased information fromhim in the past."When you saw the documents, what did you think?" Bradley asked Burba."I was puzzled because actually, if those documents were authentic, theywould have been the 'smoking gun' that everybody was looking for in thatmoment," she replied.But Burba quickly suspected the documents had been forged. "The more Ilooked at them and then the more I found strange things or inconsistencies,"she says.Burba says the documents looked like were bad forgeries. She gave copies ofthe papers to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. It was the first time the U.S.government had gotten its hands on the documents at the heart of the Nigerstory.Drumheller says the CIA station chief in Rome, who worked for him, told himhe didn't believe it. "He said, 'It's not true. It's not; this isn't real,'"Drumheller recalls.When the documents arrived in Washington, State Department analysts quicklyconcluded they were suspect. One analyst wrote in an e-mail: "you¹ll notethat it bears a funky Emb. of Niger stamp (to make it look official, Iguess)."The Washington Post recently reported that in early January 2003, theNational Intelligence Council, which oversees all U.S. intelligenceagencies, did a final assessment of the uranium rumor and submitted a reportto the White House. Their conclusion: The story was baseless. That mighthave been the end of the Niger uranium story.But it wasn¹t. Just weeks later, the president laid out his reasons forgoing to war in the State of the Union Address -- and there it was again."The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently soughtsignificant quantities of uranium from Africa," the president said."I didn¹t even remember all the details of it because it was such alow-level, unimportant thing. But once it was in that State of the Unionaddress, it became huge," says Drumheller."So, let me see if I have it correctly. The United States gets a report thatSaddam is trying to buy uranium from Africa. But you and many others in ourintelligence community quickly knock it down. And then the uranium story isremoved from the speech that the President is to give in Cincinnati. Becausethe head of the CIA, George Tenet, doesn't believe in it?" Bradley asked."Right," Drumheller appeared.It then appeared in the State of the Union address as a British report.Drumheller, who oversaw intelligence operations for the CIA in Europe doubtsthe British had something the U.S. didn't. "No. I don¹t think they did," hesays.The British maintain they have intelligence to support the story -- but tothis day, they have never shared it.The White House declined 60 Minutes' request for an interview for thisstory, but Dan Bartlett, Counselor to the President, wrote us:"The President¹s convictions about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD werebased on the collective judgment of the intelligence community at that time.Bipartisan investigations S found no evidence of political pressure toinfluence the pre-war intelligence assessments of Iraq¹s weapons programs."And he added: "Saddam Hussein never abandoned his plan to acquire WMD, andhe posed a serious threat to the American people and to the region."On March 7, 2003, the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agencyannounced that the Niger uranium documents were forgeries. The Bushadministration went to war in Iraq 12 days later, without acknowledging thatone of its main arguments for going to war was false.Four months later, Wilson, who had gone to Niger and found nothing tosubstantiate the uranium rumor, went public and wrote a piece for The NewYork Times claiming that the Bush Administration had "twisted" theintelligence on Iraq:"This was really an attempt to get the government to acknowledge that the 16words should never have been in the State of the Union Address. It was assimple as that. If you are going to mislead the American people and you'recaught at it, you ought to fess up to it," says Wilson.One day after Wilson's piece appeared, the White House acknowledged thepresident should not have used the uranium claim. But according to newlyreleased court records, the vice president¹s chief of staff, Scooter Libby,leaked classified intelligence to reporters a day later in an effort tobolster the uranium story. What Scooter Libby didn¹t tell reporters is thatthe White House had been warned before the State of the Union speech not touse the Niger uranium claim."At the same time they were admitting the words should not have been in theState of the Union address, they were, we now know, sending Libby out toselectively leak only those pieces that continued to support this allegationthat was baseless. In other words, they were furthering the disinformationcampaign," says Wilson."The American people want to believe the president. I have relatives whoI've tried to talk to about this who say, 'Well, no, you can¹t tell me thepresident had this information and just ignored it,'" says Drumheller. "ButI think over time, people will look back on this and see this is going to beone of the great, I think, policy mistakes of all time."------------ABOUT THOSE IRAQ INTEL COMMISSIONSBy Josh MarshallTaking Points MemoApril 23, 2006http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008284.phpBy now you've probably seen or heard about the 60 Minutes segment with theinterview with Tyler Drumheller, the now-retired CIA officer who was head ofcovert 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'srun down the key points in the story.First, Drumheller says that most folks in the intelligence community didn'tthink there was anything to the Niger-uranium story. We knew that in generalterms; but we hadn't heard it yet from someone so closely involved in thecase itself. Remember, the CIA Station Chief in Rome, the guy who first sawthe 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'sForeign Minister, who the CIA managed to turn not long before the war brokeout. Drumheller was in charge of that operation. The White House, asDrumheller relates it, was really excited to hear what Sabri would revealabout the inner-workings of Saddam's regime, and particularly about any WMDprograms. That is, before Sabri admitted that Saddam didn't have any activeprograms. Then they lost interest.Now, if you didn't see the episode you can catch most of the key facts inthis story at the 60 Minutes website (see above for links).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 whetherthe 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 intelcommissions that have given the White House a clean bill of health ondistorting the intel and misleading the country about what we knew aboutIraq's alleged WMD programs?Think about it. It's devastating evidence against their credibility on aslew of levels.Did you read in any of those reports -- even in a way that would protectsources and methods -- that the CIA had turned a key member of the Iraqiregime, 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 theyrealized it didn't help the case for war? What about what he said about theNiger story?Did the Robb-Silbermann Commission not hear about what Drumheller had tosay? What about the Roberts Committee?I asked Drumheller just those questions when I spoke to him early thisevening. He was quite clear. He was interviewed by the Robb-SilbermannCommission. 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 onIntelligence (the Roberts Committee) but apparently only after they releasedtheir summer 2004 report.Now, quite a few of us have been arguing for almost two years now that thosereports were fundamentally dishonest in the story they told about why wewere so badly misled in the lead up to war. The fact that none ofDrumheller's story managed to find its way into those reports, I think,speaks volumes about the agenda that the writers of those reports werepursuing."I was stunned," Drumheller told me, when so little of the stuff he had toldthe commission's and the committee's investigators ended up in theirreports. His colleagues, he said, were equally "in shock" that so little ofwhat they related ended up in the reports either.What Drumheller has to say adds quite a lot to our knowledge of whathappened in the lead up to war. But what it shows even more clearly is thatnone of this stuff has yet been investigated by anyone whose principal goalis not covering for the White House.------------NHNE News List:To , send a message to:nhnenews- To , send a message to:nhnenews- To review current posts:nhnenews/messagesPublished by David SunfellowNewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)eMail: nhneNHNE Website: http://www.nhne.org/Phone: (928) 282-6120Fax: (815) 642-0117Appreciate what we are doing?You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=8173P.O. Box 2242Sedona, AZ 86339 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 oh..of course they did just like they agreed to keep certain stories about bush and team out of the news til a year after the election jo Apr 25, 2006 10:12 AM Re: oh dear what a leader.... HiFraggle You can bet if we knew they did. It must have served their purpose to keep quiet. Jo You can bomb the world to pieces You can't bomb it into peace Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 Like you said it was common knowledge , so its a bit like stating th obvious, news for when there is no news and a few column inches to fill..... The Valley Vegan............fraggle <EBbrewpunx wrote: see..wot i find funny..in a sad sick sorta way hordes of ppl knew this already.... it was all over the alternative press... Everyone else knew that there weren't any WMD's anymore in iraq.... everyone else knew there were huge rifts appearing in the CIA, NSA, Pentagon and state department, over intelligence and wot was being said. It just has taken the maon stream press HOW MANY YEARS TO CATCH ON????? sheesh Colin Sky Apr 25, 2006 1:15 AM ^*+ oh dear what a leader.... NHNE News ListCurrent Members: 1438Subscribe//archive info at the bottom of this message.------------A SPY SPEAKS OUTCBS 60 MinutesSunday, April 23, 2006http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlWhen no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Bushinsisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faultyintelligence. But a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller -- a 26-yearveteran of the agency -- has decided to do something CIA officials at hislevel almost never do: Speak out.He tells correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in theintelligence community but in the White House. He says he saw how the Bushadministration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit thepresident's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye tointelligence that did not.............VIDEO & AUDIO FEEDS:REAL AUDIO VIDEO:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlSTREAMING FLASH:http://tinyurl.com/nhhwpWINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER:http://tinyurl.com/q62ksMP3:http://tinyurl.com/qrvq4............"It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it¹s an intelligencefailure. It¹s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure,"Drumheller tells Bradley.Drumheller was the CIA's top man in Europe, the head of covert operationsthere, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the WhiteHouse promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn¹t:"The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen oneway or the other," says Drumheller.Drumheller says he doesn't think it mattered very much to the administrationwhat the intelligence community had to say. "I think it mattered it ifverified. This basic belief that had taken hold in the U.S. government thatnow is the time, we had the means, all we needed was the will," he says.The road to war in Iraq took some strange turns -- none stranger than adetour to the West African country of Niger. In late 2001, a month after9/11, the United States got a report from the Italian intelligence servicethat Saddam Hussein had bought 500 tons of so-called yellowcake uranium inorder to build a nuclear bomb.But Drumheller says many CIA analysts were skeptical. "Most people came tothe opinion that there was something questionable about it," he says.Asked if that was his reaction, Drumheller says, "That was our reaction fromthe very beginning. The report didn't hold together."Drumheller says that was the "general feeling" in the agency at that time.However, Vice President Dick Cheney thought the story was worthinvestigating, and asked the CIA not to discount the story without firsttaking a closer look. So, in February 2002, the agency sent formerambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate."If Saddam Hussein had acquired 500 tons of yellowcake uranium in violationof U.N. sanctions, that would be pretty serious, wouldn¹t it?" Bradley askedWilson."Absolutely. Certainly. And the fact that there was an allegation out therethat he was even attempting to purchase 500 tons of uranium was veryserious, because it essentially meant that they were restarting theirnuclear programs," Wilson replied.Wilson spent eight days in Niger looking for signs of a secret deal to sendyellowcake to Iraq. He spoke to government officials who would have knownabout such a transaction. No one did. There had been a meeting betweenIraqis and Nigerians in 1999, but Wilson was told uranium had never beendiscussed. He also found no evidence that Iraq had even been interested inbuying uranium."I concluded that it could not have happened," Wilson says. At the end ofhis eight-day stay in Niger, Wilson says he had no lingering doubts.When he returned, Wilson told the CIA what he had learned. Despite that,some intelligence analysts stood by the Italian report that Saddam Husseinhad purchased uranium from Niger. But the director of the CIA and the deputydirector didn¹t buy it. In October, when the president¹s speechwriters triedto put the Niger uranium story in a speech that President Bush was scheduledto deliver in Cincinnati, they intervened.In a phone call and two faxes to the White House, they warned ³the Africastory is overblown² and ³the evidence is weak.² The speechwriters took theuranium reference out of the speech.Meanwhile, the CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq¹snuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq¹s foreign minister, had made a deal toreveal Iraq¹s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of theoperation."This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein. Someone who would knowwhat he was talking about," Drumheller says."You knew you could trust this guy?" Bradley asked."We continued to validate him the whole way through," Drumheller replied.According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news aboutthe Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House,including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.At that meeting, Drumheller says, "They were enthusiastic because they said,they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis."What did this high-level source tell him?"He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program,"says Drumheller."So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authorityfrom a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an activeprogram for weapons of mass destruction?" Bradley asked."Yes," Drumheller replied. He says there was doubt in his mind at all."It directly contradicts, though, what the president and his staff weretelling us," Bradley remarked."The policy was set," Drumheller says. "The war in Iraq was coming. And theywere looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify thepolicy."Drumheller expected the White House to ask for more information from theIraqi foreign minister.But he says he was taken aback by what happened. "The group that was dealingwith preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longerinterested," Drumheller recalls. "And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?'And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regimechange.'""And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that youhad this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilledwith that," Bradley asked."The first we heard, they were. Yes," Drumheller replied.Once they learned what it was the source had to say -- that Saddam Husseindid not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMDprogram, Drumheller says, "They stopped being interested in theintelligence."The White House declined to respond to Drumheller's account of Naji Sabri¹srole, but Secretary of State Rice has said that Sabri, the Iraqi foreignminister turned U.S. spy, was just one source, and therefore his informationwasn¹t reliable."They certainly took information that came from single sources on uranium,on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroborationat all and so you can¹t say you only listen to one source, because on manyissues they only listened to one source," says Drumheller."So you¹re saying that if there was a single source and that informationfrom that source backed up the case they were trying to build, then thatsingle source was ok, but if it didn¹t, then the single source was not ok,because he couldn¹t be corroborated," Bradley asked."Unfortunately, that¹s what it looks like," Drumheller replied."One panel after another found that agencies were giving conflictinginformation to the president," Bradley remarked.Drumheller admits they were. "And that's the problem. No. There was no onevoice in coming out of the intelligence community and that allowed thosepeople to pick and choose those bits of information that fit what theywanted to know."A few weeks after Sabri told the CIA that Iraq had no active nuclearprogram, the Niger uranium story seemed to get a new life: Documents thatsupposedly could prove that Saddam had purchased uranium from Africasuddenly surfaced in Rome. The documents came from Rocco Martino, a formerspy for Italian military intelligence.For years, Martino operated in a shady intelligence underworld, buyinggovernment secrets and then selling them to the highest bidder. Martino toldCBS News that a colonel in Italian military intelligence arranged for him tobuy classified documents from a woman who worked in the embassy of Niger.One set of documents showed Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger.What did he think when he first looked at the documents?"I thought I had my hands on some important papers. And this same woman wastelling me that they were very important," says Martino.In October 2002, Martino tried to sell the documents to Elisabeta Burba, areporter for an Italian news magazine. She had purchased information fromhim in the past."When you saw the documents, what did you think?" Bradley asked Burba."I was puzzled because actually, if those documents were authentic, theywould have been the 'smoking gun' that everybody was looking for in thatmoment," she replied.But Burba quickly suspected the documents had been forged. "The more Ilooked at them and then the more I found strange things or inconsistencies,"she says.Burba says the documents looked like were bad forgeries. She gave copies ofthe papers to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. It was the first time the U.S.government had gotten its hands on the documents at the heart of the Nigerstory.Drumheller says the CIA station chief in Rome, who worked for him, told himhe didn't believe it. "He said, 'It's not true. It's not; this isn't real,'"Drumheller recalls.When the documents arrived in Washington, State Department analysts quicklyconcluded they were suspect. One analyst wrote in an e-mail: "you¹ll notethat it bears a funky Emb. of Niger stamp (to make it look official, Iguess)."The Washington Post recently reported that in early January 2003, theNational Intelligence Council, which oversees all U.S. intelligenceagencies, did a final assessment of the uranium rumor and submitted a reportto the White House. Their conclusion: The story was baseless. That mighthave been the end of the Niger uranium story.But it wasn¹t. Just weeks later, the president laid out his reasons forgoing to war in the State of the Union Address -- and there it was again."The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently soughtsignificant quantities of uranium from Africa," the president said."I didn¹t even remember all the details of it because it was such alow-level, unimportant thing. But once it was in that State of the Unionaddress, it became huge," says Drumheller."So, let me see if I have it correctly. The United States gets a report thatSaddam is trying to buy uranium from Africa. But you and many others in ourintelligence community quickly knock it down. And then the uranium story isremoved from the speech that the President is to give in Cincinnati. Becausethe head of the CIA, George Tenet, doesn't believe in it?" Bradley asked."Right," Drumheller appeared.It then appeared in the State of the Union address as a British report.Drumheller, who oversaw intelligence operations for the CIA in Europe doubtsthe British had something the U.S. didn't. "No. I don¹t think they did," hesays.The British maintain they have intelligence to support the story -- but tothis day, they have never shared it.The White House declined 60 Minutes' request for an interview for thisstory, but Dan Bartlett, Counselor to the President, wrote us:"The President¹s convictions about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD werebased on the collective judgment of the intelligence community at that time.Bipartisan investigations S found no evidence of political pressure toinfluence the pre-war intelligence assessments of Iraq¹s weapons programs."And he added: "Saddam Hussein never abandoned his plan to acquire WMD, andhe posed a serious threat to the American people and to the region."On March 7, 2003, the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agencyannounced that the Niger uranium documents were forgeries. The Bushadministration went to war in Iraq 12 days later, without acknowledging thatone of its main arguments for going to war was false.Four months later, Wilson, who had gone to Niger and found nothing tosubstantiate the uranium rumor, went public and wrote a piece for The NewYork Times claiming that the Bush Administration had "twisted" theintelligence on Iraq:"This was really an attempt to get the government to acknowledge that the 16words should never have been in the State of the Union Address. It was assimple as that. If you are going to mislead the American people and you'recaught at it, you ought to fess up to it," says Wilson.One day after Wilson's piece appeared, the White House acknowledged thepresident should not have used the uranium claim. But according to newlyreleased court records, the vice president¹s chief of staff, Scooter Libby,leaked classified intelligence to reporters a day later in an effort tobolster the uranium story. What Scooter Libby didn¹t tell reporters is thatthe White House had been warned before the State of the Union speech not touse the Niger uranium claim."At the same time they were admitting the words should not have been in theState of the Union address, they were, we now know, sending Libby out toselectively leak only those pieces that continued to support this allegationthat was baseless. In other words, they were furthering the disinformationcampaign," says Wilson."The American people want to believe the president. I have relatives whoI've tried to talk to about this who say, 'Well, no, you can¹t tell me thepresident had this information and just ignored it,'" says Drumheller. "ButI think over time, people will look back on this and see this is going to beone of the great, I think, policy mistakes of all time."------------ABOUT THOSE IRAQ INTEL COMMISSIONSBy Josh MarshallTaking Points MemoApril 23, 2006http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008284.phpBy now you've probably seen or heard about the 60 Minutes segment with theinterview with Tyler Drumheller, the now-retired CIA officer who was head ofcovert 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'srun down the key points in the story.First, Drumheller says that most folks in the intelligence community didn'tthink there was anything to the Niger-uranium story. We knew that in generalterms; but we hadn't heard it yet from someone so closely involved in thecase itself. Remember, the CIA Station Chief in Rome, the guy who first sawthe 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'sForeign Minister, who the CIA managed to turn not long before the war brokeout. Drumheller was in charge of that operation. The White House, asDrumheller relates it, was really excited to hear what Sabri would revealabout the inner-workings of Saddam's regime, and particularly about any WMDprograms. That is, before Sabri admitted that Saddam didn't have any activeprograms. Then they lost interest.Now, if you didn't see the episode you can catch most of the key facts inthis story at the 60 Minutes website (see above for links).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 whetherthe 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 intelcommissions that have given the White House a clean bill of health ondistorting the intel and misleading the country about what we knew aboutIraq's alleged WMD programs?Think about it. It's devastating evidence against their credibility on aslew of levels.Did you read in any of those reports -- even in a way that would protectsources and methods -- that the CIA had turned a key member of the Iraqiregime, 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 theyrealized it didn't help the case for war? What about what he said about theNiger story?Did the Robb-Silbermann Commission not hear about what Drumheller had tosay? What about the Roberts Committee?I asked Drumheller just those questions when I spoke to him early thisevening. He was quite clear. He was interviewed by the Robb-SilbermannCommission. 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 onIntelligence (the Roberts Committee) but apparently only after they releasedtheir summer 2004 report.Now, quite a few of us have been arguing for almost two years now that thosereports were fundamentally dishonest in the story they told about why wewere so badly misled in the lead up to war. The fact that none ofDrumheller's story managed to find its way into those reports, I think,speaks volumes about the agenda that the writers of those reports werepursuing."I was stunned," Drumheller told me, when so little of the stuff he had toldthe commission's and the committee's investigators ended up in theirreports. His colleagues, he said, were equally "in shock" that so little ofwhat they related ended up in the reports either.What Drumheller has to say adds quite a lot to our knowledge of whathappened in the lead up to war. But what it shows even more clearly is thatnone of this stuff has yet been investigated by anyone whose principal goalis not covering for the White House.------------NHNE News List:To , send a message to:nhnenews- To , send a message to:nhnenews- To review current posts:nhnenews/messagesPublished by David SunfellowNewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)eMail: nhneNHNE Website: http://www.nhne.org/Phone: (928) 282-6120Fax: (815) 642-0117Appreciate what we are doing?You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=8173P.O. Box 2242Sedona, AZ 86339 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 maybe common knowlege on yer side of the pond here...most ppl get their news from the Major newscorps... if they don't mention, joe american doesn't hear of it in general peter hurd Apr 25, 2006 11:18 AM Re: oh dear what a leader.... Like you said it was common knowledge , so its a bit like stating th obvious, news for when there is no news and a few column inches to fill..... The Valley Vegan............fraggle <EBbrewpunx wrote: see..wot i find funny..in a sad sick sorta way hordes of ppl knew this already.... it was all over the alternative press... Everyone else knew that there weren't any WMD's anymore in iraq.... everyone else knew there were huge rifts appearing in the CIA, NSA, Pentagon and state department, over intelligence and wot was being said. It just has taken the maon stream press HOW MANY YEARS TO CATCH ON????? sheesh You can bomb the world to pieces You can't bomb it into peace Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 your right. we knew it even before day one. way back past viet nam we knew it... nothing has changed. the belligerent bastard just changes name... - fraggle Wednesday, April 26, 2006 3:40 AM Re: oh dear what a leader.... see..wot i find funny..in a sad sick sorta way hordes of ppl knew this already.... it was all over the alternative press... Everyone else knew that there weren't any WMD's anymore in iraq.... everyone else knew there were huge rifts appearing in the CIA, NSA, Pentagon and state department, over intelligence and wot was being said. It just has taken the maon stream press HOW MANY YEARS TO CATCH ON????? sheesh Colin Sky Apr 25, 2006 1:15 AM ^*+ oh dear what a leader.... NHNE News ListCurrent Members: 1438Subscribe//archive info at the bottom of this message.------------A SPY SPEAKS OUTCBS 60 MinutesSunday, April 23, 2006http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlWhen no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Bushinsisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faultyintelligence. But a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller -- a 26-yearveteran of the agency -- has decided to do something CIA officials at hislevel almost never do: Speak out.He tells correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in theintelligence community but in the White House. He says he saw how the Bushadministration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit thepresident's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye tointelligence that did not.............VIDEO & AUDIO FEEDS:REAL AUDIO VIDEO:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlSTREAMING FLASH:http://tinyurl.com/nhhwpWINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER:http://tinyurl.com/q62ksMP3:http://tinyurl.com/qrvq4............"It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it¹s an intelligencefailure. It¹s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure,"Drumheller tells Bradley.Drumheller was the CIA's top man in Europe, the head of covert operationsthere, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the WhiteHouse promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn¹t:"The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen oneway or the other," says Drumheller.Drumheller says he doesn't think it mattered very much to the administrationwhat the intelligence community had to say. "I think it mattered it ifverified. This basic belief that had taken hold in the U.S. government thatnow is the time, we had the means, all we needed was the will," he says.The road to war in Iraq took some strange turns -- none stranger than adetour to the West African country of Niger. In late 2001, a month after9/11, the United States got a report from the Italian intelligence servicethat Saddam Hussein had bought 500 tons of so-called yellowcake uranium inorder to build a nuclear bomb.But Drumheller says many CIA analysts were skeptical. "Most people came tothe opinion that there was something questionable about it," he says.Asked if that was his reaction, Drumheller says, "That was our reaction fromthe very beginning. The report didn't hold together."Drumheller says that was the "general feeling" in the agency at that time.However, Vice President Dick Cheney thought the story was worthinvestigating, and asked the CIA not to discount the story without firsttaking a closer look. So, in February 2002, the agency sent formerambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate."If Saddam Hussein had acquired 500 tons of yellowcake uranium in violationof U.N. sanctions, that would be pretty serious, wouldn¹t it?" Bradley askedWilson."Absolutely. Certainly. And the fact that there was an allegation out therethat he was even attempting to purchase 500 tons of uranium was veryserious, because it essentially meant that they were restarting theirnuclear programs," Wilson replied.Wilson spent eight days in Niger looking for signs of a secret deal to sendyellowcake to Iraq. He spoke to government officials who would have knownabout such a transaction. No one did. There had been a meeting betweenIraqis and Nigerians in 1999, but Wilson was told uranium had never beendiscussed. He also found no evidence that Iraq had even been interested inbuying uranium."I concluded that it could not have happened," Wilson says. At the end ofhis eight-day stay in Niger, Wilson says he had no lingering doubts.When he returned, Wilson told the CIA what he had learned. Despite that,some intelligence analysts stood by the Italian report that Saddam Husseinhad purchased uranium from Niger. But the director of the CIA and the deputydirector didn¹t buy it. In October, when the president¹s speechwriters triedto put the Niger uranium story in a speech that President Bush was scheduledto deliver in Cincinnati, they intervened.In a phone call and two faxes to the White House, they warned ³the Africastory is overblown² and ³the evidence is weak.² The speechwriters took theuranium reference out of the speech.Meanwhile, the CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq¹snuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq¹s foreign minister, had made a deal toreveal Iraq¹s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of theoperation."This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein. Someone who would knowwhat he was talking about," Drumheller says."You knew you could trust this guy?" Bradley asked."We continued to validate him the whole way through," Drumheller replied.According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news aboutthe Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House,including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.At that meeting, Drumheller says, "They were enthusiastic because they said,they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis."What did this high-level source tell him?"He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program,"says Drumheller."So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authorityfrom a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an activeprogram for weapons of mass destruction?" Bradley asked."Yes," Drumheller replied. He says there was doubt in his mind at all."It directly contradicts, though, what the president and his staff weretelling us," Bradley remarked."The policy was set," Drumheller says. "The war in Iraq was coming. And theywere looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify thepolicy."Drumheller expected the White House to ask for more information from theIraqi foreign minister.But he says he was taken aback by what happened. "The group that was dealingwith preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longerinterested," Drumheller recalls. "And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?'And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regimechange.'""And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that youhad this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilledwith that," Bradley asked."The first we heard, they were. Yes," Drumheller replied.Once they learned what it was the source had to say -- that Saddam Husseindid not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMDprogram, Drumheller says, "They stopped being interested in theintelligence."The White House declined to respond to Drumheller's account of Naji Sabri¹srole, but Secretary of State Rice has said that Sabri, the Iraqi foreignminister turned U.S. spy, was just one source, and therefore his informationwasn¹t reliable."They certainly took information that came from single sources on uranium,on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroborationat all and so you can¹t say you only listen to one source, because on manyissues they only listened to one source," says Drumheller."So you¹re saying that if there was a single source and that informationfrom that source backed up the case they were trying to build, then thatsingle source was ok, but if it didn¹t, then the single source was not ok,because he couldn¹t be corroborated," Bradley asked."Unfortunately, that¹s what it looks like," Drumheller replied."One panel after another found that agencies were giving conflictinginformation to the president," Bradley remarked.Drumheller admits they were. "And that's the problem. No. There was no onevoice in coming out of the intelligence community and that allowed thosepeople to pick and choose those bits of information that fit what theywanted to know."A few weeks after Sabri told the CIA that Iraq had no active nuclearprogram, the Niger uranium story seemed to get a new life: Documents thatsupposedly could prove that Saddam had purchased uranium from Africasuddenly surfaced in Rome. The documents came from Rocco Martino, a formerspy for Italian military intelligence.For years, Martino operated in a shady intelligence underworld, buyinggovernment secrets and then selling them to the highest bidder. Martino toldCBS News that a colonel in Italian military intelligence arranged for him tobuy classified documents from a woman who worked in the embassy of Niger.One set of documents showed Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger.What did he think when he first looked at the documents?"I thought I had my hands on some important papers. And this same woman wastelling me that they were very important," says Martino.In October 2002, Martino tried to sell the documents to Elisabeta Burba, areporter for an Italian news magazine. She had purchased information fromhim in the past."When you saw the documents, what did you think?" Bradley asked Burba."I was puzzled because actually, if those documents were authentic, theywould have been the 'smoking gun' that everybody was looking for in thatmoment," she replied.But Burba quickly suspected the documents had been forged. "The more Ilooked at them and then the more I found strange things or inconsistencies,"she says.Burba says the documents looked like were bad forgeries. She gave copies ofthe papers to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. It was the first time the U.S.government had gotten its hands on the documents at the heart of the Nigerstory.Drumheller says the CIA station chief in Rome, who worked for him, told himhe didn't believe it. "He said, 'It's not true. It's not; this isn't real,'"Drumheller recalls.When the documents arrived in Washington, State Department analysts quicklyconcluded they were suspect. One analyst wrote in an e-mail: "you¹ll notethat it bears a funky Emb. of Niger stamp (to make it look official, Iguess)."The Washington Post recently reported that in early January 2003, theNational Intelligence Council, which oversees all U.S. intelligenceagencies, did a final assessment of the uranium rumor and submitted a reportto the White House. Their conclusion: The story was baseless. That mighthave been the end of the Niger uranium story.But it wasn¹t. Just weeks later, the president laid out his reasons forgoing to war in the State of the Union Address -- and there it was again."The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently soughtsignificant quantities of uranium from Africa," the president said."I didn¹t even remember all the details of it because it was such alow-level, unimportant thing. But once it was in that State of the Unionaddress, it became huge," says Drumheller."So, let me see if I have it correctly. The United States gets a report thatSaddam is trying to buy uranium from Africa. But you and many others in ourintelligence community quickly knock it down. And then the uranium story isremoved from the speech that the President is to give in Cincinnati. Becausethe head of the CIA, George Tenet, doesn't believe in it?" Bradley asked."Right," Drumheller appeared.It then appeared in the State of the Union address as a British report.Drumheller, who oversaw intelligence operations for the CIA in Europe doubtsthe British had something the U.S. didn't. "No. I don¹t think they did," hesays.The British maintain they have intelligence to support the story -- but tothis day, they have never shared it.The White House declined 60 Minutes' request for an interview for thisstory, but Dan Bartlett, Counselor to the President, wrote us:"The President¹s convictions about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD werebased on the collective judgment of the intelligence community at that time.Bipartisan investigations S found no evidence of political pressure toinfluence the pre-war intelligence assessments of Iraq¹s weapons programs."And he added: "Saddam Hussein never abandoned his plan to acquire WMD, andhe posed a serious threat to the American people and to the region."On March 7, 2003, the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agencyannounced that the Niger uranium documents were forgeries. The Bushadministration went to war in Iraq 12 days later, without acknowledging thatone of its main arguments for going to war was false.Four months later, Wilson, who had gone to Niger and found nothing tosubstantiate the uranium rumor, went public and wrote a piece for The NewYork Times claiming that the Bush Administration had "twisted" theintelligence on Iraq:"This was really an attempt to get the government to acknowledge that the 16words should never have been in the State of the Union Address. It was assimple as that. If you are going to mislead the American people and you'recaught at it, you ought to fess up to it," says Wilson.One day after Wilson's piece appeared, the White House acknowledged thepresident should not have used the uranium claim. But according to newlyreleased court records, the vice president¹s chief of staff, Scooter Libby,leaked classified intelligence to reporters a day later in an effort tobolster the uranium story. What Scooter Libby didn¹t tell reporters is thatthe White House had been warned before the State of the Union speech not touse the Niger uranium claim."At the same time they were admitting the words should not have been in theState of the Union address, they were, we now know, sending Libby out toselectively leak only those pieces that continued to support this allegationthat was baseless. In other words, they were furthering the disinformationcampaign," says Wilson."The American people want to believe the president. I have relatives whoI've tried to talk to about this who say, 'Well, no, you can¹t tell me thepresident had this information and just ignored it,'" says Drumheller. "ButI think over time, people will look back on this and see this is going to beone of the great, I think, policy mistakes of all time."------------ABOUT THOSE IRAQ INTEL COMMISSIONSBy Josh MarshallTaking Points MemoApril 23, 2006http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008284.phpBy now you've probably seen or heard about the 60 Minutes segment with theinterview with Tyler Drumheller, the now-retired CIA officer who was head ofcovert 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'srun down the key points in the story.First, Drumheller says that most folks in the intelligence community didn'tthink there was anything to the Niger-uranium story. We knew that in generalterms; but we hadn't heard it yet from someone so closely involved in thecase itself. Remember, the CIA Station Chief in Rome, the guy who first sawthe 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'sForeign Minister, who the CIA managed to turn not long before the war brokeout. Drumheller was in charge of that operation. The White House, asDrumheller relates it, was really excited to hear what Sabri would revealabout the inner-workings of Saddam's regime, and particularly about any WMDprograms. That is, before Sabri admitted that Saddam didn't have any activeprograms. Then they lost interest.Now, if you didn't see the episode you can catch most of the key facts inthis story at the 60 Minutes website (see above for links).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 whetherthe 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 intelcommissions that have given the White House a clean bill of health ondistorting the intel and misleading the country about what we knew aboutIraq's alleged WMD programs?Think about it. It's devastating evidence against their credibility on aslew of levels.Did you read in any of those reports -- even in a way that would protectsources and methods -- that the CIA had turned a key member of the Iraqiregime, 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 theyrealized it didn't help the case for war? What about what he said about theNiger story?Did the Robb-Silbermann Commission not hear about what Drumheller had tosay? What about the Roberts Committee?I asked Drumheller just those questions when I spoke to him early thisevening. He was quite clear. He was interviewed by the Robb-SilbermannCommission. 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 onIntelligence (the Roberts Committee) but apparently only after they releasedtheir summer 2004 report.Now, quite a few of us have been arguing for almost two years now that thosereports were fundamentally dishonest in the story they told about why wewere so badly misled in the lead up to war. The fact that none ofDrumheller's story managed to find its way into those reports, I think,speaks volumes about the agenda that the writers of those reports werepursuing."I was stunned," Drumheller told me, when so little of the stuff he had toldthe commission's and the committee's investigators ended up in theirreports. His colleagues, he said, were equally "in shock" that so little ofwhat they related ended up in the reports either.What Drumheller has to say adds quite a lot to our knowledge of whathappened in the lead up to war. But what it shows even more clearly is thatnone of this stuff has yet been investigated by anyone whose principal goalis not covering for the White House.------------NHNE News List:To , send a message to:nhnenews- To , send a message to:nhnenews- To review current posts:nhnenews/messagesPublished by David SunfellowNewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)eMail: nhneNHNE Website: http://www.nhne.org/Phone: (928) 282-6120Fax: (815) 642-0117Appreciate what we are doing?You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=8173P.O. Box 2242Sedona, AZ 86339 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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